This is a post that has been germinating for a long time. But it was most immediately inspired by Marshall Poe‘s article claiming that “The Internet Changes Nothing“. And as it turns out, I mostly agree. OK, this may sound a bit paradoxical. Twelve years ago, when I submitted my first column to be published, […]
Category: Framing
Over on the Language Log, Victor Mair puts to rest that all English expressions have to be tensed and thus prevent timeless poetry. He shares his translation of a 13th century Chinese poet thus: Autumn Thoughts by Ma Zhiyuan Withered wisteria, old tree, darkling crows – Little bridge over flowing water by someone’s house – Emaciated […]
Some years ago in a book review, I made an off-the-cuff comment that thriller writers tend to be quite right-wing in their outlook whereas science fiction authors are much more progressive and leftist. This is obviously an undue generalisation (as most of such comments tend to be) but it felt intuitively right. Even then I […]
Acclaimed academics have policy agendas just like anybody else. And often they let them interfere with a straightforward critical analysis of their output. The monumental capacity for blindness of highly intelligent people is sometimes staggering. Metaphors and analogies (same thing for metaphor hacking) make thinkers particularly prone to mis-projection blindness. Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economics prof, […]
Image via Wikipedia Dan Cohen has decided to “crowdsource” (a fascinating blend, by the way) the title of his next book with the following instructions. The title should be a couplet like “The X and the Y” where X can be “Highbrow Humanities” “Elite Academia” “The Ivory Tower” “Deep/High Thought” [insert your idea] and Y […]