Comments by Grettir

If true aficionados do in fact are looking for ever-more-innovative goals they may try to achieve the following: conquer a Kyrgyzstan mountain or two without paying any bribe along the way. If such a mission ever accomplished its grandeur would be on par with invention of polypropylene ropes

"As for wheter the quality of football in the PL is better than in the Bundesliga, I don't know for sure. But the English players certainly don't look like a case in point whenever they face Germany..."

The Premier League players are overwhelmingly from abroad. Couple of years ago there was a situation in Arsenal when not a single player in the team was from England. English soccer team does not perform well lately in the international tournaments, that's true, but it has little to do with English Premier League per se.

Also, don't get me wrong - Bundesliga is a quite entertaining league. It is just Premier League is more so.

Author nailed it right in the head observing about Anglo-Saxon resolve and Teutonic efficiency. One detail though somehow evaded attention and, in a commercial way, somewhat puzzling - watching Anglo-Saxon resolve in its Premier League embodiment is incredibly more fun than any other soccer league on the planet. And it does not even matter whether it is Chelsea or Arsenal, lesser teams such as QPR and alike are also delivering so much excitement it is hard to understand how they can be unprofitable.

It is sort of bizarre not to see mentioning of Walter Scott's works in this piece as well as at the exhibition website. Take "Ivanhoe" for example. My first impression of English countryside was his detailed description of that memorable and possibly fictitious knight tournament in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, where deeply divided society (Normans versus Saxons) was united for a few days of gory festivities.

Also, pretty good descriptions of England can be found in Stevenson's novel "The Black Arrow". Brightly unforgettable are scenes of Aella's castle storm by Nordic hordes led by the hero of Kirk Douglas in "The Vikings" but perhaps Hollywood interpretation of how England looked like at the time is too unrealistic to be a part of the exhibit.

Hi Ashbird,

All you said encompasses the mainstream point of view of majority of highly educated individuals (I would assume your background is Ivy League or something similar). But for majority of average folks such artistic greatness (coming from heart or otherwise) is not as moving. I know guys who are good people but for whom genius of Leonardo (or Mozart etc) is not as visible and significant. For me personally, as for average individual, grandma's smile on that work is quite moving but I don't feel the same way when I see "Vitruvian Man" for example. There are conventional truth about who is supposed to be considered a genius and who is not. But ask a person on the street who is more genius, creator of "Mona Lisa" or inventor of digital photography and answer will not be as conventional.

I watched lately an interesting documentary about Leonardo. There are two years of his life that are completely blank, nothing is known about his activities or whereabouts. Those two years, authors argue, played a substantial role in his life as an artist and inventor. They have couple of interesting theories about those years. That's all highly speculative of course but interesting nevertheless.

The smile of Jesus' grandma does in fact very moving and it is impossible to comprehend how a human being and not a digital photography can reproduce such a facial expression. Tensions between humanity and the divine can also be seen in the contrast created by that bleak and rough terrain at the background. I wonder if Leonardo left unfinished those grey mountainous contours on purpose just to underscore the depth between the two.

It seems that immortality, if ever achieved on a mass scale, can easily prevent evolution as a process of continuous refinement of life forms. Thus making species extremely vulnerable to unexpected shocks such as new and unknown diseases for example. In evolutionary sense to have species immortal is kinda putting all eggs in just one basket. I wonder if the author explores that aspect anyhow.

This piece (including the joyful photo) is so full of life it is hard to believe it's obituary. My deep love for bagels got even stronger after reading it, that's for sure.

Country burr for the original Georgian accent sounds like a bizarre way to portray some kind of resemblance.

It is somewhat surprising to observe so much attention to the figure of the dictator and I don't mean just Richard Overy's books. In Russia now Stalin is hotly debated topic with extremely polarized views from "cruel killer" to "efficient manager". But it is first time I hear about play dedicated to him. It would be fair to assume that this play can be successful in both Russia and Georgia although country burr might need to be slightly re-designed.

Not sure about New York but in my city "occupy" movement was not incredibly clear and transparent in its ideology due to acute lack speakers capable of, well, clear and understandable speaking. Majority of "occupiers" were poor homeless people and drug addicts in need of help with little or no political agenda. When given chance to speak though some of them expressed wide array of causes, including desire to save forests.

But the movement itself will be remembered mostly for its serious drug problems. One death due to overdose in the occupiers camp had occurred and many others were prevented by firefighters and police. I wonder if this particular aspect of that memorable movement is anyhow highlighted in the books announced.

Fomenko and Nosovsky, authors of the concept of new chronology, display 18th century map from the Atlas of Prince Orange of France in one of the books they authored. Lion's share of Eurasia is covered with the state named "Grande Tartarie", which is considered to be Russia and authors argue that this is how Russia was known in the West at the time. What is interesting though is that part of India is included in that state. Northern part, where modern days Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are located.

"He argues that language is not the product of a “language organ” but an extension of general intelligence."

This conjecture is very easy to prove (or disprove). Take a baby from Pirahã tribe and get him life in well-off Western family, provide him good education and chances are his general intelligence will surpass anything Mr. Everett is thinking of. Logistically and juristically it may not be a straightforward experiment but it might still be possible (please don't think I am preaching for boarding schools as Canada Aboriginal kids were subjected to some time ago).

I am absolutely sure that "general intelligence" is phantom concept because I saw multiple examples when kids from poor highland villages of Central Asia from uneducated parents were very successful when given chance of good education.

