Sábado, 11 de enero de 2014

Primera página de la Biblia Políglota Complutense

EspañaMemoria Histórica

EL 10 de enero de 1514, en los talleres alcalaínos del impresor Arnao Guillén de Brocar, veía la luz el primer volumen de la Biblia Políglota Complutense, obra magna del humanismo español. El iniciador y mentor de esta gran empresa es el cardenal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, que unos años antes había fundado la Universidad de Alcalá, en torno a la cual reunirá a los mejores exégetas y filólogos.

Era la primera vez que se afrontaba un proyecto de estas características: una edición impresa de la Biblia que presentara los textos originales del Antiguo y Nuevo Testamento junto con sus versiones antiguas.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaSocial

La manera más eficaz de torpedear una discusión se reduce a una cosa tan simple como exigir definiciones. Lo he vivido hasta la saciedad y era una práctica académica muy usada para evitar los compromisos. Es decir, que hace un porrón de años a usted se le ocurría exigir un comportamiento digno frente a la dictadura y a favor de la libertad, y siempre salía un egregio catedrático o aspirante que pedía, antes de seguir adelante, que definiéramos “qué entendíamos por libertad”. A partir de aquí era imposible seguir, salvo en el terreno que algunos llamaban “de las ideas”, donde nos quedábamos.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalIglesia Católica

"Un hospital para el alma”. Así definió el papa Francisco su proyecto de Iglesia, enlazando con la tradición franciscana a la que quiso asociarse. Una Iglesia que salga de sus burocracias y oropeles y vaya a buscar a la gente, restañe sus heridas cotidianas, aporte esperanza y sentido de vivir. Dirigiéndose prioritariamente a los marginados y a los jóvenes incomprendidos por las instituciones, como hizo explícito en julio de 2013 en Brasil fustigando a los obispos atónitos por la llamada papal a la insubordinación de los jóvenes contra los pastores que no ejercen como tales. No fue por casualidad que escogió Brasil, el mayor país católico del mundo.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios,

Politics, to Ariel Sharon, was like a Ferris wheel. But he didn’t make do with just staying on the wheel; he did all he could to climb to the top and stay there.

Mr. Sharon exuded strength, authority, leadership and charisma. His briefings before missions were precise, clear and unequivocal, instilling in his men a sense of trust and confidence. His orders were delivered in a lighthearted, sometimes cynical tone, with a piercing sense of humor. And he fought at the front of his forces, taking great risks.

While he was still a young, relatively junior officer, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary about Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

It was sunny as usual in Little Haiti, a small Haitian enclave in Miami where the predominant language is Haitian Creole.

I was there that day in May 2012 to celebrate Haitian Flag Day, and my invitation from the Office for Haitian Cultural Affairs said speakers could lecture in English, French or Haitian Creole.

My talk was about what the Haiti Lab — a center for research and Haitian studies at my school, Duke University — was doing to help people understand what Haiti has accomplished for the world in terms of equality for all. To my surprise, when I started speaking in Haitian Creole, the celebration’s cultural affairs representative interrupted to say I was not allowed to give my presentation in Creole.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNuevas Tecnologías

At the Philadelphia convention of 1787, James Madison alone took complete notes in a rapid shorthand, a self-appointed job that he said almost killed him. But today, constitutional debates are recorded in Twitter bursts -- and in Tunisia, where the constituent assembly is compiling that nation's new constitution, the children of the Arab Spring are using the full range of technological tools to ensure a degree of transparency never seen before in such political processes.

At the heart of the technological openness is a Tunisian nongovernmental group called Al Bawsala, which means, roughly, the Compass. Bawsala staffers are 20-something Tunisians dressed in the same skinny jeans and sweaters worn everywhere by young people too cool to be called hipsters.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial

It looks like Europe’s most famous Nazi-hunting family is back at it again, and this time, they’re going after a different kind of opponent: the controversial French-Cameroonian comedian Dieudonn-bala-Mbala, who most recently made headlines after French soccer star Nicolas Anelka used the comedian’s trademark gesture, widely interpreted as a Nazi salute – a reverse “Heil Hitler”– and ignited a debate about anti-Semitism across Europe.

Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, a married couple now both in their seventies, have made a name for themselves over the past half-century going after Nazi war criminals who have escaped persecution. And though their Nazi-hunting days are over, they and their son Arno called for a protest of a performance by Dieudonn-n the French city of Nantes.…  Seguir leyendo »

Internacional, ,

With a surprise decree Dec. 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin shut down RIA Novosti, the massive, state-controlled news agency, and replaced it with an entity that will be overseen by Margarita Simonyan, the head of “RT,” Russia’s international propaganda arm, and Dmitry Kiselyov, an odious television presenter.

