Spotted during an impromptu trip to New York this week:
God save capitalism.
 |
| $1 pizza in Manhattan |
God save capitalism.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Protestkultur (FR/GB)
Die weltweite Rezession breitet sich aus, besonders in Europa, wo die Überalterung der Bevölkerung und die sinkende Wettbewerbsfähigkeit die wirtschaftliche Malaise verschärfen. Aber für die nationalen Regierungen Europas gibt es nicht viel, was sie dagegen machen können. In früheren Jahren war die keynesianische Politik eine Option, doch die aktuellen Haushaltsdefizite sind schon zu groß. Deshalb haben manche Regierungen Politiken entwickelt, um Staatsausgaben zu reduzieren.
Frankreich und Großbritannien sind zwei wichtige Beispiele davon. In Frankreich will die Regierung das Ruhestandsalter von 60 auf 62 Jahre heraufsetzen. Sie will auch, dass man die volle Rente erst mit 67 statt wie bisher mit 65 beziehen kann. Laut Sarkozy sind diese Änderungen notwendig, um die finanzielle Gesundheit des Rentensystems zu erhalten.
Auf der anderen Seite des Ärmelkanals sind Premier Camerons Politiken wegen der britischen Staatsverschuldung noch drastischer. Neben der Anhebung des Rentenalters plant die Regierung die Staatsausgaben um 83 Milliarden Pfund zu kürzen und die Steuern um 29 Milliarden Pfund zu erhöhen. In dieser neuen Ära der Sparmaßnahmen werden die Etats der Ministerien um durchschnittlich 19 Prozent schrumpfen, und fast eine halbe Million Arbeitsplätze im öffentlichen Sektor werden gestrichen.
Trotz der Tatsache, dass die Schocktherapie in Großbritannien viel drastischer als der Zustand in Frankreich ist, scheinen die meisten Briten ihr Schicksal zu akzeptieren. Doch in Frankreich ist die Situation ganz anders: die Demonstrationen gegen Sarkozys Rentenpläne stürzen jede Großstadt ins Chaos. Laut der Polizei gingen landesweit 900.000 Teilnehmer auf die Straße. Überraschenderweise nehmen auch viele Studenten und junge Arbeiter an diesen Protesten gegen die Rentenreform teil. Seit einer Woche streiken die Arbeiter in allen zwölf Raffinerien des Landes, und deswegen haben mehr als tausend Tankstellen im Moment keinen Treibstoff mehr. Außerdem bleiben 850 Schulen bestreikt.
Diese sehr gegensätzlichen Reaktionen verkörpern einen großen kulturellen Unterschied zwischen Frankreich und Großbritannien. Manche behaupten, dass Protestieren ein Übergangsritus für junge Franzosen sei. „Soziale Konfrontation ist Teil unserer Demokratie“, sagte Premierminister François Fillon, „aber so ist gesellschaftlicher Konsens“. Solche Demonstrationen seien ein wichtiger Teil des französischen Stiles der Demokratie, besonders wenn großzügige Leistungen wie kurze Arbeitszeiten und lange Ferien angegriffen werden.
Im Vergleich dazu ist die britische Kultur nicht so kollektiv. Großbritannien ist eine gespaltenere Gesellschaft als Frankreich: Das Reichtum ist protziger, die Armut ist sichtbarer, und persönliche Bereicherung ist mehr wert. Und der kollektive Kampf ist nach Thatcher nicht sehr populär. Die Gewerkschaften wurden geschwächt, und großangelegte Proteste wurden unterdrückt. Es ist aber möglich, dass Camerons neue Sparpläne, obgleich notwendig, die Geduld der Briten prüfen wird.
Frankreich und Großbritannien sind zwei wichtige Beispiele davon. In Frankreich will die Regierung das Ruhestandsalter von 60 auf 62 Jahre heraufsetzen. Sie will auch, dass man die volle Rente erst mit 67 statt wie bisher mit 65 beziehen kann. Laut Sarkozy sind diese Änderungen notwendig, um die finanzielle Gesundheit des Rentensystems zu erhalten.
Auf der anderen Seite des Ärmelkanals sind Premier Camerons Politiken wegen der britischen Staatsverschuldung noch drastischer. Neben der Anhebung des Rentenalters plant die Regierung die Staatsausgaben um 83 Milliarden Pfund zu kürzen und die Steuern um 29 Milliarden Pfund zu erhöhen. In dieser neuen Ära der Sparmaßnahmen werden die Etats der Ministerien um durchschnittlich 19 Prozent schrumpfen, und fast eine halbe Million Arbeitsplätze im öffentlichen Sektor werden gestrichen.
