Dr. Johnson and Wikipedia

Last week Nature published its survey of 50 science articles in Wikipedia and Britannica respectively. Result: Wikipedia had 162 errors and Britannica 123.

The literal (numerical) reading of the survey is that Wikipedia is more erroneous than Britannica. This makes the columnist of The Register conclude that Wikipedia is ruthlessly implementing “McDonaldization” of information society: we are simply consuming junk knowledge like “a terrible, bland meal of unhealthy junk food” (though I suspect his use of Prof. George Ritzer’s term ‘McDonaldization is incorrect).

Is Wikipedia really a Sir-Isaac-Newton-was-born-in-1462-and-published-the-Theory-of-Relativity dictionary? How can we prove that Wikipedia will survive the dominant capitalistic culture in the long term? Are we being nitpicking! Again Dr. Johnson is at once right and wrong:

 

It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward.

Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pionier of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths through which Learning and Genius press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other authour may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

Samuel Johnson, Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language p.s. I learned this news from TechnoLlama . Many thanks to Andres!

The Imponderable Wittgenstein

“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.”

It seems that I am forming the bad habit of spending Sunday afternoons reading stuff wildly irrelevant to my current research work. In all honesty, I didn’t remember why I picked a book about Wittgenstein from the shelf this time. As usual, I started the book from its middle without much clue.

Thanks to the accessible style of Ray Monk’s writing, I was lost in thought of my own experience more than in a possible language game . As a non-native English speaker, I am forced to hover on the edge area between two languages— the worry of speaking or writing incorrect and awkward English has been plaguing me intermittently since my first day of learning this language. I understand my mother tongue is sometimes an inertial force posing difficulty in my acquiring a second language. (Technically speaking, this “inertia” is what Noam Chomsky calls “negative evidences”). Time and again when new ideas (maybe in the shape of pictures) crossed my mind I was simply unable to verbalise them –I felt suppressed and overwhelmed.

 

  Witt-Gen-Stein

 

However, my inability to verbalise does not always come as negative experience. I gather I am becoming a bit more introspective than before. Here comes the oft-quoted aphorism by Wittgenstein: “(1) What can be said at all can be said clearly; (2) and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.” The corollary for me is obvious in an intensified case: since I am not able to do (1) in English then I have to opt for (2).

At least I hesitated a lot until I really wanted to say something really important (in one verbal form or another). To some extent, I, as a foreigner, was more likely to be discouraged from uttering “unassailable and definitive” truthful propositions which are said to be tautological and nonsensical as well. This happens not because I choose to do so but my lack of linguistic ability prevents me. (Ignorance is bliss?)

 

On a day of 1930, Wittgenstein felt very distressed and said to his friend Drury:

I was walking about in Cambridge and passed a bookshop, and in the window were portraits of Russell, Freud, and Einstein. A little further on, in a music shop, I saw portraits of Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin. Comparing these portraits I felt intensely the terrible degeneration that had come over the human spirit in the course of only a hundred years.

(Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. Rush Rhees Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 112) Trivia: A literary critic challenges how Wittgenstein can compare Einstein to Chopin?!

“I simply couldnt learn to swim in shallow water!”

Bernard Shaw On Swimming or Learning to Swim at the age of 90

 

 

Q: You spent a boyhood which was a singularly free and imaginative one. You taught yourself to swim in Killiney Bay?

A: Yes, I found that I simply couldnt learn to swim in shallow water, for my feet would insist upon touching the ground. So I went to what is called the White Rock, and jumped in where I could not reach the bottom–and thereby was forced to swim ashore.

An interview by James Whelan (1946), in Bernard Shaw, The Matter with Ireland, Rupert Hart-Davis, Soho Qure London, 1962, p.290

Who moved my RSS feed?

Of course, it is far easier to generate new content every day by aggregating other people’s writings into your own website than writing them yourself. Then RSS is a, if not the, right technology to achieve this. (Praval recommends this old article which is a nice and straightforward account of RSS) However, it would be a cliché to say RSS is a double-edged sword which can be used either for good or bad. RSS Feed Hijacking has already been real and present, spawning much discussion among bloggers/podcasters in the past couple of weeks. It is not unconceivable that the very new RSS Hijacking techinques will be prevalent in future days and eventually take over its elder brother of Domain Name Hijacking in the family of cyber-squatting.

Colette Vogele, an American IP lawyer who is representing Vegan.com (the allegedly first victim of RSS Hijacking in history) proffered four points to fight against RSS squatting:

1. You should check all the podcast directories and search engines to be sure that their RSS feeds are pointing to your official URL/RSS feed. (Though, in iTunes and possibly others, this information may not be readily available or obvious.)

2. If you learn of a hijacking, you can write to the hijacker and demand that she or he stop their conduct.

3. You can also write to the podcast directories and search engines to point out the bad actor’s conduct.

4. And, of course, you can consult a lawyer about possible claims against the hijacker.

This is an excitingly (sadly) new area both for lawyers and podcasters. (Wikipedia does not have any entry on RSS Hijiacking. Why not start one? ) I will alos have a close look at its development.

Seneca: On the Shortness of Life

“Life is Long If You Know How to Use It!” Last night, Matteo, my flatmate, before leaving for Italy, gave me this book by Seneca (c. 5 BC -AD 65) as a Christmas gift.

It is a small book with big ideas: how to come to terms with the brevity of life? The reading is stimulating and reminds me of Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations” and Foucault’s the technology of the self quite often. I really like the kind of the books worth reading at any age from one’s tender 10 to ripe 80. The places of reading them are not restricted either: they can be consumed at an unimaginitive desk, or in a moving train, or in a tediously long waiting queue, or even in a toilet allowing one to be highly pensive and self-reflective! Thank you, Matteo, and I also enjoyed quite a lot discussing “Modernism as a problem” with you in our funny little kitchen in Butlers Wharfs, though conclusions were hardly reached on most occasions.

It is not that we have a short time to live , but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.

From: Seneca: On the Shortness of Life, pp.1-2 Trans. by C D N Costa / Cover Design: Phil Baines for the Great Ideas series, 2004, Penguin Group, 1997

Books purchased

I bought a number of lovely books including the following one at Judd Bookstore this afternoon. Very reasonable price!

 

After Dr. Johnson was given a pension of 300 pound a year (coming out of the Secret Service Fund) , he was also proffered the privilege to use George III’ library:

The royal librarian had allowed Johnson to use the King’s library as often as he liked, which was brave of him because Johnson was notoriously destructive of other people’ books.

quote from : Dr. Johnson’s London, Life in London 1740-1770 by Liza Picard, “a lawyer by trade” and “an inquisitive practical woman by character” (Preface & p.292)

Birth

 

This is an identical site of

http://viosym.blogsome.com/ 

Birth: Desymbolisation is Evil!

A Violent Symbol is born.  It is violent and yet nothing more than  a symbol. But it only wants to be  modest or modestly violent, when it was thrown into this huge and hugely disenchanted land. “Go back to the Symbol!”,  it said; I  agreed with a lopsided grin–blessed  is somehow the place which is  bewitched.
–Way OUT–

 

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.