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How to teach quantum mechanics to kids

Does this even make sense? Doesn’t quantum mechanics involve advanced esoteric mathematics? Didn’t Richard Feynman say that nobody understands quantum mechanics, and didn’t Niels Bohr remark that those who aren’t shocked by quantum mechanics can’t possibly have understood it?

Quantum mechanics is our fundamental theory of matter. It has been confirmed to exquisite levels of accuracy and underlies much of modern technology: Transistors, microchips, lasers, atomic clocks, the basic building blocks of computers, televisions, smartphones, CD players, fiber-optic telecommunications, GPS systems, MRI machines, and more. No one could say that physicists who exploit quantum mechanics to design and construct these devices fail to understand the theory.

What Feynman and Bohr meant was that quantum mechanics calls into question our commonsense classical worldview at the most fundamental level. As Einstein put it, we think of an object as having a ‘being-thus,’ a particular catalogue of definite properties. Objects are located in space and time. Our actions causally influence the properties of distant objects only via perturbations that propagate locally from neighboring region to neighboring region. The most astonishing and disturbing feature of quantum mechanics is non-locality as it occurs in the phenomenon of quantum entanglement: Strangely counter-intuitive correlations between separated quantum systems that defy causal explanation. Schrodinger called entanglement ‘the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought.’ The classical worldview is fundamentally at odds with non-local entanglement.

Any educated person should be aware of major advances in science, and so should have a basic understanding of this extraordinary revolution in our conceptual framework. You might think that it’s a tall order to convey the weirdness of quantum correlations to kids, but there’s an insightful way to do this without the mathematical machinery of the theory by considering simulation games. In fact, if you don’t already understand just how quantum mechanics conflicts with our classical worldview, you will by the end of this article.

Consider an imaginary ‘superquantum’ correlation, proposed in 1994 by Sandu Popescu and Popescu Rohrlich – an extreme but possible version of the correlations that do occur in our quantum world. Popescu and Rohrlich imagine a box with two inputs, a left input and a right input, and two corresponding outputs. Inputs and outputs can each be 0 or 1, and the two possible outputs occur with equal probability for either input. The box functions in such a way that whenever both inputs are 1, the outputs are different, but for the other three combinations of inputs – both inputs 0, or left input 0 and right input 1, or left input 1 and right input 0 – the outputs are the same. Finally, Popescu and Rohrlich suppose that the two halves of the box can be separated by any distance without altering the correlation.

Jeffrey Bub compares the output of the Popescu-Rohrlich correlation box to flipping a coin. Image Credit: Coin toss by jeff_golden. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

The Popescu-Rohrlich correlation contains all the conceptual mysteries of quantum entanglement. There’s no way you could rig a real box with some sort of mechanism to produce this correlation, but it’s quite possible for a pair of coins, say, to produce the correlation just by chance for a long run of tosses, where the inputs correspond to a coin being tossed heads up or tails up, and outputs correspond to a coin landing heads or tails, with heads and tails corresponding to 0 and 1. Of course, the longer the run, the more improbable the correlation would be, but it’s not impossible.

Suppose Alice and Bob play a game with a moderator where the goal is to simulate this correlation. Alice and Bob are allowed to discuss strategy before the start of the simulation game, but once the game begins they are separated (say in two soundproof booths) and can only communicate with the moderator. The moderator gives Alice and Bob each a 0 or a 1 chosen randomly as input at each round of the game, and they each respond with a 0 or a 1 as output. They win the round if inputs and outputs are correlated like the correlations of a Popescu-Rohrlich box.

If Alice and Bob are allowed to generate a long random list of 0’s and 1’s before the start of the game (with as many entries as there are rounds of the game) and each keeps a copy of the list to consult during the game, they can win three out of four rounds on average. For each round, the strategy is for Alice and Bob to ignore the input and respond with the 0 or 1 on the list, in order for the sequence of rounds. Then they will both respond 0 or both respond 1 with equal probability for each pair of inputs (because the lists are the same), and they will win all the rounds except the rounds for which both inputs are 1 (when they are supposed to respond differently). If the inputs are chosen randomly, they will win three out of four rounds on average. It’s not hard to prove that this is the optimal strategy if Alice and Bob are allowed only classical resources: Pencil and paper, calculators, classical computers, that sort of thing. So the optimal classical strategy is only successful for three out of four rounds on average, which is to say the probability of winning the simulation game with classical resources is at most .75.

