Nepenthe

For years, foreigners in China have delighted in the loopy English translations that appear on the nation's signs. They range from the offensive ("Deformed Man," outside toilets for the handicapped) to the sublime (on park lawns, "Show Mercy to the Slender Grass"). Last week, Beijing city officials unveiled a plan to stop the laughter. With hordes of foreign visitors expected in town for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing wants to cleanse its signs of translation nonsense. For the next eight months, 10 teams of linguistic monitors will patrol the city's parks, museums, subway stations and other public places searching for gaffes to fix. Already, fans of the genre are mourning the end of an era, and some Web sites dedicated to it have seen traffic spike. The bewildering signs were "one of the great things we want to show people visiting us," says financial-services consultant Josh Kurtzig, a Washington native who lives in Beijing. Correcting them is...

RESIDENTS of a remote Chinese village are hoping DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends, that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity. Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi Desert, more than 300 kilometres from the nearest city. They are seeking an explanation for the unusual number of local people with Western characteristics - green eyes, big noses, and even blond hair - mixed with traditional Chinese features. "I really think we are descended from the Romans," said Song Guorong, 48, who with his wavy hair, 1.8-metre frame and strikingly long, hooked nose stands out from his short, round-faced colleagues. Studies claiming Liqian has Roman ancestry have greatly excited the impoverished county in which it is situated. The village is now overlooked by a pillared portico, in the hope of attracting tourists. The town's link with Rome ...

I have long been preoccupied by the problem of evil. Not being a philosopher, I have no satisfactory explanation of evil to offer, nor even, indeed, a satisfactory definition of it. For me, evil is rather like poetry was for Doctor Johnson: easier to say what it isn’t than what it is. All I know for certain is that there’s a lot of it about - evil, I mean, not poetry. Why? Is the heart of man irredeemably evil, or at any rate inclined to evil? What are the conditions in which evil may flourish? My medical practice, admittedly of a peculiar kind, in a slum and in a prison, convinced me of the prevalence of evil. I was surprised. I had spent a number of years in countries wracked by civil wars and thereby deprived of even minimal social order, precisely the conditions in which one might expect evil to be widely committed, if only because in such situations the worst come to the fore. But nothing prepared me for the sheer malignity, the joy in doing wrong, of so many of my compatriots...

Canadian scientists have found astonishing evidence that the lifelong use of two languages can help delay the onset of dementia symptoms by four years compared to people who are monolingual. There has been much interest and growing scientific literature examining how lifestyle factors such as physical activity, education and social engagement may help build "cognitive reserve" in later years of life. Cognitive reserve refers to enhanced neural plasticity, compensatory use of alternative brain regions, and enriched brain vasculature, all of which are thought to provide a general protective function against the onset of dementia symptoms. Now scientists with the Rotman Research Institute at the Baycrest Research Centre for Aging and the Brain have found the first evidence that another lifestyle factor, bilingualism, may help delay dementia symptoms. The study is published in the February 2007 issue of Neuropsychologia (Vol.45, No.2). "We are pretty dazzled by the results,...

Buildings in the United States consume 68% of the country’s electricity, produce 40% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and use nearly 40% of its energy according to statistics compiled by the US Green Building Council. It is not surprising then that a growing number of art museums in the US are incorporating sustainable technologies into their multi-million dollar expansions. Yet for every ­environmentally conscious museum, there are several leading art institutions that have given limited attention to ecological issues. A number of museum professionals have never even considered the idea of environmentally sound systems. Some cite the requirements of light and temperature sensitive ­collections as incompatible with green design, while others are put off by the five to ten percent higher costs of environmentally friendly buildings. According to Ric Bell, executive director of the American Institute of Architects in New York: “When you talk to museum directors,...

Postcards from Cheryl - Thanx ;)

Postcards from Kseniya - spassiba ;)

Let's talk about the most important interview you'll ever be granted. Seated at a well-appointed table, you mull the choice between crab cakes and seared tuna, but truly you are sorting through a mental repertoire of wisecracks and war stories. If you are secure in your improvisational charms, you might use this moment to appraise the cleavage or cufflinks of the woman or man across the table. There's no predicting discussion topics, but you can be sure they'll pertain to your marital status, extracurricular activities, and your job. (There are no verboten questions at this interview.) You are applying for a new and expanded life. Or, you simply want a one-night pass that can be renewed indefinitely. And you need to know whether your dining companion is up to the task. A date makes us both spectator and performer at a two-ring circus: We troll for wit, kindness, curiosity, and "chemistry," hoping that we radiate these same attributes in the right amounts...

