quinta-feira, 30 de agosto de 2018
Faz sua escolha
https://www.facebook.com/589393794777592/photos/pcb.599783177071987/599782993738672/?type=3&theater
Falar línguas estrangeiras
"According to Pliny the Elder, the Greco-Persian king Mithridates VI, who ruled twenty-two nations in the first century B.C., “administered their laws in as many languages, and could harangue in each of them.” Plutarch claimed that Cleopatra “very seldom had need of an interpreter,” and was the only monarch of her Greek dynasty fluent in Egyptian. Elizabeth I also allegedly mastered the tongues of her realm—Welsh, Cornish, Scottish, and Irish, plus six others.
"With a mere ten languages, Shakespeare’s Queen does not qualify as a hyperpolyglot; the accepted threshold is eleven. The prowess of Giuseppe Mezzofanti (1774-1849) is more astounding and better documented. Mezzofanti, an Italian cardinal, was fluent in at least thirty languages and studied another forty-two, including, he claimed, Algonquin. In the decades that he lived in Rome, as the chief custodian of the Vatican Library, notables from around the world dropped by to interrogate him in their mother tongues, and he flitted as nimbly among them as a bee in a rose garden. Lord Byron, who is said to have spoken Greek, French, Italian, German, Latin, and some Armenian, in addition to his immortal English, lost a cursing contest with the Cardinal and afterward, with admiration, called him a “monster.” Other witnesses were less enchanted, comparing him to a parrot. But his gifts were certified by an Irish scholar and a British philologist, Charles William Russell and Thomas Watts, who set a standard for fluency that is still useful in vetting the claims of modern Mezzofantis: Can they speak with an unstilted freedom that transcends rote mimicry?"
quarta-feira, 29 de agosto de 2018
Eça de Queiroz
“Numa palavra, o deficit quer antes uma atenuação que uma salvação; a atenuação liberta-nos a todos; a salvação mata os vindouros; o desleixo mata-nos a nós e aos vindouros; se vamos agravar o deficit, se não andamos prudentemente na questão financeira, se lançamos indevidamente impostos, se não cortamos certas despesas, se não coibimos certas necessidades, preparamos a bancarrota para as gerações infelizes que hão-de vir”
Eça de Queiroz
no jornal Distrito de Évora, 1867
no jornal Distrito de Évora, 1867
Totalitarismo na China
"Xinjiang is now a totalitarian police state of historic proportions — it is widely cited as one of the most heavily policed places in the world today. Public security budgets have skyrocketed and futuristic surveillance systems have been pioneered in the region. As a result, over 20 percent of all criminal arrests in China happens in Xinjiang, despite the fact that the region contains only 1.5 percent of the country’s population."
"In the camps, officials seek to brainwash p...
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Leszek Kolakowski
Um grande historiador, já desaparecido, escreveu um magnífico obituário quando da morte de um grande filósofo polonês, crítico do marxismo.
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