Still not enough time for anything, but this case deserves all attention one is able to muster. The experiment described in the following page (a copy from a book by Arnhild Lauveng) has implications far beyond a simple personality quirk. Click on the image to make the reading easier.
Just to make sure the story is true, I have done some fingerwalking with Google. First of all it is Major and Crocker, and, besides, the experiment was performed by Kleck, R. E., and Strenta, A. in 1980. However, the description above summarizes the results in a simple and easy language, so I have decided to use it, despite the wrong reference.
In our brave new world, when the battle cry "Discrimination!" is used by so many small and large groups of people, for a good reason or (more frequently) without any reason at all, this experiment should serve as a litmus paper for a lot of cases.
Baizuo (/ˈbaɪˌtswɔː/;[1] Chinese: 白左 báizuǒ, literally "white left") is a derogatory Chinese neologism used to refer to Western leftist liberal elites. It refers to the left faction in the culture wars in Western politics, implying support of multiculturalism, political correctness and positive discrimination. In more than 400 answers submitted by Zhihu users during 2015 to May 2017, the term is defined as referring to those who are hypocritically obsessed with political correctness in order to satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority motivated from an ignorant and arrogant Western-centric worldview who pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours. A related term is shèngmǔ (圣母, 聖母, literally "holy mother", title for the mother of an emperor), a sarcastic reference to those whose political opinions are guided by emotions and a hypocritical show of selflessness and empathy, represented by celebrities.
It will be a grave omission on my side to skip another observation related to the promenade described here. You can see in the picture of the promenade in this post that every 50 m or so there is a sign warning the passerby not to venture onto the rocks. It is heartwarming to state that both Arabs and Jews disregard this warning.
And both throw there some strangely looking garbage that could scare the crap out of an innocent tourist.
As for this act of artistic self-expression: you tell me what it means.
Well, and the last one - just to show off my prowess as a photographer.
Nah, it was just a lucky play of sun, shadows and clouds. Oh well...
Just to make sure that the location and the general environment of the rest of the pictures is clear, this is where they were taken: along the Jaffa seaside promenade.
The rocks, apparently brought in to protect the shore from erosion, provide a kind of a safe space for a sizable feline population, a small part of which is presented here.
Notice that the tuxedo (black and white) cats presented are not several shots of the same cat.
Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky, one of very few in the Russian poetry of XX century, was a man of tragic times and his life was tragic as well. A poet who, while he escaped the fate of his peers (like Osip Mandelshtam) in the bloody thirties, had his first book published at the age of 55. This alone should tell you most of his life story. Still, he was one of very few to have that elusive deity of poetry guide his pen.
But this post is about translation. One of the most known in the West poems by A.T. is Первые Свидания, a poem dedicated to a woman he loved till his last breath, over several marriages and over life full of pain. And here starts the saga of translation.
In fact, the closest (and most fitting) translation of the title Первые Свидания would have been First Trysts. The multiple attempts of translation ended up with: First Meetings, First Dates, First Times Together, ...
And from this point it all went downhill. The poem itself is a perfect example of a poet at the peak of his power, using the rhythm and the rhyme to the utmost, in their most difficult implementation. With absolute success, at least for a layman like I. So it isn't easy to translate, a towering challenge for anyone. And the last, say, 6 lines, present an even more insurmountable goal:
Сама ложилась мята нам под ноги, И птицам с нами было по дороге, И рыбы подымались по реке, И небо развернулось пред глазами… Когда судьба по следу шла за нами, Как сумасшедший с бритвою в руке.
Try your Google Translate and see what kind of challenge these lines provide, even without knowing the original language. Especially the two last lines, justly characterized by Philip Metres here:
The final two lines, a brutal couplet, suddenly brings the lovers into the cold, where fate will have its say—like a madman with a razor. The scales of the poem tip from romance to tragedy.
Yep. He got it. However, the translation he and his Russian colleague provided, didn't get it:
And mint bowed down beneath our feet, And birds hovered above our heads. And fish nosed against the river’s flow, And the sky unfurled above the land… While behind us, fate followed Like a madman with a razor in his hand.
In addition to the above translation I have checked another four: First Meetings, First Dates, First Meetings and again First Dates. Only the last one, by Rupert Moreton, somewhat rises to the challenge:
And underfoot was minty sward’s foundation,
And birds along the way flew in formation,
Against the flow the fish were swimming free,
Before our eyes the heavens were unfolding…
Behind us still our fate was grimly holding,
A razor-handed madman, seeking fee.
Playing a bit loose with the text, but doing his best with rhyme and rhythm. Still not there, but more in the spirit of the poem than the others, to my taste.