Trotz der Tatsache, dass die Schocktherapie in Großbritannien viel drastischer als der Zustand in Frankreich ist, scheinen die meisten Briten ihr Schicksal zu akzeptieren. Doch in Frankreich ist die Situation ganz anders: die Demonstrationen gegen Sarkozys Rentenpläne stürzen jede Großstadt ins Chaos. Laut der Polizei gingen landesweit 900.000 Teilnehmer auf die Straße. Überraschenderweise nehmen auch viele Studenten und junge Arbeiter an diesen Protesten gegen die Rentenreform teil. Seit einer Woche streiken die Arbeiter in allen zwölf Raffinerien des Landes, und deswegen haben mehr als tausend Tankstellen im Moment keinen Treibstoff mehr. Außerdem bleiben 850 Schulen bestreikt.
Diese sehr gegensätzlichen Reaktionen verkörpern einen großen kulturellen Unterschied zwischen Frankreich und Großbritannien. Manche behaupten, dass Protestieren ein Übergangsritus für junge Franzosen sei. „Soziale Konfrontation ist Teil unserer Demokratie“, sagte Premierminister François Fillon, „aber so ist gesellschaftlicher Konsens“. Solche Demonstrationen seien ein wichtiger Teil des französischen Stiles der Demokratie, besonders wenn großzügige Leistungen wie kurze Arbeitszeiten und lange Ferien angegriffen werden.
Im Vergleich dazu ist die britische Kultur nicht so kollektiv. Großbritannien ist eine gespaltenere Gesellschaft als Frankreich: Das Reichtum ist protziger, die Armut ist sichtbarer, und persönliche Bereicherung ist mehr wert. Und der kollektive Kampf ist nach Thatcher nicht sehr populär. Die Gewerkschaften wurden geschwächt, und großangelegte Proteste wurden unterdrückt. Es ist aber möglich, dass Camerons neue Sparpläne, obgleich notwendig, die Geduld der Briten prüfen wird.
Monday, October 25, 2010
友情
„Ein bisschen Freundschaft ist mir mehr wert als die Bewunderung der ganzen Welt.“
„Menschen zu finden, die mit uns fühlen und empfinden, ist wohl das schönste Glück auf Erden.“
- Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the German Empire
„Menschen zu finden, die mit uns fühlen und empfinden, ist wohl das schönste Glück auf Erden.“
- Carl Spitteler, Swiss poet and Nobel laureate
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8
There are a number of composers who have fundamentally changed the way I see (or at least hear) this world. Dmitri Shostakovich is one of them.
I still vividly remember the Sunday afternoon when I first heard, from the second violin section of the Houston Youth Symphony, the simultaneously haunting and breathlessly passionate melodies of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1. It was also my first encounter with the composer's ingenious DSCH motif (which he uses to represent the letters of his name in many of his works). Without a doubt, accompanying the guest soloist, whose name I've long since forgotten, was a formative experience in my musical education.
The life of this 20th-century Soviet Russian, artistic brilliance aside, is fascinating from a purely historical viewpoint. His music was officially denounced, twice, and periodically banned by the Stalinist bureaucracy. At the same time, Shostakovich received numerous state accolades and even served in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR.
String Quartet No. 8 is a work I have come to admire relatively recently.
The official dedication "to the victims of fascism and war" is believed to have been a declaration imposed by government authorities; the composer thought of the work as a personal epitaph in anticipation of his planned suicide. In a private letter to a friend, Shostakovich described the string quartet as his own memorial, "an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs."
I assure you that my liking for this powerfully bleak piece has nothing to do with any similarities between Shostakovich's mental health and my own.
Below are all five movements, performed by the Emerson String Quartet. (If you're only going to listen to one, consider the second—Soviet headbanging music.)
I. Largo
II. Allegro molto
III. Allegretto
IV. Largo
V. Largo
QOTD:
"Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment—and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture."
I still vividly remember the Sunday afternoon when I first heard, from the second violin section of the Houston Youth Symphony, the simultaneously haunting and breathlessly passionate melodies of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1. It was also my first encounter with the composer's ingenious DSCH motif (which he uses to represent the letters of his name in many of his works). Without a doubt, accompanying the guest soloist, whose name I've long since forgotten, was a formative experience in my musical education.
