The EconomistCritiques

Treasure palaces is an interesting concept and a wonderful collection that leaves a few things to be desired. Some of the writers are able to really approach a sense of space within the museums they write about, or weave in a sense of themselves, their stories, and what these place mean to them; others seem to fall back on describing the artwork which, while interesting, isn't quite why I'm here as a reader. Some of the more moving, emotional essays include Tim Winton's on the National Gallery of Victoria, and Don Paterson's on the Frick Collection in New York. Julian Barnes' essay on Ainola, the home of the composer Sibelius, manages to thread the needle of this book's concept perfectly, capturing space, history, and emotion all in one. Overall it's an enjoyable and occasionally captivating, if inconsistent, collection.

Rey interesting collection of essays on common and obscure museums. A favourite read of the year.

I liked this collection, although it's missing the photos that went with the columns originally. I haven't​ been to most of the museums, although a few of these are tempting. I can make due with a description of "The Museum of Broken Relationships."

"This report describes the methods and main findings from The Economist Intelligence Unit’s
assessment of health system preparedness for multiple chronic conditions (MCC) in 25 countries
across the globe. The research programme consists of an Index of Health System Preparedness,
which measures how ready healthcare systems are for the challenge of MCC and identifies
opportunities for health systems to improve their management of MCC. This report describes
the methods used to build the index and discusses the key findings. "

I actually love books like this with comparative statistics. But they all suffer from the same problem: they are really history books not the current situation. SO, although this book is the 2018 edition, the data in it is for 2016 or in some cases for 2012. It is good enough to show trends but doesn't really show the latest figures. And I can get the latest figures by "googling". But 4.5 stars from me for the quality of the book when I first obtained it.½

Interesting article on early man.

It's a little hard to get too excited about a book that is basically a compendium of statistics about the nations of the world. I don't often get the urge to find out the world's biggest copper producer, or what nation drinks the most beer per capita. If I want to know such things, I would generally just Google them. Nor is it a particularly good book for browsing, as some almanacs are. I don't think, for instance, that there is a table showing the world's worst mine disasters or theater fires. On the other hand, it is the Economist, so it is probably pretty reliable. Not nearly as interesting or witty as the magazine, however.½

Este libro es sobre todo una guía práctica que explica con claridad las realidades económicas subyacentes en el mundo de hoy y constituye un valioso elemento de consulta.

Utile e fatto bene, ma anche simpatico: alla fine della voce “Americanisms”, dice “Above all remember that many American read The Economist because they like to read good English. They do not want to read prose loaded with Americanisms. Nor do most other readers”. Il problema di questo libro è che è troppo piccolo e non sai mai cosa ci troverai e cosa avrà saltato, ma mi piace e ormai ho una buona idea di cosa troverò e cosa no. C’è un piccolo neo: non sempre è d’accordo con il pensiero della Oxford e quindi se prendi qualcosa da qui, ricordati di non dire al cliente che hai seguito le regole Oxford, oppure ricordati di controllare anche dall’altra parte. Per esempio, guardando la lettera “d”, vedo che le Dates paiono derivare da quella che viene considerata la forma americana, mentre la voce Different from contrasta con Fowler’s e Oxford perché dice Different from not to or than. In un certo senso hanno ragione, perché different to non piace a molti e different than meno ancora, anche se il primo è tecnicamente corretto in BrE.
Segnalato da Simon Turner

http://nhw.livejournal.com/681975.html

Mandatory reading for those of us doing editing for a living, of course. Full of useful snippets and helpful hints, though I dare to disagree on a few points:

Dominicans Take care. Do they come from Dominica? Or the Dominican Republic? Or are they friars?

*Snerk!*

federalist in Britain, someone who believes in centralising the powers of associated states; in the United States and Europe, someone who believes in decentralising them.

Perhaps that one was a bit more tongue-in-cheek.

Abbreviations that can be pronounced and are composed of bits of words rather than just initials should be spelt out in upper and lower case

Agreed, but their examples include "Kfor" and "Sfor" which I would always spell KFOR and SFOR, since that is and was the capitalisation preferred by the peacekeepers themselves.

Put the accents and cedillas on French names and words, umlauts on German ones, accents and tildes on Spanish ones, and accents, cedillas and tildes on Portuguese ones: Françoise de Panafieu, Wolfgang Schäuble, Federico Peña. Leave the accents off other foreign names.

C'mon, in this day and age I think we should be able to go a long way in spelling names correctly even if the version of the Latin alphabet used in unfamiliar. Though I accept that Đà Nẵng, for instance, has an English spelling of Da Nang.

Capitalisation rules - much tougher than I would be inclined to be, with odd lapses from that toughness - why, for instance, "the queen" but "the Queen's Speech"?

community is a useful word in the context of religious or ethnic groups. But in many other others [sic] it jars. Not only is it often unnecessary, it also purports to convey a sense of togetherness that may not exist.
The intelligence community means spies.
The online community means geeks and nerds.

*Hmph!*

It is sometimes useful to talk of human-rights abuses but often the sentence can be rephrased more pithily and accurately. The army is accused of committing numerous human-rights abuses probably means The army is accused of torture and murder.

Fair point. Though perhaps the latter phrase is in fact more precise, while being equally accurate.

haver means to talk nonsense, not dither, swither or waver.

Really?

There is an insanely complex set of rules for the correct spelling in English of Russian names, almost all of which I agree with, apart from the idea that you should always transliterate "дж" as "j"; giving as an example Stalin's real surname, Jugashvili. I would always write Dzhugashvili. (Though of course in his native Georgian it was ჯუღაშვილი which I would transliterate as Jugashvili, as "ჯ" is normally transcribed "j"; but we know him through translation from the Russian.) They then go on to add, absurdly, that his first name should be spelt "Josef" not "Iosif". I would have said that the man know to us as "Joseph Stalin" was born "Iosif Dzhugashvili". (Accepting Иосиф Джугашвили ratehr than იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი as the more official version of his original name.)

Placenames: I'm glad that they are with me on Transdniestria, rather than "Transnistria" which is gaining ground. But there's no way I'm using "Leghorn" for Livorno.

More places: The list of administrative divisions of Belgium, bafflingly, lists only nine provinces, omitting Brussels (and Flanders and Wallonia), though there is a hint that Brabant can be Flemish or Walloon. And the list of Swiss cantons, while including without explanation the splits of Appenzell and Unterwalden, does not mention that Basel is similarly split.

Will keep it by my desk though.

My favorite source of world news. Although it considers itself conservative, it appears fairly balanced and very intelligent from this liberal American's perspective.

Ed- Merry Christmas 1991- Phil

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