“Far more than we like to admit, the world is to a remarkable extent a self-organizing, self-changing place,” Mr. Ridley writes. “Skeins of geese form Vs in the sky without meaning to, termites build cathedrals without architects, bees make hexagonal honeycombs without instruction, brains take shape without brain-makers, learning can happen without teaching, political events are shaped by history rather than vice versa.”
Wednesday, November 04, 2015
The freedom of being …
… No Planning Necessary - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
RIP …
… Stanford professor and eminent French theorist René Girard dies at 91. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Back to the future …
… GLOBAL COOLING: Decade long ice age predicted as sun 'hibernates' | Science | News | Daily Express.
When can we start laughing? I guess one or the other — warming or cooling — has to be right. But maybe not. Maybe things will stay about the same. Maybe science ought to get out of the prediction business.
As to that back to the future business, check this out.
When can we start laughing? I guess one or the other — warming or cooling — has to be right. But maybe not. Maybe things will stay about the same. Maybe science ought to get out of the prediction business.
As to that back to the future business, check this out.
Getting it as right as possible …
… The TLS blog: Translation and the case for pragmatism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Chandler noted in particular how a collaboration between Koteliansky (“Kot” to his close acquaintances), D. H. Lawrence and Leonard Woolf had resulted in, to Chandler’s mind, one of the finest translations of Ivan Bunin’s short story "The Gentleman from San Francisco". Even Koteliansky’s “remarkable . . . bold” foreignisms are deserving of praise, he said. Citing the line “strings of bare-shouldered ladies rustling with their silks on the staircases and reflecting themselves in the mirrors”, Chandler extolled the efficacy of Koteliansky’s Russianizing “with their silks” (shelkami, the instrumental) and the even purposely defamiliarizing “reflecting themselves” (otrazhaiushchikhsia, an ordinary reflexive participle). Note, however, that Bunin himself could have achieved Koteliansky’s effect, had he opted for the active otrazhaiushchikh sebia. Undoubtedly a case where the translation is more striking than the original.
In this corner …
… Relativity v quantum mechanics – the battle for the universe | News | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What emerges from the dust-up could be nothing less than a third revolution in modern physics, with staggering implications. It could tell us where the laws of nature came from, and whether the cosmos is built on uncertainty or whether it is fundamentally deterministic, with every event linked definitively to a cause.There is always the possibility that the human mind is not capable of fully comprehending reality.
Something to think on …
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
— Michael Crichton, who died on this date in 2008
Tuesday, November 03, 2015
Honored in Seattle …
… Devoted American pilgrims move Jeeves, Bertie Wooster and Blandings Castle to Seattle | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Few 20th-century writers could be more quintessentially English than Pelham Grenville “Plum” Wodehouse. His name guarantees an escape into a lost world of upper-class frivolity: Mayfair lounge lizards, dreamy, pig-loving earls, inscrutable butlers and, of course, the “mentally negligible” Bertie Wooster and his omniscient manservant Jeeves, who happen to be celebrating their centenary this year.
Jesus selfie?
Recall the Gospel of Matthew: when Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, Judas Iscariot had to point him out because the soldiers couldn’t tell him from his disciples. It’s logical that he would have looked like the Galilean Semites of his era, and not a white-boy rock and roller.
Hmm …
… The State of Criticism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I write about books of poetry that I think I are worth bringing to people's attention. I'm a newspaperman. I report. I don't think many people are interested in reading about why I think a a book of poems they would probably never otherwise have heard of is not worth reading.
And the winner is …
… The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2015 Winner | Samuel Johnson Prize. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
The crucial discovery was made that, in order to become painting, the universe seen by the artist had to become a private one created by himself.
— Andre Malraux, born on this date in 1901
Monday, November 02, 2015
More bureaucratic — and journalistic — foolishness …
… Bacon causes cancer? When pigs fly! | New York Post.
Dr. Elizabeth Lund, a widely quoted expert in nutrition (she is a former research leader at the Institute of Food Research), says the actual risk is even smaller than that — three more people out of every 100,000 will get cancer due to their consumption of red meat.When are people going to wise up to these clowns?
