October 09, 2006
Recent Reviews, Articles, Bits Of Note
In these United States: Some people want to ban Alison Bechdel's delightful graphic memoir Fun Home, as well as Craig Thompson's Blankets, from their Missouri library. And it looks like they're winning.
If you've ever wondered about the ending to One Thousand and One Nights, and about the significance of Scheherazade's father being appointed the ruler of Samarkand, then you may like to read this meditation by Salman Rushdie, which appeared in the Times this weekend. The text is part of a collaboration with the sculptor Anish Kapoor, for a series to be shown at the Lisson Gallery.
Remember how Hugo Chávez was mercilessly derided because he thought Chomsky was dead? Well, it turns out, he never said Chomsky was dead. Ah, but surely it was just a big misunderstanding, and not part of the general trend to treat him as a kook for the unforgiveable crime of not liking our foreign policy and not wanting to sell us his oil.
The revelation that "A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas" has created a lot of anxiety. I understand the feeling, but the truth is that monitoring systems are nothing new, and have long been used by media and politicians to know what is happening around the world. For example, the BBC has one. But one should also point out that the BBC is using trained linguists, editors, and translators, people who are native speakers of the foreign language they are monitoring. These trained professionals read the foreign press and listen to speeches of leaders, and write a piece if they find that there is an interesting development. This is how a lot of the world news is circulated. However, the proposed U.S. system relies on language software, which, in my opinion, has not yet reached levels of maturity that would lead to reliable judgments. So. Expect some problems.
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