| Jag bor i Berkeley i Kalifornien. Jobbar med teoretisk fysik. Lyssnar på musik. Förutom det intresserad av politik, filosofi, vetenskap och snö.
Jag är administratör sen december 2006.
Jag sysslar mest med två saker här:
...och så lite andra grejer ibland. Saker att göra.
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises ... in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.”
— Francis Bacon, Novum Organum.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.
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Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.”
— George Orwell, Politics and the English language.
When a disciple asked Confucius what he would do first if a king were to entrust him with a kingdom, he did not hesitate to say: "My first task would be to rectify the names." Explaining what he meant to his perplexed disciple, he said: "If the names are not correct and do not match realities, language has no object. If language has no object, action becomes impossible — and therefore all human affairs disintegrate."”
— Konfucius, från Analekterna.
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