“While other sectors have certainly overlooked brilliant new ideas and missed opportunities for innovation, this fact isn’t usually romanticized or celebrated. In other sectors this level of oversight would be called ‘a system failure,’ or ‘inefficiency,’ or ‘failure to innovate.’ And policies and practices would be put into place to try to prevent this from happening in the future.”
Category: words
Why Do We Have So Few Words For Smells?
All of our other scent descriptors are really descriptions of sources: We say that things smell like cinnamon, or roses, or teen spirit, or napalm in the morning. The other senses don’t need these linguistic workarounds.
Books Are Dangerous And We Must Be Protected From Them
“This is probably the first time in history that young readers themselves are demanding protection from the disturbing content of their course texts, yet reading has been seen as a threat to mental health for thousands of years.”
Contagion, Poison And Trigger: Books Can Be Dangerous
The current fuss over trigger warnings for university courses “is probably the first time in history that young readers themselves are demanding protection from the disturbing content of their course texts, yet reading has been seen as a threat to mental health for thousands of years.” Frank Furedi looks at that history.
Editors And Board Of Linguistics Journal Quit En Masse Over Open Access
“The mutiny of Lingua’s editors is another battle in the long-running war over whether academic research should be sold by publishers as part of often costly subscriptions or whether it should be free to all.”
Chicago Is Getting A Writers Museum. Because…
Asked why folks on Michigan Avenue would seek out the museum’s second-story space and pay to enter it when much of the information it’ll present is a tap away on their laptops or phones—or available at the, you know, public library—Anway said the museum will provide “context.”
When An Author You Translate Gets Death Threats
“Acclaimed Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk (pictured) has received a steady stream of hate mail and even death threats after questioning her country’s view of itself as ‘an open, tolerant country.’ As one person put it in a post to Tokarczuk’s Facebook page, ‘The only justice for these lies is death. Traitor.'” And when translator Jennifer Croft set up and English-language Facebook page to support Tokarczuk, she found herself in the line of fire.
PEN Petition Urges Ayatollah To Pardon Two Condemned Iranian Poets
Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Mousavi “were first arrested in 2013, placed in solitary confinement and interrogated … They were released on bail in January 2014, awaiting verdicts on charges that included insulting the sacred in their poems, publishing unauthorized content and spreading anti-state propaganda. The sentences [were] 11 and a half years for Ms. Ekhtesari and nine years for Mr. Mousavi, plus 99 lashes for both.”
Prix Goncourt, France’s Top Literary Prize, Given To Mathias Énard
“France’s oldest and most prestigious literary accolade … has been awarded to the Arabic and Persian scholar Mathias Énard for his novel Boussole (Compass). … Its reward comes not in the prize money – at just €10 it is roughly the same amount as the first Prix Goncourt 1903 – but the massive book sales it guarantees, making the author a fortune.”
Amazon’s New Bookstore – Community Center For The 21st Century?
“Amazon Books, like a Barnes & Noble of yore, comes complete with plush leatherette chairs for relaxed reading. There are open areas for browsing and chatting. There’s a kids’ area. (“Relax, read, and discover great books with your children,” the release invites.) Which is also to say that Amazon Books is trying to be a place of community—a place where people will meet and hang out.”