Culture & Society

"The US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways. In Europe it’s austerity in the midst of recession and that’s guaranteed to be a disaster. And there’s an dangerous growth of ultra xenophobia which is pretty threatening to any one who remembers the history of Europe... and an attack on the remnants of the welfare state. It’s hard to interpret the austerity-in-the-midst-of-recession policy as anything other than attack on the social contract. \\ In the US, it’s essentially off-shoring production and financialization and getting rid of superfluous population through incarceration. The US electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it’s been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it’s over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [PR] extravaganzas. It was understood by the ad industry in 2008 -- they gave Barack Obama their marketing award of the year. This year it’s barely a pretense." - Adriano

"Right now we’re living in what Carl Sagan correctly termed a demon-haunted world. We have created a Star Wars civilization but we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. That’s dangerous. (…) Constant turmoil occurs in modern human societies and what I’m suggesting is that turmoil is endemic in the way human advanced social behavior originated in the first place. It’s by group selection that occurred favoring altruism versus individual level selection, which by and large, not exclusively, favor individual and selfish behavior. We’re hung in the balance. We’ll never reach either one extreme or the other. (...) I’ve also felt very strongly that we needed a much better understanding of who we are and where we came from. We need answers to those questions in order to get our bearings toward a successful long-term future, that means a future for ourselves, our species and for the rest of life. (...) We have a kind of resistance toward honest self-understanding as a species and I think that resistance is due in part to our genetic history. And now, can we overcome it? I think so.” - Amira

“There was this American physiologist who was asked if Mary’s bodily ascent from Earth to Heaven was possible. He said,“I wasn’t there; therefore, I’m not positive that it happened or didn’t happen; but of one thing I’m certain: She passed out at 10,000 meters.” - Amira

"Edward O. Wilson has revolutionized science and inspired the public more often than any other living biologist. Now he is blending his pioneer work on ants with a new perspective on human development to propose a radical reframing of how evolution works.First the social insects ruled, from 60 million years ago. Then a species of social mammals took over, from 10 thousand years ago. Both sets of “eusocial” animals mastered the supremely delicate art of encouraging altruism, so that individuals in the groups would act as if they value the goal of the group over their own goals. They would specialize for the group and die for the group. In recent decades the idea of “kin selection” seemed to explain how such an astonishing phenomenon could evolve. Wilson replaces kin selection with “multi-level selection,” which incorporates both individual selection (long well understood) and group selection (long considered taboo). Every human and every human society has to learn how to manage adroitly the perpetual ambiguity and conflict between individual needs and group needs. What I need is never the same as what we need." - Amira

“Mythmaking could never discover the origin and meaning of humanity” — and contemporary philosophy is also irrelevant, having “long ago abandoned the foundational questions about human existence.” The proper approach to answering these deep questions is the application of the methods of science, including archaeology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology. Also, we should study insects.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012... - Amira

"There are growing number of people who have decided to live light on the earth 'to not be a part of problem anymore'. I spent the last few years with four of them striving for harmony with nature in the most pristine corners of United States." - Amira

A mix of the Wild West and Robin Hood scenery :-) - Amira

"Where the world’s wires once hummed with the electrical impulses of people talking, that conversation, in the digital age, has been subsumed by all the other information we are exchanging. “At this point, voice isn’t even a rounding error in network operators’ calculations,” Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a telecom research company, recently told me. To underscore the point, he sent me a chart showing “switched voice” as a thin wedge, gradually squeezed to a nearly invisible nothing by the oceanic thrust of “Internet” (and a smaller stratolayer of “private networks”). It looks as if the world has gone quiet. (...) While in 2003 the average local mobile phone call lasted a leisurely three minutes, by 2010 it had been trimmed to a terse one minute and 47 seconds. (...) Consider, for example, this casual dismissal by TheNew York Times in 1939: “The problem with television is that people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn’t time for it.” (...) - Amira