Officially, the Kremlin described the change as a way to “provide information on Russian state policy and Russian life and society for audiences abroad.” But this shake-up is better understood as the latest Kremlin effort to reassert control over its domestic mass media. RIA Novosti had a growing reputation for pursuing independent and analytical reporting.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaEconomía,

Sin duda, y de forma negativa. Cada vez se acumulan más evidencias empíricas acerca de esta correlación y surgen numerosas voces que expresan su preocupación por ello.

Es un hecho que los niveles de desigualdad han aumentado en el mundo desarrollado en las ultimas décadas, con perniciosos efectos sobre la movilidad social, generando crecimientos económicos más frágiles y haciendo más frecuentes las recesiones en aquellos países donde esos niveles son más altos, como acaba de recordar el presidente Obama en un formidable discurso pronunciado el pasado 4 de diciembre.

Y la situación sigue empeorando. El 10% de ciudadanos con mayor riqueza acaparaban el 30% del ingreso nacional en EE UU en las décadas de los sesenta y setenta; hoy, se hacen con el 50%.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaMundoOriente PróximoInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

Iraq is once again at a crisis point. Given the sacrifices the United States, coalition partners and so many Iraqis made to bring the country back from the precipice of 2006, it is more than unsettling to see a third battle of Fallujah unfolding. But rather than point fingers and assign fault for this foreseeable threat, the focus needs to be on how to best move forward.

Al-Qaeda is taking a coordinated approach to establishing what it calls the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. That organization and another al-Qaeda franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra, are recognized by the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

Me acuerdo de fines de año de la década de los sesenta y los comparo con el de hace unos días. París es otro y el mundo también lo es, y cuando me llaman desde una playa del centro de Chile, desde el sol y el mar, y recibo el llamado en una noche invernal de celebración, entre el ruido del viento y de la lluvia, siento que parte del cambio, parte esencial, es la comunicación, la tecnología, el Internet. Recibo por Internet, por ejemplo, tarjetas de fin de año que cantan y que bailan, cosa que antes no era concebible.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesNuevas Tecnologías

Una de las quejas tradicionales sobre la ascensión de intermediarios digitales como Google y Facebook es que, con su entusiasmo descarado por la personalización, han provocado una desagradable polarización de la esfera pública. Como aíslan a los ciudadanos de las opiniones contrarias, corremos el peligro de pasar nuestras vidas en lo que el escritor Eli Pariser denomina “la burbuja de los filtros”.

Pero la burbuja de Pariser no es sino una entre muchas más en el horizonte. Para empezar, tiene un origen técnico muy concreto: hasta hace poco, los sensores que intervenían en el proceso de personalización podían registrar nuestros golpes de teclado y nuestros clics, pero no detectar nuestros sentimientos.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

It’s not every day that your family photo appears on a 15-foot storefront sign in the Brazilian Amazon. But for at least the last year, a larger-than-life version of the Massachusetts-Maryland-New York Kugels has stared down at passers-by on Sebastião Diniz Avenue in Boa Vista, the low-slung capital of Roraima, Brazil’s least populous state. The business, Credirápido Solicitações de Empréstimos, makes personal loans so the people of Roraima can buy cars or homes or take their kids to Disney World.

I had no idea it existed until December, when a friend from São Paulo — where I had lived for a few years — spotted my face from the car.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa, ,

For the past month, Turkey has been plagued by an all-out political war between the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and certain elements within the judiciary and the police. No one knows how it will end, but its meaning for Turkey’s troubled democracy is already clear: There is little rule of law here, and “justice” easily falls victim to power.

This is a problem with deep historical roots. When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923, he devised the legal system as the protector of his “revolution” — rather than citizens’ rights. His politically motivated “Independence Courts” executed or imprisoned many dissidents.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

Angela Merkel deemed multiculturalism — the idea that social harmony is best achieved through celebrating our differences — a complete failure in Germany. David Cameron claimed it facilitated the rise of radical Islam in Britain and called for “stronger societies and identities at home,” along with a “much more active, muscular liberalism” that “believes in certain values and actively promotes them.”

Last fall, the European backlash against multiculturalism crossed the Atlantic and landed in Quebec, when the governing Parti Québécois proposed the Charter of Values, which sets out a vision of government that breaks sharply with Canada’s broader multicultural ethos.

Quebec, of course, with its distinctive religious history, feminist bent and linguistically diverse metropolis of Montreal, has never been reluctant to go against the Canadian grain.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaEconomía

I was talking just before Christmas to a young man who sells shoes in a department store in Dublin. He told me that a television news crew had filmed interviews in the store the previous day. They wanted to know if sales were picking up during the vital holiday period, indicating that the battered Irish economy was, after five grim years, on the rise at last.

Most of his colleagues said that, actually, sales were rather sluggish. One was more hopeful and said that there were signs of improvement. When the young man watched the TV news that night, he was not entirely surprised to find that the only interview that had made the cut was the one with the optimist.…  Seguir leyendo »