Bathrobe's "Chinese, Japanese & Vietnamese Language Site" contemplates how the sentence "On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur", from Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), has been rendered in English (and Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese) by various translators:

All five English translations are a little different as each translator has made certain choices. The five English versions are:

Name of translator	English version
Woods 1943	It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
Cuffe 1995	You can only see things clearly with your heart.
Testot-Ferry 1995	It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly.
Wakeman 1997	We only really see with our hearts.
Howard 2000	One sees clearly only with the heart.

Of the five versions, Howard's is virtually a word-for-word translation from the French. The other translations vary in certain well-defined ways. Here we make a point-by-point comparison with the French and see where the translations vary...

I know jack about French (the only class in which I ever received a failing grade!), but the issues involved here are fascinating to the poet. These versions all have the same literal meaning, so what is difference? The big one is, I think, rhythm.
Woods and Testot-Ferry's versions have it: "It is ONLY with the HEART that ONE can see RIGHTly." "It is ONLY with one's HEART that ONE can see CLEARLYly." You can imagine singing these over four measures of 4/4, a line for a blues or rock song.

Try it: think of, say: "You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog":

You Ain't NOTHIN' But a HOUND Dog / ROCKIN' all the TIME

It is ONLY with the HEART / that ONE can see RIGHTly.

or even, for a more exact parallel, move the break:

It is ONLY with the HEART that / ONE can see RIGHTly.

The other translations just don't have that driving beat.

A slow Sunday, we're just hanging out in front of the Grind, chatting. Bad music from the bar a few doors up makes me feel better about my own abilities.

A little poetry to keep the fire going:

bulldog on the bricks
in front of the Daily Grind
lazy summer night

familiar faces
regulars greet each other
a Fells Point evening

heart stretches miles
waiting for her to return
anticipation

First rough draft of a new chapter for the book. (Almost up to 58,000 words total now!)

How Shall We Live?

One of the perks of being an American in Japan is that many people want to practice their English on you. Strangers will come up and start conversations, buy you drinks or even dinner, just to chat.

You get to meet a wide cross-section of people. Usually it's just small-talk, "Hello", "Where are you from?", and so on. But one Osaka businessman gave me a interesting lesson in ethics along with a round of drinks.

I had come to an jazz club (called, charmingly, "Rugtime") to see my friend Eric's band play. Eric is a former Buddhist monk and acupuncturist, current elementary school vice-principal and drummer in several bands. During a break Eric and I were chatting, and an older Nihonjin gentleman approached us and asked in (extremely good) English if he could buy us drinks. We of course readily assented.

We engaged in some of the usual small-talk, and our new friend asked us our impression of Osaka.

Now, Osaka has a unique place in Japanese culture. It's known as the home of both gangsters and of comedians, and for its unique dialect. It's the place where people cross the street against the light and park their bicycles right under the signs that say "No Bike Parking" -- compared to other Japanese cities, that's wild behavior.

Osaka has always been a mercantile hub, and because its merchants were key to keeping the imports of foreign luxury goods flowing during the centuries that the shoguns ruled Japan, they were always granted a little extra latitude. So Osaka never quite fell fully into line with the social norms enforced in Tokyo.

I tried to explain to this gentleman how I liked Osaka's energy, its hustle, its willingness to make a deal and get down to business.

His eyes lit up. "Yes, yes! Let's do business. Make everybody happy!"

The idea that a business transaction should leave everybody involved happy is something that we rarely hear these days, drowned out by talk of quarterly profits and shareholder value. Going deeper and considering not just the customer satisfaction but the effects of our business dealings on broader world, we see what Jacob Marley learned only after his death: Mankind was his business.

In Buddhism, this is the concept of "right livelihood", a big part of Buddhist ethics.

HealthDay (at U.S. News & World report) reports on research on the link between obesity and the loss of brain tissue:

For every excess pound piled on the body, the brain gets a little bit smaller.

