Month: September 2024

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

September 2024

Reading as part of the Fall 2024 Shakespeare course — see general notes for more.

The Play Itself, and Its Characters

There are four groups of characters. In these notes I describe each, and go on to describe the action that occurs with respect to them.

Note that this play has few sources for its plots, though some of its characters are well known.

1. The lovers (Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, Lysander)

  • Hermia is short in stature and long in foresight, and very straightforward
  • Helena, her friend from childhood, is tall in stature, but has little foresight and does things against her own interest
  • Demetrius, contracted to marry Hermia (who does not want him) is straightforward
  • Lysander is a romantic and poetic, and loves to talk; he has wooed Hermia and won her heart. Much (all?) that Lysander says is in rhyme. 

The Action:

  • Hermia Is contracted to marry Demetrius, but is in love with Lysander; her father wants her marry Demetrius, and asks Theseus to put her to death if she does not go through with it (Theseus offers her the alternative of becoming a nun). 
  • Helena is in love with Demetrius, but he has no interest in her, and tells her so to no effect. Hermia tells Helena she would gladly see Demetrius transfer her affections to Helena; but Helena seems angry
  • Hermia and Lysander decide to elope, and will take refuge with Lysander’s Aunt, a rich dowager 20 miles (7 leagues) away from Athens who does things according to her own rules (cf. Queen Elizabeth
  • Hermia and Lysander tell Helena of their plans to elope; Helena tells Demetrius hoping to win his favor.
  • Hermia and Lysander rendezvous in the woods (at a place where she and Helena exchanged confidences as children)
  • Demetrius, in search of Hermia, is pursued by Helena, who repeatedly declares her love for him and is spurned. 

2. The Fairies

  • Oberon, King of the fairies (from Edmund Spencer’s The Farie Queen)
  • Titania, Queen of the fairies, from Ovid’s* Metamorphosis
  • *  Ovid: The story of the Thisbe and Piramisius from the play within a play is also from Ovid). Ovid’s writing also portrayed the god’s as nonchalant, and mischievious towards humans. 
  • Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck. A mischievious goblin or sprite from English folk tradition

The Action:

  • Oberon and Titania are quarreling over an “Indian Boy” whom Titania was ‘keeping.’ Oberon decides to enchant Titania into falling in love with a beast, and while she is enchanted will get her to give him the boy. 
  • Oberon also notices Helena’s pursuit of Demetrius, and instructs Puck to enchant him so that ‘the Athenian’ will fall in love with Helena.
  • Puck encounters the would-be players in the woods, and gives Bottom the head of an ass. Puck enchants the wrong Athenian, and so Lysander drops Hermia and switches his love to Helena. PWhen Oberon see’s what this, Oberon instructs puck to enchant Demetrius, and now both D & L are in love with Helena, while Hermia is spurned by both. 
  • Helena, however, does not believe any of this, and instead concludes that first D, then L, and finally Hermia, are all conspiring to mock her. 

3. The Players

  • Bottom (weaver). Plays the Pyramus, the hero/lover. An especially foolish and narcissistic character.
  • Flute (the Bellows-Maker) – Plays Thisbe, the love interest.
  • The others: Snout (Tinker) plays wall; Snug (joiner) plays lion; Robin Starveling (tailor)plays Moonlight,, Peter Quince (carpenter) delivers the prologue.

The Action:

  • The players decide which parts are to be taken; they go to the woods to rehearse; Bottom is enchanted by Puck to have the head of an ass; the other players arrive, and flee in terror. Titania awakes and, enchanted, falls in love with Bottom. Titania is unenchanted, and Bottom awakens alone, and decides that what transpired must have been a dream. He returns to town, just in time, and joins the others to produced the play, which Theseus has selected for the evening’s entertainment (against Philostrate’s advice).
  • The play: Pyramus and Thisbe exchange words through a gap in the wall that separates their houses (their families are enemies). They plan to elope, meeting at a tomb outside town: Thisbe encounters a lion with a fresh kill, and flees, dropping her cloak or veil in the process – the lion mouths it, and leaves it with blood stains. When Pyramus arrives he believes Thisbe has been killed by a lion. He kills himself with his sword, and then Thisbe finds his body and kills herself as well. This happens beneath a mulberry tree, and the blood turns the fruits purple. ChatGPT: “The Mechanicals’ rendition of “Pyramus and Thisbe” is intentionally comical due to their lack of theatrical skill. Their overacting, mispronunciations, and unnecessary explanations turn the tragic tale into a source of amusement for both the characters watching the play and the audience of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The performance highlights themes of love, misunderstanding, and the fine line between comedy and tragedy.”
  • The Performance. The play is performed poorly, with many errors and malapropisms, and the audience finds it so bad that it is funny.

