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"Meta-patterns"

Pythagoras :Not only do all things possess numbers, all things are numbers. Peter Russell :The Internet is the central nervous system, and each user a discrete neuron, of a newly evolved global brain.  Johann Sebastian Bach :The art of fugue. Bach’s use of counterpoint to organize thematic variations into intricately detailed works called fugues is unequaled in Western music. While he didn’t invent the form, Bach’s fugues have been credited by scientists as a source of insight about nature and the cosmos. Charles Darwin :Evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s theory offers a complete explanation of the complexity and diversity of life, connecting all organisms alive today to all organisms that have ever lived. Leonardo Fibonacci :The Fibonacci sequence, a set of numbers intimately connected to a mathematical proportion that yields beauty in nature, art, and the human form. Albert Einstein :Relativity. Einstein revolutionized modern physics by demonstrating that time and space are not fixed and that mass and energy are manifestations of the same thing.Benoît Mandelbrot :The fractal geometry of nature. Mandelbrot discovered what is now called the Mandelbrot set and coined the term fractal to describe its structure. Fractals, when magnified, display infinitely repeating self-similarity; they describe the complexity of the natural world in a way Euclidean geometry could not.

Constelaţii răsturnate

"Dropia magică, de o-nălţime amară şi o supleţe noptatică, întâlnită numai la seminţiile nomade, desfăcu larg aripile şi înaintă cu paşi siguri spre fântâna cu mir răsărită şi ea pe neaşteptate în micul vad al bălţii. O trupă de arici cu ţepii ascuţiţi făcu roată în jurul fântânii, gata să răspundă oricărui atac. Din surpări de timp, poate din constelaţii răsturnate, se auzi din nou glasul doamnei cu mantilă violet şi mănuşi albe: -E vremea ca puii de zeu egiptean să se arate. O privighetoare roşie începu un cântec fermecat în cuibul ei dintre trestii. Întrupaţi parcă din trilurile vrăjite sau răsăriţi din fântâna de mir, puii de zeu egiptean se înfăţişară în poiană: închipuiri de abur şi de lună. "

Conversations

Yet the American culture, which regards Kennedy as a virtual Galahad, is the supposedly shockable one, while in France—ah, la France—a much more broad-minded and adult attitude prevails.

Determinísm

`Let's pretend that you're the Red Queen, Kitty! Do you know, I think if you sat up and folded your arms, you'd look exactly like her. Now do try, there's a dear!' And Alice got the Red Queen off the table, and set it up before the kitten as a model for it to imitate: however, the thing didn't succeed, principally, Alice said, because the kitten wouldn't fold its arms properly. So, to punish it, she held it up to the Looking-glass, that it might see how sulky it was -- `and if you're not good directly,' she added, `I'll put you through into Looking-glass House. How would you like that?'

Metaphor

Liniştea şi vertijul. Tăcerea şi strigătul. Privighetoarea şi vulturul. Vioara şi orga. Golful şi reciful Curcubeul şi fulgerul. Borges şi Sabato.

Imuábili

The argument for tenure has always been a combination of academic freedom and job security. And increasingly we believe that claim for freedom is really an excuse for self-indulgence, and that sort of security is incompatible with the requirements of the increasingly competitive or productivity-oriented global marketplace. The academic world is hardly exempt from the general pressure to become a meritocracy based on productivity. Productivity, of course, has to be measured. And so profesors, like everyone else, have to be held accountable. Tenured professors, the thought is, can't be held accountable. They can do what they please and not be fired.

Abbottābad

Read the Times obituary to find descriptions of how Bin Laden was seen by the West (“elevated to the realm of evil in the American imagination once reserved for dictators like Hitler and Stalin”) as opposed to how he was seen by “much of the Islamic world” (“a hero … as much a myth as a man”). Yet, according to an article on Bin Laden’s legacy, although “Osama bin Laden was hero, sheikh, even leader to some” in the Arab world a decade ago, he has now been “reduced to a footnote in the revolutions and uprisings remaking a region that he and his men had struggled to understand.”