NARMOD OANRMD DNAORM RANDOM

[El_Josharino]

What the shit? Nobody has posted in the last 7 hours? What am I supposed to do when I come home with drinks in my face?

[Ashley]

my god, i know. i've been all, what, are you serious, i'm the only one stomping around on the internet on a friday night?

[clare]

I've been busy for the last 12 hours, so I'm no good to anyone. Buggered now. Cleaning out the spare room so that it will be E's. Probably tomorrow. Bookshelves in the hallway, which is not the ideal solution, but will do for the short term.

[Anne the Man]

I went to look at a flat last night. I got on quite well with the people, but the room is too small, painted grey and next to a noisy shower. Plus a lack of garden Also one of the guys, who was quite hyperactive, described himself as a 'film geek' a few times, and though his favourite movie was Metropolis others included having a thing for LOTR and Titanic. His film geekery probably comes through more in that he makes them, but by those standards my film taste makes me a Film Nerd Commander Extraordinaire, and I hardly watch anything. They really were nice people though, I could probably live with them if it were a bigger place. I may adopt them anyway.

[Anne the Man]

I wrote a thing about how it's a mistake to talk shit about current activist movements and act as though the old ones (specifically the Civil Rights Movement) are all dandy. If y'alls are interested. Uh, this is less shit-stirring than the gay marriage one... http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1201/S00087/i-had-a-dream-political-nostalgia-and-civil-rights-movement.htm

[Good Intentions]

There's a a scare-quote in the second line. Anne, are you trying to kill me?!

[edison]

GI, I think you would be proud at my attempts to discourage the use of scare quotes in French political sociology! (They are more widely used and accepted in French, but no less annoying)

[Good Intentions]

God bless you, J-Y, fighting the good fight.

[Thermofusion]

you gettin paid to write these articles?

[edison]

There's a a scare-quote in the second line. Anne, are you trying to kill me?!

Reading Anne's article now - this isn't really a scare quote at all, since the word "failure" does appear in the piece she is referring to, right?

[Good Intentions]

Not to argue too fine a point in lieu of actually commenting on the piece, but it's a scare-quote, because she is trying to indicate the bit she finds questionable by putting it (and only it) in quotes. That's the original and paradigmatic type of scare-quoting.

[Antero]

These so-called "scare quotes."

[Good Intentions]

Well-played.

[edison]

Not to argue too fine a point in lieu of actually commenting on the piece, but it's a scare-quote, because she is trying to indicate the bit she finds questionable by putting it (and only it) in quotes. That's the original and paradigmatic type of scare-quoting.

Okay, that appears to be indeed correct. The use of scare quotes I encounter most in academic texts is slightly different and is generally the author using a term he's not quite satisfied with or that he knows is terrible or does not exist and putting quotation marks around it to express the sentiment "hey, I can't write or I can't say this clearly, but at least I'm aware of it".

[edison]

Also, sorry I don't have much to say about the actual piece - I admire Anne's writing efforts but tend to really dislike opinion pieces in general and try to avoid them as much as I can.

[alistarr*]

Also, sorry I don't have much to say about the actual piece - I admire Anne's writing efforts but tend to really dislike opinion pieces in general and try to avoid them as much as I can.

This reminded me of someone I'd completely forgotten - not a really close friend but someone who I used to enjoy hanging out with at university. Once after a creative writing class he asked me in conversation what I'd thought of his piece because I hadn't made any comments in the class, and I said something like "I can see you have some skill and that you're practising hard, but I didn't have much to say because it's just not really my kind of thing". He shrugged and nodded and then we just carried on chatting about whatever else and generally having a pleasant relationship, until about a year later we were out at the same nightclub and he asked what I thought of the music and I kind of gave one of those exaggerated weighing-it-up expressions as I opened my mouth to speak and he interjected with "it's just not really your kind of thing?", every word carefully and distinctly enunciated like he was reading from a book he didn't like. Then he walked off and I don't think I saw him again that night, if indeed ever again.

Can't remember the guy's last name, even, but that was a weird moment.

[edison]

Wow.

[Javan]

That's brilliant.

[fishjim]

you gettin paid to write these articles?

another trenchant critique from thermo!

as for the "scare quotes" - if anyone reads the article, you'll see they're justified. anne's whole argument hinges on the use of the word "failure" when applied to activist movements, so why shouldn't it appear in the second sentence? and why shouldn't anne quote it, both to establish the use of the word in a piece she's critiquing, and to draw attention to that word from the outset?

[DCDave]

Because using either she's quoting someone and should provide more context than "They used the word failure" or she's not quoting someone and she should not use quote marks.

[DCDave]

The word is used once in the piece she's criticizing and it is used thus:

its single greatest failure has been its refusal to transform its manifestly untrue claim to represent 99 per cent of the New Zealand public into anything resembling reality

So the author's saying that the failure is that the Occupy movement is non representative, which is not the "failure" that Anne argues against.

[fishjim]

The word is used once in the piece she's criticizing and it is used thus:

its single greatest failure has been its refusal to transform its manifestly untrue claim to represent 99 per cent of the New Zealand public into anything resembling reality

So the author's saying that the failure is that the Occupy movement is non representative, which is not the "failure" that Anne argues against.

Fair enough. It does seem to be an unfair characterization.

[DCDave]

You wouldn't know, from reading Anne's piece, that he thinks that Occupy Oakland is awesome, for example.

[Thermofusion]

you gettin paid to write these articles?

another trenchant critique from thermo!

Fine, fine.

This piece isn't as dire as the gay marriage one, but it's pretty bad. Once again she's making a lukewarm point yet doing so in a unnecessarily provocative manner:

On this basis I could glibly argue that the Civil Rights Movement ‘failed’.

The glorification of the Civil Rights Movement is fairly common but dangerous, because it exaggerates the impact it had.

Then, as in the gay marriage piece, she employs a cop-out:

This article isn’t intended to condemn either activist movement mentioned.

I don't know, some white person from the antipodes criticizing African-Americans for not doing enough 50 years ago rubs me the wrong way. I don't think anyone capable of critical thought would argue that the quest for civil rights isn't an ongoing, perpetual process, so what's the point of making statements like "I could glibly argue that the Civil Rights Movement 'failed'." The civil rights struggle is a continuum, not a series of slides. Shit isn't done. What, you gonna say Upton Sinclair failed because he didn't start OSHA?

Also, it's unfocused, meandering, and poorly written, much like her last piece.

Hope that's a little more trenchant (excuse me, 'trenchant') for ya, my Berkeley boo!

[fishjim]

Hope that's a little more trenchant (excuse me, 'trenchant') for ya, my Berkeley boo!

It is, thank you!

I don't agree it's as badly written as all that, but yeah, starting off with a straw man is a bad idea.