4. The Athenians

  • Theseus: Count of Athens, and hero famous for slaying the Minotaur and defeating the Amazons.
  • Hippolyta: Queen of the Amazons, taken captive in their defeat, to be married to Theseus. 
  • Egeus:  Hermia’s farther who has contracted her marriage to Demetrius, and wishes her to be executed if she refuses to marry him. 
  • Philostrate, Master of the Revels to Theseus. Tries to warn Theseus away from Pyramus and Thisbe play. 

The Action:

  • Theseus is eager to marry Hippolyta; not so Hippolyta who is a captive, a trophy of war. Theseus gives a speech about how slow the four days until the wedding will pass; Hippolyta corrects him with a speech about how quickly the time will pass.  Furthermore, the end of the speech seems to have veiled wish fulfillment, with the crescent moon being seen as a (drawn) bow (the Amazon’s weapon) that will behold (it is being pointed at) the wedding. And, in another layer of allusion, the goddess Diana is associated with moon, and is also a huntress who favors the bow:

THESEUS
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in
Another moon. But, O, methinks how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires
Like to a stepdame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

HIPPOLYTA
Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.

Other Comments

Rhyming

It is no doubt obvious, but in reading the play I’ve noticed that there is a hiearchy of structure: The fairies always speak in rhyming verse; the ‘gentle’ characters speak in 10 syllable lines; the ‘workmen’ aka players, speak in prose, and when they attempt meter or rhyme get it wrong. I’m curious if there is more structure here.

Rhyming vis a vis characters

  • Lovers. The lovers slip into rhymed verse during passionate or dramatic moments, reflecting the intensity of their emotions. Hermia 1.1.174 when she agrees to meet Lysander to elope; Trialog between Helena, Hermia and Lysander, when they reveal their plancs, 1.1.85 on.
  • Lysander, the poet, often speaks in rhyme, except when he is enchanted.
  • Fairies. The consistent use of rhyme by the fairies sets them apart from the human characters, emphasizing the ethereal and otherworldly aspects of the fairy realm.
  • The craftsmen‘s awkward use of rhyme during their play-within-a-play satirizes amateur theatrical productions and adds layers of humor. Their dialog, unlike the others, is NOT in 10 syllable unrhymed verses, but simple prose.

Loose ends and oddities

Loose ends

Someone said, Shakespeare’s comedies end just in time. In ‘Dream’ there are a lot of loose ends; many of these result from the enchantments, and the fact the mortals do not know of them:

  • Demetrius marries Helena, but his ‘love’ is enchantment-induced — Will his enchantment ever fade? What then? And surely Helena remembers Demetrius’ harsh words to her. What made her decide that Demetrius’ declaration of love was not a ruse?
  • Lysander marries Hermia; this is true love, but surely Hermia remembers the period during which he spurned her for Helena, and she does not know of the enchantment responsible for his betrayal.
  • Oberon and Titania appear to have been reconciled. But how does she make sense of giving the boy to Oberon, which she strongly resisted before? 
  • What do Hermia and Helena, life-long friends, make of their quarrels? Why was Hermia never angry at Helena for revealing her plan to elope with Lysander?

After all of this, it is hinted that they are confused and perhaps think they dreamed? Bottom, too, decides that he dreamed. Does Titania think she dreamed? That would seem unlikely

Oddities

At the beginning of Act V, Theseus gives a wonderful speech about poetry and imagination, but this seems odd: he, who ‘woo’ed Hipolyta with his sword,’ does not seem the poetic type. 

In the epilogue, Puck says “If I am an honest Puck…” Is he? He is mischieveous and tricks people for fun, with no regard for their feelings. And what, exactly, is the epologue apologizing for (“If this play should offend…”)

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The Light Eaters…, Zoë Schlanger

These are notes on “The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth“, by Zoë Schlanger. I’m reading this with Rachel.