The life of this 20th-century Soviet Russian, artistic brilliance aside, is fascinating from a purely historical viewpoint. His music was officially denounced, twice, and periodically banned by the Stalinist bureaucracy. At the same time, Shostakovich received numerous state accolades and even served in the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR.
String Quartet No. 8 is a work I have come to admire relatively recently.
The official dedication "to the victims of fascism and war" is believed to have been a declaration imposed by government authorities; the composer thought of the work as a personal epitaph in anticipation of his planned suicide. In a private letter to a friend, Shostakovich described the string quartet as his own memorial, "an ideologically deficient quartet nobody needs."
I assure you that my liking for this powerfully bleak piece has nothing to do with any similarities between Shostakovich's mental health and my own.
Below are all five movements, performed by the Emerson String Quartet. (If you're only going to listen to one, consider the second—Soviet headbanging music.)
I. Largo
II. Allegro molto
III. Allegretto
IV. Largo
V. Largo
QOTD:
"Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment—and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture."
- Dmitri Shostakovich
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Things [Tory Burch] Likes
"The exclusive movie Tory made with celebrated filmmaker Van Neistat. Van gave Tory a digital voice recorder to tape her thoughts and impressions during a trip to Europe—whatever, whenever. Tory then handed it off to Van in Korea where he matched what he saw in Seoul with what Tory said in Europe. The result? Whimsical, engaging and worth multiple viewings."
(Tory Burch was in Seoul this summer to open her brand's largest flagship thus far. Here's the Seoul city guide inspired by her visit.)
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Houston Arts News
Lots of good news from Houston's arts scene this month:
Bayou City Arts Festival
Bayou City Arts Festival
- 300 artists showing off wares in 19 media.
- "International style, Texas hospitality." Four nights of runway shows at the Wortham Center.
- HGO has emerged from the end of the 2010 fiscal year with a surprising surplus, attributable to "a dedicated board of trustees, enviable endowment and Houston's loyal donor community." Record ticket sales to such hits as Puccini's Tosca, Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Handel's Xerxes also gave HGO the budget boost. In all, the company has raised over 60 million dollars in contributed support in the last 38 months and increased its subscription audience by 38 percent. CEO Anthony Freud's contract has been extended through July 2015.
- Houston Symphony musicians have ratified a four-year contract that will extend through the orchestra's 100th anniversary season. (They're still not paid nearly enough, but at least furlough has been decreased.)
- The Symphony is currently on tour in the United Kingdom for its "inventive and ingeniously orchestrated" presentation of Gustav Holst's The Planets (check out the video).
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Das Rheingold
"The Ring is not just a story or a series of operas, it’s a cosmos."
Slept in this morning, had a late brunch in Berkeley dining hall and walked over to Sprague Hall for The Metropolitan Opera's "Live in HD" performance of Das Rheingold.
Of course, it wasn't quite like watching Wagner performed live, but it likely was the best performance of any kind that I've been to in my pajamas.
Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) is the first in the four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) cycle of operas that took Wagner 26 years to compose. The momumental Ring was intended to be performed in succession as a coherent whole over four nights, with a total playing time of about 16 hours. The story, which follows three generations of protagonists, was inspired by Norse mythology and the eponymous Nibelungenlied, an epic poem in Middle High German.
As Bloomberg reports, "the prospect of a new Ring at the Metropolitan Opera has sent opera nuts into a state of hyper-excitement for months on end." The article then continues, "This may be the first production in opera history generating a stream of bulletins on the weight of the set," which weighs in at 45 tons. "The Met has suggested something in the range of $16 million for the production. Another $4.5 million was spent replacing the wagons that roll sets to the footlights. Reinforcing the main stage to support the set cost $100,000."
The effect is spectacular.
The most spellbinding segment of the performance was the opening scene. The 136-bar drone piece begins with a somber E flat, which gradually builds into more elaborate figurations of the E flat major chord, though which Wagner portrays the flow of the Rhine River. In the Met's rendering of this scene, the set itself began to undulate, mirroring the shape of the music. Against this stirring backdrop, the three Rhine maidens floated into view, supported by cables, and then, dangling 30 feet above the stage, began their song. (Listen to the Vienna Philharmonic on YouTube.)
Here is the Met's synopsis of Das Rheingold.
