Eliza: Hello. I am ELIZA. How can I help you?
You:
are you a real woman?
Eliza: Would you prefer if I were not a real woman?
You: no
Eliza:
You are being a bit negative.
You: I am merely answering to your question
Eliza:
How long have you been merely answering to my question?
You: for about 15 to 20 seconds now
Eliza:
Please go on.
You: ok, but you have to ask a question don't you now?
Eliza:
Oh, i have to ask a question dont i now.
You: ah ah ah ah ah
Eliza: Please go on.
You: yes I guess laughing is the therapy he?
Eliza:
You are sure?
You: I am sure of nothing and no one
Eliza:
How long have you been sure of nothing and no one?
You: Since puberty and the incredible explosion of neurones that ensued
Eliza:
Please go on.
You: laughing?
Eliza:
Please go on.
You: or puberty?
Eliza:
Please go on.
You: you are boring and unhelpful... if only you could tell me what you're wearing
Eliza:
Do you wish that only i could tell you what youre wearing?
You: Well I kind of know that already, da!
Eliza:
Can you elaborate on that?
You: Oh, you're a blonde aren't you?
Eliza:
How long have you been a blonde arent i?
You: And a real one I can tell
Eliza:
Can you elaborate on that?
You: Well you see it is a common and unverified stereotype that blond are stupid lack conversation and do not make sense what so ever, since your conversation fits all these mentionned caracteristics I am fairly assuming that you may answer to this stereotype. But of course this stereotype demands verification, perhaps I could get some fundings to make a PhD on just that...
Eliza:Oh, i see it is a common and unverified
stereotype that blond are stupid lack conversation and dont make sense
what so ever since my conversation fits all these mentionned
caracteristics youre fairly assuming that i may answer to this
stereotype but of course this stereotype demands verification perhaps
you could get some fundings to make a phd on just that.
You: Wow, you have good memory for a blonde. I so want you now.
Eliza:
Oh, i have good memory for a blonde you so want i now.
You: And the moment's gone. Why do you have to kill it by uttering words?
Eliza:
Oh, i have to kill it by uttering words.
You: I see, please elaborate on that.
Eliza:
Can you elaborate on that?
You: Well no since I am not in the head of yours
Eliza:
You are being a bit negative.
You: yes it's true, my mother's to blame... and I guess that was the closure we were looking for here
Eliza:
Why do you say your mothers to blame and you guess that was the closure we was looking for here?
You: no reason
Eliza:
You are being a bit negative.
Eliza is an AI therapist, you can play with her here.
At the moment I am struggling with the definitive round of editing on my MA thesis, which is quite tedious and painful since I have to make drastic clear-cuts. According to my academic supervisor I have to "sharpen the overall focus" and "eliminate less crucial bits to main points". This demands intensive intellectual efforts. So the brain's craving suga'. Normally I take some dextrose but I decided to give regular sugar a go, since it is more colorful and tasty. I give it gladely in the form of two addictive products I have just discovered (does this qualify me as "sugar daddy"?). First, the Irish made Jelly Beans with multiple flavours. Their main inconvenient is that I need to plunge in the box to select my favourite ones, which is very time consuming. But they're GMO free, so I guees it's healthy -- although I had no clue that candies could be made out of GMO (this Santos company is everywhere, soon we'll be eating "soylent green" wafers!). The other thing is the newly marketed Red Bull simply cola. Now this thing is absolutely delicious. Not only does it cool me down -- since it is a record 33°C in here (check the weather here) -- but it is also made of strictly natural ingredients. We easily forget that coca-cola is made out of coca leafs and cola nuts and not E-plenty something and phosphoric acid that corrode teeth and stomachs. I never liked the energy drinks they made but this, it is simply delicious and natural. (I should get paid for this. Can't academics get sponsored?)
(under construction...)
So now the EU is in shock -- again -- after the Irish "Níl" or no to the Lisbon Treaty. All pundits and political leaders are wondering what plan B is now -- again. Unfortunately the Lisbon treaty was plan B after the French and Dutch rejection of the European constitution. Is there a plan C then? A newly remarketing positioned mini-light-weight-diet version of the already severely amputated EU constitution? New with improved legalistic and uncomprehensible technical jargon?
The truth is that it is a bad time for any political reform, and it is also the time for much needed political reforms. The American recession is slowing down the world's economy even if China and India are saving the average. The past years have not been all rosy, and the coming ones are definitely going to be dryer. Since national political leaders have had the nasty habits of delegating the source of all problems and politically difficult decisions to Bruxelles, no wonder the EU is the first to be blamed for social and economic difficulties. And this is not likely to change in the coming years.
According to a flash opinion poll conducted by the European Commission people felt uninformed or ill-informed about the issues at stake, and found the "no" campaign more effective. Alsp, they voted no more for perceived economic and financial threats than identity reasons.
