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<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u2014 1 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Did you know that Earth has a\u00a0second moon?\u00a0<\/em> \u00a0Because I sure as heck did not (I\u2019m in the lucky 10,000!<\/a>). \u00a0Apparently, the astronomical body\u00a03753 Cruithne is\u00a0also<\/em> in orbit around the Earth, but its orbit is bizarrely convoluted \u2014 to the point where it takes 800 years for it to make a full, wobbly circuit. \u00a0io9 has all the details<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n And if you\u2019re trying to learn other, unknown-to-you, sometimes terrifyingly interlooped ideas, Existential Comics has a \u201cHow to Study Philosophy\u201d post<\/a>,\u00a0which has specific recommendation, as well as some advice on how to read:<\/p>\n I am proposing a new principle: The Principle of Science. When first reading a philosophical text, you should read it not as the most compelling\u00a0argument<\/em>, but rather as though you were reading a scientific text. The reason for this is simple: scientific texts are taken as fact. Philosophy texts are always presumed to be questionable. When you first encounter Newton\u2019s Law that says an object in motion will continue in motion until acted upon, you don\u2019t say, \u201cWhat a load of crap, I threw a meat pie at my cousin Mike just last week, and it stopped on its own accord before it got to him.\u201d Obviously, although scientific theories can be overturned, people assume that they are correct, so their only objective becomes trying to understand the theory. However, when Kuhn says that science, like evolution, progresses towards nothing in particular, a lot of people\u2019s first reaction is something like: \u201cWhat a load of shit, science obviously progresses towards the truth\u201d, then they spent the rest of the time trying to work out just how wrong Kuhn is. Now, obviously Kuhn\u2019s claim is much more controversial than Newton\u2019s, and in fact most philosophers don\u2019t agree with him, but the point of reading his book shouldn\u0092t necessarily be to become a Kuhnian, but rather to understand him. That doesn\u2019t mean that you can\u0092t critique the ideas afterwards, but understanding the ideas first is much more important than refuting them, and you really shouldn\u2019t worry about it too much. In fact, it\u0092s often more fruitful to read another philosopher\u2019s critique than trying to come up with your own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, on the comic side of that website, I\u00a0loved\u00a0<\/em>the latest adventures of Stoicism Man<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Stoicism Man\u2019s response to distress may not be generally appreciated, but I did like reading about how the Mets sometimes try to salve their players\u2019 suffering<\/a>:<\/p>\n For the last few years, the Mets\u2019 rehabilitation team has given metal coins like these to more than 40 players for getting through a program designed to get them healthy. Not every player receives one. The injury must be a significant one \u2014 such as Harvey\u2019s Tommy John surgery \u2014 that keeps the player out for a while, and the player must put forth a genuine effort.<\/p>\n The coins, then, are their reward. Pearson views them as a motivational tool, something the players can strive for, a keepsake they can cherish later in life. Some players are ecstatic to receive their coins; others are indifferent. But in general, they understand the coin\u2019s purpose.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of times,\u201d Pearson said, \u201cthese are situations where this is the first time these kids have been really, truly injured, and it\u2019s a big shock. This is the first time they\u2019re told, You\u2019re not going to play this year.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I like that this team is trying to find a way to address a player\u2019s fear and emotional hurt, as well as the physical injury. Hurrah for ritual and tradition!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 4 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, on the subject of unusual coins, I liked reading the origin story of Valve\u2019s (a video game company) economist-in-residence<\/a>:<\/p>\n When I read the opening line of the email in question, my finger almost pushed the delete button:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m the president of a videogame company (www.valvesoftware.com).\u201d<\/p>\n I thought to myself: Oh, not another \u201cbusiness proposal\u201d from a crackpot\u2026 However, something in my head stopped my finger from pressing DEL while my eyes pondered the next line:<\/p>\n \u201cWe are running into a bunch of problems as we scale up our virtual economies, and as we link economies together. Would you be interested in consulting with us?