Diacrónic

"Ca urmare a tendinţei general-umane de a bănui o logică în tot ce (ni) se întîmplă, căutăm un fir care să lege ziua de ieri de ziua de mîine – şi, în clipele noastre bune, ne mai şi imaginăm că firul există."

Peigner la girafe

A book by the Paris-based British academic Peter Gumbel published last year titled On achève bien les écoliers? (They shoot schoolchildren, don’t they?) sharpened attention further. In it he argued that the education system was systematically undermining children’s confidence. “By every international comparison kids here have a low level of self-confidence and lack of self-esteem and fear of failure and no fun at school,” he says. “Even people who have done well have a nasty butterfly feeling in their stomach when they think of school.” A disconnect between the traditional academic education system and the diverse needs of the pupils it caters for is increasingly recognised. The grading system has been reformed in primary schools to make it more diagnostic than a simple mark out of 20, although many teachers have continued the old system anyway. The government is experimenting with introducing more arts and cultural activities in schools. There are moves to give headteachers more freedom over the curriculum.

Dialéctic

ESTRAGON: (giving up again). Nothing to be done.
VLADIMIR: (advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Estragon.) So there you are again.
ESTRAGON: Am I?
VLADIMIR: I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
ESTRAGON: Me too.
VLADIMIR: Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? (He reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.
ESTRAGON: (irritably). Not now, not now.

Unstated strategic

The euphoria waxes and wanes with news from the front, and the rebels’ efforts to forge a new governing authority. Unlike the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, the revolutionaries in Benghazi and eastern Libya have taken control. Qaddafi’s revolutionary committees, people’s congresses, and security apparatus have disbanded, offering no interim stopgap. The defeated regime has no unions, political parties, or independent news organizations in eastern Libya. Even transitional institutions have to be built from scratch, by a population that for forty years has been severed from governing norms, and before that took lessons from Italian fascism.

Lună plină

"Cu această intervenţie aeriană, Sarkozy vrea să-i cîştige, cred, pe francezii musulmani şi vrea să trezească orgoliul Franţei, cea care şi-a pierdut coloniile şi s-a trezit colonizată de o parte dintre locuitorii fostelor sale colonii. La France a luat-o acum înaintea americanilor – care americani n-au nici un chef să mai fie primii şi în Libia -, le-a luat faţa şi englezilor, despre nemţi ce să mai vorbim, că nu vor să se lege cu Libia la cap."

Role models

The only real freedom is freedom from nature. And the only real knowledge is power. So those who liberate us from nature through the generation of power are the most free and rational among us. That might mean that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are the most liberally educated Americans. That fact--if it is a fact--should chasten professors of philosophy and the humanities and such who mistakenly dismiss them as pretty clueless nerds. Bill and Mark, our professor of liberal education claim, don't know spit about love and death or the beatiful and the good or true pride and genuine humility etc. The Social Network should at least cause us to wonder about Bill and Mark's wisdom and virtue--and the wisdom and virtue of our techno-meritocrats in general these days.

Forces telluriques

« En théorie, tout ce qui affecte la masse terrestre affecte la vitesse de rotation de la planète. Les répliques du séisme japonais vont elles aussi raccourcir la durée de la journée mais dans des proportions encore plus faibles»

Clasări

predictions

the questions: (1) How will the close passage of Comet Elenin and Earth cause geologic catastrophes on March 15 and (2) How will the so-called "Supermoon", a full moon when the moon is closest to Earth in its orbit, cause geologic catastrophes? I know there has long been a desire to show about the gravitational resonance of planets/comets/asteroids/the sun might play a role in Earth's geologic activity - and with some logic. We see the interaction of the Earth's surface with the Moon's gravity (and to some extent the Sun's) with the tides in the oceans. Water has low viscosity so the tidal tugging of the moon as it rotates around the Earth sloshes the oceans back and forth to create our tides. One could imagine that the Earth's crust/mantle/core might feel some of that gravitational interaction as well - and they do. John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Washington, mentions that during full and new moons - when the moon is oriented between or opposite the Earth and the sun - there is potentially as much as a 1% increase in earthquake activity worldwide (and a slightly higher effect on volcanic activity).

Perturbations

nuanțáre

Fifth Season

Categoriae

By being 'present in a subject' I do not mean present as parts are present in a whole, but being incapable of existence apart from the said subject. Some things, again, are present in a subject, but are never predicable of a subject. For instance, a certain point of grammatical knowledge is present in the mind, but is not predicable of any subject; or again, a certain whiteness may be present in the body (for colour requires a material basis), yet it is never predicable of anything. Other things, again, are both predicable of a subject and present in a subject. Thus while knowledge is present in the human mind, it is predicable of grammar.

war time

..."Unimpressed, the king told his diary that he couldn't get used to the idea of Churchill as prime minister and had greeted the defeated Halifax to tell him that he wished he had been chosen instead. All this can easily be known by anybody willing to do some elementary research."