Modern Science Refutes Global Warming Alarmism

Andrea shared with you: Modern Science Refutes Global Warming Alarmism Power Line - It isn't quite true to say that the science is settled–climate science is in its infancy, and we have only a poor understanding of the Earth's climate. Just about every proposition is controversial. But we are very close to being able to say that, as to global warming alarmism, the debate is over and the alarmists have lost. (I mean, of course, the scientific debate, not the political one, which never had much to do with science in the first place.) Available on the App Store.

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Osservatore romano

Osservatore romano

Qualsiasi traduzione dal giappone-
se in una lingua occidentale deve
avere l'onestà di riconoscere un'im-
perfezione allusiva: non si dice mai
esattamente la stessa cosa nell'una e
nell'altra lingua. Infatti mentre le let-
tere dell'alfabeto, prese separatamen-
te, non hanno senso e non creano né
immagini né emozioni, ogni ideo-
gramma cinese, necessario per preci-
sare il significato dei tanti omofoni
esistenti nella lingua giapponese, tra-
smette all'occhio e alla mente infor-
mazioni che pur non avendo nulla a
vedere con il senso del testo sono co-
munque là e interpellano il lettore.
L'ideogramma an, ad esempio, pa-
ce in cinese e in associazione con
shin/cuore, tranquillità in giappone-
se, raffigura una donna sotto un tet-
to. In effetti, quando una madre è in
casa e se ne prende cura, tutta la fa-
miglia sta tranquilla. Il termine giap-
ponese Kotoba in italiano diventa pa-
rola, termine riduttivo rispetto all'ori-
ginale che si scrive, a meno di non
optare per i segni kana sillabici e so-
lo fonetici impossibilitati di esplicita-
re un significato, con due ideogram-
mi: uno significa "dire", l'altro signi-
fica "foglia". Dunque i due ideo-
grammi che assieme vogliono dire
parola/parole, sul piano del signifi-
cante loro proprio accostano le paro-
le alle foglie. E così per magia della
ipotiposi sui generis suggerita dagli
ideogrammi, le parole volant. Ma
hanno anche un peso. «Noi e Lei,
Padre, siamo un cuore solo!», le pa-
role di quell'umile donna piena di fe-
de dal poetico nome Yuri (giglio),
contraddicono il detto verba volant
come lo intendiamo di solito e, per
la profondità del loro significato so-
stanziato dalla fede, di fatto manent
in ognuno di noi.
Oggi, nella cattedrale di Ooura,



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Why they are hooked on classical - Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3652458/Why-they-are-hooked-on-classical.html


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Why they are hooked on classical

Devotion: Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa 

Ivan Hewett

12:01AM BST 20 May 2006

Comment

The country has shown an extraordinary devotion to Western music for 140 years. Ivan Hewett reports on where that love has led the Japanese

Where is the nerve centre of classical music in the early 21st century? Answering that question depends on your criteria. If it's to do with possessing a venerable tradition, you might choose Vienna. If it's the location of the best orchestras and opera houses, you might choose Berlin. If it's finding exuberantly creative ways to reinvent the tradition, London or New York seem strong contenders. But if the true measure is a passionate devotion amounting almost to idolatry, Tokyo would win the palm.

It's revealed in a thousand ways, not least in the sweetly earnest way people talk about the art form. The president of the Japan Arts Corporation wrote in his company's concert brochure that "music has the power to foster a richer greater experience for the human soul." Audiences listen in a silence that one can only describe as fervent. At one concert in Tokyo, my neighbour sat perfectly still, eyes closed, for the entire three hours of Bach's St Matthew Passion, with only a tiny rhythmic movement of his little finger to show that he was still alive.

Even more striking is the way the Japanese put their money where their mouths are. Tokyo has eight orchestras, which is one more than Berlin, a city normally seen as the acme of orchestral lavishness. On any night you find at least as many concerts in as many genres as you can in London. And these concerts take place in venues of a quality that puts London's halls to shame. Often they're buried inside vast gleaming complexes of shops and hotels, such as the well-known Suntory Hall. Even more exquisite in sound and sight is the main hall at Tokyo Opera City. Everything that meets your eye is made of wood. Music in here rings out beautifully, as if the hall is vibrating like a giant violin.

This profusion isn't just a feature of Tokyo. Even quite modest provincial towns have lavish arts centres, thanks in large part to the so-called "bubble" economy of the '80s and early '90s. One of them, the Mito Art Tower, has one of the world's great chamber orchestras in residence, whose chief conductor is Seiji Ozawa. The chief executive, Yazawa Takaki, is clearly proud of the centre, and is keen to show me the theatre, modelled on Shakespeare's Globe. But, once inside the concert hall, he reveals an anxiety about the arts in Japan. "You hear the silence in this hall? That is what music really needs, but we have so little silence in our lives. I really wonder whether the younger generation will be able to hear music at all."