Now here’s the punchline. If Alice and Bob are allowed quantum resources – entangled pairs of quantum systems prepared before the start of the simulation game which they share when they are separated, and measuring instruments to measure these systems – they can win the simulation game with a probability of roughly .85 if they base their responses on these measurements! So quantum systems somehow manage to produce correlations closer to a Popescu-Rohrlich correlation than classical systems. How they are able to accomplish this feat is the quantum mystery nobody understands, the mystery that requires a fundamental revision of our commonsense classical worldview.

Featured image credit: Technology by tec_estromberg. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Jacob Zuma’s endgame and the state of South African politics

It is possible that events in recent months may have signalled the beginning of the end for South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma. True, Zuma has proved to be a resilient politician in the face of relentless criticism, ridicule and scandal, which began long before he came to power and premature predictions of his demise abound. There are signs, however, that the endgame has begun. The worry is that it will serve to distract attention from the country’s most pressing problems.

The country is beset with challenges, not least persistent poverty, unemployment, inequality, a flat-lining economy, declining minerals sector, looming credit rating downgrade, falling Rand, underperforming state owned companies, corruption and state incapacity, to name but a few. Protests over access to services, corruption, and university tuition fees are growing, while the unprecedented industrial action witnessed in recent years is likely to spike when important wage negotiations reopen this year. Many of these protests take aim directly at Zuma himself, and have even generated a #ZumaMustFall campaign.

They are accompanied by unending criticism of Zuma by the opposition parties and press. Such pressures are taking a toll, but Zuma’s downfall will not be heralded by this cacophony of moral outrage and liberal tut-tutting. His receding power is symbolised by a reluctance among all but his closest allies to speak out for him.  At the same time, section of his own party has become emboldened enough to challenge his increasingly erratic and autocratic decision making. Zuma’s U-turns in recent weeks regarding the appointment of his favoured finance minister and his offer to pay back some of the public money spent on his controversial Nkandla residence are symptomatic of his weakened position. While the court of public opinion might claim a victory, it is manoeuvrings within his own party that have Zuma most worried.

Zuma’s recent declaration that he will not run for a third term as ANC president reflects an admission of weakness, rather than a heartfelt commitment to democratic change and renewal in the movement. The fallout from the local elections in 2016 will provide the starting gun for the struggles for ANC leadership positions. Whether or not the ANC manages to hold on to the major metro areas it fears losing, the poll is likely to reflect longer-term trends of slowly diminishing ANC support. The apportioning of blame for this will likely reveal the factional fault lines ahead of the ANC’s elective conference in December 2017; a contest that Zuma is slowly losing influence over. There is even speculation that Zuma could be recalled by the ANC before then.

The danger with all this speculation, however, is that while Zuma’s future is of great importance to the country, there is a tendency among analysts to play the man and not the ball. A post-Zuma era would be welcome if for no other reason than refocussing attention away from a man whose leadership has, for much too long, been understood as being synonymous with, rather than symptomatic of, South Africa’s problems.

A pressing issue is the extent to which private patron-client networks have come to determine the distribution of public goods. Individual gatekeepers in positions of party or public administration control access to resources and opportunities and exercise a form of discretionary power by regulating who gains access to such resources; decisions that are often made  on the basis of political loyalty, rather than competence. Such practices are therefore not synonymous with corruption, though corruption is a pervasive symptom of it. Instead, they reflect something much broader: political and social structures through which authority and power are cultivated, disseminated, and contested.

There are two dimensions to this. The first is the distribution and consumption of state spoils (jobs, status, authority, services, housing etc.) along private networks for political gain. The second is the facilitation of capitalist accumulation through direct state support and influence, including the discretionary control and distribution of public contracts, BEE deals and market access. Large sections of the emerging black capitalist class in South Africa are highly dependent on continued state patronage for their future. This resembles the kind of capital accumulation one can witness in the crony capitalism evident in the East Asian ‘Tiger’ economies, post-Soviet Russia, and the ‘oligarchic’ politics evident in Western countries where private capitalist lobbyists wield huge influence over public officials.

This kind of gatekeeper politics is not the ineluctable way in which the ANC works. These tendencies were a prevalent feature of the National Party’s governance and thus predate the ANC’s assumption of office, let alone Jacob Zuma’s presidency. Patronage, corruption, cronyism, poverty, and inequality might instead be seen as intractable features of contemporary global capitalism, and South Africa’s historical insertion within it. Mitigating the fallout of these will require much more than stopping Zuma.

And yet, debates about Zuma’s future have come to embody debates about the country’s future. South Africa needs a far more reflective, mature conversation about the development of capitalism and its implications for party politics, democracy and development. Whether or not Zuma falls, this conversation cannot become solely a plebiscite on one man’s leadership; South Africa cannot afford such a blinkered fascination.

