Q: Living Italian… Is it a great way to live or the greatest way to live?
A: I think it’s definitely one of the greatest ways to live. But I think (and please forgive me for cheating on Italy for a moment) that living French and living Spanish and living Greek also are incredible. For me, it’s almost about “living Mediterranean,” that take-it-as-it-comes lifestyle that appreciates the fine things in life, whether it’s food, wine, sensuality, or the scent of the sea.
Q: What does “living Italian” mean to you?
A: It means wholeheartedly embracing the simple goodness and sensuality in life. Taking the extra time, for example, to stop at a specialty market or gourmet grocery store for fine imported cheese or salumi rather than dashing into a regular supermarket makes a huge difference. Think how special it feels opening these hand-wrapped treasures as opposed to ripping open an industrial-strength package. It’s worth every extra dime you pay. It means purchasing the best inherent quality you can afford, whether you’re talking shoes, pretty lingerie, or wine glasses. And even when it comes to things that DON’T cost money — valuing quality time spent with family and friends; enjoying the arts and culture just because and not only when out-of-town guests come to visit — this to me also embraces this wonderful way of living and being.
// via Simple Italy
During one secondary inspection, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, I was wearing under my shirt a spectacular, only-in-America device called a “Beerbelly,” a neoprene sling that holds a polyurethane bladder and drinking tube. The Beerbelly, designed originally to sneak alcohol—up to 80 ounces—into football games, can quite obviously be used to sneak up to 80 ounces of liquid through airport security. (The company that manufactures the Beerbelly also makes something called a “Winerack,” a bra that holds up to 25 ounces of booze and is recommended, according to the company’s Web site, for PTA meetings.) My Beerbelly, which fit comfortably over my beer belly, contained two cans’ worth of Bud Light at the time of the inspection. It went undetected. The eight-ounce bottle of water in my carry-on bag, however, was seized by the federal government.
via theatlantic.com
In one experiment, students were shown a list of words and then asked to recall words from it, after which they were told to type words that were randomly selected from the same list. Spookily, the students were better at recalling words that they would later type.
via newscientist.com
There are at least 250,000 words in the English language. However, to think that English – or any language – could hold enough expression to convey the entirety of the human experience is as arrogant of an assumption as it is naive.Here are a few examples of instances where other languages have found the right word and English simply falls speechless.
1. Toska
Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
2. Mamihlapinatapei
Yagan (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego) – “the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start” (Altalang.com)
3. Jayus
Indonesian – “A joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh” (Altalang.com)
4. Iktsuarpok
Inuit – “To go outside to check if anyone is coming.” (Altalang.com)
5. Litost
Czech – Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.
6. Kyoikumama
Japanese – “A mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement” (Altalang.com)
7. Tartle
Scottish – The act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name. (Altalang.com)
8. Ilunga
Tshiluba (Southwest Congo) – A word famous for its untranslatability, most professional translators pinpoint it as the stature of a person “who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate it the second time, but never forgive nor tolerate on the third offense.” (Altalang.com)
9. Prozvonit
Czech – This word means to call a mobile phone and let it ring once so that the other person will call back, saving the first caller money. In Spanish, the phrase for this is “Dar un toque,” or, “To give a touch.” (Altalang.com)
10. Cafuné
Brazilian Portuguese – “The act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair.” (Altalang.com)
11. Schadenfreude
German – Quite famous for its meaning that somehow other languages neglected to recognize, this refers to the feeling of pleasure derived by seeing another’s misfortune. I guess “America’s Funniest Moments of Schadenfreude” just didn’t have the same ring to it.
12. Torschlusspanik
German – Translated literally, this word means “gate-closing panic,” but its contextual meaning refers to “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.” (Altalang.com)
13. Wabi-Sabi
Japanese – Much has been written on this Japanese concept, but in a sentence, one might be able to understand it as “a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.” (Altalang.com)
14. Dépaysement
French – The feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country.
15. Tingo
Pascuense (Easter Island) – Hopefully this isn’t a word you’d need often: “the act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them.” (Altalang.com)
16. Hyggelig
Danish – Its “literal” translation into English gives connotations of a warm, friendly, cozy demeanor, but it’s unlikely that these words truly capture the essence of a hyggelig; it’s likely something that must be experienced to be known. I think of good friends, cold beer, and a warm fire. (Altalang.com)
17. L’appel du vide
French – “The call of the void” is this French expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.