First discussion: Monday, 9/23

Some nicely written turns of phrase

  • I savored these tears in the fabric of my day [16]
  • I watched the hard beaks of the purple crocuses crack the cold earth like hatched chicks. [16]
  • The birds … called wildly, like they were caffeinated. [52]
  • I had the dreamlike sense that it had just cunningly frozen in place,,, [53]
  • Nature, never a flat plane has always had more folds and faces still hidden from human view. The world is a prism, not a window. Wherever we look we find new refractions. [61]

Prologue

A beautifully written, lyrical introduction to how the author — a science journalist — became interested in plants. Initially an escape from burnout due to writing about the increasingly dire environmental situation being ushered in by global warming, it turned into a fascination with plants, and the discovery that botany seems on the edge of a revolution in its understanding of plants, particularly with respect to their behavioral/adaptive mechanisms.

Having read the Prologue and Chapter 1:
It looks to be a pleasant and fun read. I hope she will go deeply enough into the science to make it interesting to me.

C1: The Question of Plant Consciousness

  • Begins by describing the author’s urge to find something more optimistic to pursue than the increasingly dire findings of climate science. She began to follow papers in botany, and then, two weeks into this new pursuit, discovered that the first genome of a fern — a tiny one called Azoola Ficuloides — had been sequenced. This drew her attention to ferns…
  • Ferns alternate generations, with one generation being what we know of as a fern, and the other being a one-cell thick entity on the forest floor that produce motile sperm that can live for an hour. Some ferns are able to produce chemicals that slow the movement of competing species. Ferns are very ancient, and have up to 720 pairs of chromosomes, compared to the 23 humans have.
  • Comments on Oliver Sacks’ Oaxaca Journal, and his description of a numinous moment: “when there is a sense of intense reality, almost preternatural reality…” She begins to find descriptions of moments like this scattered throughout the literature on plants, from Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, to the biography of Alexander von Humboldt.
  • She became interested in plant behavior, and discovered that early research had been squelched by the debacle of The Secret Life of Plants, published in 1973, which caused scientific funding for research on plant behavior/adapatation to dry up until very recently.
  • Plants exhibit behaviors that seem similar to memory, recognition of genetic kin, the ability to sense the sound/vibrations of running water, and the ability to emit chemical compounds of the predators of pests that are attacking the plants
  • She talks a bit about her childhood, and her early fascination with plants.
  • Terminology and tensios. Discussion of the tensions around discussing whether plants can be said to have senses or intelligence or consciousness. Some scientists are wary of repeating the Secret Life, debacle; others argue that these terms are anthropomorphizing what is going on, and it is simply not helpful; others are less wary.

C2: How Science Changes Its Mind

  • A brief recap of the evolution of plants, beginning with the incorporation of cyanobacteria into at algal like cell 1.5 Ga. She refers to plants as chimera — I’m not sure if she means more than that their cells contain cyanobacteria…???
  • She ties the oxygenation of the atmosphere to the movement of plants onto land 500 Ma — is this correct? I am a little unsure of her timeline re cyanobacteria and oxygenation… below is what I get from ChatGPT, and so she is roughly correct (if we ignore the great oxygenation event and banded iron formations), although there is a lot more to the story…:
    • 3 Ga: Cyanobacteria appear. Banded iron formations appear in geological record.
    • 2.4 Ga: The great oxygenation event — Oxygen levels rose from almost zero to about 0.02%-0.04% (still very low compared to today).
    • 800-540 Ma: Neoproterozoic Oxygenation event — Oxygen levels began to rise more substantially, reaching about 1-10% of present atmospheric levels (PAL), likely due to the evolution of more complex multicellular life.
    • 540 Ma: Cambrian explosion: Oxygen to 10-20% PAL. O2 more prevalent in shallow oceans, facilitating development of more complex ecosystems.
      • 470 Ma: Plants — bryophytes and liverworts, begin colonizing land
      • 430 Ma: Vascular plants appear
      • 400 Ma Plants developed true leaves, roots, and woody tissues, leading to the rise of early tree-like plants such as Archaeopteris, which were among the first plants to form forests. (Flowering plants and seeds did not appear until 150 Ma)
    • 360 Ma: Carboniferous: O2 reaches 1.5 PAL (35%) due to worldwide forests
    • 300 Ma-present: O2 fluctuates but generally decreases and stabilizes at 21%
  • She goes on to describe photosynthesis and make the point about how all carbohydrates (and all organic compounds, for that matter) on earth were produced by plants.
  • She notes that plants are immobile, and that thus they have to develop a variety of strategies for dealing with predators, reproduction, and forming and maintaining communities.
  • She then shifts to Kauai, and biologists involved in trying to save species on the edge of extinction. She notes that it is estimated that 1 or 2 plant seeds made it to Kauai every 1,000 years, and thus it was fertile ground for adaptive radiation, and also that, in the absence of predators, plants lost their normal defense mechanisms (toxins, thorns, etc.) As a consequence, Kauai is losing plant species at a rate of 1-2/year, vs. a normal rate of 1-2/10,000 years.
  • Next she turns to human conceptions of plants — especially vis a vis sentience and awareness — and looks at the opinions of philosophers through the ages. Aristotle is the great villain in the demotion of plants of insensate organisms… With the exception of Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor, who was ignored, plants were disregarded until Darwin began studying them after publication of TOofS, eventually writing four books on aspects of plant ‘behavior.’
  • Darwin was particularly taken with the “root cap” of plant roots, noting that it was exquisitely sensitive and could guide the growth of the root, and that it was the only part of a plant which, if removed, would grow back in exactly the same form.