No such thing as "hate speech" exception...
I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas. One is as free to condemn Islam — or Muslims, or Jews, or blacks, or whites, or illegal aliens, or native-born citizens — as one is to condemn capitalism or Socialism or Democrats or Republicans.
Getting ugly
NOAA ignores Congressional subpoenas for data underlying newly reconstructed data set claiming global warming.
Above is from The Hill; for the conservative side see here at the National Review.
Above is from The Hill; for the conservative side see here at the National Review.
Love letters …
… ‘His Joy, His Life’ by Stacy Schiff | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.
— Georges Sorel, born on this date in 1847
Sunday, November 01, 2015
Andy Warhol, Likes, and Facebook
Warhol: Someone said that Brecht wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It’s happening here all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it’s working without trying, why can’t it work without being Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we’re getting more and more that way.
I think everybody should be a machine. I think everybody should like everybody.
Art News: Is that what Pop Art is all about?
Warhol: Yes. It’s liking things.
Art News: And liking things is like being a machine?
Warhol: Yes, because you do the same thing every time. You do it over and over again.
Mama/Dada
In Africa, Swahili has mama and baba. In the Philippines, Tagalog has nanay and tatay. Fijian has nana and tata. Mandarin, so intimidatingly different from English to the learner, soothes unexpectedly in offering up mama and baba. Chechen in the Caucasus? Naana and daa. Native American languages? Eskimo has anana and ataata; Koasati, spoken in Louisiana and Texas, turns out to have mamma and taata; down further in El Salvador, Pipil has naan and tatah.
It’s tempting to imagine this means that the first humans called their parents mama and dada, and that those two warm, hearty words have survived the slings and arrows of human history to remain in use today. But the notion is too good to be true. Over time in language, sounds smush along their way to becoming new ones, and even the meanings people assign to a word drift all over the place.
Inquirer reviews …
… Leonard Pitts Jr.'s 'Grant Park': A page-turner that reflects on race, history.
… I review a book I have mentioned a few times already: Rebecca Foust's 'Paradise Drive': In the lap of plenty, wishing for better.
… Maraniss' 'Once in a Great City': Doom that few saw coming.
… Houellebecq's 'Submission': Politically incorrect, slyly satirical.
… I review a book I have mentioned a few times already: Rebecca Foust's 'Paradise Drive': In the lap of plenty, wishing for better.
… Maraniss' 'Once in a Great City': Doom that few saw coming.
… Houellebecq's 'Submission': Politically incorrect, slyly satirical.
FYI …
… Sorry, kids, the 1st Amendment does protect 'hate speech' - LA Times.
When the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper at Williams College recanted an editorial that had suggested that “some speech is too harmful to invite to campus,” she added this qualification: “Students should not face restrictions in terms of the speakers they bring to campus, provided of course that these speakers do not participate in forms of legally recognized hate speech.”The problem is that there is no such thing.
Hear, hear …
… Letter to the Catholic Academy - NYTimes.com.
… we come to the third argument, which makes an appearance in your letter: You don’t understand, you’re not a theologian. As indeed I am not. But neither is Catholicism supposed to be an esoteric religion, its teachings accessible only to academic adepts. And the impression left by this moving target, I’m afraid, is that some reformers are downplaying their real position in the hopes of bringing conservatives gradually along.
The letter Douthat refers to was a piece of crap. I do not have to have a degree in theology in order to qualify as a Catholic. My qualifications were established 74 years ago when I was baptized. As far as I'm concerned, the theologians who signed the letter can take their degrees and shove them. Especially since said degrees don't seem to have done squat for their understanding of the faith, except to bring them to the brink of, yes, heresy. (By the way, I did study theology for four years at a Jesuit college. So I am far from being theologically illiterate.)
In stores now …
… Light's Battered Edge: Poems: Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, Anna Faktorovich: Amazon.
Yes, I have committed a blurb.
Yes, I have committed a blurb.
Something to think on …
Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.
— Scholem Asch, born on this date in 1880
Saturday, October 31, 2015
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