Featured Image Credit: Jacob Zuma, 2009 World Economic Forum on Africa-2.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Location, location, location: Why the HSBC headquarters stayed in London

Last month HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, decided not to move its headquarters from London to Hong Kong.

The revelation that a company is staying put is usually not earth-shattering news. Nonetheless, HSBC’s decision made headlines in Asia, Europe, and the US for three reasons. First, HSBC is the world’s fifth largest commercial bank: it holds more than $2.5 trillion in assets and is exceeded in size only by four state-owned Chinese banks. Wherever such a financial behemoth decides to hang its hat will have an important impact on that location…and the one it leaves. Second, and more importantly, the decision highlights the crucial role that a country’s legal and economic institutions play in the health of its financial institutions. Third, it shows how large banks like HSBC can—and do— use the threat of moving to secure more favorable treatment.

HSBC was established as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank almost exactly 151 years ago, opening for business in Hong Kong on March 1865 and in Shanghai a month later. It extended its reach throughout east and south-east Asia for the next three quarters of a century. With the communist take-over of China after World War II, the bank retreated from China and expanded its scale, scope, and geographic reach elsewhere, increasing its presence in the US, where it acquired Marine Midland Bank, and in the UK, where it purchased Midland Bank, one of the big four UK banks.

HSBC has more than a quarter of a million employees; nearly a fifth are located in Hong Kong and Mainland China, just slightly more than the proportion working in the UK (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Geographic distribution of HSBC workforce 2014 graph by Richard Grossman. Used with permission.

Nearly half of the firm’s assets are located in the UK, about a third in Asia, and about a sixth in North America (see Figure 2). Hence, from a logistical perspective, London and Hong Kong would both seem to be good choices for a headquarters location.

Figure 2: Geographic distribution of HSBC assets in 2014 by Richard Grossman. Used with permission.

From a purely commercial perspective, however, Hong Kong seems to have the upper hand: the long-run potential growth in less-developed Asia is certainly higher than in Europe. And, in fact, nearly two thirds of HSBC’s pre-tax profits in 2014 came from its Asian business. And yet, there are many reasons HSBC might be wary of decamping to China. Although Hong Kong has a large and well-run financial system, and its regulators get high marks from the IMF, if HSBC were to get into trouble, the Hong Kong authorities might not have sufficient resources to act as a lender of last resort: in 2012, Hong Kong’s banking sector assets amounted to more than seven times its GDP—HSBC’s balance sheet alone is nine times the size of Hong Kong’s GDP. Finding the resources to bail out a bank that is bigger than the entire economy would pose a substantial challenge.

Further, because Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China with a currency board, and not an independent country with its own central bank, it could not bail out a bank by issuing unlimited amounts of money. Hence, any serious crisis would require China to step in. And, given that China’s economic institutions are neither efficient not transparent, and its commitment to corruption-free rule of law is tenuous, a large multinational institution like HSBC might be wary of putting its future in Beijing’s hands.

HSBC had been officially considering the move to Hong Kong for almost a year before it decided to stay put. As a healthy and relatively profitable bank, the British government was keen for it to remain in London. So keen, in fact, that recent government moves could be interpreted as an attempt to … convince (bribe is such an unpleasant term) HSBC and other multinational banks to remain in London.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e., finance minister), George Osborne, made it clear during his Mansion House speech in June 2015, that he was prepared to make life more comfortable for banks to stay in the UK, offering a “new settlement” to Britain’s financial industry. “I want Britain to be the best place for European and global bank HQs. It’s in our national interest to be so.” And so the government will reduce a special tax that had been imposed on banks in the wake of the financial crisis. He also signaled that the substantial fines that had been imposed on banks for bad behavior would be used more sparingly: “… simply ratcheting up ever-larger fines that just penalise shareholders, erode capital reserves and diminish the lending potential of the economy is not, in the end, a long term answer.”

The HSBC board, which voted unanimously to keep its headquarters in London, understood that moving to a more economically dynamic Hong Kong would subject it to China’s not-yet-ready-for-prime-time economic institutions. Still, the threat of the move encouraged the British government to make life cozier for its banks.

The Chancellor was taking no chances.

And neither was HSBC.

Featured image credit: DLR / Barclays, HSBC by George Rex. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

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Do you know which classic inspired it? [quiz]

Do you know how many novelists, film directors, and board-game creators have been inspired to create art based on classical mythology and other classical works? Maybe not, but perhaps you know some of the more popular examples. Greek and Roman mythology has had a big impact on modern literature, film, and even the games we play. We owe more than we think to authors like Homer.

