semblent grises sous la lune

"Check!"

'By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: `but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, `as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.' So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.'

Une démarche s'impose

«les mouvements autonomistes avaient pensé pouvoir trouver une légitimité à leurs discours grâce à la construction européenne. C'est à dire qu'on serait passé d'une Europe des nations à une Europe supranationale reconnaissant d'autres modes d'organisations...»

Dissimilitude

Some philosophers maintain that if determinism holds in our world, then there are no objective chances in our world. And often the word ‘chance’ here is taken to be synonymous with 'probability', so these philosophers maintain that there are no non-trivial objective probabilities for events in our world. (The caveat “non-trivial” is added here because on some accounts all future events that actually happen have probability, conditional on past history, equal to 1, and future events that do not happen have probability equal to zero. Non-trivial probabilities are

Tat Tvam Asi

L’attitude héroïque est le privilège et la damnation des désintégrés, des suspendus, des laissés-pour-compte du bonheur et de la satisfaction. Être un héros, dans le sens le plus universel du mot, signifie désirer un triomphe absolu, qui ne peut s’obtenir que par la mort. Tout héroïsme transcende la vie, impliquant fatalement un saut dans le néant. Tout héroïsme est donc un héroïsme du néant, même si le héros ne se rend pas compte que son élan procède d’une vie privée de ses ressorts habituels. (Sur les cimes du désespoir)

kernel of truth

And that's the danger of stereotypes, is, the danger of stereotypes is that we use them and then we stick too closely to them, and we're unwilling to revise our impressions afterwards, on the basis of new information. And the other danger is that we think those stereotypes may exist for some good reason, whereas it may not be a good reason for their existence.

New Year’s Day

Among varieties of religious experience, games rarely rank first, yet what we feel in the final moments of a unique collective experience (like the last Eagles/Giants game) could qualify as transcendent. And the transcendent qualifies for philosophical attention. In this sense, New Year’s Day represents a chance not only for deep personal reflection, but also for transformative, shared emotion. Harvard philosophy Professor Sean Dorrance Kelly has a cool blog. He writes posts on things like the relation between what’s right and what matters. And, is there a phenomenon of the sacred now?

Un an mai bun !

hereinafter QM

When an observer interacts with this wave function by taking a measurement, the wave function suddenly manifests as a particle with a position and speed to which numbers can be assigned. It ceases to be a quantum-mechanical phenomenon and becomes a “classical” one. This seems to give the observer’s consciousness a privileged position in our description of the world.
The fact that observer A takes measurement M is nothing to do with interaction between A and the universal wave function. They are already, and for ever, interacting — “entangled.” All that happened was that the universe split in two at the instant of observation (as it is always doing, observed or not) and the version of A that we know about was carried off willy-nilly on the branch associated with co-ordinate M. A copy of him, A2, was carried off on a different branch, with a different measurement. So were innumerable other copies. The universal wave function governs them all. Actually, it is them.

• This was the germ of what later became known as the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM.

There is also the small matter of evidence for the existence of these other universes. Are they in fact physically real? Everett, an atheist and a materialist, was as little inclined to metaphysics as his nemesis Bohr, though for different reasons

Research

Victorians were enamored of the new science of statistics, so it seems fitting that these pioneering data hounds are now the subject of an unusual experiment in statistical analysis. The titles of every British book published in English in and around the 19th century — 1,681,161, to be exact — are being electronically scoured for key words and phrases that might offer fresh insight into the minds of the Victorians. This research, which has only recently become possible, thanks to a new generation of powerful digital tools and databases, represents one of the many ways that technology is transforming the study of literature, philosophy and other humanistic fields that haven’t necessarily embraced large-scale quantitative analysis.

Particulár

Istodor: Sînt tone de prozatori, de critici literari pe Facebook, pe net, pe twitter? Dispare scriitorul?

• Nicolae Manolescu: Sper că nu. Limba franceză face deosebirea dintre écrivains și écrivants. Pe net nu există deocamdată decât cei din urmă.

Istodor: Ce mai înseamnă cultură astăzi? Cui folosește?

• Nicolae Manolescu : Cultura este singura rațiune de a fi a omului pe pământ și tot ceea ce omul lasă urmașilor lui. Civilizația supraviețuiește prin cultură.

Istodor: Realitatea nu a înebunit, compromis ficțiunea?I

• Nicolae Manolescu: Realitatea întrece uneori ficțiunea. Ficțiunea întrece uneori realitatea. Dar de obicei se copiază una pe alta.

Le G20

Le programme identifie neuf domaines où une action s'impose, notamment celui de la formation, et dans l'amélioration des structures matérielles des pays en développement. Selon un projet du communiqué qui doit être publié vendredi à l'issue du somme, le principe des prêts bonifiés sera confirmé, ainsi que les engagements des pays membres du G20 concernant l'aide au développement. Une avancée significative ? Que nenni. Pour Ben Phillips, de Save the Children, ONG britannique, le projet de communiqué oublie l'engagement du Groupe des Huit (G8) de 2005, qui annonçait le doublement de l'aide au développement à 50 milliards de dollars d'ici 2010. «C'est maintenant qu'on a besoin d'aide. Les pays se cherchent des excuses pour ne pas tenir leurs promesses», souligne-t-il. La crise financière est passée par là, pourraient lui répondre les chefs d’Etat du G20, et il vaut mieux sauver les banques que les pauvres…

1. Security officials placed six goldfish inside a tank supplying toilet water to the conference, the Mirror of London, England, reported. The officials will watch the fish for signs of illness or poisoning in an effort to protect the conferees, according to the Mirror. An animal rights group is up in arms over the use of the finned defenders.