Also, I don't understand the use of "though" at the end of point 1.
On point 3, I believe a few years ago San Francisco came out as the U.S. city least safe for pedestrians.
1 - I ended up reading my guidebook on the way here. That took more of my time than I expected. I also watched the crappy in-flight movie (Fun With Dick and Jane) because I started to get tired and didn't want to sleep on the plane, screwing up my internal clock. I bought The Pleasure of My Company (reader suggestion!) for the trip back. My hotel is next to a used bookstore so I'll probably go in there and grab something else, too.
2 - I suppose the "though" means that, while the SFPD look unprofessional compared to the NYPD, they at least get the satisfaction of being hotter. And, if you haven't noticed, I tend to use the word "though" unnecessarily a lot.
Also - more taxidermy by that artist here, although the site doesn't do her stuff justice.
3 - Really? I can't see why. It seems much safer for pedestrians than D.C. or NYC.
Oh, and speaking of D.C., BART and the DC Metro are doppelgangers. I was so weirded out when the same "stand clear of the doors please" voice came on.
It may be safer now, but there were a bunch of fatalities around 1999 or 2000. It was all over the local news for a while.
I'm pretty sure the DC Metro was consciously modeled after BART, but I think DC had the door voice before BART did.
I love Evolution. (See?) I even have one of their t-shirts, though by now it's incredibly old. Was going to go back when I was in nyc, but I felt the bloom might be off the rose.
I didn't know about Paxton Gate, even though I see now that I must have walked past it pretty frequently. Near the Pirate Supply store, I see.
Also, I jaywalk wherever I am, whenever I think I can get away with it.
In fact, Paxton Gate is right next door to the pirate supply store.
I count any crossing of an intersection where I don't get hit by a car as a success.
Really, I don't get the point of banning jaywalking. If you don't get hit by the car, does it matter?
Cala, you are very popular here. I keep passing establishments named in your honor.
Also, lest you all think I'm being lame and hanging out in my hotel room, I am in fact sitting in a bar full of people who are drinking beer, blogging on their laptops, and not talking to one another. It is quite odd.
Ever time I walk across a street following a J-shaped path, I end up in someone's parking space.
I just received a notification that there is some group planning a march to stop the genocide in Darfur on the same day as the immigration marches (May 1). I wonder if this even came up during the brain-storming sessions.
Hans Kung apparently held a major interreligious dialogue event on September 11, 2001. He was angry because coverage of the terrorist attacks meant that no one heard a word about his conference. It seems to me that this Darfur thing is bound to meet the same fate.
Cala Food! Cala Eat! Cala Drink! CALA MAKE MERRY!
I'm pretty sure the DC Metro was consciously modeled after BART
That matches my recollection. The *prices* certainly weren't... (I was taken aback at just how cheap the Metro is in comparison.)
If it is big, I think that's going to suck a lot more for a city like San Francisco
I'll bet it will be huge, in San Francisco and everywhere else. That's what they're saying about the Chicago rally. My law firm, always enlightened (and with a large immigration practice) offered the day off to anyone who's going to it. And yes, there's a Darfur rally the same day.
Oh right, Adam's in Chicago, as I am. Duh. We probably got the same e-mail.
Oh! And I had a nice chat with the people from the pirate supply store and said that they have heard a number of anecdotes from customers about a reemergence of scurvy among crystal meth users. I googled "scurvy" and "meth" and didn't find anything related in the news or medical literature so you heard it here first.
13 - that might be because it's May 1.
Googling reveals some relationship between heroin and scurvy, and drug abuse (in general) and scurvy.
My cousin's college roommate got scurvy her fresman year, due mainly to the fact that her diet consisted solely of pizza and beer. As a result of hearing this tale, I was careful to drink a glass of orange juice a day all through college. I remain scurvy-free.
Will no one indulge my vodka-induced volubility? Ought I—perhaps—have remained elsewhere?
dear ben, if you are really feeling alcoholically voluble and it isn't way too late for you in your other time zone, feel free to translate the sentence that is making my flu-addled brain hurt right now, from a translation i have to finish today.
extra points to translations by people who don't know french.
