El País como Oficio

EDUARDO ESCOBAR Jesucristo, Inc. 5 DE FEBRERO 2014 - 00:01 Las grandes ideas tienden a deformarse a medida que se alejan de sus lugares de origen y de su tiempo, sobre todo las descabelladas que son las más durables, y están relacionadas con grandes espantos. El cristianismo está fundado en el drama del sacrificio de un inocente. Y en el absurdo de su glorificación posterior. El cristiano espera después de la muerte como añadidura compensatoria la resurrección. Nada más, nada menos prometió el cristianismo. Y por un proceso oscuro, a partir de la hiperactividad de un exsargento, la promesa se enturbió y la alucinada esperanza de unos pescadores, un recaudador de impuestos y una muchacha de mala fama, derivó hacia los obispos coronados y las amarguras inevitables del poder. La reelaboración del mensaje pacífico de Jesús por san Pablo culminó en las cruzadas asesinas. Como si la desmesura de la propuesta de la eternidad hubiera estado condenada por necesidad al exceso: a...

(illustration by John Hersey) Why String Theory Still Offers Hope We Can Unify Physics Evidence that the universe is made of strings has been elusive for 30 years, but the theory's mathematical insights continue to have an alluring pull By  Brian Greene SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE |  SUBSCRIBE   JANUARY 2015 25K   629   21   16   624   92   29.3K   25K 629 16 624 21 29.3K In October 1984 I arrived  at Oxford University, trailing a large steamer trunk containing a couple of changes of clothing and about five dozen textbooks. I had a freshly minted bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard, and I was raring to launch into graduate study. But within a couple of weeks, the more advanced students had sucked the wind from my sails. Change fields now while you still can, many said. There’s nothing happening in fundamental physics. Then, just a couple of months later, the prestigious (if tamely titled) journal  P...

https://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_a_30_year_history_of_the_future?language=es

Ancient vandalism? EMILY GOWERS Kristina Milnor GRAFFITI AND THE LITERARY LANDSCAPE IN ROMAN POMPEII 336pp. Oxford University Press. £70 (US $125). 978 0 19 968461 8 Published: 10 December 2014 A nineteenth-century engraving of Roman graffiti We hope you enjoy this free piece from the  TLS , which is available every Thursday in print and via the  TLS  app. This week’s issue has Edmund White on the daemons of Tennessee Williams, Jonathan Benthall on religion and the roots of violence, David Wootton on forensic Shakespeare, Ruth Scurr on Andrea Levy’s islands, and much more. When Pompeii was rediscovered in the eighteenth century, no one was particularly interested in the rash of graffiti scratched on its walls. Excavators at the time were too busy carting away bulky and aesthetically pleasing works of art as trophies for the Bourbon kings. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century, and the advent of “romantic” archaeology, that one open-minded director, Fr...

24 de noviembre de 2012 Localizaron 550.000  dólares enterrados  Miguel Cardoza San Fernando de Apure Encontraron 550.000 dólares enterrados en el sector Guío, en las cercanías del río Meta, parroquia Codazzi, municipio Pedro Camejo del estado Apure, muy cerca de la línea fronteriza con Colombia y donde se han producido múltiples destrucciones de aeronaves presuntamente utilizadas para el narcotráfico. También se encontró un kilo de cocaína, un fusil HK 33KE, 4 cargadores, 2 camionetas Toyotas, un tractor , varios teléfonos satelitales, documentos, pendrives y varios equipos de comunicación. El dinero estaba envuelto en 6 paquetes con billetes de 100 para un total de 5.500 unidades, según la información suministrada por el general Edilberto Molina, subdirector de la Oficina Nacional Antidrogas. Molina explicó que se allanó un campamento de una organización internacional del narcotráfico que opera desde Colombia hasta Centroamérica.

How I Read Tim Parks Agostino Ramelli Copperplate engraving of a  machine designed for studying several books at once, 1588 How can we read better? Recently I  suggested the value of reading with a pen in the hand, ready to mark the pages at any moment. In return I received a score of emails from readers lamenting that even thus armed they felt the text was passing them by. “Tell us how you read and mark a novel,” more than one correspondent challenged me. Well, I would not want to be prescriptive. We all read from different places, different backgrounds, and my meeting with Proust or Woolf, or Lydia Davis or J. M. Coetzee, will not be yours, nor should it be. On the other hand I do believe reading is an active skill, an art even, certainly not a question of passive absorption. Borges would often remark that he was first and foremost a professional reader, not a writer, and he meant the claim as a boast, not a confession; certainly his wonderful essays on other ...