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Bonjour.
Bugger, I was just about to dash in with amazing insight to say “first!”
Bonsoir!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23008810-2702,00.htmlKeith Windshuttle on Acid.
What a curious curious story!
Obama – just the latest espouser of wilsonianist rhetoric? How to classify the flavour? ‘Soft’ vs the ‘hard wilsonianism’ of the neocons?
I’d like to ask why comments that contain vulgar, filthy language can’t be automatically banned.
The tone of L.P. is seriously reduced all too often by a few people who, immaturely, think that adolescent swearing is clever.
Just asking!
sublime cowgirl, considering some of the other utterly stupid things the CIA got up to in the 60s, this really wouldn’t surprise me!
Everyone:
7th. And 10 degrees cooler in Central Queensland than way down south in Victoria. Strange.
Pyzo:
Out-of-context or thoroughly feigned surprise/anger/dismay swearing for its own sake is annoying, it is adolescent …. and it can be ignored.
Graham, you and I both manage to express ourselves without resorting to filthy language. It can be done.
If L.P. had a clear policy on this, the problem would immediately disappear and the tone of this otherwise fine forum would improve immensely.
Perhaps if the gutter language went so would much of the personal abuse!
“And 10 degrees cooler in Central Queensland than way down south in Victoria. Strange.”
This is what we call summer, Graham. Victoria’s weather is usually much hotter than that of central Queensland over late December through to February. This is because they have different weather systems. Queensland has a tropical/ subtropical climate dominated by the warming of the oceans to its north and east during the summer months causing cloud formation and precipitation, hence moderating temperatures. Victoria’s weather is dominated by the deserts to its northwest which heat up over summer and push the lows that come in from the Indian and Southern Oceans south and which mean clear skies and a building up of heat as there is little if any cloud formation to reflect the sun’s radiant heat. The result is that not infrequently it is much hotter in Victoria over summer than it is in central Queensland.
sublime cowgirl
The REAL story of the Australian Culture Wars is just how traumatised Windschuttle’s merciless bitchslapping has left a whole generation of lazy inept Leftists. This latest article and the fortune of ARC and Ph.D scholarship money spent by the Ghastlies on trying to find even the smallest punctuation mark to “discredit” Windschuttle is really very, very sad.
Said Ghastlies would do well to actually hit the archives and rewrite their howler-ridden fantasies and destructive lies.
Mark, how civilised it is to greet the day with an exchange of temporal perceptions.
Btw, there’s a very funny Kudelka cartoon in one of the liftouts from Rupe’s rag re cultural elites. Gagged on me bloody latte, I did.
A man feeling suicidal calls a help line.
“Good afternoon, how can I be helping you?”
“Er, is ths Life-Line?”
“Yes, sir. The service in your area has been outsourced to here in Pakistan.”
“Well, I suppose that’s globalisation for you. Can you help me with my suicidal feelings?”
“Certainly sir. Can you drive a truck?”
I was right in the thick of the non-university cointer-culture in Kings Cross in the 60s to mid 70s. The CIA may very well have used LSD to disrupt the anti-war movement in the US, but it may not have had too much to do with it in Australia. I’ll come back to that in a moment. In Sydney, while acid was still legal, people had heard of it but not come across it. I don’t know what happened on uni campuses, but on the street it first appeared in Kings Cross, because a batch of it was allegedly stolen from Callan Park, where I believe it was being used to treat schizophrenia by two ex patients known as Mindless and Horse. To my knowledge this was the first time it turned up at the Cross. It was surprising, though, as time went on, how many American soldsiers were dealing the stuff at the Al-Aliemein Fountain. I understand it was also being manufactured at UNSW, though I never knew anyone who actually made the stuff. Apart from Honi Soit, the formula for making acid was published in an underground magazine named Graffitti, in which I had quite a bit of poetry published. Theat edition was confiscated by the Drug Squad, which was very small in those days. We also published extracts from banned books on the technique of love-making, which were confiscated by the Vice Squad. As all this was over 40 years ago, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in revealing it now. In Australia LSD certainly did not disrupt the anti-war movement, even if some of those American soldiers were CIA plants.This was long before I went to uni. A misspent youth, you might say, but a hell of a party.
Pyzo, plenty of people have sufficient linguistic dexterity to express themselves without utilising the colloquial definitions of vulgarities. Some people can best express themselves using swear words. Someone shouldn’t be ignored or excluded because of how they express themselves. However personal abuse, no matter how it’s expressed, certainly has no place in a reasonable discussion.
GregM, I’m not sure about central Queensland, but Brisbane and the South East have had quite an unusual couple of weeks. We’ve been enjoying tops in the 20’s and quite a few showers to help fill our dams. This during a period where we’d normally be sweltering through Christmas and the New Year with the occasional summer storm.
