Новости за 27.05.2016

Do we know our own beliefs better than we know those of other people? Generally yes, but it is a difference of degree, rather than a different kind of knowledge. To know other people’s beliefs we observe what they do and listen to their outer speech. To know our own beliefs we observe what we ourselves do and listen to our inner speech. We have more information about ourselves because we are watching and listening all the time. But it is easy to be mistaken about one’s own knowledge, even of one’s... Читать дальше...

A rediscovered eye-witness account tells how white mobs with machine guns and fire-bombs killed 300 black people and burned down black neighbourhoods in Tulsa 95 years ago. The trigger for the rampage was a newspaper report of an assault; the underlying cause was white anger at the prosperity of the African-American business community, thanks to oil wells. The riots “aren’t mentioned in most American history textbooks, and many people don’t know that they happened”

Because Westerners know little of Russia’s long history of involvement in the Middle East, going back to the Middle Ages, they were taken by surprise when President Vladimir Putin intervened expertly in Syria. Russia’s conspicuous return to the region forms a logical part of its broader push to regain status as a world power. It wants to be respected as an actor in the Middle East, but not to displace America as the main foreign power. It knows well the dangers of getting in too deep

Edwin Land was a genius at building his brand as well as his product. He made the bridge between Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs. Polaroid had affect. You would never talk of “a shoebox full of Kodaks”. The company failed for want of execution, not of insight. It saw digital coming and applied for patents in 1980. But Polaroid culture was so perfectionist, and so accustomed to dominance, that the firm didn’t get a digital camera to market until 1996 — by which time it had 40 competitors

Robert Oppenheimer was “an enormously charming man” capable of “really horrible things”. In his youth he placed a poisoned apple on the desk of his university tutor and attempted to strangle his best friend. His biographer Ray Monk attributes these actions to “temporary insanity”. But Oppenheimer never lost his enthusiasm for making enemies. When Freeman Dyson was organising a festchrift he “found it difficult to round up prominent physicists willing to speak on Oppenheimer’s behalf”

Adjusting for inflation, thalers, ducats, stipends, sinecures etc — probably yes you do, if these low-sounding figures are correct. JS Bach earned a salary equivalent to £28,000 in today’s terms, plus room and board, as a schoolmaster in Leipzig. Scott Joplin earned £10,959 in the year of Maple Street Rag. In his five years as musical director at Powick Country lunatic asylum Edward Elgar earned £3,362 annually, topped up with occasional freelance payments for dance arrangements

Introductory article from a survey of migration, all of which bears reading (this piece, I believe, is outside the Economist paywall). The world’s displaced population stands at a post-war record of 60m, including 20m seeking refuge in other countries. Rich countries have bound themselves to provide relatively well for refugees in theory; but they struggle first to keep refugees out, and then to deny them refugee status. The result is a rising stock of forced migrants living semi-permanently without... Читать дальше...