Test your knowledge of classical influences, classical reception, and learn about the ways in which the ancient world continues to inspire human culture.

Featured image credit: Virgil reading the Aeneid, by Jean-Baptiste Wicar. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Quiz background image credit: Elihu Vedder. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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99 years after the Jones Act: Austerity without representation

Ninety-nine years ago this week, Puerto Ricans became citizens of the United States. What does this anniversary signify? That depends a lot on who you ask (and be careful who you ask, since most Americans have no idea how or why Puerto Ricans became US citizens, or if they’re even citizens at all).

Just under a century after the Jones-Shaforth Act conferred US citizenship on residents of Puerto Rico in 1917, the island’s complicated legal and political relationship to the United States is once again under close scrutiny, with Puerto Rico’s economic survival hanging in the balance. And in a presidential election year, as Florida’s recent surge in Puerto Rican migrants—many of them voters—promises to shape election results in that swing state, the importance of Puerto Ricans’ US citizenship looks more momentous than ever. (The huge popular support for statehood in the 2012 status plebiscite—a possible if highly improbable future outcome that would change everything about both the island’s economic prospects and Puerto Ricans’ role in national politics—is another issue for another day.)

As we consider the legacy of the Jones Act, as it’s usually called, we should also review some facts.

Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in March 1917, the Jones Act served two objectives. First, it provided a system of civil government for the island the United States had taken as a prize of war following its victory against Spain in 1898. (The Spanish-Cuban-American war had begun as a fight for independence by Cubans and Puerto Ricans against Spain, which the United States joined, it claimed, in order to protect the liberty and sovereignty of its Caribbean neighbors.) The second purpose of the Jones Act was to secure US citizenship for Puerto Ricans, ensuring that the US constitution would “follow the flag” that was already flying over its new unincorporated territory.

The question of whether to extend US citizenship to Puerto Ricans had been debated by US jurists and politicians for almost two decades before it happened, and that debate was shot through with racism. Senator Chauncy Depew of New York insisted in 1900 that the United States could not “incorporate the alien races, and civilized, semi-civilized, barbarous, and savage peoples of these islands into our body politic as States of our Union.” In his last-ditch opposition to the Jones bill in 1916, Representative Joseph Cannon of Illinois warned that “the people of Porto Rico have not the slightest conception of self-government…Porto Rico is populated by a mixed race…fully 75 to 80% of the population…had an African strain in their blood.”

The citizenship question was also controversial in Puerto Rico. Most political leaders there had imagined, in 1898, that winning a war against Spain (with or without help from the United States) would result in an independent Puerto Rico—the achievement of political autonomy if not immediate and outright national sovereignty. Luis Muñoz Rivera, Puerto Rico’s first Resident Commissioner (the island’s non-voting representative in the US Congress), vehemently objected to the extension of US citizenship to his compatriots. “If we can not be one of your States; if we can not constitute a country of our own, then we will have to be perpetually a colony, a dependency of the United States. Is that the kind of citizenship you offer us? Then that is the citizenship we refuse.”

But of course Puerto Ricans could not refuse an Act of the United States Congress. The citizenship conferred on Puerto Ricans by the Jones Act was, and is, unequal to that possessed by residents of the mainland United States.

Puerto Ricans on the island, born US citizens, cannot vote in federal elections and have no proportional representation in Congress; the island’s single elected Resident Commissioner can vote in Congressional committee but can’t cast final votes on the House floor. A common explanation for this lack of representation is that Puerto Ricans don’t earn that voting power because they don’t pay federal taxes. But this is wrong. Puerto Ricans don’t pay personal federal income taxes, but they pay most other federal taxes mainlanders pay, including social security and Medicare taxes. They also pay a relatively hefty income tax to the Commonwealth government.

Such unequal terms make up the legal foundation of the relationship between Puerto Rican islanders and the United States. One of the few US officials to admit this fact—before the 1960s—was Rexford Tugwell, a New Dealer appointed governor of Puerto Rico by FDR in 1941. Reflecting on his governorship, Tugwell wrote that even after three decades of citizenship, “Americans generally did not come to think of Puerto Ricans as real citizens—rather, when they thought of them at all, as citizens of a sort of second class.”

Tugwell, it turned out, would be the island’s last non-Puerto Rican governor. In 1946, President Truman appointed legislator Jesús Piñero as the island’s first native governor, and then in 1948, Puerto Ricans elected the wildly popular Senator Luis Muñoz Marín, son of Luis Muñoz Rivera. Muñoz Marín shepherded the island through the legal transition to a Commonwealth (or Estado Libre Asociado) in 1952.