Related Articles

• Sound of strangeness could be the saviour of tradition
  20 May 2006

It was a surprise to hear Yazawa unwittingly express the ancient Japanese idea of ma. This guiding concept behind much traditional music performance says that music lives only in constant dialogue with silence. It was a reminder that many factors come together in the Japanese love affair with classical music, some ancient, some new. The most obvious factor is fairly recent - Japan's decision in 1868 to end centuries of isolation and open itself to the West. One of the first imports was Western music. By 1872 Western music had supplanted traditional music in the Japanese school system, and in 1884 the philosopher Shoichi Toyama actually suggested that Christianity should be adopted because it would help the new music to take root.
Another advantage of Western music was that it seemed better suited to modern sensibilities than the old traditional songs. The writer Nagai Kafu, who studied in Paris, remarked sadly that "no matter how much I wanted to sing Western songs, they were all very difficult. Had I, born in Japan, no choice but to sing Japanese songs? Was there a Japanese song that expressed my present sentiment - a traveller who had immersed himself in love and the arts in France but was now going back to the extreme end of the Orient where only death would follow monotonous life? I felt forsaken. I belonged to a nation that had no music to express swelling emotions and agonised feelings."
But Kafu lived long enough to see that his fears were unfounded. Japan embraced Western ways as its own, a process only briefly interrupted by the Second World War. By the 1950s, Japan had its own artists' agency, and foreign artists were again visiting the country.
At first, the cost was prohibitive. Kaz Nakaya, a retired university English professor and self-confessed opera buff, says that when he first became interested in classical music an LP cost as much as an average month's salary. But the upward momentum was unstoppable. Japan was by now no longer an importer of Western music; it had its own orchestras, some of which, such as the Tokyo Philharmonic, had quite long histories. It had several distinguished manufacturers of pianos and other instruments, which were serious rivals to Western firms. It had its own performing virtuosi, and its own composers, one of whom, Toru Takemitsu, had a worldwide reputation.
It seemed as if Japan was now set to repeat the trick it had pulled off in the economic sphere: beating the West at its own game. Soon Europe and America would be importing Japanese orchestras and singers the same way it had imported Japanese fax machines and Hondas.
The fact that this hasn't happened shows that after nearly 140 years, classical music isn't yet thoroughly naturalised. The roots seem shallowest in opera, the area of classical music where Japanese performers most obviously lag behind Western ones; only a handful of Japanese singers have made even a modest impact in the West. One reason for the disparity is that the Japanese themselves have a prejudice against their own performers, which is why so many Japanese performers choose to live in the West.
Noriko Kawai, a pianist living in London, says there are all kinds of barriers against home-grown talent. "It costs around a million yen, about £5,000, to promote a concert in Tokyo, and unless you have in a way become a Western artist, like Mitsuko Uchida, people won't come. And the leading agents like Kajimoto and Japan Arts give much better terms to foreigners. I know the Japanese artists have equal prominence in their glossy brochures, but the difference is that they have paid to be there! Whereas the agent takes the financial risk for the foreign artists."
A deeper reason, in the eyes of many Western critics, is a distressing lack of any striking individuality in many Japanese performers. Always one hears the complaint that Japanese performers have staggering technical facility but a certain emotional reticence. A factor in this is the very strict training, which, according to Kawai, is bound up with just the same rigid social hierarchies you find in traditional music.
"I knew one violin teacher who used to prick the young player's wrist with a needle if it sank below the required height. And I caused a huge row when I tried to study with a very distinguished teacher without first studying with one of his pupils. I was breaking the rule that you have to work your way up step by step."
According to the critic Takuo Ikeda, another big problem for Japanese classical musicians is the sheer distance between themselves and the West, which has created a strange time-lag. "Teachers pass on the ideas they picked up from their studies in Europe 30 years before," he says. "But I think things are changing. Air travel is so much cheaper now, and of course there's the internet. And young people today are not so conformist as their parents."
Maybe so. But when I attended a masterclass for young Japanese singing students given by two distinguished German singers, I was struck by how inhibited the students were. The distinguished visitors didn't really succeed in persuading the students to express the feelings in the words.
At the bottom of these young students, who seem so completely Westernised, something stubbornly refused to let go. The story of Japan's long affair with classical music is a healthy reminder that, when it comes to cultures, an affair isn't easily turned into a marriage.

• The City of London Festival (0845 120 7502) in June features Japanese musicians including Noriko Ogawa and the Tokyo String Quartet.

Revel からの写真 劣等感 2

Insight 636

Insight 636

 

Rational Consciousness and rational self-consciousness

合理的意識と合理的自己意識

 

	タイプ	例えば	扱うもの	内的終着点有無	無執着性・無私心性		掟
experience	経験的意識	分からない外国語の話	Data	○	○		Be attentive
understanding	知的意識	パズルを解決しようとする	Pattern	○	○		Be intelligent
judgement	合理的意識	何か分かった時	Being Truth	○	○		Be rational
decision	合理的自己意識	何か決めた時	Value	× 外的終着点	×		Be responsible

 

NHKスペシャル｜日本人はなぜ戦争へと向かったのか第３回 "熱狂"はこうして作られた

http://www.nhk.or.jp/special/detail/2011/0227/index.html


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日本人はなぜ戦争へと向かったのか
第３回　"熱狂"はこうして作られた

