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2005-09-23 15:08
It is Karl
"Poverty" Popper on the dialectic!
In section 17 of his 1961 "addenda" to The Open Society, entitled
"Facts, Standards, and Truth: A Further Criticism of Relativism,"
Popper refused to moderate his criticism of the Hegelian dialectic,
arguing that it "played a major role in the downfall of the liberal
movement in Germany, ... by contributing to historicism and to an
identification of might and right, encouraged totalitarian modes of
thought. ... [and] undermined and eventually lowered the traditional
standards of intellectual responsibility and honesty" (The Open
Society and Its Enemies, 5th rev. ed., vol. 2 [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1966], p. 395).
We find this more than somewhat baffling. Popper's philosophy of
science may not be at all sensible but it is certainly fastidious.
When it comes, however, random assertions about the causal relations
between metaphysics and social upheaval are apparently not just fine
or dandy but fine and dandy. Who knew?
Does Popper pretend to have an actual theory of historiography that we
could point at and (presumably) laugh, or does this such stuff really
have no visible means of support?
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2005-09-23 13:08
It is silly Prospect's silly poll of top
"intellectuals". We're not on it, which is absurd, but neither is
the Medium Lobster, which
is inconceivable.
We demand that our Varied Reader corrects one of these omissions via
their silly "bonus ball" field.
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2005-09-23 10:42
It is Dag Herbj�rnsrud og Stian Bromark!
Vi tar stolt p� oss vikinghjelmen n�r vi skal p� landskamp, vi l�rer
barna v�re de norske folkeeventyrene, og er stolt over at vi har en
historie uten norsk slavehandel. Men det ene identitetssymbolet etter
det andre, ja selve den norske historiefortellingen, er preget av
forfalskning, hevder forfatterne bak boka �Norge - et lite stykke
verdenshistorie�, Dag Herbj�rnsrud og Stian Bromark.
We proudly wear viking helmets when we go to national competitions(?), we
teach our children Norwegish folktales, and are proud that we have a
history without a Norwegish slavetrade. But this series of one identity
symbol after another, even the Norwegish history telling, is marked by
fraud, claim the authors of the book Norway - a little piece of
world history, Dag Herbj�rnsrud and Stian Bromark.
We're tempted
to acquire such an excellent book, for sure.
[Permalink]
2005-09-22 16:43
We've taken to making our own samwidges. This is cheaper, for sure,
but more importantly it means that we don't have to put up with our
ex-samwidge shops born-again tomato evangelisme.
They used to have lots of nice samwidges without tomatoes, but then
someone senior appears to have decided that a good samwidge without
tomato would be an even better samwidge with tomato, and surely
there can't really be persons who rather be without.
Since we are just such a person, we needed an exit strategy with all
due haste, and it turns out that samwidges are really not 2.95 GBP's
worth of difficult to manufacture - it is really just a question of
bread and butter and something in between. Who knew?!
[Permalink]
2005-09-22 12:39
�1. Un peu de tacte
It is
Giscard d'Estaing!
Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing has criticised the UK
for achieving "very little" so far in its presidency of the European
Union.
�2. Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten
("Slowly gespoken news")
It does
exactly what it says on the tin! (In, which is a bonus, mp3 format.)
�3. Do try to keep up!
("Quickly spoken news")
It is Wereldomroep's latest
nieuws, in mp3 but at full speed.
Deutsche Welle is endearingly convinced that everyone wants to learn
German really; Radio Nederland seems to be entirely certain that if
you needed to know Dutch you already would. (Does Belgium have Dutch
courses for the obdurately Francophone? That would totally rock, for
sure!)
[Permalink]
2005-09-22 10:24
It is kronprinsess Vickan and her wedding plans, which she doesn't
have:
Victoria har vid flera
tillf�llen diskuterat sin f�rlovning med kungaparet som b�da har gjort
tummen upp. Men �ven om bandet �r starkt mellan paret tror v�nkretsen
att ett br�llop dr�jer.
- Victoria har f�r m�nga j�rn i elden just nu. Jag
tror helt enkelt att hon inte har tid att gifta sig, inte till
sommaren i alla fall, s�ger en av v�nnerna.
Victoria has on several occasions discussed her engagement with the
king and queen who both have given it the thumbs up. But even if the
bond is strong between the pair the prinsesses friends think that a
wedding is a long way off.
"Victoria has too many irons in the fire just now. I think she simply
doesn't have time to get married, not till the sommar in any case",
said one of her friends.
Her friends, it seems to us, are not quite the full shilling: it is
surely obvious to pretty much everyone else that the logistics of a
kronprinsessly royal wedding would be slightly non-trivial, and that
the inevitable procession through streets thronged with flag-waving
throngs of jubilant subjects are probably just slightly more
convenient in the Zwedish sommar than the sn�-covered Zwedish
non-sommar.