Nationalists violently opposed the status change, calling it “perfumed colonialism.” Puerto Ricans could pretend otherwise, they said, but they’d still be second-class citizens. These loud opponents of colonialism were joined in the 1960s by a growing base of radicalized young Puerto Ricans in the United States, whose critiques linked the injustices of colonialism on the island (and elsewhere in the world) with the racial prejudice and economic disadvantage they confronted as second- or third-generation Puerto Ricans growing up in American society.

Since that era, for at least the last fifty years, the anniversary of the Jones Act has been marked more often by protest than by celebration. And it’s not just nationalists and independentistas who focus on the injustices inscribed into law in 1917. One of the ironic legacies of the Jones Act is that opposing it brings together Puerto Rico’s staunchest political rivals, the left-leaning nationalists and the ideologically heterogeneous statehooders. First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Juan Toruella, who supports statehood for Puerto Rico, has written that the Jones Act created “a citizenship clouded by legalistic ‘ifs,’ ‘ands,’ ‘buts,’ and footnotes.” A nationalist would say the same thing—but would just arrive at a different conclusion about how to fix that problematic citizenship.

For the moment, for once, the “status question” has been sidelined in public debate as the island confronts more pressing problems. After years of negative economic growth, declining incomes and employment, rising poverty rates (already much higher than on the mainland), and mismanagement, the island faces a catastrophic debt crisis. Puerto Rico’s leaders are struggling to make the case that the United States should restore island municipalities’ rights to Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, which were denied following a convoluted legal decision in the 1980s. The Jones Act anniversary in 2016 serves primarily as a reminder that lack of representation in the US Congress continues to exact a painful price.

Featured image credit: MODERN BUILDINGS TOWER OVER THE SHANTIES CROWDED ALONG THE MARTIN PENA CANAL – NARA – 546368 by John Vachon, US National Archives and Records Administration. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Celebrating women in Economics and beyond [interactive map]

In 2016, women around the world are still fighting for their right to equality, even in the countries we think of as the most developed. Although in many areas, the gap has narrowed in recent years, gender inequality is still common in the labour market and in politics. To mark International Women’s Day 2016, we’ve put together a collection of books, journal articles, online products, and blog posts to celebrate the achievements of women, highlight current issues such as the gender pay gap, and acknowledge the steps that have been taken towards gender equality. The extracts featured on the map each focus on an issue, fact, or problem from around the world.

Explore the map to discover more.

Headline image credit: Hello, Sunshine! by Luci Correia CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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Sculptural transformations: destruction and reuse in Roman London

Despite much build-up to the new Star Wars film, one of the lesser-known news stories of 2015 described the transformation of a statue of Lenin, standing in a square in Odessa, into one of Darth Vader. This metamorphosis was necessary to comply with a law passed by the Ukrainian Parliament in April 2015 that banned communist propaganda. Streets were renamed and monuments removed, though even before the law was passed some statues of Lenin had been torn down or mutilated, possibly in protest against Russian influence at a time of heightened political tension.

This brought to my mind the iconoclasm of the ancient world: images and statues have held symbolic power for millennia, and inspire emotional, sometimes violent, responses. Under the Empire, statues of ‘bad’ Roman emperors suffered condemnation of their memory, now known as damnatio memoriae. While some statues, making best use of their expensive marble fabric, were re-cut as portraits of successors or revered predecessors, others were simply torn down or images in reliefs defaced. Cassius Dio tells us that an angry mob wished to tear Commodus’ body limb from limb ‘as in fact they did with his statues’, and Pliny recounts in his Panegyric to Trajan the public joy at hacking at sculptures of his predecessors, inflicting pain on them and spilling their blood as if they were human.

In London and the south east of England, political iconoclasm can be seen in at least two marble busts of outstanding quality. A portrait probably of Pertinax, emperor for a short time in early 193 AD, was found mutilated, decapitated and with shoulders cut off, in a cellar at Lullingstone villa. The damage is probably associated with the turbulent years near the end of the 2nd century when Pertinax, then governor of Britain before he became emperor, succeeded in defeating one revolt only to face another, only just escaping with his life. After this he imposed strict discipline. Mutinous soldiers looting his villa took revenge on the image of their hated commander.

Image credit: Bronze head from a statue of Hadrian, found in the River Thames in London, by FollowingHadrian. CC-BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The second, a portrait of Geta, who was murdered and his memory expunged at the hands of his brother Caracalla, was also extensively mutilated with shoulders amputated, ears cut off, nose damaged and decapitated in antiquity. Said to be recovered from the River Thames, the symbolic dumping in the river after destruction would be a fitting enactment of damnatio memoriae.

