How to Measure a Cheshire Grin?

LEWIS CARROLL IN NUMBERLAND

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was a mathematician at

Oxford University for most of his life. His fanciful “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
and “Through the Looking Glass” are quite familiar to us, as, to a lesser extent, are
his photographs of young children. In “Lewis Carroll in Numberland,” the
distinguished British mathematician Robin Wilson has filled a perceived gap in the
writings about Carroll by describing in a straightforward, jabberwocky-free fashion the
author’s mathematical accomplishments, both professional and popular.

Wilson begins this fine mathematical biography with an account of Dodgson’s idyllic
North England childhood. Born in 1832, the eldest son in a large family, Dodgson
was mathematically gifted like his clergyman father. He read widely, wrote amusing
pamphlets for his siblings and dazzled his teachers. As Wilson documents, some of
Dodgson’s later concerns with logic, time and puzzles were already apparent in his
pamphlets and letters.

Proceeding linearly through Dodgson’s life, Wilson pays particular attention to his
early career at Oxford, including the sometimes tedious details of exams, classes
and the tutoring of fellow students. But even at the beginning of his career, Dodgson
demonstrated a playful approach to mathematics, frequently injecting little puzzles
into his lessons. (One of his classics: A cup contains 50 spoonfuls of brandy, and
another contains 50 spoonfuls of water. A spoonful of brandy is taken from the first
cup and mixed into the second cup. Then a spoonful of the mixture is taken from the
second cup and mixed into the first. Is there more or less brandy in the second cup
than there is water in the first cup?)

During these early years, Dodgson developed what would become a lifelong
fascination with geometry, an interest that led to his many explications and
pedagogical enhancements of Euclid’s “Elements.” Wilson explains these clearly for
those without mathematical background, as well as Dodgson’s later work on
algebraic determinants and his idiosyncratic techniques for evaluating them to solve
systems of linear equations.

Dodgson’s mathematical career — and perhaps even his literary career — would not
have been possible without the Rev. Henry Liddell. In 1855, Liddell became dean of
Christ Church and the following year appointed Dodgson a lecturer in mathematics.
Liddell had four children, including one little girl named Alice. Wilson briskly
dismisses the argument that Dodgson’s photographs of Alice and other girls,
sometimes nude or semi-nude, show he was a pedophile. “In common with many of
his generation, he regarded young children as the embodiment of purity and he
delighted in their innocence,” Wilson writes, adding that Dodgson’s vows of celibacy,
which he took in 1861 (though he never became a priest), “would have outlawed any
inappropriate behavior, and there has never been a shred of evidence of anything
untoward.”

Despite his voluminous output, Dodgson, who never married, remains inscrutable as
a person, at least to me. A religiously, politically and personally conservative man, he
revealed no unseemly visceral urges, but he did have an interest in politics. Through
it he came to investigate voting and apportionment systems; he pointed out the
possible faults of majority rule, runoffs, eliminations and other procedures, and
proposed various alternative arrangements, which also had shortcomings. These
insights foreshadowed Kenneth Arrow’s 1951 theorem showing that any voting
framework satisfying certain minimum conditions sometimes produces unfair results.

Wilson also discusses Dodgson’s proposals for ciphers and codes, his suggestions
for improvements in sports and tournament scoring, and his logic diagrams, which in
some ways better elucidate the conclusions of syllogisms than the more familiar
Venn diagrams. But the variety of his endeavors aside, Dodgson’s mathematics has
not proved influential or enduring. More long lasting have been his geometrical,
arithmetical and logical puzzles, well-chosen examples of which Wilson strews
throughout the book, along with excerpts from some of his often teasing letters.

Wilson’s aim is to concentrate on Dodgson’s scholarly work rather than on the

whimsical “Alice” books, but when pushed too hard the dichotomy between them
breaks down. Even Dodgson’s mathematical work contained wordplay and
humorously literal interpretations. Contrariwise, his popular work, always under the
pseudonym Lewis Carroll, refers obliquely to serious mathematical and philosophical
issues.

