Category: Uncategorised
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Protected: New Orleans and Iraq
Robert Trivers
The Guardian has a wonderful profile of Robert Trivers. As an ignorant arts student, I hadn’t heard of him before today, and now I’m regretting it.
Untitled
Storms are so much better when there’s a very bendy tree right outside the window.
This is going to be an impressive place to sit in winter.
Update: the last four posts on my friends-list, this one included, are *all* about the weather. So stereotypical it hurts.
Job and house
House and job are finally sorted – yay!
On (about) 5th September I’m moving into naranek‘s spare room (the one currently occupied by feanelwa). Then a week after that I begin working at Jagex – which means I’ll be seeing a lot more of raggedyman, necro_angel, and mazzarc.
I’m slightly distressed that I can write a paragraph like that where
everyone
has a livejournal. But hey, they’re all nice people, so who cares?
Now that’s all sorted, I need to work out what to do for the next three weeks. Suggestions welcome!
Translating the internet
I don’t know what to make of this report by Reidar visser, which analyses the effect of the internet on separatist Shi’ite politics in Southern Iraq. Much of the report is devoted to translating and commenting on articles from fairly minor websites. I’m delighted that people are taking apart arabic-language Iraqi politics on the internet, and making it available to those poor fools who don’t speak Arabic (i.e. me).
But at the same time, isn’t it a waste of time? At one point, Visser reveals that one article has had only 10-30 readers. Is it worth an expert’s time to translate this stuff?
Arabic discussions about Iraq are so widespread on the internet that no human is going to be able to translate them all. If you want to understand what Iraqis are saying on the web, you’re really going to have to learn Arabic. You’ll get so much more information by skimming though lots of sites than by reading erudite deconstructions of a few articles. Case studies are inevitably misleading: they’re subject to the biases of an academic, and no one piece of writing can explain an entire discusison.
But – there are so many people, myself included, who don’t read Arabic and yet write about Iraq. In an ideal world, we’d all either learn the language or stop talking about Iraq. In my case, either is a possibility: I’m likely either to finally learn to read arabic, or to shift my focus off Iraq and onto the CIS, where I can at least read what’s going on in Russian. But in general, most people won’t know the languages of countries they’re trying to understand.
Given that, I suppose translating and analysing extracts from foreign-language sites is worthwhile. But it still feels as though Visser and others like him are flinging themselves at an impossible task.
Translating the internet
I don’t know what to make of this report by Reidar visser, which analyses the effect of the internet on separatist Shi’ite politics in Southern Iraq. Much of the report is devoted to translating and commenting on articles from fairly minor websites. I’m delighted that people are taking apart arabic-language Iraqi politics on the internet, and making it available to those poor fools who don’t speak Arabic (i.e. me).
But at the same time, isn’t it a waste of time? At one point, Visser reveals that one article has had only 10-30 readers. Is it worth an expert’s time to translate this stuff?
Arabic discussions about Iraq are so widespread on the internet that no human is going to be able to translate them all. If you want to understand what Iraqis are saying on the web, you’re really going to have to learn Arabic. You’ll get so much more information by skimming though lots of sites than by reading erudite deconstructions of a few articles. Case studies are inevitably misleading: they’re subject to the biases of an academic, and no one piece of writing can explain an entire discusison.
But – there are so many people, myself included, who don’t read Arabic and yet write about Iraq. In an ideal world, we’d all either learn the language or stop talking about Iraq. In my case, either is a possibility: I’m likely either to finally learn to read arabic, or to shift my focus off Iraq and onto the CIS, where I can at least read what’s going on in Russian. But in general, most people won’t know the languages of countries they’re trying to understand.
Given that, I suppose translating and analysing extracts from foreign-language sites is worthwhile. But it still feels as though Visser and others like him are flinging themselves at an impossible task.
Jerome
I’ve also been having another look at Latin and Greek recently. And, at risk of seeming horribly religious, I’ve ben reading some of the letters of St. Jerome.
This is hilarious in an exactly opposite way to the dream of the rood. It sounds uncannily like current evangelism. Or rather, it sounds exactly like the kind of stereotypical CICCU evangelising that makes people run screaming. Nothing has changed, it seems, over the past 1600 years, and perhaps the Jerome Method works.
I was going to paste in some of the gems I came across, but I can’t find the appropriate letters on the internet, and certainly not in English. One day I’ll go back to the classics library and copy down a few of the best bits.
Incidentally, I’d not realised that Jerome and Heironymus are same name. Not quite as good as Catamite and Ganymede, but getting close.