“For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new. (…) The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History. (…) Movies and literature and music have never changed less over a 20-year period. Lady Gaga has replaced Madonna, Adele has replaced Mariah Carey—both distinctions without a real difference. (...) Ironically, new technology has reinforced the nostalgic cultural gaze: now that we have instant universal access to every old image and recorded sound, the future has arrived and it’s all about dreaming of the past. Our culture’s primary M.O. now consists of promiscuously and sometimes compulsively reviving and rejiggering old forms. (...)" - Amira

"Why is this happening? In some large measure, I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out. (...) The more certain things change for real (technology, the global political economy), the more other things (style, culture) stay the same. (...) [But] more people than ever before are devoting more of their time and energy to considering and managing matters of personal style. (...) But the other part of the explanation is economic: like any lucrative capitalist sector, our massively scaled-up new style industry naturally seeks stability and predictability. (...) Today, Starbucks doesn’t want to have to renovate its thousands of stores every few years. (...) Information technology; which leads us to embrace the past and turn the present into a pleasantly eclectic for-profit museum; which deprives the cultures of innovation of the fuel they need to conjure genuinely new ideas and forms; which deters radical change, reinforcing the economic (and political) stagnation." - Amira

"Since 2001, we conducted experiments showing that when someone's level of oxytocin goes up, he or she responds more generously and caringly. We relied on the willingness of our subjects to share real money with others. To measure the increase in oxytocin, we took their blood and analyzed it. We sprayed synthetic oxytocin into our subjects' nasal passages -- a way to get it directly into their brains. We could turn the behavioral response on and off like a garden hose, and we found that you don't need to shoot a chemical up someone's nose, or have sex with them, to create the surge in oxytocin. All you have to do is give someone a sign of trust. When one person extends himself to another in a trusting way, the person being trusted experiences a surge in oxytocin that makes her less likely to hold back and less likely to cheat. The feeling of being trusted makes a person more trustworthy, which makes other people more inclined to trust, which in turn... makes an endless loop that can feed back onto itself, creating ultimately a more virtuous society." - Adriano

:-) - Amira

"Human nature, if nothing else, consists of this desire to transcend our boundaries—-the entire history of man from hunter gatherer to technologist to astronaut is this story of expanding and transcending our boundaries using our tools. And so whether the metaphor works for you or not, that’s a wonderful way to live your life, to wake up every day and say, “even if I am going to die I am going to transcend my human limitations.” And then if you make it literal, if you drop this pretense that it’s a metaphor, you notice that we actually have doubled our lifespan, we really have improved the quality of life across the world, we really have created magical devices that allow us to send our thoughts across space at nearly the speed of light. We really are on the cusp of reprogramming our biology like we program computers. (...)" - Amira

"[As Freeman Dyson said] “in the future, a new generation of artists will be writing genomes as fluently as Blake and Byron wrote verses.” It’s a really well placed analogy, because the alphabet is a technology; you can use it to engender alphabetic rapture with literature and poetry. Guys like Shakespeare and Blake and Byron were technologists who used the alphabet to engineer wonderful things in the world. (...) Eventually it will get to the point where it will be like that scene in Inception where he says that we can create and perceive our world at the same time. Because, again, if you look at human progress in time lapse, it is like that scene in Inception. People thought “airplane, aviation, jet engine” and then those things were in the world. If you look at the assembly line of an airplane in time lapse it actually looks self-organizing; you don’t see all of these agencies building it, instead it’s just being formed. And when you see the earth as the biosphere, as this huge integrated system, then you see this stuff just forming over time, just popping into existence. There’s this process of intention, imagination and instantiation, and the buffer time between each of those steps is getting smaller and smaller." - Amira

