Tag: culture

Cultural transposition

Andrew Wilson has translated harry potter into ancient greek, the longest work to receive that treatment since 400 CE. wilson was very intent to recreate a version of the book which would make sense to a Greek from any era up to the 4th century AD who had managed by some magical process to reach the 21st century.
this led to some thorny problems:

Cultural problems There were many, one of the more obvious being
relationships – the patriarchal Greeks not really concerning themselves with relationships like mother’s sister
Time was another one – Greeks had little interest in “telling the time” although they did have devices for measuring how much had elapsed (water clocks for timing speeches, for example). Nor did they care about minutes, let alone seconds!
And colors – it’s little appreciated how languages divide up the visible spectrum of light in their own way – our red orange yellow etc is of course completely arbitrary- the spectrum is a continuum.

reminds me of douglas hofstadters Le Ton Beau De Marot.

A skilled literary translator makes a far larger number of changes, and far more significant changes, than any virtuoso performer of classical music would ever dare to make in playing notes in the score of, say, a Beethoven piano sonata. In literary translation, it’s totally humdrum stuff for new ideas to be interpreted, old ideas to be deleted, structures to be inverted, twisted around, and on and on.

Age of quacks

If you didn’t know Baltimore has a permanent Rumor Control hotline, you’re not alone. The municipal rumor-snuffing center is little promoted today. Rumor Control’s mission is squash misinformation, loose talk, and wild-haired stories that might affect the health and safety of the city. It was established in 1968 to ease tensions and provide information amid the riots that followed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Once its services were advertised on the sides of buses. Now about the only place you’ll find the number is buried in the phone book’s blue-paged government listings. “Most of the calls that come in today just want to know what Rumor Control is”.

i wonder if the panopticon singularity hedged with augmented social networks will be able to stem the tide of quacks?

geekman

GeekMan action figure with accessories

GeekMan is 15 cm tall, made from plastic, and comes with 5 accessories (his weapons of wisdom and tech gadgetry):

  • Geeky Glasses (the Geek Visual Input Device)
  • Handheld Computer / PDA
  • Notebook Computer / Laptop (the Cerebral I/O Device)
  • Coffee Mug (to re-energize super powers)
  • Wristwatch

top 10 delusions

  1. “God is on our side”
  2. The market is rational
  3. There is no such thing as reality
  4. We mustn’t be “judgmental”
  5. Laissez-faire capitalism is the prerequisite for trade and prosperity
  6. Astrology and similar delusions are “harmless fun”
  7. Thin air is solid
  8. Sentimental hysteria is a sign of emotional maturity
  9. America’s economic success is entirely due to private enterprise
  10. “It could be you. . .”

great list by francis wheen. via lance.

Heresy

Training yourself to think unthinkable thoughts has advantages beyond the thoughts themselves. It’s like stretching. When you stretch before running, you put your body into positions much more extreme than any it will assume during the run. If you can think things so outside the box that they’d make people’s hair stand on end, you’ll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that people call innovative.

paul graham describes how to think forbidden thoughts, and why you should, too.

Great ideas

Malaspina Great Books is a biographical database on Great Ideas. These are the living ideas that have shaped, defined and directed world culture for over 2500 years. By definition the Great Ideas are radical. As such they are sometimes misread, or distorted by popular simplifications. Understanding a Great Idea demands personal engagement. Our selection of Great Ideas is drawn from literature and philosophy, science, art, music, theater, and cinema.

clearly, christmas is early this year. what a great resource.