Notre époque découvrirait ainsi par défaut, c’est à dire comme l’objet d’un combat, et comme ce qui demande soin et vigilance parce que cela fait défaut, comme ce qui doit être cultivé et requiert en cela une nouvelle culture, l’inconditionné comme la condition sans condition de toute raison, de tout motif autrement dit.
ow ow ow.
babelfish translates the above as follows:
Our time would discover thus by defect, i.e. like the object of a combat, and like what requires care and vigilance because that been lacking, as what must be cultivated and requires in that a new culture, inconditionné like the condition without condition of any reason, of any reason in other words.
Unfortunately, that's about as incomprehensible to me as the original.
hey, I wanna play. My French is really crappy.
Our epoch would discover in this manner by default, that is to say, as the object of a battle, like that which asks for care and attention because its lacking, like that which must be cultivated and needed,* in this fashion a new culture, the unconditioned like the condition without condition of all reason, of every motive otherwise stated.
*I can only make any sense of this sentence if I insert a comma there, so I'm going to pretend there was one.
Oops. I think Babelfish is smarter than me. Hmm.
Okay, I wrote out an entire translation and realized it still made no more sense than Babelfish's. Why do French writers get to act like they're writing in the 17th century?
See, I got my conjugations mixed up. I was thinking that was a past participle of of required. "In any other words" is also an improvement. "requires" is better than "asks for," in contest, sigh. Also, I meant to say defect, I did! I just got mixed up, but I was thinking defect. I'm not sure about the rest though. mmf! should adjudicate. I think it's wrong to use "reason" for both. I also think "in that" for "en cela" is wrong. I think "that which" is superior to "what" just because it's consistent with the ridiculous style.
That leaves me with:
Our epoch would discover in this manner by defect, that is to say, as the object of a battle, like that which requires care and attention because it's lacking, like that which must be cultivated, and requires in this fashion a new culture, the unconditioned like the condition without condition of all reason, of any motive put in other words.
Although my first translation had the virtue that by misunderstanding "requiert" I gave "would discover" a direct object, and now it doesn't have one. Hmm.
Does Tia's second make sense in context, mmf!? It seems the best we're capable of, but it still sounds like crazy talk to me.
I think it's saying that the epoch's culture was formed in response to deficits in whatever was there before, and that this process was somewhat unconscious and instinctual, despite the actors' conscious reason and motives.
The problem I feel with much of French cultural criticism (Foucault excepted) is that if you increase the syntactical clarity of the statements and lose the similes and analogies, the results are either self-evident or ridiculous. (Clearly, I am not to be taken seriously since I recently made a good chunk of change writing brief clarifications of several French theorists.)
this is what i have finally come up with:
Our epoch discovers the unconditioned as the condition without condition of all reason, of all motifs, in other words—and we discover it as the object of a combat, as something which requires care and vigilance because it is lacking, and must therefore be cultivated and requires a new culture in order to be cultivated.
but yeah, crazy talk. the subject of this essay is the emotional/spiritual side that was missing from the EU constitution that got rejected last year -- the lack of what he calls a "European dream" vs the American dream. would you have ever guessed??
mwah. thanks for thinking through this with me.
comment 32 is, uh, not untrue in this case.
venting. helps.
one last self-indulgence, a final kicker, although i already more or less translated this one:
Ce qui est ici en question met en question précisément parce c'est la question de ce qui n'existe pas, et de ce qui ne peut que demeurer sous la forme de la question, y insister en consistant, et comme une épreuve, comme l'épreuve de ce qui ne saurait être prouvé, ne pouvant qu'être éprouvé, constituant en cela l'expérience : comme l'improbable.
My French is unreliable (I would definitely have guessed "par defaut" as "by default") but:
What we have here as a question put as a question precisely because it is the queestion of what doesn't exist, and what cannot just remain* hidden** beneath the form of a question, but*** insists on constituting [that form?], and as a proof, as the proof of what only knew**** how to be proved, could only be proved, by constituting experience: as the improbable.
Feh. Babelfish does better, I'm sure.
*had to look this word up
**this is added, but I don't know how else to do anything with the 'sous'
***also added;
****or should this be 'did not know'?
Ce qui est ici en question met en question précisément parce c'est la question de ce qui n'existe pas, et de ce qui ne peut que demeurer sous la forme de la question, y insister en consistant, et comme une épreuve, comme l'épreuve de ce qui ne saurait être prouvé, ne pouvant qu'être éprouvé, constituant en cela l'expérience : comme l'improbable.