"Many people will tell you that having many friends, a fortune or freedom is essential to happiness, but Kagan believes they are wrong. "A fundamental requirement for feelings of serenity and satisfaction," Kagan says, is "commitment to a few unquestioned ethical beliefs" and the confidence that one lives in a community and country that promote justice and fair play. "Even four-year-olds have a tantrum if a parent violates their sense of fairness." His diagnosis of the "storm of hostility" felt by Americans on the right and left, and the depression and anomie among so many young people, is that this essential requirement has been frustrated by the bleak events of the past decades. War, corruption, the housing bubble and the financial crisis, not to mention the fact that so many of those responsible have not been held unaccountable, have eroded optimism, pride and the fundamental need to believe the world is fair." - Adriano

"We think constant [electronic] connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true. If we are unable to be alone, we are far more likely to be lonely. I am a partisan for conversation. At home, we can create sacred spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars “device-free zones.” We can demonstrate the value of conversation to our children. And we can do the same thing at work. There we are so busy communicating that we often don’t have time to talk to one another about what really matters. We need to remember — in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts — to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another." - Adriano

"So what does matter in determining the happiness or life satisfaction in a nation? Income of course matters to everyone, especially the poorest. As the report shows, the richest countries are a lot happier than the poorest. The four happiest are all in Northern Europe (Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands) and the four least happy are in Sub-Saharan Africa. On a 0-10 scale, the average life evaluation score is 7.6 in the first four countries and only 3.4 in the last four. (...) But income is only one among many factors that explain the variation in happiness among people. As the report describes, income explains only about one-twentieth of the variation within nations that can be explained statistically, and across countries it explains about one-eighth of the explained variation. The other factors besides income can be divided into those that are mainly social and those that are mainly personal." - Amira

"Countries differ hugely in the strength of their networks of social support ("If you were in trouble do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them?"). They also differ in the degree of corruption in government and business, and of course in personal freedom and security. All these factors matter a great deal. So too does the state of the labor market. High and stable employment is extremely important. Therein lies the case for active labor market policies, job training, and various innovations in working hours flexibility. Turning to more personal factors, a crucial one is mental health. A person's mental health many years earlier is a better predictor of his current happiness than his current level of income. (...) Physical health is also a major factor affecting happiness. (...) Not surprisingly, individual values are also important. People who care more about other people are also themselves on average happier. (...) Over the last 40 years, sadly, measured happiness has not increased in the United States despite sharply rising incomes. The problems of poverty, insecurity, corruption, loss of social trust, and other factors are weighing heavily on America's sense of well-being. (...)" - Amira

"British Library Sounds presents 50,000 recordings and their associated documentation from the Library’s extensive collections of unique sound recordings which come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds. The selection available here comes from the 3.5 million sounds held in the British Library." - Amira

"The total stock of information used in these ecosystems exceeds the capacity of single organizations because doubling the size of huge organizations does not double the capacity of that organization to hold knowledge and put it into productive use. In a world in which implementing the next generation of ideas will increasingly require pulling resources from different organizations, barriers to collaboration will be a crucial constraint limiting the development of firms. Agility, context, and a strong network are becoming the survival traits where assets, control, and power used to rule. John Seely Brown refers to this as the "Power of Pull."" - Adriano

Polari (or alternatively Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, Palari;[1] from Italian parlare, "to talk") is a form of cant slang used in Britain by actors, circus and fairground showmen, criminals, prostitutes, and the gay subculture. It was popularised in the 1960s by camp characters Julian and Sandy in the popular BBC radio show Round the Horne. There is some debate about its origins,[2] but it can be traced back to at least the 19th century, and possibly the 16th century.[3] There is a longstanding connection with Punch and Judy street puppet performers who traditionally used Polari to converse.[4] - Halil

Halil, I haven't. These cryptolects are interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Maitani