A three-sided box, with a reclining figure on the lid in the manner of a funerary ash chest, was deliberately broken up, burned, and cast into a well under the crypt of Southwark Cathedral, suffering probably for religious reasons. Too small for human remains, it may have contained the vires of a priest of Attis after his ceremonial castration; bronze clamps to aid in such a procedure were found in the Thames and are now in the British Museum. Eastern cults like those of Cybele and Attis, her consort, seem to have suffered iconoclastic attacks elsewhere in the Empire, such as at Sarsina in northern Italy where marble statues of Serapis and Cybele were found broken into hundreds of pieces.

Not all destruction was motivated by political or religious hatred, and other explanations are more likely for the deposition of the magnificent bronze head of Hadrian in the River Thames. Though the archaeological record is poor at chronicling intent, this may have been thrown in as an offering to the river, one of a long sequence of offerings to water from early prehistory into medieval times. As in the story of the Head of Bran, one of the tales in the Welsh collection the Mabinogian, its deposition may have been intended to bring luck.

We know also that much other statuary was reused in more utilitarian fashion. Sculptures, which had for later generations lost their original meaning, could be a valuable building material, especially in the south east of England which lacks significant sources of local freestone. The watch towers or bastions added to the London city walls in the late Roman period stood firm on foundations packed with old bits of funerary monument: according to A.H.Burkitt, a ‘complete quarry of stones’, totaling 40 cart loads, was recovered from excavations at the site of the second bastion, just north of the Tower of London, in the mid-19th century. Reused blocks from an arch and screen of gods in London, carved with fine reliefs of gods, goddesses, and personifications of the moon and seasons, were discovered in the 1970s in the late Roman riverside wall.

In a world where valuable bronze was melted down and stone fed to the lime kiln for building material, it is paradoxically through intended destruction that we have much of what is now left. Returning to the Ukraine and Darth Vader, rather than destroy it, the artist Alexander Milov simply covered the statue of Lenin, which still exists underneath, so that it can be recovered and future generations can experience this part of the nation’s history. And while similar responses echo through the centuries, the addition of a wi-fi hotspot in Darth Vader’s helmet is perhaps a new development.

Headline image: “Later walls built on the foundations of the original Roman wall and a 13th century tower”. Outside the Museum of London  by Mike Peel. CC-BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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La traviata at the Royal Opera House: a period masterpiece

The current La traviata at the Royal Opera House premiered in 1994 and almost immediately established itself as a modern classic. It succeeded a highly successful production by Luchino Visconti and John Copley, which had run for 27 years and had featured legendary sopranos, including Mirella Freni, Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballé, and Kiri Te Kanawa. To follow Visconti was a hard act, but the 1994 Royal Opera House La traviata did just that and with considerable panache. Its success was due in no small part to a stunning 29-year-old Angela Gheorghiu. By the time she undertook the demanding role of Violetta she had already sung Mimi in La Bohème and was known to be a promising talent. She brought to the part of Violetta a fragile beauty that turned to animated magic the moment she sang. The producer, Richard Eyre, at the time the director of the National Theatre, was impressed by her instinctive ability to act and sing with her whole body. While her lyrical soprano voice was perfect for the part, she grew into Violetta’s vulnerable personality with every move.

The night of the Royal Opera House premiere, 25 November 1994, caused a sensation. When controllers at the BBC heard of the stunning spectacle at Covent Garden, they famously cleared the schedules of BBC Two for a live broadcast. It was this event that propelled the opera, its star, and the production to international fame overnight. The camera could not get enough of Gheorghiu’s Violetta and homed in on her time and again. What the close-ups brought out above all was the sheer effortlessness of her performance, the grace and ease of her movements, the control of her voice in this most challenging of all soprano roles, and her almost tangible delight in singing. The conductor was the 82-year-old Georg Solti. He had never before taken on La traviata. At an early stage during rehearsals he worked through the score with Gheorghiu on the piano in his home. When they had finished he stepped outside and cried.

No other opera in the repertoire may have quite the power to move of La traviata. The Eyre-Solti 1994 production recognized that and ran with it. It is one of the reasons why two decades on it towers above most contemporary productions. Violetta may be a courtesan but she is also a Mary Magdalene turned into a Madonna of the boulevard. Twisting this truly grand opera into a gritty minimalist show, a currently fashionable approach, to underline the sordid underbelly of Violetta’ society, is to miss the point. The Royal Opera House’s La traviata is as luscious as it is delicate and subtle. Set pieces – the opening scene of the party around a champagne fountain, or the gypsy and matador choruses – reflect the sumptuous indulgence of the Paris of the 1840s to excellent effect. At the same time Violetta’s almost haughty reproof to a self-righteous Germont, that his tone is inappropriate because she is in her house and he is addressing a lady (‘Donna son io, signore, ed in mia casa’), rings profoundly true in this exquisitely calibrated production. The Royal Opera House’s Violetta never loses her dignity any more than she does in Verdi’s minutely annotated music and Piave’s superb libretto.