What is here in question challenges [puts in question] precisely because [you left out a "que" here, looks like] it is the question of what does not exist, and of what can only remain under the form of the question, insisting on it while consisting, and as an ordeal [I assume this is Derrida -- "épreuve" is the word he uses to characterize Abraham's "test" of sacrificing Isaac], as the ordeal of what cannot be proven, what can only be undergone, constituting in that [in this latter, in the undergoing] experience: the improbable [but also probably punning on "proof" somehow].
The "sous la forme" is probably a reference to something like "sub specie aeternitatis." But maybe I'm just hearing too much Kierkegaard in this little paragraph.
Okay, if it's last year, then it can't be Derrida. I'm a fool.
"Notre époque découvrirait ainsi par défaut, c’est à dire comme l’objet d’un combat, et comme ce qui demande soin et vigilance parce que cela fait défaut, comme ce qui doit être cultivé et requiert en cela une nouvelle culture, l’inconditionné comme la condition sans condition de toute raison, de tout motif autrement dit."
Our epoque will have discovered thus by default, that is to say as the object of battle, and as what demands care and vigilance because it is lacking, as what must be cultivated and [what] requires in that [cultivation] a new culture--[it will have discovered] the unconditioned as the condition without condition of all reason, of every ground [probably a reference to Heidegger here, but then of course the cute little "reduction of philosophy to poetry" thing], in other words.
If it's not Derrida, is it Jean-Luc Nancy?
If you don't like all the wordplay, Alain Badiou is another one to check out. He writes stuff specifically so that it will be easy to translate, as a principled stand against the new barbarism of identitarianism.
Sorry to leave fourteen comments in a row -- I'm just sitting here waiting for my girlfriend to pick me up for something, and I don't know what's taking her so long. Plus I haven't been able to deploy the French skills for a while now.
Sorry, it's actually "would have."
What the hell? Is there a traffic jam or something?
I mean, God, it's Sunday morning. Even with the Dan Ryan construction, it can't be that bad.
Precisely the Dan Ryan construction was the culprit! I am off!
(If not Nancy, at least Lacoue-Labarthe -- please!)
I'm not happy with translating "objet d'un combat" as "object of battle." Doesn't the French suggest more the idea of the battle's goal, or mission, or reason, or booty?
Yeah, there are implications of "purpose." "Objet" could even mean "subject" -- like "subject of a conversation." If we're allowed to be a little loose, perhaps "the stakes of a struggle"?
"decouvrir par defaut, comme l'objet d'un combat" suggests that the interpretive equivalent might even be "outcome of battle," though that would be a strong version.
Becks, was it you that left a filing cabinet on the flower tub outside my house? (18th St., not far from Paxton Gate.) I'd move it myself, but my ankle is messed up.
36 -- I think "improbable" puns on "proof" pretty nicely -- "probabil-" is "can be proven" before it acquires the meaning of "likely".
I don't think that "outcome" fits well either with the possible meanings of "objet" or with the meaning of the passage. "Purpose" is the closest to "outcome" that the Robert has.
I kind of wanted to translate it as "a site of struggle," but that doesn't really work either.
I feel like "objet" should be something like "spoils," but that may just be because I'm thinking about battle.
I took a couple of freelance jobs translating French art journalism into English, and I nearly exploded with anger at the stylish lyricisms that pass as criticism within the contemporary French academy.
It's very possible that whoever wrote our original "objet d'un combat" doesn't bloody deserve all the consideration we've given his thoughts. Oh, and I believe it's a "him."
yep, it's a him, and no, not derrida or nancy. he's someone who used to be big in france but his star has been falling here, while it is in the process of rising in the US. i think i'll let him remain anonymous, but watch out those of you in media studies!! (his main field in the past)
and thanks, i think you were right about the "par default" adam. i got thrown by all the "default"s floating around in the previous sentences.
thank god that one is out of the hopper. i think they should send me a little personalized crack pipe along with payment for that essay.
Oh please tell me nobody is taking Virilio seriously.
nope. he's more recent than either of them. though it's nice to think you guys imagine i might be paid to translate baudrillard. :)
have got very poor internet access now, so you'll be hearing little out of me for the rest of the summer. bye!