“The survival of an endangered language may depend on two people — and all they want to do is ignore each other. Manuel Segovia and Isidro Velazquez, the last speakers of a language called Ayapaneco, live less than half a mile away from each other in Ayapa, Mexico. But no matter how precious the cultural implications of keeping their language alive are, they are not going to speak to each other. (…) The Guardian notes that, “It is not clear whether there is a long-buried argument behind their mutual avoidance, but people who know them say they have never really enjoyed each other’s company.” Ayapaneco is one of many dozens of indigenous languages remaining in Mexico. Perhaps the most extreme case, it managed to survive the Spanish conquest in Mexico. Sixty-eight native languages are still in use today, although a handful are on the verge of extinction. Regardless, linguists are still attempting to preserve the language despite the lack of communication between the last two fluent speakers, who no longer converse with anyone regularly in their native tongue. When Segovia, 75, and Velazquez, 65, both die, their language will pass away with them. Still, Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist, sums up their relationship succinctly: “They don’t have a lot in common.” - Amira

“There is something about stone that calls forth the desire to touch it, and to shape it with our desires and emotions,” said Professor Susan Broomhall, acting director of the Centre for the History of Emotions, based at The University of Western Australia. “Those desires can take different forms, from Aboriginal rock art, medieval cathedrals, stone memorials or diamond engagement rings. Stone is a feature of many natural landscapes, and the history of our relationship with stone is a significant part of the history of emotions.” (...) What range of emotions governs the act of engraving initials, graffiti, or supplementary artwork onto the stone monuments of pre-modern Europe or indigenous rock art? What varied emotional responses do we have to these interventions and why? (...) “We are not thinking in abstract and analytical ways about emotions, but how we actually can give voice to the way that we feel about temporality, time, memory and the past; how stone can act as a conduit of emotion.” - Amira

"The number-one reason why nannies in Manhattan can get paid $200,000 is very simple. Rich families can afford it. (...) Six-figure nannies don't rule the world, but they help explain the world of prices. On a global scale, the price of locally-delivered services, such as nannies and barbers, fluctuate wildly from country to country. A simple haircut in Uzbekistan is much, much cheaper than a simple haircut in Beverly Hills. (...) Why some prices between countries (and even between cities in the same country) differ so dramatically. The most elegant of these theories is known, less elegantly, as the Balassa-Samuelson Effect, after two economists Béla Balassa and Paul Samuelson. The Balassa-Samuelson Effect is a mouthful. Let's call it the "Nanny Effect." In a nutshell, the Nanny Effect says that the price of some goods -- e.g.: Picasso paintings, barrels of oil, bricks of gold, and company stock -- shouldn't vary much by location, because it would create opportunities for arbitrage. (...) There is much more to price levels than the Nanny Effect. Much, much, much more. Restrictive urban policy raises the price of rent in similarly productive cities. Energy policies and levies raise or lower the price of gas. Tariffs raise the price of imports. On a nation-by-nation basis, taxes restrain demand and subsidies increase supply on an idiosyncratic basis." - Amira

"But perhaps the easiest way to mess with Balassa and Samuelson is for a government to manipulate foreign exchange rates. China, for example, is famous for pegging its currency to the U.S. dollar to make its exports more competitive. As a result, services in China are probably cheaper than they would be if the government weren't actively trying to depreciate the currency. If you're happily wondering "Why is China so cheap?" you should thank Beijing. "The B-S Effect [er, Nanny Effect!] explains why on average, prices vary across countries, but in the short to medium run, the exchange rate will also determine how cheap or expensive different countries are," (...) Another way to see this in action is to read the Economist's latest cost-of-living index for cities, an sample of which are in the graph below. The top of the list was dominated by Switzerland (and, to a lesser extent, Japan and Australia). Why Switzerland? Blame Greece and Germany. The debt crisis sweeping Europe has created a flight to safety to Swiss Francs, which are considered safer. As the Franc appreciated, prices have gone up compared to the euro and the dollar. Japan and Australia have also seen strong currency appreciation over the last few years, which made it relatively expensive for foreigners. (...) If we had to boil all this -- Balassa-Samuelson, Nanny Effect,exchange rates, urban policy -- down to a sentence, it might be this: All things equal, prices rise fastest in the places where rich, talented people want to be." - Amira

