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Vampires were invented by the Orthodox Church, which claimed that the corpses of those excommunicated from the church do not decompose. These statements contributed to the spread of mass psychosis. But the vampiric image familiar to us - a sort of refined dandy-intellectual, a strange and not unattractive young man with a very dramatic fate, usually arousing sympathy - took root in our minds with the light hand of Lord Byron. All this is the fruit of long studies by the author of the article, who passionately studied vampirism as a cultural phenomenon. The article contains a lot of other interesting observations about the fate of the vampire tribe, ancient and very heterogeneous in terms of “personnel,” - from Judeo-Christian and ancient prototypical characters to pale-faced movie homosexual drug addicts, part-time vampires, functioning in culture as a metaphor for any transgression .
Quotes: Both Voltaire and Diderot readily likened priests to vampires: this was all the more offensive because vampires at that time were represented as red-faced, unwashed, rude types of peasant appearance. The contrast with our own idea of a vampire - a pale, elegant, aristocratic-looking young man - is striking.
It seems that the vampires that populate our television and toy stores are the most viable and enduring of all manifestations of so-called Byronism.
Order a full translation of an article?Physics' new big question: what does 'is' mean? (Current problem in physics: what does "exist" mean?) Robert Matthews (Robert Matthews) Daily Telegraph
Philosophy, as you know, is not a science. Hegel deduced from philosophical premises the presence of seven planets in the solar system - less than a year later, the eighth was discovered. So, if philosophers meddle in science, nothing good will come of it - this is what many serious scientists think. However, not all. Quantum gravity is a direction in modern physics that tries to combine the theory of general relativity and quantum theory. If such a unification occurred, scientists would be able to construct a unified description of all physical phenomena, from electrons to galaxies. And the construction of such a description inevitably drives physicists into deep philosophical waters: they have to operate with the concepts of “nature of reality”, “objectivity”, “existence”. Moreover, having discovered with the help of quantum equations the possibility of the existence of an infinite number of universes, scientists were faced with a certain inconvenience: it is more common to think that there is only one cosmos. In such cases, positivist physicists strive to theoretically “kill” all these universes except one (hoping that the remaining one will be ours). But some of them become real philosophers, saying: yes, perhaps the equations did not give us what we expected - an objective description of the infinite variety of phenomena. But they demonstrate the infinite number of subjective perspectives available to observers located in the same universe. It turns out that what we mean by the Universe depends on our place in it and on the questions we ask about it. Strict pragmatic minds approached this in their own ways.
Quote: This kind of linguistic balancing on the brink of mysticism is one of the few things that pisses off most physicists more than philosophy itself. Professor Lee Smolin predicts that the basic foundations of the long-awaited Unification Theory will appear in the next decade. I am also trying to make a prediction - that it is inevitable that a new type of physicist will emerge, one who will be as committed to philosophy as to higher mathematics.
Order a full translation of an article?Hoolywood Courage Joseph Epstein Independent Women's Forum
What is a “bold statement” for the artists and intellectuals of today's America, languishing under the weight of the fruits of democracy? Build a plot around the hero killing a bunch of people for no particular reason? Sing the love of a big man for a little boy? This is always welcome. Is it weak to openly admit that there is, in fact, little good in having a child out of wedlock? Or, let’s say, depict how a freedom-loving grandfather, madly in love with a temptress from his great-granddaughter’s kindergarten group, eventually returns to his old woman to live with her and get along? That would be truly radical, argues literary critic and essayist Joseph Epstein. Many American cultural workers, it turns out, secretly agree with his idea, but dare to speak about it only in a whisper. Whether it’s homopedogerontophilia or nightmarish outbursts of bloody cruelty - a direct path to Oscars, applause and other awards for “intellectual courage”. Tested, no risk.
Quote: I suddenly realized this several years ago when my friend Edward Shils was giving another lecture at the University of Chicago. He openly criticized universities that accept federal money and yet naively ignore the associated leashes, lassos, chains and strong steel handcuffs that bind their hands and feet. After the lecture, a woman came up to congratulate Edward for his “intellectual courage.” He was sincerely surprised:
“There was no intellectual courage in what I said.” We are not in the Soviet Union or South Africa, where you could be jailed or killed for speaking your mind. What I do does not require any courage: it is simply the absence of intellectual cowardice - nothing less than intellectual courage.
