Anonymity on the Web

by Harry on March 17, 2007

Following up on my “ethicist” posts, a correspendent points me to this, rather unnerving, article from the Washington Post. A couple of quotes:

The woman and two others interviewed by The Washington Post learned from friends that they were the subject of derogatory chats on a widely read message board on AutoAdmit, run by a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania and a 23-year-old insurance agent….It contains many useful insights on schools and firms. But there are also hundreds of chats posted by anonymous users that feature derisive statements about women, gays, blacks, Asians and Jews. In scores of messages, the users disparage individuals by name or other personally identifying information. Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases. To the targets’ dismay, the comments bubble up through the Internet into the public domain via Google’s powerful search engine.

The stories prompted the deans of Yale and Penn Law School to issue statements condemning these sorts of attacks.

In case that doesn’t worry you:

[click to continue…]

Anglophone domination, even in French

by Chris Bertram on March 17, 2007

Pierre Assouline’s excellent blog at Le Monde “has some figures”:http://passouline.blog.lemonde.fr/2007/03/17/langlais-regne-en-librairie/ for the provenance of novels published in French translation:

bq. in 2006, 41.4% of novels published in France were translated from a foreign language…. English is, naturally, in first place with 2503 titles but the extent of English domination is surprising: 75.5 per cent of the total! In the runners-up spot are German and Spanish with 134 titles (4%), followed by Italian (108 titles or 3.3%). Juste après, on trouve l’allemand et l’espagnol avec 134 titres (soit 4%) suivis par l’italien (108 titres soit 3,3%). …. Russian (which is in decline) and the languages of the East [meaning? CB] are neck and neck (with 44 titles translated in the year), then come the Scandinavian languages and Japanese. The only notable breakthrough is the Chinese novel, with 37 titles translated.