Is anyone doing odds? We'd gladly put some kronors on next sommar,
for sure.
[Permalink]
2005-09-21 15:09
We are very proud indeed to be Belgian (and we're not even
Belgian!); how
about you?
Huit personnes sur dix sont fi�res d'�tre belges. Elles voient la
belgitude avant tout comme un trait d'union entre les diff�rentes
communaut�s du royaume. C'est en tout cas ce qu'affirme un sondage du
Reader's Digest.
Eight (8) out of ten (10) persons are proud to be Belgian. They see
Belgitude above all as a trait of union between the different
communities of the kingdom. That, in any case, is what is claimed or
affirmed by a survey by the Reader's Digest.
It's only 175 years old (younger than the FDR!) but it has chocklat and
friets and bier going for it!
[Permalink]
2005-09-21 12:04
It is
Expressenbladet in Yorkshire:
N�sta stopp blir "The Fox & Hounds" i den lilla byn West
Burton. Lokalerna en blandning av museum, med bland annat en
utst�llning brittiska snusburkar (gammalt n�ssnus) och en mysigt
sliten pub.
- Hit kommer mest lokalbefolkningen, och det �r fullt en g�ng i veckan
n�r vi k�r quiz night (det vill s�ga fr�gesport) och hela beh�llningen
g�r till v�r lokala idrottsf�rening, s�ger Andrew Landau och h�ller
upp en Best Bitter.
Next stop is the Fox & Hounds in the small town of West Burton.
The place is a mix of museum, with a collection of British snufftins
amongst other things, and a typical cosy pub.
"You're not from round here, are you? This is a local pub
for local people. It's mostly localpersons which come here, and
it's full once a week when we have a quiz night (that is to say
questionsport) and all the profits go to our local athletics
association", says Andrew Landau and pours out a Best Bitter.
Including a convenient guide to the local biers, and we rejoice not to
have heard of any of them. (We're sure they're lovely, but we like
our bier nice and fresh and local, which it will be tonight if
"microbrewery" means what we think it means, and it is inconceivable
that it might not.)
[Permalink]
2005-09-21 10:25
It is the Stooges!
Ce premier album et le suivant Fun House, ont enfin, �t� r��dit�s
correctement en CD. Dans le rendu exact de leur �nergie fondatrice
qu'un transfert du vinyl au CD, h�tivement r�alis� � la fin des ann�es
1980, avait loup�.
This first album and the following Fun House have finally been
properly remastered on CD. In the exact rendition of their founding
energy that a transfer from vinyl to CD, hastily accomplished at the
end of the 80s, had lost.
It would be more dignified not to care, but we do.
[Permalink]
2005-09-20 14:51
It is an unbearably smug article on organic/conscience-driven shoppnings:
By shopping little and often, topping up with really fresh food, you
can often go on foot or by bike, stopping off en route. It needn't be
more expensive to do it this way, just more pleasurable and less
wasteful.
Because of course jolly little local stores are open when we get out
of work, isn't it?
We endorse some of the ideas, not least this one:
As Hugh "The Guru" [sic] Fearnley-Whittingstall [sic]
argues isn [sic] The River Cottage Meat Book those who eat meat
have a moral responsibility to make a difference to the way it is
produced and used. We should buy better quality, think about animal
welfare, eat all of the beast and less of the most expensive cuts.
We quote this, despite our antipathy to Cap'n Fairly-Whiteelephantstall,
because "All of the beast!" strikes us an excellent slogan. But if
you, like us, have tried asking a butcher lately for yummy ox-tongue
or pork knuckle, you may find, as we have found, that not all butchers
stock "all of the beast". (Although the second one got a pig's leg
and a hacksaw and did the necessary. Well done them!)
Pig's ears and trotters and t�te de veau might be fiddly too,
but we can all eat up our yummy blood "black" pudding and lung sossage
("haggis") and liver sossage or p�t�, isn't it? We'll leave our tripe
for the dowager countess, who, unlike us, is a fan, and our kiddly for
anyone else - we have never liked kiddly - but apart from that, bring
on the beast, the whole beast and nothing but the beast two (2)
veg!
[Permalink]
2005-09-20 12:41
Si, d'autre part, la dialectique fait acc�der au vrai, alors m�me que
cet acc�s implique l'abnegation du dialogue, du d�bat, c'est qu'elle
est parente de l'enfantement douloureux par quoi le r�el est ce qu'il
est, souvent dans l'obscur secret de sa manifestation.
If, on the other hand, the dialectique reaches the truth, even though
such access implies the abnegation of dialogue, of debate, it is
because it is the painful childhood by which the real is what it is,
often in the obscure secrecy of its manifestation.
La dialectique, Claude Bruaire (� Que sais-je ?�)
Please to eat up your nice dialectics, Varied Reader! Don't make me
come over there and negate your negation!
