One in a million

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."

Linus Pauling, chemist, peace activist, author, educator; Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Peace Prize (1901-1994)

Movements of translation

"Translating is writing"

Marguerite Yourcenar, writer (1903-1987)

Big up to my friend Seb who posted this on Facebook to mark what could be a big step in my life as a writer, and not only as a translator.

Translating a novel is an arduous job, and like writing it requires a healthy lifestyle, diligence and, more often than not, having to force oneself to settle to the desk and down to the task. About one fifth of the book is done so far, but the amount of work has been tenfold as I had to research a part of history and of the world I had only dim knowledge about: Persia in the eleventh century. I read roughly a hundred articles on different topics, people, regions, battles, events. It connected with what I already knew and this is perhaps what I like best in my job: connecting things. Because everything is connected. Even picking up a German-made map of Persia in the fourteenth century (in order to find the old names of the cities, burgs and rivers, which change through the centuries, of course) can make you connect what you know with what you learn. Knowledge is like a multi-layered spider's web, only way more intricately woven, and not plane, but three-dimensional, for the webs criss-cross. So is history, and the world.

Chi va piano va sano

"To read fast is as bad as to eat in a hurry."

Vilhelm Ekelund, Swedish poet (1880-1949)

Pluie de météorites en Russie : les images

Pluie de météorites en Russie : les images par lemondefr

Asteroid?

Atoms For Peace - Judge Jury and Executioner

Podium

"It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last."

Francois De La Rochefoucauld, moralist (1613-1680)

In order of appearance

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."

William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, act 1, scene 1

The carrot?

"If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit."

Robert Brault, writer (b. 1938)

Chuva de aranhas (Video Original)