reading break; next discussion Monday, 7 October 2024

C3: The Communicating Plant [Chemical Signaling]

There is a lot here I don’t agree with. The definition of communication seems very loose, and I suspect that simple signaling between plants will ‘inherit’, without any proof, characteristics of human-human communication. For example: “Communication implies a recognition of self.” — I don’t agree. And also “Communication is the formation of threads between individuals.” What does “threads” even mean? And what is meant by “individual?” Very fuzzy.

That is not to say that there are not some very interesting phenomena:

  • 1977/1983: David Rhodes, Caterpillars and the Forest. In 1977, David Rhodes, studying the invasion of an experimental forest by a wave of caterpillars discovered that after a couple of years, the caterpillars suddenly began to dies as they fed on the trees because they had started producing toxins their leaves. Furthermore, trees that the caterpillars had not yet reached were also producing these toxins in their leaves. Conclusion: the trees were “communicating” ((or, at least, the affected trees were transmitting signals to unaffected trees that triggered toxin production)). However, although communication via roots had already been established, these trees were too far apart for this to be the explanation: Rhodes posited that communication was due to substances being released into the air.
  • Multicellular Organisms. At this point she zooms out and talks about the evolution of multicellular organisms, and what this means: “Each cell in an organism must know who it and what it does.” She goes on to talk of cells “communicating” with one another, and having “awareness.” I don’t care of the way this is expressed, but it does connect with points made in “The Master Builder.”
  • Definitions. She defines “communication” as when a signal is sent, received and causes a response. I think this can be simplified to “as signal is sent and causes a response.” I note that she does not require intentionality. So, with this definition, we can say a thermostat ‘communicates.’ OK, but this is such a broad definition that I’m not sure its useful, and I am wary that connotations of more complex forms of communications will be uncritically brought into play where they may not belong.
  • Rhodes as ‘ignored pioneer.’ Rhodes published on his research in 1983. Schlanger paints a picture of Rhodes being attacked (“bludgeoned”) by colleagues, though she does not provide references or describe in what ways or for what reasons he was attacked. She does mention, in passing, that he was unable to replicate his results — this is a huge problem, but she skates over it. Eventually, he stopped applying for grants, focused more on teaching, and then died. I suppose this is a nice bit of drama for the book…
  • 1983: Baldwin and Schultz published a similar, lab-based finding in 1983, about 6 months after Rhodes. They were able to show, in an experiment with maple seedlings, that damaging the leaf of one seedling would cause other seedlings — whose roots were isolated from one another — to produce protective tannins in their leaves. Unlike Rhodes, Baldwin and Schultz’s careers prospered, even though, unlike Schultz, they used the word “communication” in their papers. To my eye, this discredits Schlanger’s narrative about Rhodes.
  • 1`985: Wooten van Hoven observes in 1985 that kudu had suddenly begun dying on ranches in south africa. It appears to be due to (a) their feeding on acacia leaves triggering a build up of toxins in the leaves, and (b) the fact that they were confined on ranches and had no other food sources. Later, investigating why this was not a problem for giraffes, found that they did not graze on most acacias, but rather only on ones that were up-wind from already-damaged trees — and of course they were not confined and had plenty of options.
  • 2019/2021: Rick Karban. Sagebrush releases chemicals that can be interpreted by nearby wild tobacco (which can release chemicals that attract predators that prey on caterpillars that are attacking them); also the chemicals released by sagebrush get a stronger response from sagebrush that are more genetically related.
  • Aino Kalske, et al. found that goldenrod that live in fairly benign environments release chemicals that can only be interpreted by kin; whereas goldenrod that live in more dangerous environments release chemicals that can be interpreted by goldenrod regardless of degree of kinship. The claim here is that this shows that the chemical communication is beneficial to the sender as well as the receiver… Later: oh, I think the claim is that the signaling benefits other plants rather than just the other parts of the sender. Still, I don’t see that that makes it “communication.” This is imagined as using public or private channels, and having ‘dialects’ and having a clear sense of who is who. — I find this pretty dubious.
  • Personalities — bundles of particular ways of acting or responding that differ between individuals. Researchers are looking at these in animals, and now in plants. Karban’s work seems to involve framing this as ‘tolerance for risk.’ Um. Certainly, it is easy to imagine that plants might find different balances between the speed and amount and type of signals they produce, and the expenses that those incur. It would make evolutionary sense for that to vary across a population, just as diversity in other characteristics varies — robustness is good.

