This is the first math-related graphic novel I have ever read. I stumbled upon it while browsing the math shelves on the third floor of the DKU library — the cover caught my eye as a pleasant surprise, especially for a big manga/comic fan with some amateurish interest in mathematics.

Unlike most graphic novels, this one takes on a subject often considered dry for general readers, logic, through pictorial storytelling. I expected a light treatment filled with amusing (and hopefully thought-provoking) paradoxes, but the authors went much deeper. The book offers not only an engaging portrait of Bertrand Russell and his contemporaries, but also a nuanced account of the evolution of Russell’s ideas on logic and mathematics. The engagement with the subject matter is serious, without much Mickey mouse superficiality, which I greatly appreciate. I was also impressed by how carefully the text translates logicians’ words (and theorems) into everyday language. I imagine it is a delicate balance to strike.

Although the political upheavals of Russell’s era remain largely in the background, their presence is felt throughout the narrative. I was especially intrigued by this character, Gottlob Frege, whose work I’m totally unaware of, and of course, the tragic story of Georg Cantor.

My only quibble is the stereotypical portrayal of immigrants in Athens, which felt unnecessary.

Favorite quotes:
At the conclusion of his lecture on logic (addressing an audience of pacifists), Russell notes,

“Reflect on this, please: if even in logic and mathematics, the paragons of certainty, we cannot have perfect assurances of reason, then even less can this be achieved in the messy business of human affairs — either private, or public!” 

This is the first book I borrowed from the DKU library. I had been wanting to read it for a long time, so it was exciting to spot it on the shelf during my first visit to the comic/manga section on the third floor. I also noticed the Chinese translation of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, and Sabrina. I couldn’t help but wonder who placed those orders.

This book continues Guy Delisle’s travelogues with his wife and children, but it takes on a far more serious subject: Israel and Palestine. The contradictions of the holy city are depicted vividly with Delisle’s usual sarcasm. Unlike his earlier work on Shenzhen, Pyongyang, or Burma, here the open displays of repression, and the human costs of occupation, are truly heavy, depressing, and saddening.

Since this is a comic, instead of quoting passages, I want to highlight a few memorable scenes, observations from a masterful artist’s eye.

On the flight to Israel with his daughter, Delisle sits next to an old man who takes a liking to Alice. “When he lifts up Alice, I’m floored by what I see: a series of numbers tattooed on his forearm. Good god! This guy is a camp survivor.”

In East Jerusalem, Delisle wanders into a Middle Eastern restaurant. When the owner asks what he is doing there, Delisle replies, “For now, I’m taking care of my kids. My girlfriend works for Doctors Without Borders.” The owner answers, without looking at him: “There’ll always be borders.”

Later, observing children with toy guns, Delisle remarks, “I see lots of kids in the streets with toy guns. The guns are end-of-Ramadan gifts. Given the context, I’d probably give them Lego bricks instead.”

I can go on and on. The book is full of such scenes that first make you smile but soon leave you reflecting. It is not a work of war journalism (compared to, say, the work by Joe Sacco), but it is, without doubt, a must-read.

I appreciate Feynman as a teacher. Explaining how physical laws sometimes need revision, he writes “experiments are always inaccurate. The laws are guessed laws, extrapolations, not something that the observations insist upon. They are just good guesses that have gone through the sieve so far. And it turns out later that the sieve now has smaller holes than the sieves that were used before, and this time the law is caught.” (24)

Or emphasizing the importance of uncertainty: “All scientific knowledge is uncertain. This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important. I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences. I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to permit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right. Otherwise, if you have made up your mind already, you might not solve it.” (26-27)

He’s both enlightening and entertaining even when he’s laying waste to the social sciences: “it’s a general principle of psychologists that in these tests they arrange so that the odds that the things that happen happen by chance is small, in fact, less than one in twenty. That means that one in twenty of their laws is probably wrong.” (80)

And perhaps even far-seeing. Here it almost sounds like he’s describing the internet: “I have heard it said that the communication between nations should lead to an understanding and thus a solution to the problem of developing the potentialities of man. But the means of communication can be channeled and choked. What is communicated can be lies as well as truth, propaganda as well as real and valuable information. Communication is a strong force, also, but either for good or evil.” (31)

Another bit that hits hard comes in his discussion of the possibility that some domestic political extremists, unbeknownst to them, sought to accomplish the same aims as the Soviets: “And what they want us to do is to lose faith in the Supreme Court, to lose faith in the Agriculture Department, to lose faith in the scientists and all the people who help us in all kinds of ways and so on and so on, and lose faith in all sorts of ways, and it’s a way that they have entered into this movement of freedom that everybody wanted, this thing with all the flags and the Constitution, and they’ve gotten in on it, and they’re getting in there, and they’re going to paralyze it.” (105) Writing in the 1960s, when social capital and trust in the institutions of government, media, and academia were near all-time highs, it’s impossible to survey the current landscape and not shake one’s head at the seeming prescience.

