Státic

'Europe’s deepest problem is bad ideas. Unpleasant price movements represent “illiquidity", ”speculators" ,”market manipulation", ”lack of confidence” and “contagion,” not the hard reality of looming default. The point of policy is to “calm markets” and “provide confidence”, not to solve financial problems. When the price of bread rose in their revolution, the French took bakers to the guillotine. They got more inflation, and less bread. When their descendants saw bond prices falling, they passed restrictions on short sales. They got lower prices, and less liquidity. This is not a temporary market dislocation. This debt will not be paid back. Greece and the others might well rather default.'...

Par-delà

'L’autodestruction –la capacité des cellules à se « sacrifier » au profit de la collectivité du corps –a été considérée à la fois comme un prix payé par le vivant à l’émergence de cette complexité et comme une réponse apportée aux problèmes posés par cette complexité. C’est une vision naïve, mais fréquente de l’évolution du vivant, qui consiste à penser que la « solution » à un problème nouveau apparaît au moment même où surgit le problème. Au début des années 1990, il fut découvert que l’autodestruction cellulaire était à l’œuvre non seulement dans la sculpture des corps des animaux, mais aussi des plantes. Et c’est la mort des cellules qui constituent une partie de leur tige qui provoque, à l’automne, la chute des feuilles. Ainsi, de manière inattendue, la métaphore choisie vingt ans plus tôt pour décrire le suicide cellulaire – l’apoptose –rejoignait la réalité : c’est l’apoptose des cellules végétales qui cause « la chute des feuilles des arbres en automne ». Mais, parce que les premières plantes étaient aussi apparues il y a environ un milliard d’années, cela ne changea rien à ce dogme qui évoquait implicitement les mythes anciens d’un « âge d’or originel » : au début, pendant les trois premiers milliards d’années de la vie, durant lesquelles le vivant s’était uniquement propagé sous la forme d’organismes unicellulaires, régnaient la simplicité et une immortalité potentielle.'

Contemplatív

'Tot aşa, o societate sau istoria unei culturi pare a fi separată de alte societăţi sau de alte culturi; putem să considerăm aşadar că avem a face cu organisme distincte. Dar la fel ca şi indivizii, aceste organisme ale culturii sînt înglobate într-o unitate superioară din care fac parte: Istoria universală, comună tuturor „culturilor", unifică civilizaţiile, sau societăţile, aşa după cum fiecare societate este comună indivizilor care o compun. Nu se pot nega particularismele. Nu se poate nega nici Istoria generală a umanităţii, universalitatea. Nenumărate note aparţin aceleiaşi simfonii. Două stări de conştiinţă, sau două vîrste diferite sînt constitutive aceluiaşi om. Civilizaţiile se unifică în Istoria universală care ne dă identitatea.'

Controvérse

'O epocă se caracterizează prin unitatea stilului ei —sinteză a diversităţilor— care face să existe corespondenţe evidente, între arhitectură şi poezie, matematici şi muzică. O unitate esenţială există între castelul de la Versailles şi gîndirea carteziană, de exemplu. Literatura şi teatrul, de la Andre Breton la Maiakovski, de la Marinetti la Tristan Tzara sau Apollinaire, de la teatrul expresionist la suprarealism, pînă la romanele recente ale lui Faulkner şi Dos Passos şi, foarte recent, la cele ale Nathaliei Sarraute şi ale lui Michel Butor, au participat la această înnoire. Dar nu toată literatura a urmat mişcarea şi, pentru teatru, ea pare să se fi oprit la 1930. Teatrul este cel .mai întîrziat. Avangarda a fost stopată în teatru, dacă nu în literatură. Războaiele, revoluţiile, nazismul şi celelalte forme ale tiraniei, dogmatismul, scleroza burgheză de asemenea în alte ţări, l-au împiedicat să se dezvolte, pentru moment. '

Innocents Abroad

'But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities; they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair images they have set up for your willing worship with the pitiless ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their witless platitudes, for their supernatural ability to bore, for their delightful asinine vanity, for their luxuriant fertility of imagination, for their startling, their brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity!'

utterly

'The complexity really lies in the fact that there are hundreds or maybe even thousands of different types of neurons, which are arranged in highly-organised patterns, and which connect to each other in very specific ways. Now, a new technique is emerging that enables neuroscientists to trace these kinds of connections by enlisting help from an unlikely source – viruses. To understand why this approach is so exciting, we need to consider the scope of the problem it can help solve. This begins with individual neurons themselves. Neurons are polarised – they have an end for inputs and an end for outputs. Each of these may be branched to give thousands of independent sites of input and output. For any given neuron, there are other neurons that connect to it (information flows from all those neurons into our subject neuron) and other neurons that it connects to (information flows from our subject neuron out to all these neurons). But neurons are not all the same...'

disheartened

'All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen that remark before somewhere.] The pier was crowded with carriages and men; passengers were arriving and hurrying on board; the vessel's decks were encumbered with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists, arrayed in unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain and looking as droopy and woebegone as so many molting chickens. The gallant flag was up, but it was under the spell, too, and hung limp and disheartened by the mast. Altogether, it was the bluest, bluest spectacle! It was a pleasure excursion -- there was no gainsaying that, because the program said so -- it was so nominated in the bond -- but it surely hadn't the general aspect of one. Finally, above the banging, and rumbling, and shouting, and hissing of steam rang the order to "cast off!" -- a sudden rush to the gangways -- a scampering ashore of visitors-a revolution of the wheels, and we were off -- the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the dripping crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the slippery decks; the flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the "battery of guns" spake not -- the ammunition was out. We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor. It was still raining. And not only raining, but storming. "Outside" we could see, ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must lie still, in the calm harbor, till the storm should abate. Our passengers hailed from fifteen states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before; manifestly it would not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until they had got their sea-legs on. Toward evening the two steam tugs that had accompanied us with a rollicking champagne-party of young New Yorkers on board who wished to bid farewell to one of our number in due and ancient form departed, and we were alone on the deep. On deep five fathoms, and anchored fast to the bottom. And out in the solemn rain, at that.'

Time Cloaking

They've even designed illusion cloaks that can make one object look like another.

Time cloaking is possible because of a kind of duality between space and time in electromagnetic theory. In particular, the diffraction of a beam of light in space is mathematically equivalent to the temporal propagation of light through a dispersive medium. In other words, diffraction and dispersion are symmetric in spacetime. That immediately leads to an interesting idea. Just as its easy to make a lens that focuses light in space using diffraction, so it is possible to use dispersion to make a lens that focuses in time. Such a time-lens can be made using an electro-optic modulator, for example, and has a variety of familiar properties. "This time-lens can, for example, magnify or compress in time,"

à l'égard

Une mesure d’éloignement « prise localement et dans une situation d’urgence » afin de « minimiser le trouble et le retard pour les voyageurs », souligne la RATP qui précise avec insistance que « la décision n’a pas été prise en amont » par la Régie. « Il n’y a pas eu de réquisition par le préfet, confirme la préfecture. Il a fallu gérer un trouble à l’ordre public comme lorsque l’on prend en charge des supporteurs turbulents. »
«Cette opération, faite hors de tout cadre juridique, constitue une voie de fait»