Helen DeWitt's Blog, page 44

100 best Arabic books

Courtesy Marginal Revolution, a link to M. Lynx Qualey's blog Arabic Literature in English, which has posted an annotated translation of a list of the 100 Best Arabic Books. (Annotation: whether an English translation is available, some additional information.) Original list (from the Arab Writers' Union) on Arabic Wikipedia, here.

continent cut off

Mark Liberman discusses 'beg the question' on Language Log. A commenter chips in.

As to whether 'begs the question' is an archaic term for all but a few specialists, I didn't grow up surrounded by formal logicians or professional philosophers but I've used it unselfconsciously since my childhood (OK, we're a pretty argumentative family…).

[(myl) As someone who uses the this phrase in its medieval-logic version without being a philosopher or an intellectual historian, you fall into the...

My first encounter with Beckett was when I was studying i...

My first encounter with Beckett was when I was studying in Minnesota and I acted in a student production of Krapp's Last Tape.

...

Since then I must have read Waiting for Godot – of course – a hundred times. Every time I go back to Beckett he seems more subversive, not less; his works make me feel more uncomfortable than they did before. The unsettling idea, most explicit in Godot, that life is habit – that it is all just a series of motions devoid of meaning – never gets any easier.

Nick Clegg ...

supersynthetics

Goldman's controversial "ABACUS 2007-AC1″ synthetic CDO turns out to be a very complicated deal. This is not your grandfather's vanilla mezzanine RMBS synthetic CDO. It is, in some sense, a supersynthetic CDO.

Steve Randy Waldman has a couple of detailed posts on Goldman's ABACUS:

Deconstructing ABACUS
A knife fight is not a mediation

Under the banner of the financial crisis, recent months h...

Under the banner of the financial crisis, recent months have seen management threaten departments and jobs in post-92 and Russell group universities alike. Although no clear national pattern of cuts has emerged, philosophy has been singled out by several institutions. Threats to philosophy at Liverpool and King's College London were greeted with international outcry and management retreat. Recent news that philosophy recruitment at both undergraduate and postgraduate level at Middlesex...

KCH

The most interesting thing I've ever read on the subject of linguistic diversity has nothing to do with immigration; it's in the late historian Eugen Weber's 1976 book "Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914." There, Weber (who died in 2007) cited France's catastrophic defeat in the...

If there were three simultaneous vacancies on the Supreme...

If there were three simultaneous vacancies on the Supreme Court, Washington would be a war zone, and the volume of direct mail would solve the post office's financial problems. Not so with the Federal Reserve. When the Fed is discussed in a political context, the talk normally comes from the fringe (as in the Ron Paul fan club's chants of "End the Fed"). Yet its decisions powerfully affect everyday life in a way that's rare for a court decision. ...

For all that elected officials talk about...

Save Middlesex Philosophy

I've just learned that Middlesex University has decided to close its philosophy department. Those familiar with the distinction of the department will, I know, be as horrified as I am. A campaign to save the department is underway (successful campaigns have already saved philosophy departments at King's and Liverpool, so public outcry may work where the department's mere demonstration of excellence has not); the petition can be signed here.

code like a girl

Mooching around online as one does (reculer pour mieux sauter) I find

a) a somewhat unfocused piece on the PEN website on a recent conference session, originally entitled Women, Sex, Fiction, renamed Gender, Translation, Diversity, contemplating the fact that women are 80% of readers of fiction but are underrepresented in the Library of America (3%) and win fewer literary prizes.

b) a piece in the Guardian by Kira Cochran on women and depression

and

c) a piece in the Guardian by Zoe Williams on ...

wha-?

The Schöneberger Kiez is not the prettiest part of Berlin. In fact, you could say it's downright ugly. The streets are full of betting shops, all-night Köfte joints and Döner Kebab restaurants. On Kurfürstenstraße, prostitutes ply their trade day and night. Sex shops stand next to pawnshops. Outside the Turkish supermarkets, hawkers sing the praises of their produce: "Strawberries, strawberries, €1. Tasty, tasty strawberries. Ladies and gentlemen, only €1." This is the Schöneberg 'ghetto'...