The Eternal Word Horde of a Master Musician

‘Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind’

"You know, one of the intense pleasures of travel and one of the delights of ethnographic research is the opportunity to live amongst those who have not forgotten the old ways, who still feel their past in the wind, touch it in stones polished by rain, taste it in the bitter leaves of plants. Just to know that Jaguar shamans still journey beyond the Milky Way, or the myths of the Inuit elders still resonate with meaning, or that in the Himalaya, the Buddhists still pursue the breath of the Dharma, is to really remember the central revelation of anthropology, and that is the idea that the world in which we live in does not exist in some absolute sense, but is just one model of reality, the consequence of one particular set of adaptive choices that our lineage made, albeit successfully, many generations ago" - Wade Davis.

The Importance of Careful Translation

I have heard of people getting Chinese script characters tattooed and then find out later what they thought was the sign for Peace was actually taken from a menu.

Now the esteemed Max Planck Institute has committed a similar blunder. The above cover of Max Planck Research (MaxPlanckForschung) has just been withdrawn but not before thousands of copies were distributed. The Chinese text reads in translation:

With high salaries, we have cordially invited for an extended series of matinées

KK and Jiamei as directors, who will personally lead jade-like girls in the spring of youth,

Beauties from the north who have a distinguished air of elegance and allure,

Young housewives having figures that will turn you on;

Their enchanting and coquettish performance will begin within the next few days.

It is taken from a poster set up in the streets of Hong Kong's redlight district.

A meme or just dumb?

A more detailed account with expanded translation is available HERE.

Voloshinov: A Philosopher Who Anticipated Simulative Media Environments

"Any consumer good can likewise be made into an ideological sign. For instance, bread and wine become religious symbols in the Christian sacrament of communion.. But the consumer good, as such, is not at all a sign. Consumer goods, just as tools, may be combined with ideological signs, but the distinct conceptual dividing line between them is not erased by the combination. Bread is made in some particular shape; this shape is not warranted solely by the bread’s function as a consumer good; it also has a certain, if primitive, value as an ideological sign (e.g., bread in the shape of a figure eight (krendel) or a rosette).

Thus, side by side with the natural phenomena, with the equipment of technology, and with articles for consumption, there exists a special world – the world of signs."
Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1929)

Genuine British Accents and Dialects

An online archive of British accents and dialects has been established by the British Museum as part of their Collect Britain project. Shropshire is a favorite of mine.