Wilson doesn’t mention it, but this unwarranted bifurcation brings to mind the
philosopher George Pitcher’s 1965 essay “Wittgenstein, Nonsense, and Lewis
Carroll,” which highlights telling similarities between the philosophical writings of
Wittgenstein and the popular work of Carroll. Both men were concerned with
nonsense, logical confusion and language puzzles. But while Wittgenstein was
tortured by these things, Carroll was, or at least appeared to be, delighted by them.
The relation between the two is similar in this respect to that between, say, Soren
Kierkegaard and Woody Allen.

Finally, in case you’re wondering, there’s exactly as much brandy in the water as
there is water in the brandy. Most frabjous!

John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University. His most

recent book is “Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just
Don’t Add Up.”
Eight Commonly Misinterpreted Songs
By: Vicki Santillano

In college, I took a class called “The Author’s Intention,” which analyzed whether readers
(and even the authors themselves) can ever really understand the meaning behind a piece of
writing. When we read a poem or a story, we bring our own experiences into the text and that
often yields vastly different interpretations. Thus, the meanings of things such as songs, which
can be interpreted as poems set to music, become blurred and stretch far from what their
writers might have originally intended.

Because many of us use music as an outlet for our deepest feelings, we are often shocked
when the meanings that we have given to certain songs prove false. Just as some literary
works are commonly misinterpreted, there are songs with meanings that are consistently
misinterpreted. All too often, we find out that the songs we put on mix tapes for our crushes,
or those we listen to on repeat in the midst of bad breakups, were written from a completely
different view.

1. “Born in the U.S.A.,” Bruce Springsteen

Almost everybody knows the chorus of this song, but fewer know the rest of the lyrics, which
is why Springsteen loudly singing, “I was born in the U.S.A.” is often taken as a patriotic
proclamation. However, it’s really about veterans returning from the Vietnam War and facing
the harsh realities of how they’re treated post-war. The misinterpretation only grew after both
Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole used the song on their campaign playlists.

2. “Losing My Religion,” R.E.M.

When Michael Stipe sang about being in a corner and losing his religion, he wasn’t referring
to a relationship with a higher power, as many believe. To “lose one’s religion” is actually a
Southern phrase that means to run out of patience or to be very frustrated by a person or
situation. This song is actually about having a crush on somebody and constantly looking for
assurances that the love is not unrequited.

3. “Every Breath You Take,” The Police

How many people foolishly chose this song for their first dance as newlyweds? I’m not sure
why this song is misinterpreted so universally as a love song. Do people listen to lyrics? If
someone says to you, “Every game you play, every night you stay, I’ll be watching you,”
wouldn’t you be more than a little creeped out? I guess that’s the power of Sting—even his
stalker anthems are considered romantic.

4. “Hollaback Girl,” Gwen Stefani

I’ve gotten into arguments with people over this song. Many believe it means that, by not
being a “hollaback girl,” Stefani is saying that she won’t respond to guys who “holla” at her
or treat her poorly. Actually, she’s using a cheerleading metaphor—a hollaback girl is one
who repeats back the cheers that the head cheerleader yells. With this song, Stefani is stepping
away from the pack and proclaiming herself independent. She’s the head cheerleader giving
orders, not one of the cheerleaders who simply repeat them back.
5. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” The Beatles
Many assume that this song refers to drug use, especially since the capitalized words in the
title start with the same letters used to denote a particular hallucinogenic drug. However, John
Lennon stated that the origins of the title come from a drawing that his son did of his friend,
Lucy. The title of the picture was “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” so John used that for his
song. Whether the actual meaning behind the song is about drug use is debatable, but the title
itself is not meant to refer to an LSD trip.

6. “Crash into Me,” Dave Matthews Band

I’m pretty sure I put this song on a mix CD I made for a crush my sophomore year of high
school. At the time, I thought it was a beautiful love song about longing for someone else.
Well, it is … but the person singing is actually a perv! These lines give him away: “Oh I
watch you there through the window and I stare at you. You wear nothing but you wear it so
well.” How did I miss the peeping tom aspect? The part about him wanting to be “tied up and
twisted” is a bit off-putting as well …

7. “The One I Love,” R.E.M.

It sounds like the perfect song for a radio dedication when Michael Stipe sings, “This one
goes out to the one I love.” Oh, except until he gets to the line about the one he loves being “a
simple prop to occupy my time.” Ouch! This song hardly inspires romantic feelings; actually,
it makes Stipe seem like kind of a jerk. He’s basically saying the one he “loves” is nothing
more than a waste of his time that he’s abandoned. Not exactly an uplifting declaration of true
love, but people seem to focus on that first line before listening to the rest of the song, hence
the constant misinterpretation.

