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Fishing in the Mud on It’s Guys Like You Mickey
at 19:03 on 23-05-2013 - link
If you want to win votes by slamming the school system, you have to focus on its failure to teach young people trivial things that your target audience thinks they know themselves.
I have noticed that whenever I try to criticize education, I end up sounding like the kind of jerk who laments that kids today just aren't as smart and knowledgeable as I am. I actually get a rush of that feeling, and now that I notice it it disgusts me. I have to wonder how many people who enjoy trashing education are doing it to give themselves that rush of superiority. -
Melanie on Quiz Night!
at 16:32 on 23-05-2013 - link
I'd also suggest that a question mark, for example, doesn't actually *change* the meaning of a sentence, it merely provides additional context. "Where did you get that hat" is unambiguously a question whether you put a question mark on the end of it or not.
I think it changes the meaning, but indirectly. It doesn't make a sentence a question, exactly... it indicates that the sentence is in a questioning tone. And different tones can make a sentence mean different things; I suppose "Where did you get that hat" is a question regardless of punctuation, but I think not using a question mark makes it read as a rhetorical question, rather than an actual request for information. I would count this as a change in meaning: while the literal meaning of the words hasn't changed, the thing you're communicating has.
While it makes sense to call tone part of "context", I don't think you can completely separate meaning from context. -
Dan Hemmens on It’s Guys Like You Mickey
at 16:13 on 23-05-2013 - link
Just because someone hates Twilight it doesn't have to be because they are a chauvinist asshole, is what I'm saying. I mean, don't get me wrong, that could be why. But it could also be because they have either taste or morals or both.
Gove, however, transparently has neither. Or rather he does have morals, but they're exactly the kind of normative, ultraconservative "values" that books like Twilight are actually rather good at championing.
More generally, the problem with Twilight bashing is that while there are a lot of very sensible reasons to dislike it, you have to hang out in the right parts of the internet to hear them. Mainstream complaints (and you don't get more mainstream than Tory MPs) are invariably of the "lol sparkly vampires lol stupid girls and their stupid girl fantasies" variety. You get the same thing with Fifty Shades - Gray's relationship with Ana is flat out abusive in a lot of places, but all you get from the mainstream press is either "lol women are reading books with sex in lol frustrated middle aged housewives lol" or "omg BDSM is teh ebil!"
When Michael Gove chose Twilight as his exemplar for the kinds of books we don't want our children to grow up reading, he wasn't trying to make a subtle and sophisticated point about the way our educational system can reinforce harmful notions about gender and relationships. He was deliberately exploiting the fact that Twilight is widely disparaged for having a female target audience. There were dozens of other books he could have reached for instead but he went straight for the one that has the reputation for being a stupid girl book for stupid girls. -
http://lokifan.livejournal.com/ on Sins of the Fathers
at 15:16 on 23-05-2013 - link
I totally agree re: the Mary Sue thing - and especially the way even feminist women will tend to sadly agree characters are Mary Sues, which drives me up a wall.
blockquote>Katsa, for example, is stubborn, tempestuous, erratic, emotionally insensitive and completely blind to (and, for that matter, completely incapable of providing) what Bitterblue needs and wants from her, which is steady maternal love.
Oh yes. I loved the slightly comic edge Katsa and Po's DRAMATIC TRUE LOVE gets once we're out of Katsa's head, but yeah, it was also a little sad - reminded me of that saying 'the children of lovers are orphans'. Katsa and Po are clearly awesome to Bitterblue in their particular way, but they can't give her what she needs.
Agreed that the pacing/plotting was somewhat uneven, but I loved Bitterblue to bits - even more than Graceling and Fire. Not least because I find Leck terrifying. Or rather, I find his effect terrifying - the particular brokenness and untrustworthiness of the people around Bitterblue both broke my heart and CREEPED ME THE FUCK OUT.
I must admit it never occurred to me to treat post-Leck Monsea as anything other than people recovering from personal trauma. I mean obviously there's the literacy/history/legacy/power stuff going on, but yes, 'abuse survivors' was definitely how I read Bitterblue, her city and her court.
In short, BITTERBLUE I LOVE YOU. WILL YOU MARRY ME? I WOULD BE OKAY WITH SAF VISITING. -
http://baeraad.livejournal.com/ on It’s Guys Like You Mickey
at 13:42 on 23-05-2013 - link
I have very little to say about the bulk of the article. This Gove fellow sounds like your standard-issue reactionary asshat - the kind that thinks that the root cause for any problem is that someone, somewhere, isn't miserable enough.
But since you managed to bring it up twice, I'd like to state the following opinion: saying "girls like Twilight" is kind of like saying "boys like Conan the Barbarian." It is probably true in the sense you mean it, but it is far from universally true, and the subset of the mentioned group for which it is true is probably not the subset that the entire group should be judged by.
Or to put it another way: most "girls" I know hate, hate, HATE Twilight. They consider it not only some amazingly horrible literature (which it is) but also a horrific anti-feminist tract (which it also is). Just because someone hates Twilight it doesn't have to be because they are a chauvinist asshole, is what I'm saying. I mean, don't get me wrong, that could be why. But it could also be because they have either taste or morals or both. -
Dan Hemmens on Quiz Night!
at 09:13 on 23-05-2013 - link
I was thinking more of direct changes in meanings that depend on punctuation
I think this comes back to Shimmin's point about hammers and nails. Not everything that affects meaning is grammar. If I attempt to write the word "kitten" but I accidentally forget to cross the ts and write the n badly so it looks more like "killer" that changes the meaning, but it's a pure question of orthography, not grammar.
I'd also suggest that a question mark, for example, doesn't actually *change* the meaning of a sentence, it merely provides additional context. "Where did you get that hat" is unambiguously a question whether you put a question mark on the end of it or not. -
http://arilou-skiff.livejournal.com/ on Quiz Night!
at 22:21 on 22-05-2013 - link
Well, obviously punctuation only makes sense for written language (I take it for granted that written and spoken languages obey different rles and have different grammars) but I was thinking more of direct changes in meanings that depend on punctuation, like exclamation marks being used to denote imperatives, or question marks changing the meaning of a sentence into a question.
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Melanie on Quiz Night!
at 20:11 on 22-05-2013 - link
I read somewhere[1] that punctuation's origin was as an aid to oratory--that it was meant to show how something should be said, where to pause and so on. Which made complete sense to me as soon as I read it, because the way something's punctuated makes a big difference in how I "hear" it, and I don't even know exactly where/how I learned to do that.
[1]That's a trustworthy source, right?