[Permalink]
2005-09-20 10:02
It
is the British presidency of the EU, and it was a bit of a
shambles:
The influential S�ddeutsche Zeitung recalled how Mr Blair asked Europe
to react to "the economic and technical challenges from Asia instead
of looking backwards," adding: "The British failed almost for a day to
provide hundreds of participants with an internet connection. Even
with old technologies, and with transport they had problems."
The trains came in for particular criticism:
Meanwhile, the Spanish agency Europa Press described "organisational
chaos" and that "the difficulties and uncomfortable situation for the
media added to the difficulties which many correspondents experienced
getting to Newport using British railways, which yesterday collapsed
for hours." The same agency reported that, in Newcastle, 100
workstations were provided although 400 journalists requested
accreditation.
Tony "Baloney" Blair has his head wedged too far up Murdoch's back
passage to know or care that they have 'bladets abroad too, of course.
[Permalink]
2005-09-19 15:54
�1. Lock up your tankards, M�nchkins!
It is the oktoberfestival!
Bestiller du deg en �l p� oktoberfestivalen i M�nchen, f�r du minst �n
liter skummende brygg i glasset.
If you go down to the bar today,
You're in for a big surprise
If you should order a Bier today
You'd better know big's the size!
For every Bier that ever there was
Is gathered there together because
This month's the month
The Munichers have their Bierfest!
�2 Popular request, shmopular shmequest
It's our blogg and we're doing the England cricketteam's winter tour
party news, so there:
[Sussex's Matt] Prior goes as back-up [']keeper in place of Chris Read,
while [Hampshire's veteran off-spinner] Udal displaces Gareth Batty as
second spinner.
Did you ever get the feeling Fletch has more than somewhat of a downer
on Chris Read?
Anyone? Hello?
�3. Thanks, NYT!
Everyone was always burbling on endlessly about oh the NYT says this
oh the NYT says that and we were frankly sick and tired of it.
Now they've quarantined their dreary coterie of dingbats, wingnuts,
halfwits, has-beens, never-weres and Krugmen behind a nice paywall,
and we shall not only miss none but this last more than not at all, we
shall miss endless discussions of them even less.
[Permalink]
2005-09-19 11:52
�1. We don't ghetto it
It
is increasing social blah:
The number of people of Pakistani heritage in ghettos, defined as
areas with more than two-thirds of any one ethnic group, trebled
between 1991 and 2001.
If WASP is an ethnic groop then there's a lot of previously
unsuspected ghettos in Berkshire, thinks us. If it isn't, WTF not?
�2. A prinsess!
It
is kronprinsess Vickan of Zweden!
I g�r satte Victoria f�r f�rsta g�ngen n�gonsin sin fot p� kinesisk
mark. Det �r 24 �r sedan som n�gon fr�n svenska kungafamiljen bes�ker
Kina.
-Det k�nns bra att vara h�r, sa en tr�tt Victoria efter mer
�n tio timmars flygresa.
Yesterday set Victoria for the first time ever foot on Chinese soil.
It is 24 years since anyone from the Zwedish royalfamily has visited
China.
"Thank God that's over, I'm gasping for a fag. It feels good to
be here", said a tired Victoria after a flight of over ten (10)
hours.
Various Zwedish pranksters loaded her up with Wild Swanses
and other seditious literature for the trip. What larks!
�3. Resistance; its alleged futility
It is Alan Ryan, introducing the Penguin edition of Utilitarianisma
and Other Stuff (by Mill and Bentham) and remarking in passing
of On Liberty that
hardly anyone puts it down without reading it straight through. Even
those who find the arguments unconvincing find it hard to resist the
manner.
This such manner, then:
And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less, if put forth
on the side of my most solemn convictions.
We could, we remark or observe, resist such a manner all day everyday
- including Sundays - without ruining our appetite.
[Permalink]
2005-09-19 09:52
It
is the University of Glasgae! Which is benefitting so much from
the knowledge-economy-driven drive to increase participation in higher
education that it's reported, in a report, on its delight and glee:
The report says: "Departments seem to have reached a critical point in
their ability to cope individually with the decreasing literacy of
incoming students."
"Conveners across the faculty are reporting that students demonstrate
poor writing and even reading skills."
One classical civilisation lecturer said in the report: "The most
basic arts skill of all, namely the accurate and grammatical use of
English language, is a skill that is inadequately possessed by some
students."
They also say that plagiarisme (via the Internets) is a huge problem,
which makes us wonder: is it that students are plagiarising illiterate
sources, and if it is not, is it not slightly blindingly obvious what
they're up to?
The university - that of Openness - at which we are a student ourself
claims that plagiarism is spottable from sudden shifts in style, tone
and register, and one might think that the shift to "literate" would
be especially conspicuous.
[Permalink]
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