C4: Alive to Feeling [Electricity]

  • How electricity works in organisms: calcium (etc.) channels and action potentials.
  • Anesthesia interfere’s with action potentials — venus flytraps and mimosa can be anesthetized. So can pea plants, which slowly wave their tendrils around over the course of 20 minutes.
  • Stoking plants can cause them to stop elongating and instead thicken their stems; other plants may grow more flexible. These responses can be seen as making the plant more resilient to winds and other forms of physical disturbance.
  • J.C. Bose (1920’s) showed that plants exhibited electrical responses to various stimuli.
  • Barbara Pickard (1993) discovered that plants have calcium channels that enable them to transmit electrical impulses.
  • Gilroy and Toyota (). Wound a plant, and a wave of electrical activity propagates across the whole plant. Possibly due to glutamate.
  • “Could the whole plant be a brain?” …I don’t think so.

reading break; next discussion 11/04/2024

C5: An Ear to the Ground

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C6: The (Plant) Body Keeps the Score

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C7: Conversations with Animals

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C8: The Scientist and the Chameleon Vine

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C9: The Social Life of Plants

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C10: Inheritance

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C11: Plant Futures

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The Taming of the Shrew, WS

Reading as part of the Fall 2024 Shakespeare course — see general notes for more.

The Induction

Precis

The induction sets up TTotS as a play within a play. It is put on for Christopher Sly, a drunken beggar, who is being pranked by a Lord. The unconscious Sly is put to bed in the Lords chamber, and when he awakes is told the he is a Lord who has lost his mind: he is offered food, entertainment, and introduced to his wife. He is convinced, and the prologue ends as he sits with his wife to watch a play put on by a troupe the Lord has engaged.

Thoughts on the Induction

  1. Sly had been cast out of a pub by a female barkeep, who berates him and calls the constable on him;
  2. The Lord also uses Sly poorly, by making him the dupe in a prank;
  3. TTofS, put on for the benefit of the deluded Sly, could be seen as a wish fulfillment in which Sly sees an assertive woman (who is also physically abusive) put down;
  4. but, although not shown, one thing we know for sure is that at some point Sly will find out how things really are, and that he has been mislead and tricked.

So perhaps S is implying that, like everything else, the apparent taming of Kate is just a ruse.

On the Play

Precis

After the induction, Lucentio and his servant Tranio arrive in Padua, where L (apparently on a sort of Grand Tour) intends to study philosophy and, in particular, virtue. Tranio advises him that this is good, but that he ought not be serious or stoic to the point of avoiding pleasures. L agrees. Baptisio and his two daughters, Kate and Bianca arrive, along with B’s two courtiers: Gremio (a pantaloon, a foolish old man) and Hortensio. Baptisio announces that he will not allow Bianca to have suitors until Kate is married, and thus B’s courtiers are motivated to seek a husband for Kate. Petruccio, Hortensio’s friend appears, and announces that he just wants a rich wife, and does not care about Kate’s shrewishness, and will win her as a wife.