Order a full translation of an article?Snooze from nowhere David Newnhan The Guardian
Our conscious life is immersed in sleep, like dry land in the world ocean. And sleep takes away a third of life - more than the ocean takes away from land. Its depths are more mysterious than those of the ocean, and more attractive to people who have built a lot of things around it: from folklore and mythological analogies (“sleep √ death”), literary and philosophical (“life is a dream”) and linguistic erased metaphors (“he slept with her”, “don’t awaken the beast in me”) to Freud’s “dream work” and the paradoxes of “REM sleep”. The experience of sleep, which not a single person in the world has escaped, inevitably carries with it something strange (for example, due to the logical-temporal inconsistency of dreams), despite all the familiarity and even routineness of the process. 's dreamer The Guardian writes about these routine oddities congenially, linking thoughts and facts in an associative rather than a strictly logical way. And at the end, unexpectedly (and on the other hand, quite naturally), the reader is offered nothing more than a dream book.
Quotes: Here are some of the most common dream elements.
Teeth. If your teeth fall out in a dream, this may mean that you are afraid of becoming helpless or sexually impotent.
Exams. If in a dream you are taking an exam and don’t know the answer to the question, it seems that you are being tested or tested in real life.
Flight. Often flying in a dream is accompanied by joyful elation and excitement. If you fly with ease, it means that you have reached some peak in life. If during the flight you encounter some difficulties and interference, it means that in your daily life you have to make an effort to control the situation.
Nudity. When you dream that you find yourself naked in public, it could mean that you have something to hide or that you have made some shameful mistake and are feeling awkward and unsafe. If your nakedness goes unnoticed, your fears may be unfounded.
Order a full translation of an article?Hannibal Lecterуs Harrowing of Hell Peter Manseau Killing the Buddha
In Hollywood they love to flirt with the goddess. In any case, meaningful biblical allusions are unobtrusively present in every second blockbuster. Sometimes, however, the imagination and taste of film makers allow them to do something more interesting. magazine The editor of Killing the Buddha examines the film "Hannibal" - the sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs" - and finds a rather interesting second plan in it. The film turns out to be structured like Dante's cosmology, where the soul goes through a slippery slope, where there is Hell and Heaven, Virgil and Beatrice, who are in a state of dialogue and periodically change places (to the point that at one point Dr. Lecter plays the role of the Savior ). Reworking an old theme, the thriller poses questions to modern audiences: what does it mean to be saved, and who in our Purgatory deserves Salvation. If Dr. Lecter doesn't deserve it, then perhaps no one does. The Dantean landscape is outlined in the article quite convincingly and, as it turns out, is quite consistent with the thriller genre.
Quote: Or maybe the atonement should be left to the sinless. Perhaps it is easier to look for Christ where we are accustomed to look for him. Eventually, even the apostles turned away from the Crucifixion. Rescue is a dirty business not for those who are afraid of the sight of blood.
Order a full translation of an article?Sloterdijk meets Venter Frank Schirrmacher Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Life is given to a person only once. In an age where cloning is about to become commonplace, such a statement may seem a little old-fashioned. However, it is not just anyone who thinks so, but the scientist who deciphered the human genome. On the eve of the publication of the genome decoding results in the French city of Lyon, at a party organized by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine , the American Craig Venter, who penetrated into the secret of the genome, met with the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. On the wall hung a rather small - about a meter and a half - poster, covered with small multi-colored letters: Venter's revolutionary scientific work. However, the conversation turned out not to be about science at all, but rather about the meaning of life. In the end, the philosopher managed to spin the geneticist into unexpected recognition.
Quote: "Why did you decide to decipher the genome?" Sloterdijk asked Venter every imaginable variation of this question - and by the end of the evening they became more and more sophisticated and dangerous. Venter replied: “Because I wanted to show everyone that I could do it.” “Why did you decide to decipher the human genome?” √ “Because in Vietnam I realized what human life is, what pain and suffering are.” The philosopher’s questions varied all the time, but Venter understood every time that he was being asked about the same thing - why? “Because I wanted to buy myself a new yacht,” the geneticist tried to sharply retort about an hour later. And then: “Because we have nothing ahead of us. Because after death comes the end.” “Isn’t DNA a materialistic version of the idea of immortality?” "DNA is dead. After death there is nothing. And we must make the most of the short time we have."
Order a full translation of an article?Dying to Be Read. What Obits Tell Us William Powers The Atlantic
An obituary is the face of a newspaper. Her preferences can be determined by the style, tone, and finally, by the size of the obituary. However, not every obituary is able to equally adequately reflect the face of a periodical. This requires a special deceased. Too famous personalities will not fit here: you can’t write a good obituary about such a person - everyone already knows everything about them. People will also be reluctant to read about people who are completely unknown to them. Therefore, it is necessary that the deceased was a celebrity who died thirty years ago. The author of the article discusses the intricacies of the genre, having studied examples of obituaries from the most important American newspapers.
Quote: Popes, presidents and other high-ranking figures make the worst candidates for an obituary. The same can be said about the pop culture colossi of the Sinatra-Princess Diana class. We do not learn anything new from these obituaries - we can say that these are obituaries of the second freshness.
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