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Other languages #24
Americans have long been racking their brains: why do the French, who eat three times more high-calorie and junk food, die from a heart attack three times less often? This so-called French paradox has been attributed to everything - the healing virtues of red wine, olive oil, garlic and onions. Cheese was also suspected. And recently there were even envious people who claimed that the French still have a long way to go: since today they actively eat American hamburgers and French fries and will soon catch up with the Yankees in cardiovascular indicators (“time delay theory”). But not everything in this life can be measured in calories. Claude Fischlet, a scientist from the French National Institute of Health , and his American colleague Paul Rosen, a psychologist from the University of Pennsylvania , came to the conclusion that it is not the food itself, but the attitude towards the process of its absorption. During a survey of one and a half thousand respondents, it turned out that Americans, although obsessed with “healthy” food, still consider their menu to be extremely “harmful”, and therefore experience an acute sense of guilt during and after eating. The French, on the contrary, eat for a long time and with pleasure, considering all the foods they eat to be extremely healthy.
Quote: The Americans Malcolm Law and Nicholas Wald, who explained the French paradox with the help of the “time delay theory,” must have carried out their dismal research while sitting over a stale piece of unleavened pie, secretly dreaming of the roast duck with sweet sauce that Claude Fischlet and I We washed it down with excellent red wine.
Order a full translation of an article?Where Rube Goldberg Meets Kafka Robin Cembalest Art News
The dominance of communist ideology affected the development of fine arts in different countries in different ways. Cheerful by nature, Cubans even have Kafkaesque motifs inspired by totalitarianism, reminiscent of the comics of the famous Rube Goldberg. So, at least, it seems to the author of the article (one of the editors of the famous American magazine Art News ), who enjoyed the peculiarities of the national totalitarianism of Liberty Island last November at the Havana Biennale dedicated to contemporary art. However, according to the journalist, many American guests were brought to Cuba by a purely commercial interest - to buy cheap paintings from local artists that are now in good demand on the world market. And most importantly, everything is according to the law: the American trade embargo does not apply to painting.
Quote: Cuban artists understand well that what can be shown abroad cannot always be exhibited at home. Moreover, today this is a question not only of state censorship, but also of self-censorship.
Order a full translation of an article?How do we distinguish the historic from the sentimental? (History or sentimentality?) Wayne Curtis (Wayne Curtis) The Atlantic
It is sometimes difficult for a resident of the Old World to even imagine to what extent poor Americans are deprived of history. It turns out that in the American National Register of Historical Monuments, only 70 thousand objects are recorded today (we can probably count more in Moscow alone). Late last year, one of these monuments of American antiquity was destroyed, despite the indignant objections of some members of the public. A huge supermarket will now be built in its place. It would seem that this is what the power of the yellow devil leads to. The indignation of the defenders of antiquity would look quite natural if not for one detail: the monument in question is a restaurant building built in 1962 in a pseudo-Papuan style. In other words, an example of real kitsch . The article is devoted to an important problem for American culture - where do sentimental childhood memories end and history begin?
Quote: What should we save? The first supermarkets? Drive-in cinemas? Or maybe old billboards? In the end, all these are the same signs of the 20th century as, for example, migrant vans are a sign of the nineteenth century.
Order a full translation of an article?Beyond the Information Revolution Peter Drucker The Atlantic
Three centuries ago the industrial revolution began. Now the next round of history is unfolding before our eyes - the information revolution. And its meaning is not in information as such: not in the appearance, say, of some new, unprecedented information. Its real meaning is in the profound transformation of the entire structure of society, in the emergence of new types of industries, products and services, a new psychology of consumption and attitude to life, new social and political realities. The same thing once happened with the industrial revolution, the meaning of which was not at all the advent of the steam engine or the railway, but that such products changed the entire economic and political picture of the globe. The author is a sociologist from the Claremont Graduate University, who has written 30 books about these revolutions: his observations of a general historical nature are extremely interesting from the point of view of the evil of the present day.
Quotes: The main thing is a change in mental geography. Since the invention of the railroad, human beings have gained unprecedented mobility. The horizons of the average person's possibilities have expanded as never before.
England remained an economic, and especially financial, great power until the First World War. Technologically, its superiority remained throughout the 19th century. Synthetic dyes and steam turbines were invented in England. But she did not accept the industrial engineer as a social type. He could never be a "gentleman" to her. No country has treated the “scientist” with such respect - but the technologist remained a “craftsman” for it.
Today we, too, must change the traditional mental attitude so that the United States in the 21st century does not repeat the fate of England.
Order a full translation of an article?A Thng of ButE is a Jy 4evr (Beauty does not age forever) Noah Richler (Noah Richler) National Post
The new generation chooses new languages. Thanks to modern telecommunications technologies, which have greatly simplified the process of exchanging information between people, familiar languages will soon die out, the author of the article believes. At the very least, the reading process will no longer resemble what we are used to: written language is becoming more and more similar to spoken language. And really, who wants to write out whole words if you can just put some icon like ($_$) (if anyone still doesn’t understand, it means: “I’m very greedy for money”). , a quote from which is included in the title of the article , can easily be written in this language And what’s bad if Keats .
Quote: Today, entire dictionaries of such designations are already being published in thousands of copies - they are ordered, for example, by Motorola and Nokia to be sold as a set with their mobile phones, from which you can send a text message.
Order a full translation of an article?The Art of Being Boring Erica Wagner The Times
Whatever they say about the great goal of Art with a capital A, the main thing in a good book is that it gives us the opportunity to escape from reality at least for a short time. And it doesn’t even matter whether it’s a fiction book or a documentary one, the reader should still get from it something that he doesn’t have in everyday life. This is the view of fine literature preached by the author of an article in The Times , apparently seriously tired of the drab everyday life of newspapers. However, it’s hard to disagree with her on some points. For example, that life cannot simply be taken and mechanically transferred to paper, and that real creativity is always the creation of your own world.
Quote: We do not want to lie in bed, we want to chase white whales in the stormy sea. We don't want to go down the subway, we want to go down the Amazon in Indian canoes.
Order a full translation of an article?President Paradox Francis Fukuyama The Wall Street Journal
The Man Who Discovered the End of History Explains the Clinton Paradox: How did one of the Democratic Party's most conservative presidents end up being hated by the right and driving society apart? This happened because, Fukuyama believes, the most significant changes during the Clinton administration were not of an economic, but rather of a cultural nature. Despite the general increase in the well-being of American citizens, wealth differences between different strata of society have not narrowed. But the self-esteem of various groups of the population has changed.
Quote: The new rich feel quite comfortable, gradually turning into a class that David Brooks called "bobo" (from bohemian-bourgeoisie - "bohemian bourgeoisie"). Excessive materialism coupled with unseemly behavior can be considered normal as long as you declare good intentions, that is, you hold correct views on environmental issues, racial and sexual discrimination, and poverty. The Clinton family is an excellent example of this tendency: the presidential couple sincerely believed that good intentions fully justified real estate fraud and lying under oath.
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