Oh well, the challenge isn't going away anytime soon.
In the following clip, from the movie The Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky (the famous son of A.T.), A.T. himself reads the poem.
Even if you don't know the language, the music is there. Enjoy.
A new model of the Sun's solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun's 11-year heartbeat. The model draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone. Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the 'mini ice age' that began in 1645.
Oh yes, and coal. Lots of coal.
And oil.
And shale.
So there.
60%? Yeah, better catch some sunlight before its gets scarce.
העובדה שהמילים "עברית" ו"ערבית" מורכבות מאותן אותיות אינה נסתרת מאף אחד מאיתנו.
וגם העובדה שערבים הם עם (nation), ויש בהם מוסלמים ונוצרים ועוד דתות, ידועה לכל.
מה היהודים - זה קצת לא ברור. האם אנחנו דת? האם אנחנו עם?
ומהי ישראל - זה גם ברור. ישראל היא מדינה.
אמנם לפעמים טועים לחשוב שכל היהודים הם ישראלים ולכן יש הקבלה בין יהודים וישראלים, אבל יש ישראלים שאינם יהודים. יש ישראלים שהם ערבים. ויש הרבה יהודים שאינם ישראלים וכנראה גם אינם רוצים להיות ישראלים.
חשבתי שהיה יכול להיות נחמד אם מדינת ישראל אכן תהיה מדינת כל אזרחיה.
ובה חיים שני עמים: ערבים (בני דתות שונות) ועברים (שמרביתם יהודים אך יש בהם גם אתיאיסטים ואולי אף לא-יהודים שהשתרבבו בעיקר מיוצאי בריה"מ).
ותהיה לנו "עבודה ערבית" ו"עבודה עברית" - כמו שדברו לפני קום המדינה, ויש את השפה העברית והשפה הערבית, ויהיו שני עמים עברים וערבים. ונפסיק להתבלבל בין המושגים -ישראלי - יהודי - ערבי.
מתי לאחרונה השתתפתם בשירה בציבור?
התנועה הציונית התאפיינה, בין היתר, בחידוש השימוש בעברית כשפה המדוברת ביומיום.
בין החלוצים שעלו לארץ ישראל מתחילת המאה העשרים היו גם מוזיקאים ומשוררים, שרכשו את השכלתם באירופה לפני עלייתם לארץ.
בתור שכאלה, הם חיברו שירים רבים.
השירים, מה לעשות, מרביתם מתייחסים לארץ ולחיים בה בראייה רומנטית וכתובים בשפה מליצית וגבוהה. שיר העמק, למשל. באה מנוחה ליגע ומרגוע לעמל. לילה חיוור משתרע על שדות עמק יזרעאל. טל מלמטה ולבנה מעל, מבית אלפא עד נהלל. שירי האהבה לטבע הם לעיתים ממש שירה ארוטית. עוד נירי פתוח לטללים ואור.... שירי המלחמה מאדירים את החיילים והקרבות. שיר על כיתה אלמונית
בתור ילדה בתל אביב ובתנועת הנוער בשנות החמישים והששים של המאה העשרים, למדתי עשרות שירים שחוברו על ידי האנשים המוכשרים הללו, בעיקר יחיאל מוהר (האבא של עלי מוהר)ומשה וילנסקי שכתבו ביחד עשרות שירים.
בכל ארוע נהגנו לשיר את השירים שחוברו לתקופת השנה או לחג שהתקיימו באותה עת.
לפני מספר שנים קם ארגון ששם לו כמטרה לשמר את השירים העבריים המוקדמים - זמרשת שמו.
האתר של הארגון הוא אוצר בלום של השירים שנכתבו בישראל וליוו את היומיום של מי שחי וגדל בארץ מתחילת המאה הקודמת.
אחת לחודש-חודשיים מתקיים ארוע של שירה בציבור שבו שמים דגש על יוצר/ים מסויים, או על נושא מסויים, או על תקופה מסויימת.
הארועים הללו הם פלאשבק מטורף. ארועי נוסטלגייה היסטריים. מפגשים עם אנשים שהיו פעם מלח הארץ והיום הם זן נכחד. הגיל הממוצע הוא 70, אבל האנרגיות שמשתחררות שם בשירה הן ברמה של רייב ביער.
Like you, I spend a lot of time trying to keep up-to-date on the hottest significant news stories. Since we free-thinking folks have to largely bypass vintage media, which have largely become a public relations arm of the Obama administration, it isn’t easy to do. There are thousands of great sites out there, any of which can have a noteworthy news story.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time to check thousands of websites for breaking news.