In 2.1 there is a long dialog between Petrucio and Kate where they engage in witty repartee, and ends with Petrucio declaring that they will be married (It is not clear to me why or if Kate actually agrees to marry P — but at some point she goes along with it).

The suitors of Bianca, in disguise as tutors, attempt to court her; the marriage day of Petrucio and Katherine approaches. At the wedding, Petrucio shows up late, in dishabile, and act disrespectfully, and takes Kate away before they can attend the wedding celebration. He then subjects her to various forms of psychological abuse (withholding food, depriving her of sleep, requiring her to agree with absurd statements), until she appears to submit.

Later, after Bianca’s wedding, Petrucio is teased for marrying a shrew, and he responds by proposing a test to see whose wife is the most obedient, by seeing who will come when summoned. Katherine comes when asked, the other two wives do not, and Kate herself eventually brings them. Petrucio appears to have tamed Kate, and thus the play ends.

Some other Notes

  • Shakespearean borrowing. Petrucio and Kate is an original plot; Bianca, with her suitors, is not — it is taken from a play called I Suppositi (The Pretenders) a play written by the Italian playwright Ludovico Ariosto in 1509. The plot involving Petrucio and Kate appears to be original to Shakespeare.
  • Shakespearean Tropes. A father with one or two rebellious daughters is a common situation in Shakespeare’s plays, as the soldier-lover (Petrucio) is a common figure.
  • Assignment. In response to the assignment, respond to a director who is proposing to cut the induction that tells the tale of the beggar Christopher Sly, here is my (tongue in cheek response)

Sir or Madam Director,

I am astonished to hear of your proposal to eliminate the induction. What on earth are they teaching in drama programs these days? To eliminate the induction is to render the central message of the play unintelligible. While, to be sure, like all of S’s plays, the primary goal is to entertain rather than enlighten, still, we should not eschew enlightenment wherever it is to be found.

Consider this:

The very first action in the play is that Christopher Sly, the drunken beggar, is being reprimanded by the tavern keeper, who is demanding he pay for the glasses he has broken, and who is threatening to call the constable. Note that the tavern keeper is a woman. It seems apparent that, just before the action described, she has has evicted him from the tavern (which he would clearly not leave of his own accord), either by physical or linguistic violence. Surely, as the very first action in the play, this is significant?

Following this, Sly falls into an inebriated slumber, and a Lord returning from the hunt finds him, and decides to play a prank. As the script describes, Sly is taken to the Lord’s bedroom, dressed in robes, and awakes to a situation in which he is surrounded by courtiers who declare him their Lord, and feign happiness at his recovery from fifteen years of lunacy. He is presented with food and drink, and his ‘wife’ enters his bed chamber, likewise delighted by his ‘recovery.’ At this point, a group of traveling players — engaged by the Lord — put on a play for him: The Taming of the Shrew.

It is notable that in this play, an assertive woman — whose assertiveness includes linguistic aggression, but also extends to physical violence (of, in the play, her sister) — is ‘tamed’ via various forms of abuse by a dominating man who eschews proper dress and comportment. It is easy to view this play as wish fulfillment for Christopher Sly, where a figure standing in for his eviction is brought to heel.

The play ends with no return to Christopher Sly, but while much of what happens in the wake of the play is uncertain, one thing that is certain is the Christopher Sly’s tenure as a Lord will be ended, and he will realize that he has been duped, and that his experiences and beliefs as he watched the play will be revealed as illusions.

Perhaps’s S’s message is that, like all else, the ‘taming’ of Kate is also illusory.

[3.2] The Taming, continued

We continued our discussion of the play, amplifying it by viewing 4 different productions of the dialog between Petrucio and Kate. The productions ranged from a traditional production using Elisabethan constumes and settings, to adapations using puppets and exchanging the genders of Petrucio and Kate.

I was struck by how different — in tone and meaning — the various productions were, and how effective various devices (playing of a harpsicord, smoking a cigarette) can be. The script can be played as light and comedic or as dark and violent.

I didn’t think that language in the TTotS grabbed me, but upon hearing it performed (especially via reading in class) I came to appreciate it more.

Tranio [1.1 39-40]
No profit grows where there is no pleasure ta’en
In brief, sir, study what you most affect

Petruchio [1.2: 201-214]
Why came I hither but to that intent?
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puffed up with winds, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard Loud larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?
And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue, That gives not half so great a blow to hear As will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire?
Tush, tush, fear boys with bugs!