The Royal Opera House in the London district of Covent Garden. Photo by Peter Suranyi. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Time and again the Eyre-Solti Traviata scores minor and major triumphs. The famous chorus that concludes Act 2 of the opera, launched by Violetta’s ‘of this my heart’ (‘di questo core’), is a visual feast. The framing of Gheorghiu’s Violetta by the rest of the cast, musically and by stage-blocking, turns this version of it into the emotional rollercoaster that it was clearly always intended to be. Verdi could not but have admired the sheer zest of the orchestration, the exquisite intelligence of Solti’s tempi, the way in which the music and Violetta blend together here. The maestro had defiantly revised this part of the opera to exalt his heroine even more. The result is one the greatest ensemble singing in all opera and the current production at the Royal Opera House does it justice.

If one had to pick out one moment in this rich production above all others, it might be Violetta’s parting from Alfredo in Act 2. It is probably the core melodic moment in the opera and the most demanding passage of all for the soprano. In Verdi’s full score she begs Alfredo to love her as she loves him, with an iridescent ‘Amami Alfredo, amami quant’io t’amo, amami, Alfredo quant’io t’amo, quant’io t’amo’. Gheorghiu’s Violetta moves towards Alfredo on ‘Amami Alfredo’, her frame straining as she launches into the Everest of the soprano voice while facing her lover and trying to embrace him without doing so. These fleeting seconds from a live performance of genius were captured perfectly by the BBC’s cameras, a lasting tribute to one of the greatest Traviatas of the last 50 years. The fact that 22 years on it continues to sell out only confirms its stature and rightful place in the public’s affection.

Featured image credit: London, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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To blame or to forgive?

What do you do when faced with wrongdoing – do you blame or do you forgive? Especially when confronted with offences that lie on the more severe end of the spectrum and cause terrible psychological or physical trauma or death, nothing can feel more natural than to blame. Indeed, in the UK and the US, increasingly vehement and righteous public expressions of blame and calls for vengeance are commonplace; correspondingly, contemporary penal philosophy has witnessed a resurgence of the retributive tradition, in the modern form usually known as the ‘just deserts’ model.

But if we stop to think about it, this criminal justice practice stands in contrast to significant features of our everyday moral practices. People can and routinely do forgive others, even in cases of severe crime. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that both vengeance and forgiveness are universal human adaptations that have evolved as alternative responses to exploitation, and, crucially, strategies for reducing risk of re-offending. We are naturally endowed with both capacities: to blame and retaliate, or to forgive and seek to repair relations. We have a choice. Which should we choose?

In our view, criminal justice scholars and practitioners have been too ready to choose policies which – often unwittingly – invite emotive, affective blame into the criminal process. Criminal liability, we think, should be based on a detached judgment of blameworthiness; but the conviction, sentencing and penal processes should be carefully crafted so as to avoid an escalation of hostile, punitive attitudes. For these attitudes are likely to have adverse effects not only on the fairness and moderation of the criminal process but also on the hope of rehabilitative and reparative outcomes – as well as holding out a false promise to victims, whom research shows are unlikely to feel satisfied by penal measure alone.

Indeed we believe that the criminal justice system should seek to go one step further, so as not only to punish without blame, but in addition, to punish with forgiveness. The choice to blame, and not to forgive, is not only potentially instrumentally counter-productive to reducing the risk of future re-offending and fostering rehabilitation and reparation, but, in addition, inconsistent with the inclusive political and ethical values of a broadly liberal society. There are therefore both instrumental and political/ethical grounds for reconceiving punishment as incorporating forgiveness.

What would the shape of penal philosophy and criminal justice practice be like with forgiveness in place as a guiding ideal? We think that it is possible to draw on evolutionary psychology to offer an account of forgiveness and also to show how it can be institutionalised. Interpersonal reparative behaviours can be adapted to criminal justice institutions, suggesting a host of practical reforms at the trial, sentencing and penal stages. Additionally, it is likely that broader social and institutional conditions may make it easier for societies to punish with forgiveness as opposed to blame – such as political systems which foster a long term policy horizon and a consensus orientation in political debate, high levels of trust in social and political institutions, and high levels of social equality and inclusion. In our view, there is ample reason to believe not only that punishment ought to be reconceived as incorporating forgiveness but that, under certain conditions, to a significant extent in practice it can be.