Maybe that comes from taking the long-term perspective in which mankind has been here but a blink of the eye: “Why do we grapple with problems? We are only in the beginning. We have plenty of time to solve the problems. The only way that we will make a mistake is that in the impetuous youth of humanity we will decide we know the answer. This it it. No one else can think of anything else. And we will jam. We will confine man to the limited imagination of today’s human beings.” (56-57) I love that phrase “impetuous youth of humanity,” and I think it conveys better than all those silly hour/minute/second metaphors how brief humanity’s time on the planet has been.

After striking up a discussion with a rightwing pamphleteer, he reflects that “in any organization there ought to be the possibility of discussion. That fence sitting is an art, and it’s difficult, and it’s important to do, rather than to go headlong in one direction or the other. It’s just better to have action, isn’t it, than to sit on the fence? Not if you’re not sure which way to go, it isn’t.” (100) I appreciate how he’s able to bring his arguments about the importance of uncertainty and the possibility of revision from the realm of scientific investigation to other corners of his life, including his understanding of politics.

After reading Yu Hua’s To Live, I thought Red Sorghum was the perfect next book, as it also shines a light on the human struggles of life in a tumultuous 20th century. It was also a case where I’d seen the Zhang Yimou film years ago but never actually read the original novel.

Although it lacks the historical sweep of To Live, Red Sorghum was somehow harder to follow due to its frequent jumps forward and backward in time, all narrated by a descendant of the protagonists. Once I found my footing, however, I found it very compelling. I also enjoyed how no character was put atop a pedestal; each showed flaws and made questionable decisions.

I hope that in the future DKU Library can invest more in Chinese literature in English translation. 

恒星：一个巨大的，热，气球体。
热：产生于恒星中心，热量就是能量，沿恒星表面传递并产生庞大压力，足以支撑其重量。然后到达表面的能量就会变成辐射，脱离恒星。

引力主宰了恒星的诞生，又播下了恒星死亡的种子。引力终将获胜，恒星终将坍缩。

最大的黑洞是什么？也许就是我们本身生活在此的宇宙。

“Life with a cheat code isn’t life. Our existence isn’t something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That’s what it is to be human—the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.”

“Because memory…is everything. Physically speaking, a memory is nothing but a specific combination of neurons firing together—a symphony of neural activity. But in actuality, it’s the filter between us and reality. You think you’re tasting this wine, hearing the words I’m saying, in the present, but there’s no such thing. The neural impulses from your taste buds and your ears get transmitted to your brain, which processes them and dumps them into working memory—so by the time you know you’re experiencing something, it’s already in the past. Already a memory.”

When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind.

If every single person made it a rule to be kinder than necessary, the world really would be a better place.

Review:
The goal Rosenlee’s hybridized Confucian Feminism is a guide for all women to “navigate the existential contour of their lived experiences without boarders” (8). The two major themes of this book are how Confucianism offers a unique application of feminist care ethics through  ren 仁 (humaneness) grounded in xiao 孝 (filiality), and how Confucianism can fill in the gaps that democracy lacks. Rosenlee’s crafts a logical and persuasive argument backed by a range of both Western and non-Western philosophical, historical, and socio-political sources. Confucian feminism can be applied to a range of other disciplines. As I read this book over the past seven weeks, I drew numerous parallels between the teachings of this book and my CulAnth101 class. Everyone, no matter your background or major, should read this book becuase it is applicable to so many fields and is relevant to the current issues we face in the modern day.

Favorite quotes:
“[B]ehind every great man, there stands a woman.” (Rosenlee 57)

Rosenlee details the Confucian understanding of how relationships with others effect a person, quoting Confucious from Garden of Persuasions (Shuoyuan 說苑), “one’s environ becomes part of oneself; when the surrounding is red, one becomes red, and when it is black, one becomes black (丹之所藏者赤, 烏之所藏者黑)” (93). In Chinese culture, red is the most auspicious color symbolizing happiness and vitality, black has a complex reputation that carries negative connatations of darkness and evil, typically implying power or control. In this metaphor, these colors are contrasted to communicate the confluence between the self and others, and how others influence the self. In Confucianism, picking friends and good people to surround oneself with is the foundation of excellence—if you surround yourself with virtuous friends, you too will be virtuous. If you associate yourself with bad people, you too will be bad. Since friends mutually mold each other’s moral development, the people a person surrounds themselves with provides outsiders with insight into what kind of person they are.

Rosenlee writes  “He和  [(harmony)] as an aesthetic concept of musical harmonization clearly requires the concept of plurality, since monotony doesn’t make music” (135). Just as the plurality of sounds harmonize to make good music, remonstration and a variety of viewpoints are required for mutual flourishing socio-politically. The musical and aesthetic association of he 和  emphasizes the beauty of productive growth in a harmonized world. The abstract, transcendent quality of harmony contrasts with the functionality of rational and logical political discourse, expanding the scope of li 禮 (ritual) to be more than a civic concept, but a spiritual and moral one as well, a testament to its adaptability in a range of contexts.