8. “This Land Is Your Land,” Woody Guthrie

I remember singing this song in elementary school and thinking it sounded so pleasant and
positive. It’s actually a critique of the idealistic version of the U.S. that Irving Berlin sang
about in “God Bless America.” His displeasure is subtle, but made obvious upon careful
examination of lines like “As I was walkin’, I saw a sign there and that sign said—No
trespassin’. But on the other side, it didn’t say nothin’! Now that sign was made for you and
me!” This song is often grouped with “God Bless America” as patriotic tunes, but Guthrie had
the opposite intention.

What music essentially boils down to is not necessarily the meaning songs are meant to
convey, but what meanings we actually derive from them. After all, more important than what
messages artists intend to get across is their desire for people to connect with the music.
However, considering how striking the differences are between what the aforementioned
songs mean and how they’re interpreted, it might be wise to stick to the author’s version. I
know I’ll think twice before putting “Crash into Me” on my next mix CD.
How to Decide Who to Marry: By Kids
By: Salma Rumman

Kids contemplate marriage.

How would you make your marriage work?

Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck.
Ricky, age 10

How can a stranger tell if two people are married?

You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
Derrick, age 8

What do you think your mom and dad have in common?

Both don’t want any more kids.
Lori, age 8

What do most people do on a date?

Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys
have something to say if you listen long enough.
Lynnette, age 8 (isn’t she a treasure?)

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to
go for a second date.
Martin, age 10

What would you do on a first date that was turning sour?

I’d run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they
wrote about me in all the dead columns.
Craig, age 9

When is it okay to kiss someone?

When they’re rich.
Pam, age 7

The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn’t want to mess with that.
Curt, age 7

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with
them. It’s the right thing to do.
Howard, age 8

What is the right age to get married?

Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.
Camille, age 10
No age is good to get married at. You got to be a fool to get married.
Freddie, age 6 (very wise for his age)

Is it better to be single or married?

I don’t know which is better, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’m never going to have sex with my
wife. I don’t want to be all grossed out.
Theodore, age 8

It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.
Anita, age 9 (bless you child)

 How do you decide whom to marry?

You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it
that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming.
Alan, age 10

No person really decides before they grow up who they’re going to marry. God decides it all
way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with.
Kristen, age 10
Transition Holds Clues to How Obama Will Govern
By PETER BAKER

WASHINGTON — On the day before moving into the nation’s most storied house,
Barack Obama visited a shelter for teenagers with no home. With sleeves rolled up, he
spent a few minutes painting for the benefit of the cameras that trail him everywhere
now.

Cara Fuller, a shelter worker, asked if he was sweating.