Another question that rises is if "general intelligence" can draw back linguistic abilities of a tribe members why there no a single report about a human community that lacks language altogether? If you think of it logically, at some point deeper in Stone Age language it may not be needful at all. Yet every human society possesses language. Moreover, John McWhorter in his book "A tower of Babel" argues that most complex and rich in expression languages do come from those isolated near Stone Age communities in Africa (he written about Cameroon).

Another observation I made is regarding doing math vs language. I knew guys who were brilliant in math who had serious issues with language as means of expression. Basically, they can solve difficult math problems on a piece of paper but could not verbally explain it submitting paper instead. Some of them had very clear linguistic limitations. Language and math have very little in common in that regard.

Jared Diamond's theory is definitely not applicable to the TexMex area to say least, that's for sure. In that regard those who think hard trying to explain such enormous disparity in wealth accumulation deserve recognition.

One detail though is kind of nagging for explanation. It seems like all those corrupt dictators, top level bureaucrats and alike, while being abusive in their own countries do willingly and en-masse leave their countries of origin for much more democratic and, yes, wealthy states after few years or decades in power. If not themselves, their offsprings opt out for it (with rare exceptions) becoming sometimes celebrities like daughter of Uzbekistan president for example, but more often than not becoming unknown citizens with no political influence. It seems like them do feel in the depth of their souls that democracy is much more preferable way of running the country in many respects (including wealth accumulation) and yet they are trapped in those top positions where doing things in olden ways suits in the short term.

There is a lot of corruption in many countries with poor wealth distribution, that's true. The point though is that it is not considered as a something bad, it is just way of doing things there. The true phenomenon is that when they come to the democracies they don't think that way no more.

Ashbird, you probably did not read yet last issue "Science and Technology" section - there is an article there about growing movement to grant human right to cetaceans and, ultimately, to see them much like scientists who are "no different from other people". At the same time certain issues related to that peculiar move are left unanswered - how say dolphins would be paying taxes for example? Those issues are not applicable to scientists though for they do pay taxes and much more significantly in proportional sense than certain non-scientific individuals like Mr. Romney for instance (who reportedly paid 14% of tax on his 40+ mils income last year).

That's kind of a weird abberation that Brian Greene, probably the best writer on heavy duty theoretical physics since times of Gamow and Perelman, did not publish on the topic yet.

Higgs boson is a very hot topic indeed - it's getting its "mass" in mass media very rapidly, that's for sure. Chances are though it will all end up much like with Poincare Conjecture - everybody would know about its existence and vanishingly few would know what it is for real. So the joy of "asymptotic freedom" are ahead of not so many and many of them are already enjoying it anyways being physicists and representatives of related disciplines.

"Postwar" by Tony Judt and "Bloodlands" by Timothy Snyder are both very comprehensive accounts of what was happening in Europe during the war and after it. Mr. Judt's acute sense of justice manifests itself clearly in "Ill fares the land" with all that critique he offered on current state of affairs in Western Europe. Sometimes it is impossible to disagree with his views, sometimes he is clearly (and famously) controversial. In any case he was able to offer a very interesting perspective on many problems - something not too many are capable of.

The verdict by the author is quite right. Moreover, not only it is no longer a phenomenon, any news related to that old stalemate are boring, predictable and uninteresting, even that supposedly eloquent rhetoric of Iranian leaders that gets broadcasted sometimes. It does not make Israel worries anyhow less significant though.

That million of Russian repatriants Mr. Goodman mentions is not necessarily a million per se. Sizable portion of that influx opted out for further destinations after staying in Israel for 1 to 3 years (some stayed longer). I talked with many of them and all have their own motives but one theme was expressed more often than others - sometimes psychological pressure of possible terrorism is simply too high to live with.

It was historian Tony Judt who also called for reformation. His idea was somewhat different though - he called for making Israel similar not to Switzerland but to Australia with immigration open to anyone who can qualify, not only for those of Jewish ancestry. One thing by Mr. Goodman sounds very plausible though - it must be really difficult to stay optimistic in Israel presently with that Gordian knot of issues inside and outside the country.

"...why you feel businesses should have to provide service in Spanish..."

You are making lots of assumptions about somebody else's feelings. How did you know what I feel about the topic you raised?

Ultimately my feelings, or even yours for that matter, don't play too much of a role in business decisions made by corporate America (unless, of course, you are a top executive of say Walmart or Wells Fargo, which is somewhat unlikely). Corporate America makes such decisions out of pure business sense, linguistic sensibilities of certain South California dwellers don't belong to that business sense.

It can be regulated on government level though and in some parts of the worlds it does - for example Bill 101 in Quebec that "watch-dogging" the English language very closely. America does not have such regulations. That's why you don't have to learn Spanish and that's why businesses can reach out their target groups in any language they believe is more beneficial for them.

Not sure why you feel so besieged by Spanish language - nobody is imposing it anywhere in States by law or otherwise. Business adopts to it because Spanish speakers is a significant portion of consumers who can buy goods and services, that's why you see so many announcements in LA in both English and Spanish. Again, nobody imposing it on business, business does it itself, from little corner stores to Bank of America alike.

"Grettir, I am a very stupid person, IQ of 45."

Again - you don't have to know Spanish even in LA to get all goods and services you need and be employable. If you go extra mile and learn Spanish it can be beneficial for you, job and business wise. But you don't have to.

On the other note, after your revelation about your personal self-assessment of your mental capabilities may be you should consider switching from "Economist" to say "National Enquirer". It might be less stressful for you.