Designing a criminal justice system to take advantage of our evolutionarily endowed capacity to forgive and seek to repair relations must, inevitably, be a collaborative process between all of us. For only then will it be successful in reducing risk of re-offending and repairing relations. For this reason, alongside a call for wider social and institutional change, perhaps the most radical practical reform we believe there is reason to consider is to invite the offender not only to acknowledge their wrongdoing at trial, but to have, consistent with sentencing guidelines, a genuine voice in the sentencing process. Rather than the sentence being a punishment delivered from above, this would give the offender a more active role in fashioning a punishment that recognises their wrongdoing but also enables them as an individual to make good and move forward in their life. Here, the aspiration would be to build the opportunity for rehabilitation and reparation into the nature of the punishment itself and thereby demonstrate to the offender that they will be forgiven if they will do their part in making a better future for themselves and for others. In other words, reparative and rehabilitative strategies can be offered by the criminal justice system and society, without requiring offenders first to earn them. Rather, we can ourselves take the initial step – looking forwards rather than backwards, and choosing to punish not with vengeance and affective blame, but with forgiveness.

Featured image credit: ‘Prison’, by Erika Wittlieb. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Why we need female brains in CTE research

US soccer player Brandi Chastain became a household name through her outstanding play in the 1999 Women’s World Cup. She scored the championship-winning goal in the unforgettable final shoot-out in front of the world and 90,000 fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

Her iconic moment remains crystal clear: Fans screaming, some even crying from the emotion, as Chastain kneeled on the pitch and clutched her jersey in her right hand to celebrate the triumph of winning the her first US World Cup.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 17 years since Chastain and her teammates set in motion a soccer revolution, inspiring generations of new female athletes and soccer players. On Thursday, Chastain made another significant play, announcing a choice that could inspire other athletes to help advance our knowledge of concussions, CTE, and sports neurology.

Chastain, now 47, has pledged to donate her brain to Boston University’s CTE brain bank and the Concussion Legacy Foundation for research.

Brandi Chastain (right) and Rosana dos Santos Augusto (left), May 2013 by Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the US Department of State. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

She says she is in good health, and shows no signs of neurological issues from playing on the US national team from 1988-2004. Chastain helps coach youth, high school, and college soccer, and remains active as a strong voice in international women’s soccer for player safety.

Chastain’s decision to donate is important for two reasons: She’s the highest-profile female athlete to date to make the commitment, and it also hopefully will bring to light to the serious need for women’s brains to be donated for study. Male athletes dominate concussion research, and that needs to change.

Only seven female brains, out of 307 (mostly belonging to athletes), have been examined by experts at Boston University.

In other words, we are right now significantly lacking in research about how playing sports, especially contact-driven ones, can impact the female brain. But we need more female athletes to donate brains to advance the research.

“If there’s any information to be gleaned off the study of someone like myself, who has played soccer for 40 years, it feels like my responsibility — but not in a burdensome way,” Chastain told the New York Times. “People talk about what the ’99 group did for women’s soccer. They say, ‘Oh, you left a legacy for the next generation.’

“This would be a more substantial legacy — something that could protect and save some kids, and to enhance and lift up soccer in a way that it hasn’t before. That was the impetus for saying yes. If we can learn something, we should.”

The meteoric post-Title IX rise of female athletic culture in the United States, which has been replicated in different degrees around the world, means there is a growing cohort of athletes to be researched. Some of biggest stars of this summer’s Rio de Janiero Summer Olympics will be the female gymnasts, divers, basketball, and soccer players.

We clearly need to know more about the brains of all athletes. We need to see how different types of sports can affect the brain. We need to look at the different amounts of exposure and their concussion risk.

There are many questions, and donations like Chastain’s can bring us closer to finding valuable answers. It’s important to note that Chastain is the second donation off the 1999 US World Cup team, with Cindy Parlow Cone having first pledged her brain.

Researchers need to maximize Chastain’s donation, and hopefully the many female and male athlete brains to come, by striving to get the most complete data. Those who donate to brain banks should be strongly encouraged to provide clinical data before death. Fully understanding the athlete’s playing and life history, plus clinical data, provides a richer picture to analyze. Also, a control subject should also be identified with the promise of each donation.

So let’s credit Chastain with scoring another big goal and hopefully touching off another wave of inspiration among athletes. Her pledge is worthy of a big ovation from all of us.

Featured image credit: Soldiers Field Soccer Stadium, Allston, Massachusetts by John Phelan. CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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