“Nah, I don’t sweat,” he told her. “You ever see me sweat?”
Not yet. But then again, it is still early.
Mr. Obama arrives at the presidency Tuesday after a transition that betrayed little if any
perspiration and no hint of nervousness. Throughout the 77 days since his election, he
has been a font of cool confidence, never too hot, never too cold, seemingly undaunted
by the magnitude of troubles awaiting him and unbothered by the few setbacks that have
tripped him up.
He remains hard to read or label — centrist in his appointments and bipartisan in his
style, yet also pushing the broadest expansion of government in generations. He has
reached across old boundaries to build the foundation of an administration that will be
charged with hauling the country out of crisis, but for all the outreach he has made it
clear he is centralizing policy making in the White House.
He will eventually have to choose between competing advice and priorities, risking the
disappointment or anger of constituencies that for the moment can still see in him what
they hope to see.
What the country has seen of his leadership style so far evokes the discipline of George
W. Bush and the curiosity of Bill Clinton. Mr. Obama is not shy about making decisions
and making them expeditiously — he assembled his team in record time — but he has
also sought to tap into the nation’s intellectual dialogue at a time of great ferment.
He has set out ideas for governance even before taking office, but he has also adapted
the details as conditions changed.
More than any president since he was an infant, Mr. Obama has taken a place in society
that extends beyond political leadership. He is as much symbol as substance, an icon for
the young and a sign of deliverance for an older generation that never believed a man
with his skin color would ascend those steps to vow to preserve, protect and defend a
Constitution that originally counted a black man as three-fifths of a person.
He is a celebrity president in a celebrity culture, cooed over for his shirtless physique on
the beach and splashed on the cover of every magazine from Foreign Policy to People.
What his political opponents sought to portray in the campaign as arrogance is now
presented by his aides as comfort with power and the responsibilities that go along with
it.
“He sort of lives in a grudge-free zone,” said John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of his
transition team. “He’s capable of taking on board a lot of information and making good
decisions. He knows he’s going to make mistakes. But he also knows that you’ve got to
do the best you can, make tough decisions and move on.”
Some of those mistakes may owe in part to that signature confidence. Mr. Obama knew
and liked Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, initially overlooking an investigation into
state contracts that later sank his nomination for commerce secretary. Likewise, Mr.
Obama forged a personal connection with Timothy F. Geithner and picked him for
Treasury secretary, choosing to disregard Mr. Geithner’s past failure to pay some of his
taxes.
Little has emerged about the process behind those episodes, but aides described Mr.
Obama’s decision making as crisp and efficient. When he sits down for meetings, they
said, he starts by framing questions he wants answered, then gives each person a
chance to talk, while also engaging them. At the end, he typically sums up what he has
learned and where he is leaning. A late-night person, he often follows up with calls to
aides at 10 p.m. or later, after he has put his daughters to bed.
Mr. Podesta would not describe how the decision had been made to pull Mr.
Richardson’s nomination but said it had played out over just nine hours rather than days,
which limited the damage. “We saw the problem, understood it, Bill understood it wasn’t
viable, and we stopped it,” Mr. Podesta said.
That contrasts with Mr. Clinton, who liked free-ranging discussion and took time making
decisions. Mr. Podesta, Mr. Clinton’s last White House chief of staff, described the
former president as brilliant at “thinking laterally” across subject areas. “One thing that
seemed not to have taken on Bill Clinton is law school,” he said. “I tend to think of the
president-elect as approaching a problem in a more logical, more drill-down sort of way.”
Mr. Obama opted not to play it safe during the transition. He brought his Democratic
rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, into the cabinet, and angered gay and liberal supporters by
inviting the Rev. Rick Warren, an opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage, to give
the inaugural invocation. Although Mr. Obama deferred foreign affairs with his “one
president at a time” rule, that did not apply to domestic policy, where he lobbied
Congress to release $350 billion in financial bailout money and set about negotiating
roughly $800 billion in spending programs and tax breaks.
“He’s got the political courage to look at things and be bold,” said Gov. Edward G.
Rendell of Pennsylvania, a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s who has spent time with Mr.
Obama since the election. “The political wisdom is go slow, take the easy way first and
build up some victories.”
Mr. Rendell said Mr. Obama did not mind taking risks. “He’s goal-oriented, not process-
oriented,” he said. “If he does some things that are unorthodox or tick off his friends to
achieve a goal, he’ll do that.”
But Mr. Obama made a point of engaging adversaries, dining with conservative
columnists and talking with Republican congressmen. “He and his transition team have
reached out to the Hill more than any transition team I’ve seen,” said Representative
John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader. “So far, so good. But running a
campaign and running a transition are going to be different than governing, because
governing is about making choices.”
Mr. Boehner noted that Mr. Obama had originally reserved 40 percent of his economic
package for tax cuts but now seemed to be heeding Democrats pushing for more
spending. “At some point he’s going to have to tell people what he’s for,” Mr. Boehner
said, “and then we’ll see whether he really wants to govern from the middle or cave into
the liberals in his party.”
Mr. Obama’s outreach to Republicans has paid dividends. He wooed enough Republican
senators to release the bailout money. Even some he did not convince muted their
opposition. For instance, he called Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, who
opposed more bailout money without a commitment that it be used only for the financial
sector, not other industries.
“They didn’t want to shut the door, and if I were them maybe I wouldn’t either,” Mr.
Coburn said. “But I wanted the door shut.” After Mr. Obama’s call, he said, “I was quiet
as I voted against it.”
Mr. Obama has built a broader base of public support than many incoming presidents.
Representative Artur Davis, Democrat of Alabama, said 53 percent of white voters in his
conservative state now had favorable views of Mr. Obama, compared with 17 percent
before the election. “He has been pragmatic,” Mr. Davis said, “and even many voters
who voted against him see him as prepared to govern in a pragmatic, nonideological
way.”
But Mr. Obama has been harder to peg than that, and the next few months should flesh
out his governing philosophy.
“I don’t think it maps into traditional right-left, but nor is it Bill Clinton-like triangulation,”
said Robert B. Reich, Mr. Clinton’s labor secretary and an economic adviser to Mr.
Obama. “My sense is he genuinely believes that people can come to a rough consensus
about big problems and work together effectively. I don’t really get a sense of ideological
position. He’s obviously a man of strong convictions, but they don’t fall into the standard
boxes.”
Why I Love My Alpha Wife
From our special on alpha women: an essay by a beta man who loves one...