"A History of the World was a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum (...) The programmes told a history of two million years of humanity through the objects we have made, starting with the earliest object in the museum’s collection. Deep zoom imagery of the British Museum objects on the site lets you see the objects in stunning detail while listening to the programme." - Amira

"Evolution is slow and dynamic quest towards understanding itself. (...) Information is only meaningful when it is “run” - you can’t predict the outcome of even many trivial programs without running the program. So to say that “information may be more primary than matter” we have to remember that “information” does not mean “free from constraints.” Thermodynamics – including entropy – remains. (...) Carl Jung saw archetypes as templates for understanding, ways of organizing our story of the world. (...) They are very powerful because they help stitch together what can seem to be a chaotic world – that is both their strength and their weakness. It is a weakness because most of the time we are operating within an archetype and we don’t even know it, and we don’t know therefore that we can change our archetype. (...)" - Amira

"Robert Anton Wilson spoke about “reality tunnels" (....) The film Inception explored the notion that our inner world can be a vivid, experiential dimension, and that we can hack it, and change our reality… what do you make of this? The whole contemplative tradition insists on this dynamic nature of consciousness. “Inner” and “outer” are models for aspects of reality – words that map the world only imperfectly. Our “inner world” - subjective experience – is all we ever experience, so if we change it obviously we will see a change in what we label “external” reality it is of course part of and not separable from. One of the maps we should experiment with, in my view, is this “inner” and “outer” one – this is why one of my aliases is “mobius.” A mobius strip helps makes clear that “inside” and “outside” are… labels. As you run your finger along a mobius strip, the “inside” becomes “outside” and the “outside” becomes “inside.”. (...) Techno-social wormholes.. the instant compression of time and space created every time we make a telephone call (...) We are dissipative structures far from equilibrium, meaning that we fulfill the laws of thermodynamics. Even though biological systems such as ourselves are incredibly orderly – and we export that order through our maps onto and into the world – we also yield more entropy than our absence. (...)" - Amira

snob 1781, "a shoemaker, a shoemaker's apprentice," of unknown origin. It came to be used in Cambridge University slang c.1796 for "townsman, local merchant," and by 1831 it was being used for "person of the ordinary or lower classes." Meaning "person who vulgarly apes his social superiors" arose 1843, popularized 1848 by William Thackeray's "Book of Snobs." The meaning later broadened to include those who insist on their gentility, in addition to those who merely aspire to it, and by 1911 had its main modern sense of "one who despises those considered inferior in rank, attainment, or taste." - Halil

I was surprised to find Pimsleur offers neither Swedish nor Danish but offers Norwegian. If Norwegian is *the* Scandinavian language to know, I'm screwed. The spelling confuses me after learning the other two! - Spidra Webster