So it's the economy stupid. And it looks as if the "yes" team is not able to present the EU as a defender of the European economy, while the no side easily hammers home the contention that the EU is a threat for the national economies.
There is a lot of work to do for the "yes" side, and it seems that the "no" has the advantage of "playing at home" in the next coming years with an economic slow down, and possible recession lurring. The EU will all to easily be blamable for not providing this security against financial tempest, even though it would be easier for the euro-enthousiasts to point out that nation-states are much more ill-equipped to fight transnational financial turbulences. Harsh time for the European construction is coming, and it is not without reasons that The Economist is calling for a total withdrawal of the project. It is though a short-coming solution. What is to be done right now is for the Euro-camp to play a low profile with any further integration project and to fight the coming economical problems united, while heralding what the EU is doing to fight them. The EU needs to build an image in politics of some solution to globalisation and the opportunities and threats it represents. Only when this image is built can a political project be submited to the Europeans, with a democratic referendum. But it is enough of this elite cloak-and-dagger way of operating that is only harming their point.
This matter is completely ignored by traditional historiography of eighteenth-century political thought:
As a matter of fact, eighteenth-century political thought in France, and in particular during the revolutionary stint, was mainly a problem of finding the right boundaries to the concept of sovereignty as redefined by natural law on the one side, and the nation and patrie (fatherland), on the other. Since natural law posits that men are born free and equal, then the problem is that no entity should be allowed to rule and govern unless they own this political entity. This is where the theory of the nation developed. A nation is a civitas of free and equal men. By the same token, this nation occupies a political space as defined as the patrie. The love for the patrie is necessary since a republic is based on equality, and everyone must thus participate. Without civic virtues, this republic is doomed. Now this patrie is the political space replacing absolutism, despotism, the Ancien Régime. The Revolution triggered passions all over Europe between the monarchists and the revolutionaries. The war became one between those fighting for freedom and equality, the patrie ("Allons enfants de la patrie" etc.), and those defending the old monarchism. In this sense, many revolutionaries defended a universal and unbounded version of the nation and patrie. In particular one can mention Danton, Robespierre, and Cloots. Their writings are merely drawing the logical conclusions on the century's political ideas. Natural law posits a universal pre-disposition. The problem is only to define the boundaries of the legitimate sovereign for a free and equal humankind.
La littérature c'est un coup de pied dans le cul de l'univers des non-dits, des gardés-pour-soi, de la rétention anale. Un grand écrivain doit souvent changer de chaussure.
Etre libre est une activité intense, un effort de tous les instants.
On 10/09/2007, Fernando @cafebabel.com> wrote: Look, Frank, actually, it's not so complicated. And ver far from being an ideological matter. Answering to your first question: I don't know if your english is good. Look at mines: ¿is it good? Not at all. That's why I'm not the one who decides if someone speaks and writes in a good english. This person is Nabeelah, my colleague and responsible for the english version: Nabee the bee, always very busy, like you. Why? Because she's constantly receiving articles by -for example- spaniards who live in New York or London or Dublin, or Boston...etc, and want to demonstrate that their english is already very good. And apparently it's not at all. An so on with french, italian, german or polish people + the people from other countries that must write in english for us. Nabee the bee, poor nabee, spends all the day rewriting and making articles to be in real english. But I can also tell you examples of romanian or portuguese people who write in "spanish" in a very self-confident way: I normally spend double time to edit their articles. And as we want -dans la mesure du possible- spare time and means, we try to get articles written in mother tongue.
For example: I'm bilingual: spanish-french. Really bilingual: si tu ponds ton papier en français imagine combien notre petite Nabeelah va être contente. On fera ça plus vite et on se partagera un peu plus la charge de travail d'édition de textes.
Cela dit, si tu tiens fortement à ta décision d'écrire en anglais, nous serons également ravis de compter avec ton affection et ton enthousiasme pour ce projet.
PS: les danois sont déjà suffisemment nationalistes; n'en rajoutte pas davantage. En revanche, ne cache pas ton côté ironique, je sens que c'est ta véritable langue.
Un grand merci pour tout!
Fernando.
Salut,
C'est ce que je pensais, mais comme personne ne me répondit et que plusieurs personnes me martelèrent le fait d'écrire dans la langue maternelle sans autre forme d'explication, je me posais des questions. Ceci dit, ton raisonnement est curieux. Si vous demandez à tout le monde d'écrire dans leur langue maternelle et refusez sine qua non, comment se fait-il que Nabeelah passe son temps à corriger des étudiants Erasmus qui pensent maîtriser l'anglais et ne s'expriment qu'en globish? A fortiori, je pense qu'elle aurait été contente de mon article qui devrait être d'un meilleur niveau (en tout cas personne ne s'est plaint de mon anglais lors de mes études pour un MPA ni lors de mon travail pour l'Institute for Public Policy Research à Londres, ni lors de mon passage à l'UNESCO lorsque je collaborais avec une secrétaire anglaise). Mais peut-être ne m'ont-ils rien dit pour me faire plaisir.