\u201d<\/p>\n I was intrigued. The finger retreated from the keyboard\u2019s right hand side and I read on:<\/p>\n \u201cI have been following your blog for a while\u2026 Here at my company we were discussing an issue of linking economies in two virtual environments (creating a shared currency), and wrestling with some of the thornier problems of balance of payments, when it occurred to me \u201cthis is Germany and Greece\u201d, a thought that wouldn\u2019t have occurred to me without having followed your blog. Rather than continuing to run an emulator of you in my head, I thought I\u2019d check to see if we couldn\u2019t get the real you interested in what we are doing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 5 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Max Gladstone, author of\u00a0Three Parts Dead<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and the forthcoming\u00a0Last First Snow<\/em><\/a>, has also been trying to understand a different world and way of thinking. \u00a0He has a post on translating Chinese poetry and wondering what to make of unspecified pronouns<\/a>:<\/p>\n I did\u00a0greater violence to Li Bai\u2019s original\u2014or\u00a0did I?<\/em>\u2014when I inserted \u2018I\u2019 and \u2018my\u2019 into the second couplet.\u00a0\u00a0The original poem does not, so far as I can tell, indicate that the speaker\u00a0is the person raising his or her head. \u00a0Nor, of course, does the\u00a0original language indicate the gender of the speaker. \u00a0(Fun fax: spoken\u00a0Chinese doesn\u2019t\u00a0gender the third-person pronoun, and written Chinese didn\u2019t gender the third person pronoun until\u00a0IIRC the\u00a0Westernization and modernization pushes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. \u00a0Hooray! \u00a0Wait. [Though to be \u2018fair\u2019 you could read this as erasure, too.] ) \u00a0To create\u00a0an\u00a0English version of\u00a0Silent Night Thoughts<\/em>, the writer has to decide: is the poet speaking? \u00a0Is the poet\u00a0describing someone else? \u00a0If so, what\u2019s that person\u2019s gender? \u00a0(He raises\u00a0his head? She raises her head?) \u00a0Is the poet addressing the reader? \u00a0(\u201cYou raise your head\u201d?)<\/p>\n And this is where I want my time machine. \u00a0In English, this indeterminacy seems deliberate. \u00a0You\u2019ll rarely write a person-indeterminate English sentence without meaning to. \u00a0But in Chinese poetry, that\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0straightforward task. \u00a0In fact, formal restrictions can require it. \u00a0So:\u00a0would Li Bai\u2019s readers have\u00a0read an \u2018I\u2019 into the poem? \u00a0A \u2018he\u2019? \u00a0A \u2018she\u2019? \u00a0A \u2018you\u2019? \u00a0Would the indeterminacy operate for them the way it seems to operate in English, allowing the reader to\u00a0flow freely through the poem,\u00a0choosing to see it from the subject\u2019s point of view or from an outsider\u2019s, or from the point of view of a person in the Old Country thinking of his exiled lover? \u00a0Or is this\u00a0an artifact of differences in language\u00a0construction? \u00a0Would a contemporary reader\u00a0even have recognized this indeterminacy?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/a>\u2014 6 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019re worried that\u00a0you\u2019ve<\/em> been translated across genres, specifically into the ouvre of Victor Hugo, The Toast has a handy diagnostic guide for\u00a0How To Tell If You Are In A Victor Hugo Novel<\/a><\/p>\n You are a mother and, in a moment of despair, exclaim that you would die for your child. Society takes you up on the offer.<\/p>\n You are in sympathy with but two things in the world. One of them is a building.<\/p>\n You come across a stranger in a darkened alley by a cathedral\u2014but is it a stranger? No! For there are but twelve people in all of France, and you have long and complicated histories with all of them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/a>\u2014 7 \u2014<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Finally, the only TV show I\u2019ve been watching,\u00a0Agent Carter<\/em>, just came to its end, and I wanted to share this story about the actress playing the lead (Hayley Atwell)<\/a> in an earlier role in a Brideshead Revisited<\/i>\u00a0film, which is both depressing\u00a0and<\/em> heartwarming:<\/p>\n Atwell has reported that she was asked by the film company to lose weight for her role as Julia Flyte. It was only when co-star Emma Thompson (who will play Lady Marchmain) heard the news that things got resolved:<\/p>\n Says Atwell: \u201cI went round to Emma\u2019s one night and she was getting very angry that I wasn\u2019t eating all the food she was giving me. I told her why and she hit the roof.\u201d The no-nonsense Thompson was so outraged that she called the producers the next day and threatened to resign from the film if they forced Atwell to lose weight. Faced with Thompson \u2014 a two-time Oscar winner \u2014 on the warpath, Miramax Films swiftly relented.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>\n