Genetic differences

General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial.

Generations

'The Harry Potter franchise may be among the few to achieve this in real-time and not in the reflections of popular culture historians. The Beatles, Doors, Dylan, Hendrix and others were popular in their time but only later were described as anthems of a generation. A few days of rock & roll in the mud of upstate New York gave rise to what would be dubbed the ‘Woodstock generation’. And, there are the events – the Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis, space program, multiple assassinations, Vietnam War, and Watergate all believed to have affected older baby boomer attitudes toward institutions and the political process. For younger baby boomers the end of the Vietnam War, the crumbling of the Soviet Union, Star Trek, and later Star Wars, the Iran Hostage Crisis, the introduction of the PC, the launch of MTV and of course the Internet provided story lines of good and evil as well as evidence about the power of technology to drive continuous change. How will Harry Potter affect or reflect a generation? In the near term there might be the fleeting impacts on style affecting everything from haircuts, clothes to eyeglasses. But what will Harry’s Generation take away as values and stories that will help them make sense of the world is an important question for politicians, business leaders and social scientists. As with countless stories before Harry Potter there will continue to be good and evil. There are heroes too. Not the lone heroes of previous generations – John Wayne, Captain Kirk and even the first Harry – Dirty Harry. Potter is determined yet collaborative, cerebral but takes action. Harry Potter has mentors and friends that do more than support him, they are collaborators that are integral to his success. The ‘system’ is not necessarily an enemy, instead there are rules to be learned in order to succeed.'

art as product

Aristotle thought that a good life is one spent in contemplation, exercising reason, and acquiring knowledge; Plato that the good life is a harmonious life achieved through order and balance. Neither of these ancient ideas requires that a wonderful life have any impact at all. Most people’s opinions, so far as these are self-conscious and articulate, ignore impact in the same way. Many of them think that a life devoted to the love of a god or gods is the finest life to lead, and a great many including many who do not share that opinion think the same of a life lived in inherited traditions and steeped in the satisfactions of conviviality, friendship, and family. All these lives have, for most people who want them, subjective value: they bring satisfaction. But so far as we think them objectively good—so far as it would make sense to want to find satisfaction in such lives—it is the performance rather than the product value of living that way that counts. Philosophers used to speculate about what they called the meaning of life. (That is now the job of mystics and comedians.) It is difficult to find enough product value in most people’s lives to suppose that they have meaning through their impact. Yes, but if it were not for some lives, penicillin would not have been discovered so soon and King Lear would never have been written. Still, if we measure a life’s value by its consequence, all but a few lives would have no value, and the great value of some other lives—of a carpenter who pounded nails into a playhouse on the Thames—would be only accidental. On any plausible view of what is truly wonderful in almost any human life, impact hardly comes into the story at all.

prezentáre

Zeci de scriitori au fost arestaţi. Au fost arestaţi Mircea Vulcănescu, Vasile Voiculescu, Nicolae Balotă, Ştefan Augustin Doinaş, nenumăraţi… sunt liste întregi. La un moment dat Petre Pandrea, care se afla în închisoare la Aiud, a întocmit o evidenţă a scriitorilor închişi, explicând că aceştia sunt atât de numeroşi, încât s-ar putea constitui o Societate a Scriitorilor Români din închisori. Scriitorii închişi din motive politice erau maltrataţi până la exterminare. Vasile Voiculescu, imaginaţi-vă asta, un om inofensiv, care nu făcuse decât să scrie literatură, care era de profesie medic şi care practica la bătrâneţe medicina gratuit, pentru săraci, din bunătate, un om de o bunătate impresionantă, este arestat la peste şaptezeci de ani. Acestui om bătrân, cu barbă albă, arestat în timpul nopţii, îi este răscolită casa şi i se confiscă manuscrisele, texte cu care azi ne mândrim, Sonetele închipuite ale lui Shakespeare, povestirile şi altele, iar scriitorul este dus, la o vârstă înaintată în închisoare, bătut, sunt câteva relatări despre modul cum era bătut: i se aşeza o scândură pe piept şi era lovit cu barosul, ca să nu rămână urme ale loviturilor, dar să fie distrus în interior. De altfel, la scurtă vreme după ce a ieşit din închisoare, a şi murit de plămâni. Toate lucrurile astea sunt zguduitoare. Ceilalţi scriitori, rămaşi în libertate, se simţeau intimidaţi de tot ceea ce se întâmpla. Merită admiraţie eroismul discret cu care Lucian Blaga a rezistat în faţa acestor presiuni şi n-a vrut să colaboreze cu regimul comunist.

Found Poems

He cultivated the spectacular, dressed in a bizarre
Mixture of European fashions and relieved his dark attire
With a sash or plume of unexpected

And violent red. In his pale, dry face
The equally vivid color of his lips
May perhaps not have been nature’s work alone…

Born under a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter,
Wallenstein’s stars gave him a peculiar mixture
Of weakness and strength, vice and virtue.

Changeable in his humors, quarrelsome,
Friendless, and cruel. So far the analysis
Of Johan Kepler

From the position of the stars over Hermanice
At four in the afternoon on September 14th 1583,
When Wallenstein was born.