Yes, there are some great aggregators out there: Drudge, Twitchy, etc. But all of them rely upon human editors and, most importantly, don’t give smaller blogs and websites much of their attention.
That’s why we created BadBlue News. It’s a very different type of news aggregator because it uses machine learning and automation to achieve massive scalability in assessing news sources and breaking stories. Here’s how it’s different:
1. It uses social network buzz, not a set of human editors, to determine how important a story is.
2. It levels the playing field for smaller websites and blogs by taking into account traffic patterns; that is, a story on a small blog with 15 retweets might be equivalent to a story on Fox News with 1,000 retweets. The traffic patterns and social buzz are both factored in by BadBlue to offer a much wider range of news coverage than any other aggregator.
3. It never sleeps: BadBlue runs 24×7 and never relies upon human editors making decisions.
BadBlue is growing quickly. From September 2013 to January 2014, page views grew by 20 percent, with Google Analytics reporting the average time onsite is a startling 31 minutes!
In this election year, BadBlue can play an important role for advancing the conservative agenda by cutting through the media censors and offering a level playing field for websites and blogs of all sizes.
I’d love for you to come visit and, if you like it, to tell your friends, tweet about it, or like it on Facebook.
2014 will be a big year for liberty and I believe getting the word out on uncensored news stories — bypassing the state-run media — will be critical.
Actually, I am questioning a book titled The Elixir of Immortality. I know that it is one of the gravest sins - to question a book without reading it (yet). But the mystery exuded by its blurb is unbearable:
Since the eleventh century, the Spinoza family has passed down, from father to son, a secret manuscript containing the recipe for immortality. Now, after thirty-six generations, the last descendant of this long and illustrious chain, Ari Spinoza, doesn’t have a son to whom to entrust the manuscript. From his deathbed, he begins his narrative...
Don't you see some inconsistency here, an unsubtle attempt to tinker with your brain? I mean... OK, maybe it is just me, but how come... I mean immortality...
If you own a smartphone you will know what it is about:
The pinnacle of the user friendly interface in the past were two identical buttons, where the first launched the ICBMs and the second started the coffeemaker. The designers went further - now it is one button: to launch the ICBMs, you press and hold the button for about a second; to start the coffee going, press and hold less than a second...
And:
When I was a kid, I was waiting for the TV tube to warm up. These days I am waiting for the TV's operating system to load. Where is the progress?
We've just come back from the AGM of The Tate Members. The Tate is a 4 centre art gallery, for those for whom the name is unknown: two art galleries/museums in London (T. Britain & Modern), one in Liverpool and the fourth in St Ives, which is in the far South West of England. Members are this organisation's equivalent of Friends elsewhere: for a fee, you get to go as many times as you want in a year to as many otherwise pay-on-the-door exhibitions, many of them grand (one about to open is Matisse's cut-outs, sold as a once in lifetime chance to view work from Matisse's last two decades).
We missed last year's AGM, so were surprised when certain activists opened up about B(ritish) P(etroleum)'s sponsorship of The Tate, apparently a follow-on from a row last year. What struck me was the essential naivety of these young people: there they were, going on (and on and on...) about the iniquities of BP, their role in global warming, their devil worship (I made that last bit up), and so-on.
Now, we regard ourselves as Democratic Socialists in good standing. Among other things, this means that we don't assume that there are any large commercial organisations, large enough to make significant donations to cultural organisations that are without blame. The protestors clearly do. And without such donations, cultural organisations like The Tate could not keep their doors open and/or make much of their acquired material available for free to anyone who comes in: and, believe me, much of their archive is fantastic, as is that of The British Museum, which has a similar policy.
These people reminded me of the so-called "vulgar Marxists" of my early days in education: read "The Communist Manifesto" and regarded themselves as experts on Karl Marx. I was able to say as much after the AGM to the Director of The Tate. Further, as it occurred to me after leaving the building, at least some of these people reminded me of the BDS mob: banging on about boycotting the evil Zionazis, yet refusing to give up their mobile (cell) phones, or their desk top computers, or medicines developed in Israel. I bet lots of them drive cars and even (horror of horrors) have been known to buy fuel at a BP petrol station.
Hypocrite, thy name is sanctimonious (rancid - thank you Noga!) leftist.
I shall, probably, tattoo these words on my hands and place a sticker on the monitor as well. This should eliminate the long, confusing and eventually humiliating moments when I stupidly stare at headlines like
, wondering why would one compare a citizen of what was once a great empire with a barbarous act. Or does the headline say that the said citizen dislikes that revolting custom? Or what, for crying out loud?
