Solothurn, Switzerland, needs to hire a resident for its hermitage who doesn’t mind a constant stream of tourists. The last one quit after five years because she got too many visitors.
Norwegian: The easy way out
A friend on Facebook shared this article from Page F30, explaining why, in the opinion of the author, Norwegian is the easiest foreign language for an English speaker to learn:
Since it’s a Germanic language that means you will have a fun time realizing that words that originally don’t seem similar to English actually are. One example is the word selvstendighet. Looks like a completely foreign word at first, but each part has an equivalent English word: rewrite it as self-standy-hood and suddenly it looks more familiar. It means independence, which is a state of being able to stand by oneself. Another example is snikskytter. That means assassin, or a ‘sneakshooter’. Norwegian is full of these words. It also has words that aren’t exact English equivalents, but are similar. I’ve always thought that a lot of Norwegian words seem like those words you will sometimes wake up with in your head from a dream that seem so real in the dream but then turn out to be words that don’t actually exist. A translator for example is an oversetter, to exaggerate is overdrive, to accept is godta (goodtake), abroad (as in another country) is utland, and so on.
Which just leaves me, personally, fairly embarrassed to recall how long it took me to “master” the language–and such mastery as I have is only with the written word. My conversational Norwegian is still from hunger.
(Blogger’s note: Phil suggested I share this, and I told him I was too tired and had studying to do. But a massive power outage in Milwaukee has rendered my grad school web site incommunicado tonight, so here it is.)
Book Auctions for Missions
Scattering Seed Ministries sells great, vintage Christian books at auction to support the spread of the gospel to unreached people. These aren’t reprinted books. These are actual first editions of doctrinally sound works.
The Methods or Miracle of Revival
Is revival in a church or area a work of methodology or the Holy Spirit? Charles Finney says, “It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means—as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means.” Martin Lloyd-Jones says, “It is a miraculous, exceptional phenomenon.” Take for example the Welsh Revival of 1904. Men and women prayed, and the Lord responded with great favor. You can’t plan that, except by planning to hold closely to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Apple Settles Its Ebook Case
Apple has been fighting the accusation that it conspired to fix ebook prices unfairly. I believe I remember this class action lawsuit being wage on behalf of Capital Hill politicians who hadn’t felt properly, shall we say, appreciated by Apple over the years. Had a little more corporate lobbying taken place, maybe they wouldn’t be having to answer for themselves.
Now Apple is settling. The company is “also appealing the antitrust ruling against it for the same issue of price-fixing.”
YA Fiction and Superhero Movies
Alan Jacobs is laying out the facts on Twitter right now.
“Noteworthy: the real problem with YA fiction (much of it is bad) is the same as the problem with superhero movies (most of them are bad).”
“If you think there is something *intrinsically* juvenile about stories that concern beings with superhuman powers, then you’re committed to saying that the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, etc. etc. are juvenile. Which is manifest nonsense.”
“So the problem is not that we have too many superhero movies, but that those movies are unimaginatively conceived and incompetently written.”
“Much dislike of YA fiction & superhero movies is grounded in two things:19c pref. for realism & Modernist pref. for ‘difficult beauty.’ But if you go pre-c19 you can find plenty of aesthetic models that don’t privilege either realism or difficulty. The Modernist preference for difficulty was consolidated by the professiorate: we need difficult texts to justify our jobs.”
“But some of the most beautiful poems I’ve ever read are perfectly clear and call for little or no professional interpretative assistance.”
And Alex Knapp chips in: “Clarity doesn’t mean simplicity and difficulty doesn’t mean complexity. But oh how critics love to assume that this is the case.”
“All web content deserves to go viral.” Share This!!
Just in time for Friday the 13th, your new, favorite website has launched. ClickHole, from the makers of The Onion, “is the latest and greatest online social experience filled with the most clickable, irresistibly shareable content anywhere on the internet.” It says so right on the About page. It has “only one core belief: All web content deserves to go viral.”
It’s spontaneously generated (not written by any actual humans) appears on the site, just begging to be clicked and shared. If anyone needs help on just how this “clicking” process works, scroll the About page for a helpful illustration.
Share your results for great quizzes like “How Many Of These ‘Friends’ Episodes Have You Seen?” I got “Nice! ‘You know math?!’ Yep, looks like you’re a borderline ‘Friends’ genius! Wish you were around when Joey posed as a combat medic in Iraq during season 8!”
Read George R.R. Martin’s confession: “When I Started Writing ‘Game Of Thrones,’ I Didn’t Know What Horses Looked Like.”
Watch and share this touching video: “What This Adorable Little Girl Says Will Melt Your Heart”
And best of all: “8 Touching Pics Of Celebrities And Their Dads.”
(via 10,000 Words)
16 Book Adaptations for the Movies This Year
15 book-to-film adaptations coming out before the end of 2014. Children’s books have been popular. Why hasn’t anyone approached me about adapting “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb”? It would make an awesome comedy trailer or short film.
One film not on this list is Edge of Tomorrow, which looks fun. It’s based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill
Chris Hedges Copied This
Columnist Chris Hedges, who wrote such pieces as “We All Must Become Zapatistas” “Thomas Paine, Our Contemporary,” has been accused of plagiarism by Harper’s and others. The New Republic spells it out:
The plagiarism at Harper’s was not an isolated incident. Hedges has a history of lifting material from other writers that goes back at least to his first book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, published in 2002. He has echoed language from Nation author Naomi Klein. He has lifted lines from radical social critic Neil Postman. He has even purloined lines from Ernest Hemingway.
Editors at Harper’s were surprised. “A leading moralist of the left, however, had now been caught plagiarizing at one of the oldest magazines of the left,” Christopher Ketcham explains. “These examples suggest not inadvertent plagiarism,” Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute tells him, “but carefully thought out plagiarism meant to skirt the most liberal definition of plagiarism.”
Professor D.G. Myers comments on Twitter, “The case of Chris Hedges teaches a basic truth about literature: every fraud will be unmasked eventually.”
If Strangers Talked to Everyone Like They Talk to Writers
“Menswear designer for J. Crew? Interesting. Have you tried selling your clothes yourself on Etsy instead? I hear people are making millions self-designing on the internet these days.”
“Huh. A chef. Do people still eat food?”
Lincoln Michel imagines how people would talk to other professionals like they talk to writers. I’m sure I can speak for Lars on this. We’ve never had anything odd like this when people talk to us. The most common response is, “Whoa! Where are all the chicks?”