- Robert Lepage
Slept in this morning, had a late brunch in Berkeley dining hall and walked over to Sprague Hall for The Metropolitan Opera's "Live in HD" performance of Das Rheingold.
Of course, it wasn't quite like watching Wagner performed live, but it likely was the best performance of any kind that I've been to in my pajamas.
Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) is the first in the four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) cycle of operas that took Wagner 26 years to compose. The momumental Ring was intended to be performed in succession as a coherent whole over four nights, with a total playing time of about 16 hours. The story, which follows three generations of protagonists, was inspired by Norse mythology and the eponymous Nibelungenlied, an epic poem in Middle High German.
As Bloomberg reports, "the prospect of a new Ring at the Metropolitan Opera has sent opera nuts into a state of hyper-excitement for months on end." The article then continues, "This may be the first production in opera history generating a stream of bulletins on the weight of the set," which weighs in at 45 tons. "The Met has suggested something in the range of $16 million for the production. Another $4.5 million was spent replacing the wagons that roll sets to the footlights. Reinforcing the main stage to support the set cost $100,000."
The effect is spectacular.
The most spellbinding segment of the performance was the opening scene. The 136-bar drone piece begins with a somber E flat, which gradually builds into more elaborate figurations of the E flat major chord, though which Wagner portrays the flow of the Rhine River. In the Met's rendering of this scene, the set itself began to undulate, mirroring the shape of the music. Against this stirring backdrop, the three Rhine maidens floated into view, supported by cables, and then, dangling 30 feet above the stage, began their song. (Listen to the Vienna Philharmonic on YouTube.)
Here is the Met's synopsis of Das Rheingold.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
소심
If you're reading this then you almost certainly know that I'm a huge language geek. Philosophy of language, syntax, infant language cognition, translation...I'm fascinated by all of it.
Particularly interesting (and vexing for translators) are the words that convey non-universal, culture-specific connotations and thus cannot be found in many languages. The joy of language study, at least for me, lies in discovering, grappling with, studying, understanding, using and being influenced by these terms and concepts.
A Korean word I've been unable to satisfactorily translate in the past is 소심하다 (sosimhada, to be sosim). Two dictionary translations I've found are "timid" and "cautious," but as Korean speakers know, these English terms do not capture the nuances of sosimhada.
When examining Korean words, it can sometimes be instructive to study the corresponding hanja (Sino-Korean character-based words), if available. In the case of sosim, there is a related Chinese term: 小心 (xiaoxin). Yet in this particular case, the definitions have diverged—小心 means "careful," whereas sosim means, well, sosim.
If I were forced to come up with an English translation, I think it would be "small-hearted," which actually is more similar to the individual hanja than the Chinese combination xiaoxin is. (The German kopfscheu, which translates literally to head-shy, might be a decent approximation.)
There really isn't much of a point to this post, except for the fact that sosim is a delightfully specific and nuanced word. So, dear non-Korean speakers, for the next time you need a term to describe someone who is small-hearted, overly sensitive, doubtful and timid, you now have a new word in your private linguistic arsenal.
"Language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about."
Particularly interesting (and vexing for translators) are the words that convey non-universal, culture-specific connotations and thus cannot be found in many languages. The joy of language study, at least for me, lies in discovering, grappling with, studying, understanding, using and being influenced by these terms and concepts.
A Korean word I've been unable to satisfactorily translate in the past is 소심하다 (sosimhada, to be sosim). Two dictionary translations I've found are "timid" and "cautious," but as Korean speakers know, these English terms do not capture the nuances of sosimhada.
When examining Korean words, it can sometimes be instructive to study the corresponding hanja (Sino-Korean character-based words), if available. In the case of sosim, there is a related Chinese term: 小心 (xiaoxin). Yet in this particular case, the definitions have diverged—小心 means "careful," whereas sosim means, well, sosim.
If I were forced to come up with an English translation, I think it would be "small-hearted," which actually is more similar to the individual hanja than the Chinese combination xiaoxin is. (The German kopfscheu, which translates literally to head-shy, might be a decent approximation.)
There really isn't much of a point to this post, except for the fact that sosim is a delightfully specific and nuanced word. So, dear non-Korean speakers, for the next time you need a term to describe someone who is small-hearted, overly sensitive, doubtful and timid, you now have a new word in your private linguistic arsenal.
"Language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about."
- Benjamin Lee Whorf, American linguist
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