Category: English

Paper: Does Terrorism Really Work? Evolution in the Conventional Wisdom since 9/11

Bruce Schneier points to a new paper by Max Abrams titled “Does Terrorism Really Work? Evolution in the Conventional Wisdom since 9/11“. From the abstract:

The basic narrative of bargaining theory predicts that, all else equal, anarchy favors concessions to challengers who demonstrate the will and ability to escalate against defenders. For this reason, post-9/11 political science research explained terrorism as rational strategic behavior for non-state challengers to induce government compliance given their constraints. Over the past decade, however, empirical research has consistently found that neither escalating to terrorism nor with terrorism helps non-state actors to achieve their demands. In fact, escalating to terrorism or with terrorism increases the odds that target countries will dig in their political heels, depriving the non-state challengers of their given preferences. These empirical findings across disciplines, methodologies, as well as salient global events raise important research questions, with implications for counterterrorism strategy.

I hope my university has access to it …

Introspective and Intellectually Cautious

Hilarious quote comparing medieval Europe to Al-Andalus:

(talking about how Muslim scholars studied ancient Greek philosophy and the medieval Christian’s suspicion towards pagan texts)

“Set against this vibrant Islamic culture Europe can appear an introspective and intellectually cautious place.”

Muhahaha … “introspective and intellectually cautious” … this cracked me up 😀

It’s blue, wait … green, no … actually it’s 青

There are certain concepts that don’t translate well over language borders. It is difficult to convey a nuance of something to someone which she is not able to conceptually grasp (be it mentally or linguistically).

There are obvious things like Phonems (everyone loves those 😉 ) …

  • “L” vs. “R” in some Asian languages
  • “B” vs. “V” in Spanish
  • Turkish “ı” and Korean “ㅡ” ([ɯ])
  • [x] vs. [ç] in German “ch”

… and less obvious things like … colors. 🙂 The most interesting thing is that almost all languages seem to make a black<->white and a red/yellow<->green/blue distinction. I came across a Wikipedia article talking about distinguishing blue from green in language as not all of them do. Another interesting concept that was described is that in some languages it is also hard to distinguish blue from black. There are studies showing the interdependence of color concepts:

According to Brent Berlin and Paul Kay‘s 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, distinct terms for brown, purple, pink, orange and grey will not emerge in a language until the language has made a distinction between green and blue. In their account of the development of color terms the first terms to emerge are those for white/black (or light/dark), red and green/yellow.

– Wikipedia

😀

Thri…

Customer: (buys a decent set at a breakfast place in Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport)

Tenant: Thri … ahh … (then silently points at the number on the cash register)

Customer: (hands over a $100 bill)

Tenant: (silently leaves to get change, but doesn’t tell them)

CHAOS!!! 😉

Why would anyone with no workable knowledge of English (because she even struggled with the 3 -> 30 transition 😀 ) work behind the counter at a busy food place in the international flights section?