The Sixties generation thought everything should be free. But only a few decades later the hippies were selling water at rock festivals for $5 a bottle. But for me the price of “free love” was even higher. I sacrificed what should have been the best years of my life for the black lie of free love. All the sex I ever had — and I had more than my fair share — far from bringing me the lasting relationship I sought, only made marriage a more distant prospect. And I am not alone. Count me among the dissatisfied daughters of the sexual revolution, a new counterculture of women who are realising that casual sex is a con and are choosing to remain chaste instead. I am 37, and like millions of other girls, was born into a world which encouraged young women to explore their sexuality. It was almost presented to us as a feminist act. In the 1960s the future Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown famously asked: Can a woman have sex like a man? Yes, she answered because “like a man, [a woman] is a...

Romania wants to buy back a mediaeval fortress known as "Dracula's Castle" from the former royal family of Habsburg, who won it from the state last year after a long legal battle, officials said on Monday. The Bran castle, whose jagged towers and remote surroundings earned it its famous name, was one of the first prominent pieces of real estate given back by Bucharest under the new European Union member's troubled property restitution law. The Habsburgs lost it after World War Two when Romania's communist regime chased them out of the country. "We will go to Vienna to negotiate the deal with the owners," Aristotel Cancescu, head of the local council in Transylvania where the castle is located, told Reuters. Cancescu said the Habsburg family wants 60 million euros for the castle. Perched among forests on the foothills of the Carpathian mountains, the Bran Castle is a major tourist attraction in Romania. Despite the name, the fortress was neve...

Has Anita Roddick sold out? Absolutely not, she says. Handing The Body Shop over to L'Oréal was the smart thing to do . Anita Roddick, 64, founded The Body Shop in 1976 and built it into a global brand with an ethical reputation. Last March, she sold her stake to cosmetics giant L'Oréal in a £652m takeover. Have you sold out? I've done exactly what the original staff in The Body Shop would expect. I've sold the company, I've sold my shares and given my money away - that's exactly what the system was about. I felt personally let down [when you sold to L'Oréal] Well, I don't know if you were personally let down. I think there is a sense of purism that says you cannot grow, you cannot advance. You should have been personally let down when I sold to the stock market, but you weren't because you never saw anything changing. I think there's a sense of "here's another good institution being bought by the French", but then the Brits nev...

WHEN he moved there from France in 1940, Henry Miller, who had grown up in Brooklyn, called Big Sur his “first real home in America.” Running from Carmel, 150 miles south of San Francisco , to San Simeon, Big Sur's mass of tight mountains pushes brazenly against the Pacific swell. Kelp forests sway at the feet of rugged sea cliffs. Deep valleys shelter some of the southernmost redwoods. The only way through this fastness is along winding, breathtaking California Route 1. Nearly two decades after settling in, Miller wrote “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch,” a collection of fond, philosophical sketches that expressed a nostalgia for the place born of his fear that Big Sur's magic could only wane as more people came to visit. Certainly, summers can be a crush here, a paradise lost of RV traffic jams and overcrowded facilities. Yet in winter, nature reasserts itself. Whales, elephant seals and monarch butterflies arrive after travels that have taken them thousan...

Danke, Astrid ;)

'Gawain,' said the green knight, 'By God, I'm glad the favour I've called for will fall from your fist. You've perfectly repeated the promise we've made and the terms of the contest are crystal clear. Except for one thing: you must solemnly swear that you'll seek me yourself; that you'll search me out to the ends of the earth to earn the same blow as you'll dole out today in this decorous hall.' 'But where will you be? Where's your abode? You're a man of mystery, as God is my maker. Which court do you come from and what are you called? There is knowledge I need, including your name, then by wit I'll work out the way to your door and keep to our contract, so cross my heart.' 'But enough at New Year. It needs nothing more,' said the war-man in green to worthy Gawain. 'I could tell you the truth once you've taken the blow; if you smite me smartly I could spell out the facts ...