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Monthly Archives: January 2011

Philosophy and public impact.

Anthony O’Hear: Philosophers, being articulate and argumentative by training, and often having time on their hands as well, will often involve themselves in public affairs. Indeed, despite denials of the fact from some quarters, philosophers as a group punch well above their weight in getting themselves heard in the public square.

The ‘rose-colored dream of Europe has now faded’ for the Turks, too.

This rose-colored dream of Europe, once so powerful that even our most anti-Western thinkers and politicians secretly believed in it, has now faded.

Have your avatar tweet my avatar and we’ll do a virtual lunch.

In its normal occurrence, the Facebook encounter is still an encounter — however attenuated — between real people. But increasingly, the screen is taking over — ceasing to be a medium of communication between real people who exist elsewhere, and becoming the place where people finally achieve reality, the only place where they relate in any coherent way to others.

What’s a ‘book’? Look it up on your Kindle.

Amazon and Apple are now rivals in a new kind of Christmas chart, with the Kindle and the iPad both competing for digital readership dominance.

Charlie Chan: Number one Swede in yellowface.

The Swedish actor Warner Oland, who played Chan, was so popular in China that Chinese and Hong Kong film studios started producing knock-off versions.

The secret treasure in gamification’s future.

“Games aren’t leading us to the downfall of human civilization,” she writes. “They’re leading us to its reinvention.”

Daniel Bell, an eloquent defender of modernity, dies at 91.

Yet such a situation is unsettling, for in any society (other than a small one of peers) the loss of authority leads to a reliance on power, and power rules through the implicit threat and the explicit use of force.

Lost in the loneliness of anti-social networks.

Roger Berkowitz: Sherry Turkle’s incisive and provocative new book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, vividly articulates the ways that our embrace of technology evidences our discomfort and dissatisfaction with our human selves.

Derek Walcott: The TS Eliot (and not a consolation) prize.

Michelene Wandor: And while I’m on the subject, I do wonder how some of the short-listed books got onto the short list in the first place. No names, no lawyers.

This unwanted interruption is brought to you by the RIAA.

RIAA: For a single sound recording no more than three selections may be played and only two may be played consecutively. This poses a significant difficulty for a programming philosophy which has always centered on the belief that a composer’s work should be heard as it was intended to be enjoyed: as a complete piece of music.

Thomas Jefferson and the science of practicality.

Even as Jefferson was open to and appreciative of the innovations of other inventors, he continued to pursue, and to suggest, additional refinements to enhance the quality and performance of their work.

As Thomas Paine knew, it’s the language of common sense.

What is it about English? I do not have an answer, but I note the fact that there seems to be some deep connection between the English language and that most uncommon virtue, common sense.

John Gross introduced us, by Jove.

This doesn’t mean that the best 19th-century reviewing wasn’t very good indeed and that anonymity may not have lent it some of its strength. In the age of celebrity culture, it is hard not to look back fondly on the sober charms of Anon.

Events: ‘Cinematic Genius’ and ‘Artistic Truth’ in the London Series.

The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s series of lectures on philosophy and the arts continues Friday evening, 21 January 2011,  at 5:45 pm with Paisley Livingston at the JZ Young Lecture Theatre, Gower Street. His talk is called “Cinematic Genius”.

The translator’s loyalty to the text: transformation or treachery?

The translator’s task is to freeze meaning in a form that is intelligible and interesting in another language and culture. The inevitable thaw occurs as the translation warms to the touch of different readerships, its charm dissolving with changes in literary taste, ultimately creating a demand for a new version.