"The research reviewed by Hamermesh shows that attractive people, both men and women, earn an average of 3 or 4% more than people with below average looks, which adds up to a significant amount of money over a lifetime. Beautiful people are also hired sooner, get promotions more quickly, are higher-ranking in their companies (a study found the CEOs of larger and more successful companies are rated as being more physically attractive than the CEOs of smaller companies), and get all kinds of extra benefits and perks on the job including, perhaps, more free tickets to fly in F/B class. It turns out that more attractive people often bring more money to their companies and therefore are more valuable employees. For example, a good-looking insurance salesperson will sell more insurance than one with below average looks. But that's not the whole story. Even in situations in which more and less attractive employees don't differ in their earning potential, employers are biased in favor of the better-looking people. For example, a study showed that above average looking people who apply for loans are more likely to obtain loans and to pay lower interest rates than below-average looking borrowers. This occurs despite the fact that the two groups of borrowers don't differ in their demographic characteristics (age or gender) or credit history. In fact, it turned out that the attractive borrowers were more likely to be delinquent on their loans than the less attractive people. Hamermesh's conclusion is that lenders are willing to exchange more generous terms on loans "for the pleasure of dealing with good-looking borrowers." They do this, according to him, simply because they are prejudiced against bad-looking borrowers. Similarly, Hamermesh thinks that good-looking insurance salespeople sell more insurance because customers are biased against bad-looking insurance sellers. This explanation is pretty much the only thing that caught my attention in Hamermesh's book, which is otherwise a good example of how to write a boring book on a great topic. Having a prejudice against bad-looking people is not a good explanation for having a bias in favor of good-looking people. In fact, it's not an explanation at all. It's the same as saying that half a glass is full because the other half is empty. I'd like to offer an alternative explanation for "the pleasure of dealing with good-looking people." It's called sex. Good-looking people are more appealing as potential sex partners, and other people choose to interact with them (to spend time near them, talk with them, buy insurance from them, and hire them as employees) so as to increase the chances to have sex with them. The male mind is designed in such a way when it comes to sex that heterosexual men will do anything to increase their chances to have sex with an attractive woman, no matter how small these chances are, and even if what they do only increases the probability of sex from 0.01 to 0.015 %. What a man can do ranges from a simple smile to an act of courtesy, to sending an email or making a phone call, to having a brief conversation with a woman on a train or a plane. These actions may also include purchasing insurance from an attractive insurance saleswoman; they definitely also include hiring an attractive woman to make her a permanent feature of the working environment. Not all of these actions occur consciously. Some are expressed unconsciously in the form of subtle biases in preferences, decision-making, or other behaviors. The advertisement industry knows this very well. Virtually all the ads in Italian sports newspapers, which are mainly read by men, feature half-naked attractive models, regardless of the nature of the product being advertised. The female mind may not be as extreme as the male mind in pursuing ALL opportunities for sex with attractive partners, but women too are active players in this arena. Heterosexual women too like to look at ads featuring half-naked male models and they flirt (consciously or unconsciously) with attractive men whenever they get the chance. I have an attractive friend who flies frequently for work and whose employer buys First Class tickets for her. She tells me that 99% of the men who occupy the seat next to her start talking to her at some point during the flight, and half of them end up asking for her phone number. Sometimes, she closes her eyes and pretends to be asleep to avoid being bothered. No one bothers me when I sit in the last row of the Economy class. Sometimes, I am lucky enough that no one is sitting next to me on either side, so I can stretch my body across three seats, close my eyes, and sleep for real." - Lit

Your are missed <3 - Sepi ⌘ سپی

“Even today, some opt for the comforts of mystification, preferring to believe that the wonders of the ancient world were built by Atlanteans, gods, or space travelers, instead of by thousands toiling in the sun. Such thinking robs our forerunners of their due, and us of their experience. Because then one can believe whatever one likes about the past - without having to confront the bones, potsherds, and inscriptions which tell us that people all over the world, time and again, have made similar advances and mistakes.” - Amira

“Rome Reborn is an international initiative whose goal is the creation of 3D digital models illustrating the urban development of ancient Rome from the first settlement in the late Bronze Age (ca. 1000 B.C.) to the depopulation of the city in the early Middle Ages (ca. A.D. 550). With the advice of an international Scientific Advisory Committee, the leaders of the project decided that A.D. 320 was the best moment in time to begin the work of modeling. At that time, Rome had reached the peak of its population, and major Christian churches were just beginning to be built. After this date, few new civic buildings were built. Much of what survives of the ancient city dates to this period, making reconstruction less speculative than it must, perforce, be for earlier phases. But having started with A.D. 320, the Rome Reborn team intends to move both backwards and forwards in time until the entire span of time foreseen by our mission has been covered.” - Amira

From the beginning of time, women have cared for their hair. The famous Ice Age statuettes known as the Venus of Willendorf and of Brassempouy show clear evidence of stylised hair. Perhaps 30,000 years old, these statuettes reveal that at least some women in the society took care about how their hair looked and had a concept of beauty and attractiveness. Considerable labor was required to have created the hairstyles of these statuettes. There are also small clay figurines from Butmir in Bosnia illustrating short, neatly combed hair, which are up to 7,000 years old. - Halil