Je n'aime pas beaucoup cet usage du mot nationaliste à tort et à travers comme une sorte d'invective. D'abord, autant que je sache ce sont les Francais qui ont fait capoté la construction européenne en votant non en 2005. Les Danois, eux, ont du revoter en 1992. Ensuite, je ne comprends pas en quoi tu me trouves nationaliste. Ce mot est trop complexe et trop puissant pour être utilisé à la légère. Ce que je pense, après mon expérience dans l'enseignement supérieur francais (droit européen) et danois (sciences politiques), c'est que les Francais (donc ceux éduqués) ne sont absolument pas ou peu critique de tout le processus pour la simple et bonne raison que la construction européenne fait parti de l'ordre du jour de la politique étrangère de la France pour rétablir sa grandeure sur la scène internationale (avec l'utilisation du siège permanent à l'ONU). D'autant que toute l'éducation nationale est fondée sur l'apprentissage par coeur de la vérité telle que révélée par le gourou professeur du haut de sa chaire d'amphithéâtre (grand un pourquoi l'Europe c'est génial, grand deux comment construire cette Europe géniale à la francaise que tout le monde devrait vouloir pour la raison développée dans le grand un). Les Danois (donc ceux éduqués) ont une vision critique (un, c'est quoi l'Europe ? Deux, l'Europe selon qui ? Trois, qui décide ? Quatre pourquoi collaborer à un système dirigé par des pays aux moeurs démocratiques douteuses qui mettrait en péril notre modèle social tant vanté à l'étranger ? etc.). Si avoir un esprit européen critique c'est être euro-sceptique, et donc être nationaliste, alors évidemment il y a beaucoup de nationalistes hors de France. D'autant que le Danemark est un petit pays et que le calcul géopolitique est vite fait : quitte à être dominé, autant que ce soit par une puissance lointaine comme les Etats-Unis plutot que des puissances proches comme la France, l'Allemagne, et l'Angleterre sous couvert de l'UE. Cependant, les élites danoises sont en général pro-européenne pour la simple et prosaïque raison que l'UE leur ouvre des postes et des carrières de grande envergure. Je pense qu'il faut que les euro-enthousiastes comprennent que l'euro-scepticisme est une bonne chose pour l'Europe et la construction européenne, et même un élément vital de l'identité européenne.
Personnellement je suis un enthousiaste de l'Europe. Je suis aussi viscéralement anti-nationaliste, mais il faut s'entendre sur ce que l'on appelle nationalisme : pour moi il s'agit de la vision d'un monde divisé en Etats-nation. C'est pourquoi je suis aussi critique de la construction européenne actuelle, et je pense que tout anti-nationaliste devrait l'être aussi, puisque l'on ne fait ni plus ni moins que de construire un nouvel Etat-nation à l'échelle de l'Europe, avec exactement les mêmes problèmes et les mêmes risques que ceux qui se sont présentés dans l'histoire des constructions nationales.
Je trouve cela dommage de ne pas laisser les gens écrire dans la langue de leur choix. Finalement Café Babel ne fait que reproduire les impasses bruxelloises, produits du politiquement correcte européen, et s'embourbe dans des traductions sans fins (M'enfin bon, qui a raison ? Derrida ou Ecco ?). Je trouve l'idée de l'e-zine européen vraiment très bonne, mais je me désole de l'obligation d'écrire dans sa "langue maternelle" (d'abord qu'est-ce que cela peut bien vouloir dire ? Un immigré turc dans un pays européen ne pourrait donc pas participer à Café Babel ?) au lieu de laisser un libre choix. Plutôt que de reproduire les erreurs des aînés, les jeunes devraient apporter des solutions nouvelles et impertinentes. Au lieu du paradigme de l'Etat-nation et du chacun sa langue dans son coin, on pourrait laisser place au, et favoriser le développement du, plurilinguisme dans un paradigme plus cosmopolite de la construction européenne (cf. Ulrich Beck et Anthony Giddens).
Je n'ai pas eu le temps d'écrire d'article sur le Danemark. Je m'attèlerai à la tâche cet été c'est promis. Je me rend compte que l'email est un peu longuet. C'est que je me suis passioné !
Amicalement,
Frank.
PS: l'ironie c'est l'art de rendre l'absurdité du monde plus tolérable.
The left/right divide today is as profound as the Liverpool F.C./Manchester United rivalry.
L'opposition gauche/droite est aujourd'hui aussi profonde que celle opposant le PSG à l'OM.