I wake early to get to my desk. I first grind the coffee beans, fill the espresso maker,
ready the milk, empty the dishwasher while I'm waiting for the milk to heat, the coffee
to come up. When she wakes I bring her a cup, usually, but not always, in bed.

When they wake I make breakfast for the kids, pack their lunches. I make sure their
schoolwork is finished and packed, their backpacks by the door.

My wife takes them to school, on the way to the office, where she is the boss.

She is a publisher. I am a writer. Left alone, I work through the day, once or twice a
week throw in two or three loads of laundry, wash and dry the clothes, linens, towels,
put them away, except for her clothes, which I leave on her dresser, not wanting to
put things in the wrong place. Amidst all the piles, I try to pay extra attention to her
jeans and her fine articles of lingerie, which she prefers attending to herself lest I
screw them up.

At 3 o'clock I pick up the kids, take them on some days to the Y for swimming
lessons, or walk them leisurely and pleasurably home, stopping on the way at the
grocery store to pick up milk (always milk) and anything else we might need for
dinner.

She comes home at 6:30. I do the cooking. Usually something simple — roasted
chicken with potatoes slathered in paprika, salt, and pepper, left to roast in the
chicken's juices in the bottom of the pan; spaghetti and meatballs (she passes on the
pasta but loves the meatballs: beef, veal, pork, one egg, bread crumbs, fresh parsley,
oregano, basil, salt, and ground pepper); or I call ahead for rice and beans ("My wife
will be there in 10 minutes") to the Cuban-Chinese restaurant that we love.

We clean up together.

We've got it down.

She describes herself as a control freak. Sure, she likes things done her way. But
then again, I like things done my way. We are lucky enough that her way and my way
often coincide. Once I asked her to clarify what she means by "control freak."

"Like when you were finishing your book," she said.

Oh, that.

There was a slight glitch that took place in our lives last year, and if I'm going to be
honest the year before that, and the year before that, and a couple of years more
than that besides. I was finishing up a novel I had been finishing up, or had been
nearing completion of, ever since we've known each other. Actually, I had been
working on this project for the last 17 years. I guess I fell in love with the research
and always felt I had to do more.

I had written it and rewritten it (at one point it was 2000 pages), edited it and re-
edited it, asked for help, then lashed out when I got it.

That's just the way things go.

Unfortunately, it put an enormous financial burden on our lives. My end of mortgage

payments, utility bills, food, clothes, car payments, insurance, birthday presents,
Christmas presents, walking-around money, going out to eat, you name it, all going
on my credit card(s).

Having a steady paycheck, she was taking care of most of our responsibilities, but
still.

"We've got to talk about your finances," she kept saying.

I would go into a huff.

"Joel, we need to sit down and make a budget," she'd say, in retrospect, calmly
enough.

"You don't understand," I would shout. "I'm not like you. I don't get a paycheck.
There's nothing to budget."

"No, you don't understand," she would insist. "Our money is running out. You are
putting yourself, your children, me, us, at risk."

I would storm off, sulk, snap, crackle, pop, refuse to talk another word with her, leave
the room when she came in.

She is a remarkable woman. As small as I am, she is large. She would never lash out
at me. She would let her anger be known, but she would not pick me apart, not in this
way.

And eventually, I was able to come to my senses.

Thanks to her, we own two beautiful homes. I am good with my hands and love to
build and fix and repair, but she is always doing budgets and planning. When it
comes to finances, everything must be known, in her opinion, and she works
assiduously so that she always knows where we are in terms of money.