*bumped* for WoH - Halil

Fascinting, but I don't know how they had the time to spend on hair :) - WoH: Professor MOTHRA

EU has become a vehicle by which the stronger countries promote their interests -- led, for the moment, by the tag team of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy: "So although all the member states have to be democracies -- this is one of the conditions for entry -- they're not required to act democratically once they're in. In this crisis the emergence of 'Merkozy' is a regression to the days of [Konrad] Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s, when the two of them would have tea in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, and they would decide what the policy was, and it would be proposed, and it would be accepted. This is no way to run the European Union. I now feel that the thing that is being proved wrong is what some people call the 'gradualist fallacy' -- that you drive European integration forward by economic means. And it's just wrong." http://online.wsj.com/article... - Adriano

For even the mightiest sovereigns, eventual collapse is a safer bet than indefinite life. Human institutions, like humans themselves, do not live forever. "Serenity is the balance between good and bad, life and death, horrors and pleasures. Life is, as it were, defined by death. If there wasn't death of things, then there wouldn't be any life to celebrate." -ibid. - Adriano

"European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said Europe's vaunted social model—which places a premium on job security and generous safety nets—is "already gone," citing high youth unemployment; in Spain, it tops 50%. "There was a time when [economist] Rudi Dornbusch used to say that the Europeans are so rich they can afford to pay everyone for not working. That's gone."" \\ cf. Santiago Zabala, How to Be a European (Union) Philosopher, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012... - Adriano

see also interview with Norman DAVIES who wrote Vanished Kingdoms (2012 book) http://ff.im/S4qN8 - Adriano

"...Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow." Juliet - Halil

Inspired by a chat I had with Maitani this morning, well, good night all. - Halil

Sweet dreams :) - Pete&#39;s Got To Go

"Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted. (...) They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. (...) Introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. (...) The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools (...) In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question. (...) Privacy also makes us productive. (...) What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. (...)" - Amira

"Brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity. (...) Decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. (...) The one important exception to this dismal record is electronic brainstorming, where large groups outperform individuals; and the larger the group the better. The protection of the screen mitigates many problems of group work. This is why the Internet has yielded such wondrous collective creations. Marcel Proust called reading a “miracle of communication in the midst of solitude,” and that’s what the Internet is, too. It’s a place where we can be alone together — and this is precisely what gives it power. (...)" - Amira

The language of flowers, sometimes called floriography, was a Victorian-era means of communication in which various flowers and floral arrangements were used to send coded messages, allowing individuals to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken. This language was most commonly communicated through Tussie-Mussies, an art which has a following today.[citation needed] - Halil

:) - Eivind

"The most interesting thing about the human species is our plasticity, our flexibility. (…) Over the past 10 years we have started to see powerful evidence that children might learn language statistically, by unconsciously tabulating patterns in the sentences they hear and using these to generalise to new cases. Children might learn language effortlessly not because they possess innate grammatical rules, but because statistical learning is something we all do incessantly and automatically. The brain is designed to pick up on patterns of all kinds. (...) You only have to stroll down the street to see that human beings are learning machines. (...) if you compare us with other species, our degree of variation is just so extraordinary and so obvious that we know prior to doing any science that human beings are special in this regard, and that a tremendous amount of what we do is as a result of learning. So empiricism should be the default position. The rest is just working out the details of how all this learning takes place. (...)" - Amira

"Philosophy tells us what is possible, and science tells us what is true. Cognitive science has transformed philosophy. At the beginning of the 20th century, philosophers changed their methodology quite dramatically by adopting logic. There has been an equally important revolution in 21st-century philosophy in that philosophers are turning to the empirical sciences and to some extent conducting experimental work themselves to settle old questions. As a philosopher, I hardly go a week without conducting an experiment. My whole working day has changed because of the infusion of science.” - Amira