Our authors include experts on just about everything. Here are a few snips and links from around the web. Are there more we haven’t caught? Send them our way: cupblog [dot] us [at] gmail [dot] com.
Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice cites Colin Shindler, author of A History of Modern Israel in his latest article on Israel
Fueling Our Future: An Introduction to Sustainable Energy is shortlisted for a Donner Prize. The winner will be announced April 16.
Does Nick Smith’sI Was Wrong pass the “Page 99 Test”? Find out here. Smith was also reviewed on Read the Spirit, a book blog worth a visit for faith-based reviews.
Barry Friedburg, author of Anesthesia in Cosmetic Surgerydiscusses yet another preventable death.
Nick Smith is professor of Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire with a particular interest in how apologies work. He’s also a former trial lawyer for a major New York law firm. What does this mean for us? An unusually close look at Spitzer’s oft-sound-bite-ed public apology for his involvement with a prostitution ring.
He’ll be on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show tomorrow.
Watch the apology:
Elliot Spitzer’s recent statements accompanying his resignation as governor of New York provide an occasion to reflect on the meanings of apologies. I find apologies dizzyingly complex social rituals. In I Was Wrong: The Meanings of Apologies—published by Cambridge University Press—I identified more than a dozen kinds of meaning that we seek from gestures of contrition. Instead of worrying whether an example “is or is not” an apology, I wonder how well it serves certain purposes and to what extent it conveys certain kinds of subtle social meanings.
The book considers the many nuances and gritty details of apologetic meaning, but in general I find that asking a few simple questions can take us to the heart of the meaning of an apology: Did the offender explain what she did with an appropriate degree of specificity? Does she accept blame? Does she make clear why her actions were wrong and identify the principles she violated? Does she promise not to do it again redress the problem she caused?
These questions tend to lead to further questions about the meanings of any given apology, but they can provide some insight in Spitzer’s case.
First, Spitzer’s statements obviously admit very little. Rather than “coming clean” and confessing the details of his wrongdoing, he leaves us to speculate. He could have admitted all of the relevant facts, but instead it may require years of investigations and legal proceedings to disclose the extent of his transgressions. Or he might strike a deal that effectively ends the discussion. His repeated description of the reason for his resignation as a “private failing” seems untenable given that he is a former governor and attorney general facing charges in several federal crimes, but casting the offense in this way suggests that he may deny the prostitution-related charges and instead cast the sexual relations as an affair but not a crime. This may seem like a losing argument given the facts discussed publicly to date, but Spitzer may negotiate himself into a position to sustain this claim and avoid criminal charges. If he denies relations with a prostitute, he will not apologize for that specifically.
Smith is both a philosopher interested in apologies and a former trial lawyer; suffice it to say he’ll have a lot to talk about in current politics, including the Eliot Spitzer affair. Tune in!
Far Eastern Economic Review posted a great piece about our own Bill Overholt’s Asia, America, and the Transformation of Geopolitics. Wondering whether the US is handling things well in the far East? Read on.
Globalization101.orghosted a Q&A with Susan Aaronson, author of Trade Imbalance. Aaronson discusses the always murky territory of trade and human rights.
Appellation Beer - the site and blog of author and beer lover Stan Hieronymus is reading Grape vs. Grain. He has his own thoughts about the beer/wine debate right up front today, and throughout the blog.
The excellent Good Grape is anticipating Bamforth’s book as well.
To understand him, think: here is guy thinking about sex much more often than he lets on.
I am a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Ohio State University in Columbus who has been studying human motivation for a decade.
The media has been promoting a mostly inaccurate view of why someone would do what Gov. Spitzer did. Mr. Spitzer is not self-destructive. Actually, he has a personality opposite to someone who is self- destructive. Self-destruction is motivated by guilt, but people who practice infidelity often have no guilt because they think they are not doing anything wrong.
It is misleading to say that Mr. Spitzer was motivated by hubris. He may been self-confident and this might have become overconfidence after years of success, but I doubt he started with overconfidence or has a general tendency to think he can get away with things. If he did, he would have been caught a long time ago.
Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice cites Colin Shindler, author of A History of Modern Israel in his latest article on Israel
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