I love her.

We sat down, and we made a budget.

Every payment, every expenditure was written down. I told her I was $100,000 in
debt with $20,000 cash advances on my cards still available to me.

She did not flinch, she did not condemn. She wrote the figures down and we went on.
She said we could refinance the house, take out X amount of cash, pay off a big
portion of what I owed. She said this will help you out for the time being, this is the
window in which you can operate, but — and it was a big but — come April we are
done, financially speaking. We will lose a lot of what we have built together.

For all the pain it took me to get myself to sit down with her, she liberated me. I took
her figures as gospel. Rose each day and went to work. Considered exactly how
much time I needed on this chapter and that, what it would take for me to get to the
final conclusion of the infernal book.

Thanks to her and her savvy, I met the mark, finished and sold the book. We paid off
the rest of my debt.

Still, there are certain things.

Recently we visited London for work. One of her authors, Marco Pierre White, a
celebrity chef and restaurateur in Britain, requested her presence at a big political
fund-raiser. Could she make it?

She spoke into the phone. "I'm here with my husband," she said. "Can he come?"

She was assured that I could. It was a sumptuous, rather startling affair at one of
White's most fabulous and done restaurants, Frankie's, across town from our hotel in
Soho.

We were seated at the table of honor, my wife shown to her spot of importance,
marked by a place card that said, in perfectly elegant calligraphy, Karen Rinaldi.

I, too, was ushered to my spot, and there was my place card: Joel Rinaldi.

Beta male.

Joel Rose's novel, The Blackest Bird, will be published by W.W. Norton in March.
The Human Soul: An Ancient Idea
A friend recently told me that he had finally, in middle age, found his soul mate. She was a
woman he barely knew, but he was willing to give up everything to be in her sphere. With
glassy eyes, he described how they were special, destined to find each other, and that in
coming together they made each other whole.

It was hard to not laugh at my friend's pronouncement of wandering souls crashing together,
because most adults are long past that ephemeral kind of love and way into the hard reality
of day-to-day living with someone, no matter the condition of their soul.

But my friend would be heartened by the discovery by archaeologists from the Neubauer
Expedition of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago of a stone slab with an
inscription that confirms that people like him have been into the idea of a soul for a very long
time.

The slab, or stele, was recovered from an Iron Age city called Sam'al in Turkey. It dates to
around the 8th century B.C. On the 800-pound, three-foot-tall piece of rock was an incised
picture of a man, the deceased, who was presumably cremated, and words that explained
that the soul of this man now resided within the stone slab.

What is it with humans and the idea of a soul? The ancient Greeks, who were around about
the same time as the slab was cut, also loved the idea of a soul, and most cultures and
religions today buy into it as well. Yet there's no evidence that such a thing really exists. But
still, even the most cynical of us is always trying to save our souls, damn other people's
souls, and searching for soul mates.

It's hard to say exactly when the idea of a second self came into play. Presumably the
recognition of a soul appeared hand-in-hand with human consciousness, and it was probably
voiced when we had language to put the idea of a soul into words. That would place the time
frame for a soul around 200,000 years ago, when humans experienced a cultural explosion
which they expressed in art, clothing, and evidence of religion.

Clearly, at that point and beyond, humans had moved beyond solving how to find enough
food, and they were using their excess brain power and leisure time to think of other things.

In that sense, the idea of a soul, or any kind of human spirituality, might simply be the
product of too much brain and too much free time.

It might also be an evolutionary strategy that takes us away from the anxieties of self-
consciousness. Once fully modern humans knew they could die, it probably made sense to
pretend that no one really died but that some part of us lived on into the cosmos.

Given the vagaries of ancient life, it probably also made sense to invent souls that had the
power to haunt and cause harm to explain all the bad stuff in life.

In fact, every culture, even today, has some concept that separates the spirit from the body,
confirming that like my dreamy friend, humans seem compelled to think of themselves as
something more than the sum of our biological parts, even if that belief makes us do foolish
earthly things.
Don't forget the F-word
Erica Jong on how the hope she had for women in 1968 has been
extinguished

It's an artifice of journalism to choose a given year and pretend that year "changed
everything". We constantly hear in the United States that 9/11 "changed everything", yet - for
most of humanity - life is still as nasty, brutish and short in 2008 as it was in 1008 or 2008
BC. If it is so for man, it is doubly so for woman - since women and children are the main
victims of war - if we go by numbers. But can numbers measure pain? Probably not.