18. Ya’aburnee
Arabic – Both morbid and beautiful at once, this incantatory word means “You bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.
19. Duende
Spanish – While originally used to describe a mythical, spritelike entity that possesses humans and creates the feeling of awe of one’s surroundings in nature, its meaning has transitioned into referring to “the mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person.” There’s actually a nightclub in the town of La Linea de la Concepcion, where I teach, named after this word. (Altalang.com)
20. Saudade
Portuguese – One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade. (Altalang.com)
For myself, the hardest part about learning a new language isn’t so much getting acquainted with the translations of vocabulary and different grammatical forms and bases, but developing an inner reflex that responds to words’ texture, not their translated “ingredients”. When you hear the word “criminal” you don’t think of “one who commits acts outside the law,” but rather the feeling and mental imagery that comes with that word.
Thus these words, while standing out due to our inability to find an equivalent word in out own language, should not be appreciated for our own words that we try to use to describe them, but for their own taste and texture. Understanding these words should be like eating the best slab of smoked barbequeued ribs: the enjoyment doesn’t come from knowing what the cook put in the sauce or the seasoning, but from the full experience that can only be created by time and emotion.
“I dismissed it as utterly impossible. Traveling through zero apparent wind, with no stored power? Impossible. Why would you even attempt it? (Though I’m no stranger to that question myself!) But had I been asked to bet at that moment, I would have just lost a lot of money.
A few months later I actually met the idiots in question and, to my surprise and concern, we not only have a few mutual friends, but they seemed to be technically credible. But, everyone makes mistakes, and I let them off as decent people with a blinkered view of fundamentally flawed engineering….
A few months later they were claiming success, and if it was not for another great friend, Bob Dill, advising that they were actually correct, I would have discarded their claim as an April fool. I thought about the possibility that I was wrong, and then considered that as Bob was getting on and had a bit of a shake with his stopwatch finger; maybe it was he who was mistaken. There was, however, a growing momentum of technical people (who should have known better), saying that these idiots have actually proven that it is possible to travel faster than the wind going directly down wind.
The video speaks for itself. These guys are not idiots, but sincere, genuine, technical people who took a myth and made it real. It works. It starts from rest, trundles to true wind speed, then powers to a multiple of about 3 times the true wind speed.
To all fellow skeptics, start baking that humble pie, or eat your hat. Your choice.”
There were 34,522 complaints called in to New York City's 311 number between September 8 and September 15, 2010. Here are the most common complaints, plotted by time of day.
via wired.com
Earlier this month the Pentagon announced a new effort to build a system aimed at allowing it to scan billions of communications in order to detect "anomalies" in people's behavior that will predict who is about to snap and turn into a homicidal maniac — or, perhaps, leak damaging documents to a reporter.
Citing the case of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to try to identify, before they happen, "malevolent actions" by insiders within the military. (See coverage by Wired, CNN, or Government Security News.)
The new project is called ADAMS, for Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales, and anyone who remembers the battles over the Bush Administration's "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) program may be experiencing a major flashback right about now. TIA, also a DARPA project, was based on a vision of pulling together as much information as possible about as many people as possible into an "ultra-large-scale" database, making that information available to government officials, and sorting through it to try to identify terrorists. Eventually shut down by Congress, it was probably the closest thing to a truly comprehensive monitor-everyone "Big Brother" program that has ever been seriously contemplated in the United States. And many of the problems with TIA are equally present with this ADAMS project.
For one thing, the idea is naïve and misguided and it won't work. Statistical data mining has been found to be of limited use in some areas, such as in detecting credit card fraud. But as experts have said, data mining is not good at predicting highly unusual events, because it does not have a large body of examples it can use as a basis for identifying patterns. In fact, there are no patterns with some things. As my colleague Mike German often points out — and he used to work undercover on anti-terrorism cases for the FBI — empirical studies show that there is no such thing as a reliable profile that will predict violent behavior. Incidents in which people turn into homicidal maniacs and begin shooting up their offices are extremely rare and each one has unique origins in the individual psychology, circumstances and life history of the perpetrator.
via aclu.org
“Three years before Photoshop 1.0, Soviet computer engineers were already retouching old, damaged images using this amazing piece of technology. Rotary scanner! Magnetic tape! Trackball! Z for zoom!”
on youtube.com via boingboing.net