Word: abstractions
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...about the economy to make people smile? I don't know about making people smile, but I think there's an analogy to be made about connection between money and language. When money gets too far away from actual, physical, real equity and property it gets too abstract and too distantly derived and then suddenly it's not worth anything anymore. And the same is true of language. When we get down into the roots of language, we're dealing with something that's not abstract, but that you can invest in and use. I think money...
...Sarkozy’s opinions are disturbing. We should ask ourselves if it is possible to continue to evaluate literary achievement on a common and universal metric without in some way disadvantaging writers from nations with newly emerging literatures. And even if the question of abstract “fairness” seems irrelevant to the ultimate goal of the Nobel—which is to recognize superior lifetime achievement in the field of letters—that irrelevance renders the question of whether or not one can assign a national identity to any contemporary writing no less interesting...
...been seen in nearly a decade. The shift is one that will define a cultural vocabulary for the next four, if not eight years, and it has less to do with the cramping Federal Reserve and the frantic Dow Jones and more to do with bear attacks and the abstract idea of “truthiness.” That’s right: every vote cast on Nov. 4 will be a vote to determine the future of American political humor, whether it be a brittle rehash of the stale conservative robot-rhetoric gags, or a softball jabbing...
...Holocaust or Khmer Rouge, and pieced together and shaded with the green of “Save Darfur” T-shirts. But in Horacio Castellanos Moya’s “Senselessness,” genocide—real genocide—is far from this abstract idea; it’s rooted in gritty details. Moya does not try to understand “genocide,” but rather examines the notion of genocide as it exists, filtered through one person’s psyche. The result is a shockingly detailed, brutally credible, and unexpectedly comedic...
...prepare students for careers in law. A pass/fail grading system is more in line with this mission, as it qualitatively evaluates students on the basis of whether they have obtained sufficient mastery of a subject to be prepared to engage with it in the real world, not against some abstract standard of perfection. Surely, the elimination of grades will enhance, rather than diminish, the quality of education offered at HLS. In between college experiences spent cramming for LSATs and potential futures working 80-hour weeks in a desperate attempt to make partner, it’s nice that Harvard...