Petruchio [2.1 139-140]
And where two raging fires meet together
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.

Kate [2.1 203-205]
Let him who moved you hither, remove you thence.

Petruchio [4.3 177-178]
Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor,
for tis the mind that makes the body rich.

I looked up the etymology of “shrew” and “shrewd.” Both started out as negative terms, and tended to be applied to women. During the 16th and 17th century, the meaning of “shrewd” began to changing, taking on positive connotations of cunning. Shakespeare used “shrewd” in both senses in different plays.

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Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, Paul Scharre

Discusses semi- and fully-autonomous weapons, our experiences with them, and the debates about their degree of autonomy and the design of policies regarding them. The author is a Pentagon defense expert, who began as an Army Ranger and developed into a defense analyst.

The book is quite interesting. It was published in 2018, so given the advances in AI since then, it feels a little dated. But still much of interest. Could have been significantly shorter. But glad to have read.

Points of Interest

  • Stanislav Petrov: prevented a US/USSR nuclear exchange. Value of having a human in the loop.
  • AI (e.g. face recognition) has improved drastically since this book was published in 2018.
  • AI is still not perfect.
  • Even without AI, any complex, tightly-coupled system will experience errors (AVs, aircraft, nuclear power plants)
  • Human in/on the loop offer a control point, but only if the activity is happening in human-time
  • Patriot system: tries to depend against incoming missles… implements designers’ intent.
  • “Loitering missles.”
  • Aegis system: Tries to capture intent of commanders, and uses commander-created ‘doctrins’ to mix and match capacilities and autonomy. 
  • OODA Loop: Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. 
  • A flaw in an autonomous or semi-autonomous weapon will rarely be a problem with a single weapon, but with all instances of the weapon using that software. 
  • Furthermore, if there is a bug in weapon’s software, it seems likely that security protocols will make it non-trivial to update. 
  • 2010: Stuxnet: Worm that infected systems via thumb drive and neworks, and took over control of centrifuges, destroying them, even as it provided false every-is-ok information to controllers. Intended to damage Iran’s nuclear fule enrichment programme. First autonomous cyberweapon. 
  • Autonomous Commerce/Trading
    • The Flash Crash of 5/26/2010: crash and rebound of stock market in under an hour. An automatic switch finally cut off trading for 5 seconds, allowing the market to re-set; later, a regulatory agency canceled 10’s of thousands of trades. à Now there are circuit breakers on individual stocks… these are tripped daily.
    • 7/31/2012: Knightmare on Wall Street. Deployment of faulty algorithm resulted in 460 million loss over 45 minutes, and bankrupciy for the company
    • 23 million dollar book due to dueling algorithms
  • To the extent that military exchanges use physical weapons, they are operating in something closer to human time. But in electronic warfare, the failures that happen in autonomous trading situation are an apt analogy. 
  • Suites of patches to fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities: patches often tradeoff a systems’s security for operational speed 
  • Mayhem (a system) autonomously discovers vulnerabilities and creates patches. This type of system can put hacking out of the reach of ordinary individuals, though not well-resourced organizations/countries.
  • Next step is counter-autonomy, where patches include exploits that target common hacker tools. 
  • Hacking an automomous weapons system could hand over control of entire fleets of AWs.
  • Why bans succeed or fail: perceived horribleness; perceived utility; number of actors who must collaborate for success.
  • Mad robot theory. “The threat that leaves something to chance” – Thomas Schnelling
  • IMO: Cannot ban development of AW’s – perhaps, sometimes, can ban their use, if their use is identifiable (e.g. poison gas). …You can only ban things whose development or use is detectable.  Maybe a ban on weapons that automatically target individual humans?
    • Ban autonomous weapons à not likely
    • Ban anti-personnel AW’s à might work…
    • Establish rules of the road (an AW should not fire first; return fire must be proportionate) – this could prevent escalation in tense situations, even though the rules would collapse in war à probably would work
    • Establish general principal about role of human judgment in war à not likely
    • On the other hand, codes of conduct do sometimes work in war, even if they are sometimes violated.
  • The lethal automation paradox: A random death caused by an automated system is more aversive than a death caused by human error or misdeed. 

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