The Thief
Le Voleur is French for the Thief. In 1828, during the birth and rise of the newspaper, Emile de Girardin had a novel idea on how to use the newest writing technology, the printing press. He and a friend decided to start a periodical, but since they lacked capital, the weekly was entitled Le Voleur (The Thief) and it reprinted the best articles that had appeared elsewhere during the week, saving editorial costs. (from ''The History and Power of Writing'')
Saturday, May 07, 2005
What Rough Beasts?
New York Times Op-Ed: Maureen Dowd: "I love chimeras.I've seen just about every werewolf, Dracula and mermaid movie ever made, I have a Medusa magnet on my refrigerator, and the Sphinx of Greek mythology is a role model for her lethal brand of mystery.
So when chimeras reared up in science news, I grabbed my disintegrating copy of Edith Hamilton's 'Mythology' to refresh my memory on the Chimera, the she-monster with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail: 'A fearful creature, great and swift of foot and strong/Whose breath was flame unquenchable.' Bellerophon, 'a bold and beautiful young man' on flying Pegasus, shot arrows down at the flaming monster and killed her. Chimeras with 'generally sinister powers,' as Nicholas Wade wrote in The Times, seemed to be a lesson in 'the pre-Darwinian notion that species are fixed and penalties are severe' for crossing boundaries."
Written at 11:21 AM by Darcy.
0 comments
Friday, May 06, 2005
Tuning in to Jon Stewart, and Britney Schmidt
New York Times: "There's a huge undertow of worry out in the country about how our kids are being educated and whether they'll be able to find jobs in an increasingly flat world, where more Chinese, Indians and Russians than ever can connect, collaborate and compete with us. In three different cities I had parents ask me some version of: 'My daughter [or son] is studying Chinese in high school. That's the right thing to do, isn't it?'Not being an educator, I can't give any such advice. But my own research has taught me that the most important thing you can learn in this era of heightened global competition is how to learn. Being really good at 'learning how to learn,' as President Bill Brody of Johns Hopkins put it, will be an enormous asset in an era of rapid change and innovation, when new jobs will be phased in and old ones phased out faster than ever."
Written at 10:41 AM by Darcy.
0 comments
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
All That Glisters Is Gold
NY Times Op-Ed: Maureen Dowd: "I went out once with a guy who didn't care for his mother, partly because he felt she was not attractive enough. My brother Martin, on the other hand, tells our mom how proud he was when she picked him up from grade school because he thought she was the prettiest mother. And we've seen those studies showing that aesthetics is hard-wired in the brain - that even babies have an innate sense of beauty, choosing to gaze longer at lovelier faces.So it shouldn't be surprising to learn parents have the same bias. Still, the headline yesterday in Science Times was jolting: 'Ugly Children May Get Parental Short Shrift.' As Nicholas Bakalar wrote: 'Canadian researchers have made a startling assertion: parents take better care of pretty children than they do ugly ones.'"
Written at 11:34 AM by Darcy.
0 comments