5 Intriguing Things
1. Close reading spam at The Paris Review.
"That swerve at 'Peter dislikes his daughter'—whoa! Dissertations have been written about less. And to see a clinical phrase like 'These incidences come about quite normally' next to a casual one like 'A huge clue': What does it all mean? The mind searches restlessly, somewhat desperately, for connective tissue, some semblance of conventional narrative. Like autostereograms, these comments always verge on resolving into a discernible whole; unlike autostereograms, they never do." (theparisreview.org)
2. Teaching computers the little white lie.
"Dishonest technology exists in various forms and for various reasons, not all of them obviously sinister. If you don’t know it already, you should: Many crosswalk and elevator door-close buttons don’t actually work as advertised. The only purpose of these so-called placebo buttons is to give the impatient person a false sense of agency. Similarly, the progress bars presented on computer screens during downloads, uploads, and software installations maintain virtually no connection to the actual amount of time or work left before the action is completed. They are the rough software equivalent of someone texting to say, 'On my way!' But these examples offer only a hint of what we’re liable to see in the near future." (psmag.com)
"Zhang's enthusiasm for the 'talking cure' reflects a wider surge in interest, as China's citizens seek meaning beyond the quest for prosperity. 'Chinese people have been hungering and searching for something for a long time since the collapse of Maoism. Every so often there's a certain 'fever' sweeping the country,' said Huang Hsuan-ying, an ethnographer who has been studying the boom in psychotherapy in China since 2007. 'It fits into that long-term search for something that is not only material.'" (theguardian.com)
4. The first McDonald's in Moscow has now closed.
"Directly above it was a Coca-Cola sign — another first for the country — that would shine in the darkness, brighter than the red stars atop the Kremlin towers. On the opposite side of the street stood a bronze of Pushkin, the poet, the conscience and soul of Russian culture, watching over as people crossed the line into another world. Together, Ronald McDonald and Coca-Cola’s red Santa represented a pair of freedom-loving superheroes. Add the romantic poet across the road and you have the holy trinity, symbolising all that is important to Russians: eating, drinking and contemplating the Russian soul." (calvertjournal.com)
"The answer may lie in building a planetary firewall, a kind of 'meme armor' to shield us from damaging knowledge of extraterrestrial life, while still allowing us to learn about the cosmos. It would be an artificial and autonomous construct that would take over the job of SETI, and even the task of exoplanet-hunting astronomers. By providing an algorithmic or physical barrier to the rest of the universe, it would help sift and control the flow of information—rather like an Internet firewall that defends against viruses by scrutinizing the origin and intent of packets of data." (nautil.us)
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
climb down, despite the purists' insistence on its absurdity, is in wide use & is accepted usage. Descend in many contexts would be formal or pedantic.
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