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※NHKサイトを離れます

2011年2月27日(日) 午後9時00分～9時49分

• 歴史・紀行

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「坂の上の雲」の時代に世界の表舞台に躍り出た日本が、なぜわずかの間に世界の趨勢から脱落し、太平洋戦争への道を進むようになるのか。開戦７０年の年に問いかける大型シリーズの第３回。
日本が戦争へと突き進む中で、新聞やラジオはどのような役割を果たしたのか。新聞記者やメディア対策にあたった軍幹部が戦後、開戦に至る時代を振り返った 大量の肉声テープが残されていた。そこには、世界大恐慌で部数を減らした新聞が満州事変で拡販競争に転じた実態、次第に紙面を軍の主張に沿うように合わせ ていく社内の空気、紙面やラジオに影響されてナショナリズムに熱狂していく庶民、そして庶民の支持を得ようと自らの言動を縛られていく政府・軍の幹部たち の様子が赤裸々に語られていた。
時には政府や軍以上に対外強硬論に染まり、戦争への道を進む主役の一つとなった日本を覆った“空気”の正体とは何だったのだろうか。日本人はなぜ戦争へと 向かったのか、の大きな要素と言われてきたメディアと庶民の知られざる側面を、新たな研究と新資料に基づいて探っていく。

Peter Drucker Quotes

Peter Drucker Quotes

8. "Meetings are by definition a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time."


1. "Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right."



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Lovers seek for privacy. Friends find this solitud

Lovers seek for privacy. Friends find this solitude about them, this barrier between them and the herd, whether they want it or not.

[...]

In a circle of true Friends each man is simply what he is: stands for nothing but himself. No one cares twopence about anyone else's family, profession, class, income, race, or previous history. Of course you will get to know about most of these in the end. But casually. They will come out bit by bit, to furnish an illustration or an analogy, to serve as pegs for an anecdote; never for their own sake. That is the kingliness of Friendship. We meet like sovereign princes of independent states, abroad, on neutral ground, freed from our contexts. This love (essentially) ignores not only our physical bodies but that whole embodiment which consists of our family, job, past and connections. At home, besides being Peter or Jane, we also bear a general character; husband or wife, brother or sister, chief, colleague, or subordinate. Not among our Friends. It is an affair of disentangled, or stripped, minds. Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

Hence (if you will not misunderstand me) the exquisite arbitrariness and irresponsibility of this love. I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gave value to survival.

In his insightful 1960 book The Four Loves ), C.S. Lewis


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日本教

阿部仲麻呂、「不干斎ハビアンにおける15年間の意義」、日本カトリック神学院紀要、第5号、2014年、158－159頁。

4・最近のハビアン研究Ⅲ一政治イデオロギー論の視点から
　Kiri　Paramore，Ideology and Christianity in Japan，Routledge，London ＆ NewYork，2009，pp．230・（キリ・パラモア『日本におけるイデオロギーとキリスト教』）－
一本書は日本人キリスト者の思考傾向をハビアンの著作テクスト（特に『妙貞問答』）を手がかりにして分析している。同時に、『どちりな・きりしたん』や日本におけるイエズス会の信仰教育関連文書や中国におけるマテオ・リッチのキリスト教関連著作の文脈をも参照しながら、ハビアンが生きていた当時の日本人キリスト者の信仰態度を浮き彫りにしている。その際に、16世紀のキリスト教伝来から明治期の政府によるキリスト教弾圧に至るまでの政治的動向のメカニズムが背景として紹介されている。
　パラモアは欧米人の立場で近世および近代の日本社会に特有な政治的状況をキリスト教受容という主題を手がかりにして整理している。往々にして日本人キリスト者は日本という土地の政治状況を客観視しながら捉え直す作業をまったくしないまま安穏と過ごしている場合が多いと思われるが、パラモアの研究は日本人の限界を補いつつ、欧米人にも予想外の反信仰的な社会状況が存在することを知らしめた点が秀逸な成果となっている。まさに、本書は日本人キリスト者の自画像を垣間見るための鏡である。
5．課題
　こうして、ハビアンに関する近年の研究書のいくつかを紹介してきたが、17世紀のハビアンの歩みをとおして、日本人によるキリスト教的信仰理解の心性（心のもちかたの傾向性）を垣間見ることとなる。以下の三つの段階が日本人独自の信仰理解の心性として浮上してくることだろう。

　①もともと仏教の立場で生きていた日本人がキリスト教の世界に入る場合に、いつまでもキリスト教には馴染めないままであると実感し、居心地の悪さを身に覚える。

　②その後、仏教からキリスト教へと改宗した日本人が、長期間、キリスト教の世界で生きているうちに、もともとの仏教とは異質な思考パターンを身につけて、もはや仏教的な世界観とは異なる物の見方をするようになってゆく。

　③結局は、どちらの世界にも入り込めていないという「ダブルパインド」の宙ぶらりんの状態で、日本人は苦しみを身に覚える。

　上に述べたような三段階の流れを経て、自らの立ち位置をどうするかで悩みつづけた日本人の心の葛藤のメカニズムと適正な対処の仕方に関して論じることが今後の課題となる。

Revel からの写真 劣等感

劣等感