That's the message from new research that found that elderly individuals who were obese or overweight had significantly less brain tissue than individuals of normal weight.

"The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than their healthy counterparts while [those of] overweight people looked 8 years older," said UCLA neuroscientist Paul Thompson, senior author of a study published online in Human Brain Mapping.

Much of the lost tissue was in the frontal and temporal lobe regions of the brain, the seat of decision-making and memory, among other things.

The San Francisco Examinier reports that drum circles "are emerging as an effective and respected treatment method for conditions such as stress and anxiety"

Medicinal drumming, formerly called “therapeutic drumming,” is a decade-old practice based on centuries­-­old wisdom, and is being used in The City to keep at-risk youths out of gangs and help trauma victims face their demons, among other uses, the city report said.

...

“It’s a really strong, good therapy that’s been very helpful in keeping kids off the street,” said Public Health spokeswoman Eileen Shields.

“Repetitive patterns influence brainwave activity,” Nunez said. “If a person is susceptible to seizures or perhaps psychosis or has been significantly traumatized, repetitive patterns can trigger some of that.”

The medical community is buying into the practice. Just recently, Nunez’ therapeutic drumming was recognized by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as a “culturally appropriate” and clinically proven practice.

The topic on 9/11 conspiracy theories came up in a Facebook thread today. Here are my posts from a discussion thread from Slashdot on this from last year, with a lot of links debunking conspiracy theory arguments. Quoted material is from other Slashdot posters (except as otherwise attributed), see the link for context.

Making multi minute phone calls from 30k ft with 2001 phone tech and no onboard plane phones (I already know its not possible, but would love to see them try)

You know that's not possible? So you tried it, eh? Please, post the details of your experiment.

Getting a 767 sim and attempt to fly the same path as pentagon plane

Why would you try it with a sim for a plane of a different model than the one that hit the Pentagon? Flight 77 (with a former co-worker of mine and his whole family on board) was a 757.

Of course, why let facts get in the way of a good batshit conspiracy theory?

why there was NO remainder of anything a passenger plane crash leaves in a crash site, and there were NO bodies, passenger belongings, pieces of bodies, ANYTHING but fairly intact TWO bodies in the scene.

Are you saying there were no bodies, or were you saying there were two?

Allyn E. Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers (a company involved in providing emergency engineering and post-collapse assistance) said "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts."

Of course, once you reach the level of batshitness you've achieved, you can simply ignore his testimony by saying "they got to him too!"

And I'm sure you simply don't accept the claim that the remains of 184 people were identified; surely "they" got to all 102 DNA analysts, sample processors, logistics staff, and administrative personnel at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. It's a DOD facility, after all.

Are you saying there was no debris from the plane? That's simply incorrect; hell, you can even see photos of a bunch of it at this batshit conspiracy site. And photos of the plane debris inside the building (where, in answer to your question about the lawn, most of it ended up, in agreement with conservation of momentum) can be seen at this somewhat less batshit crazy site. And some more photos here. And more photos, with amazingly detailed analysis, here

But I'm sure "they" got to the owners of all of those sites.

xkcd on how to be a tech support guru. Seems about right.

In this Bill Maher interview, Jeff Sharlet discusses "The Family", a cult that perverts Christianity into a "might makes right" philosophy, and whose members consider themselves the new "chosen ones" -- and include many conservative members of Congress. I especially like their comparison of themselves to the Mafia, and the quote about how "morality is for the little people".

Zelda's Inferno exercise: supported free-write on the phrase, "Why are you riding the crack?" (a strange out-of-context conversational extract...)

Why are you riding the crack
the crack between now and then
past and present
sane and crazy
the crack between here and there
perception and being
fire and smoke
the crack between land and sky
the crack between you and I
the crack between thinking and doing
between theory and reality
why are you riding the crack, not stepping clearly to one side
why are you in the muddled middle
why are you wobbling in the crack between

Jon Stewart talks with Betsy McCaughey, source of much of the FUD around healthcare reform:

Don't miss the even wackier second part: