Elham > Recent Status Updates

After 1908, and especially after 1945, capitalist greed was somewhat reined in, not least due to the fear of Communism. Yet inequities are still rampant. The economic pie of 2014 is far larger than the pie of 1500, but it is distributed so unevenly that many African peasants and Indonesian labourers return home after a hard day’s work with less food than did their ancestors 500 years ago.

It was lose-lose. Because credit was limited, people had trouble financing new businesses. Because there were few new businesses, the economy did not grow. Because it did not grow, people assumed it never would, and those who had capital were wary of extending credit. The expectation of stagnation fulfilled itself.

On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the surface of the moon. In the months leading up to their expedition, the Apollo 11 astronauts trained in a remote moon-like desert in the western United States. The area is home to several Native American communities, and there is a story – or legend – describing an encounter between the astronauts and one of the locals.

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"Reconstructions of two giant ground sloths (Megatherium) and behind them two giant armadillos (Glyptodon). Now extinct, giant armadillos measured over three meters in length and weighed up to two tons, whereas giant ground sloths reached heights of up to six meters, and weighed up to eight tons."

Ah,” said Arthur, “er …” He had an odd feeling of being like a man in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman’s husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves again.

“Night’s falling,” he said. “Look, robot, the stars are coming out.”
From the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to see very few stars, and only very faintly, but they were there to be seen.
The robot obediently looked at them, then looked back.
“I know,” he said. “Wretched, isn’t it?”
“But that sunset! I’ve never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams … the two suns!

“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
“Oh.” Ford carried on humming.

“Yes? Hello?” he called. “Has Mr. Dent come to his senses yet?”
“Can we for the moment,” called Ford, “assume that he hasn’t?”
“Well?” sighed Mr. Prosser.
“And can we also assume,” said Ford, “that he’s going to be staying here all day?”
“So?”
“So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing nothing?”
“Could be, could be …”

When we speak of convents, those seats of error, but also of innocence; of befuddlement, but also of good intentions; of ignorance, but also of devotion; of torture, but also of martyrdom, you almost always have to say “yes and no.” A convent is a contradiction. As a goal, salvation; as a means, sacrifice. The convent is supreme selfishness resulting in supreme self-abnegation.

At that moment, she suddenly felt that the bucket no longer weighed a thing. A hand, which seemed to her enormous, had just seized the handle and lifted it vigorously. She raised her head. A big black shape, straight and tall, was walking beside her in the darkness. It was a man, who had come up behind her without her hearing him coming.

...three thousand men, in this godforsaken hole of Hougoumont alone, run through with swords, torn to pieces, butchered, their throats cut, shot, burned to death; and all that just so some peasant today can say to a traveller: “Monsieur, give me three francs and, if you like, I’ll tell you all about Waterloo!”

They say slavery has vanished from European civilization. That is wrong. It still exists, but it now preys only on women, and it goes by the name of prostitution. It preys on women, meaning on grace, on weakness, on beauty, on the maternal. It is not the least of man’s shameful secrets.

He went easy on women and the poor, feeling that the weight of human society fell on them. He would say, “The sins of women and children, domestic servants and the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the sins of the husbands and fathers, the masters, the strong and the rich and the educated.”

Caricature representing Victor Hugo as the leader of "romantic" and "modern" authors.

Victor Hugo Painting: Le phare d’Eddystone (1866) [from the introduction)

In the lingo of quantum information physics, such a dual valued head-tail combination is known as a qubit short for a “quantum bit” of information. In traditional computing, bits are units of information corresponding to one of two possibilities—yes or no, heads or tails, 1 or 0. A classical coin must fall either heads or tails, but a quantum coin is permitted multiple possibilities, a mix of heads and tails at the

Nowak described a diverse research program, touching on everything from the immune system—deciphering the math behind fighting the AIDS virus, for instance—to inferring the origins of human language. Underlying much of his work was a common theme that at the time I really didn’t appreciate: the pervasive relevance of game theory.

Adam Smith had a lot in common with Isaac Newton. Both were lifelong bachelors. Both became professors at the university they had attended (and both had reputations for being absentminded professors as well). Both were born after their fathers had died. And both became fathers themselves of a new scientific discipline. Newton built the foundation of physics; Smith authored the bible of economics.

"‘Yes, he did,’ answered Shinshin. ‘He went down to the Caucasus, then he ran away, and I believe he became a minister with some sort of ruling prince down in Persia, and he went and killed the Shah’s brother. Anyway, all the Moscow ladies are crazy about him! “Dolokhov – the man from Persia” – that’s all you" "need to say. Nowadays you hear nothing but Dolokhov.

"‘But how are we ever going to be able to fight the French, Prince!’ said Count Rostopchin. ‘How can we take arms against our teachers and our idols? Look at our young men, look at our ladies." The French are our gods, and Paris is our Paradise.’ He began to raise his voice so that everyone could hear. ‘Our fashions are French, our ideas are French, our feelings are French! Look here, you sent Métivier packing...

My brother knows him, he’s had dinner with him – the Emperor we should call him nowadays – more than once in Paris, and he used to tell me he’d never seen a sharper and more crafty diplomat – you know, a combination of French finesse and Italian showmanship! You know all those stories about Napoleon and Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who had the measure of him.

She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood—that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements. It could be brimful of occupations which did not weary you to the bone.

She hated to hear the word “escape” used about fiction. She might have argued, not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape. But this was too important to argue about.

Have to red this for work and though maybe it's not bad to share updates from this not-a-novel-book...

“I think you make a system of saying disagreeable things, Miss Hilbery,” he broke out, again going further than he meant to. “I suppose it’s one of the characteristics of your class. They never talk seriously to their inferiors.”

‘Trafalgar, of course! How stupid of me! Another cup of tea, with a thin slice of lemon in it, and then, dear Mr Fortescue, please explain my absurd little puzzle. One can’t help believing gentlemen with Roman noses, even if one meets them in omnibuses.’

Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It’s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never.