It is a good time for me to be thinking about feminism over the past 40 years, as this week I
am in Rome with other writers, thinkers and artists (including Bernardo Bertolucci, Joschka
Fischer and Slavoj Zizek) for a festival of philosophy to mark the anniversary of 1968. In
1968, there was a great feeling of hope that things might change, that women might escape
from beatings and rape and malnutrition in the developing world, and that, in our supposedly
civilised world, they might find law degrees, medical degrees, political advancement and
economic parity with their brothers and fathers. Not to mention their husbands.

But it has not come to pass. Yes, women have law and medical degrees in great number,
write books by the carload and are good at it (why should we be surprised, when our first
great poet of love, Sappho, was a woman?), but the world is still not a level playing field.
Women are still not safe on the streets or in their own homes. And they comprise, with
children, most of the world's poor.

We have spilled oceans of ink, cut down forests of trees, blazed through the internet in light,
and the world is still dominated by the sex-bearing appendages rather than clefts. Why? That
is the subject for a future book. But I can say that the hope I felt in 1968 has evaporated. Last
week, a woman commentator on a supposedly progressive network called Hillary Clinton and
Geraldine Ferraro "whores". She was suspended, but she'll be back. Women columnists still
make their fortunes by attacking other women, as in the age of Clare Boothe Luce. It is, in
fact, a time-honoured way to get a book contract or a political appointment. Trashing one's
own gender remains a path to advancement.

There was a moment - 1968 to 1975, let's say - when it seemed that everything would
change for women. We were studied, promoted, advanced like a trendy minority. Then came
the backlash. "Is feminism dead?" screamed the cover of Time magazine. We were declared
dead before we were even half born. The backlash against feminism has lasted longer than
the brief flaring of feminism itself.

This has been the course of the movement for women's equality. Born in the 18th century
with other movements for equality, our movement has ebbed and flowed with changing
generations. We were scarcely enunciated before we became "the F-word" - the word that
can't be articulated lest we sound too much like our hated mothers.

In the US, there has been a real ebbing of reproductive rights, equality of pay and equality at
law. And women have assisted in their own demise, demonstrating against abortion and "for
life", though they don't seem to care so much for the children already born as for those
unborn. There has also been a flood of privileged women with law degrees and prosperous
husbands returning to housewifery - albeit a housewifery aided by nannies and caterers. I
have nothing against that. But I am astounded by the flight back to the nursery. In 1968, anti-
feminist scolds used to predict that the pill would stop women from having babies in the
future; quite the opposite has happened. Our daughters are having three, four and five
children - if they can afford them. Good for them. But here is what amazes: even the most
dependent years of childhood take up only a fraction of women's lives, and the cost of early
childhood education, preschools, crèches and such would come nowhere near the cost of
war, yet there is no political will in the US to make life healthier for childbearing women and
children. That is the ultimate cost of the backlash - and once again, it targets the most
vulnerable among us.

Watching this pageant of mayhem and murder one can only conclude, as Jeanette
Winterson appears to in her latest novel, The Stone Gods, that we are a uniquely self-
destructive species, high on our own desire to destroy our planet, starve and maim the
world's children. Power is a drug. It craves more and more of itself. Humanity, it turns out, is
better represented by Robert Mugabe and George W Bush than by Gandhi or Mother
Teresa. Perhaps women hating women is just a shoot off the poisonous vine of misanthropy.
We ourselves are the evil empire. And if we elect fools and knaves to hasten our planetary
demise, perhaps it is because these monsters represent our own desires for self-destruction.

1968 was a brief flare of hope for the human species. It was extinguished. The thugs with
jackboots are back. Some of them have vaginas. Or, as Oprah would say, "vajayjays". Talk
about the problem that has no name: we can't even name our own clefts.

Feminism, founded by Mary Wollstonecraft, advanced by Virginia Woolf, Eleanor Roosevelt,

Gloria Steinem and Hillary Clinton, has become nameless again. Perhaps a new generation
will rediscover it like the shard of an ancient cooking vessel. Perhaps someone will name it
again. I'll be there.