From the point of view of Melbourne I can say quite confidently that LSD assisted the anti-war movement. It was a fuel and a lubricant for the freaks who got real rowdy at the end of 69 and during 1970 rolling into the Moratoria. It was party time and the authorities got real concerned about what was happening to Australian youth. In Nov 1970 the govt blinked. It stopped arresting draft resisters even though they asked to be arrested and they didn’t replace troops that were withdrawn.
At the same time the Maoists at LaTrobe Uni went on a pusher hunt and bashed up a few of them in the area. Funny, the Libs and the Maoists shaking hands over social policy.
Katz,
I suspect you could say the same of Sydney. Almost everybody I knew went to the Moratoriums, though at the second one in Sydney the police got very violent. That was the first time I’d ever been on a university campus. Somehow or other, the anti-war movement heard about some of the anti-war poetry I was writing, and I was invited to read a long anti-war poem at the UNSW Roundhouse. Which I did, of course. And it wasn’t just conscription that got us going. Many of us were socialising with American soldiers at Whisky a Go Go and places like that, and we heard some stories whih got us very pissed off. Its always been my contention that if it wasn’t for the Vietnam War, Australia wouldn’t have as big a drug problem as it does.
Where is this foul language people are talking about? Does someone object to french?
Keith Windshcuttle admits to ghost writing at best, or plagiarism at worst.
And turns out to be extremely gullible as well. He was prepared to believe that an American in a suit, from IBM with extensive experience in LSD and “anti-establishment” would just walk into the office of Honi Soit with an article on LSD and he’d publish most of it verbatim, without credit. In fact, if the guy had looked like a hippie, Windschuttle would have been prepared to believe he was a CIA spy.
Excellent story. thanks SCG!
Desipis, are you saying that there should be no limit to the use of filthy or offensive words in a comment? Consider the following:
“Some F….in’ C…ts, can F….in’ stick it up their A..ses if the P..xy B…tard C…ts F….in’ well think that I F….in’ well will stop my bl..dy F….in’ swearing.”
I have met people who talk like that! Plenty.
“Its always been my contention that if it wasn’t for the Vietnam War, Australia wouldn’t have as big a drug problem as it does.”
Left that little pearler hanging in there air , Paul.
Nice one!
Meant to say ” in the air”.
Anyway, it is such an extraordinary conclusion, Paul.
I would have thought we would have got about good ol’ aussie drug addiction without help from that war in particular. Opium, for instance, was pretty popular, here, before pussy was a cat.
Joe2,
As I had to take a tutorial on the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s-1970s I did a bit of research on this.All of this is from memory, so I hope you will forgive any inaccuracies that might creep in.
The NSW Drug Squad was eatablished in, I think, 1969. In the annual police report for that year there were 2, repeat, TWO deaths from heroin use state-wide. Because I was working in the field as a drug-counsellor at the time, I know there were no more than 20 heroin addicts in Kings Cross. There was, I think, a smaller number on the Northern beaches.By 1975 that number had increased exponentionally, but I can’t remember the figures.Marijuana smoking was not widespread, and was restricted mainly to people best described as Bohemians and it had been going on for decades. Kylie Tennant in Foveaux records limited cocaine use among the Australian underworld in the 1920s-1930s. Most morphine addicts were WW2 veterans who had been given too much for treatment of their war wounds, but I was unable to ascertain the numbers.
Marijuana use was not common knowledge until it was publicised by the Wayside Chapel in a totally unmerited media beat up, the purpose of which was to raise the donation level for the Chapel.And teenagers who’d never heard of the drug unless they’d read Kerouac or Ginsberg, naturally enough, got curious.But it did not reach Australia in floodtide proportions until American troops brought it, and LSD, in on R&R from Vietnam. The big hard drug problem was heroin. My impression is there was very limited use of speed among the counter-culture because most of the hippies I knew really believed the maxim Speed Kills.Sadly heroin did make some inroads.
If there hadn’t been a VN War, the world wouldn’t have as big an opium problem as it does. Feeding the Grunts’ habit kick-started a huge industry in Thailand and Burma, which later translated to Turkey and Afghanistan to feed their habits, and everyone else’s who learned from them, when they returned Stateside.
The Australian market was just a handy little sideline for a thoroughly industrialised drug economy.
Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose. She’d used heroin before, but it’d been cut and expensive. In 1970 she got some righteous uncut stuff direct from the Golden Triangle, possibly brought in a by a returning grunt.
http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/j/Janis%20%20Joplin/janis_joplin.htm
The result is that not infrequently it is much hotter in Victoria over summer than it is in central Queensland.
Supersaturated air cannot go above 32 degrees C from memory so while the temperature may be lower, believe me this does not translate to greater comfort.
In Melbourne marijuana was very widespread from about 68 on. LSD was mostly brought in from London, starting late 68 or so. I don’t know if anyone was manufacturing it in Melb. There was a bit of an urban legend that some stuff was coming in from Sydney.
But the end of 1969 heroin was very widespread. There were two well-known dealers in my neighbourhood, one of whom got bashed up by the Maoists I mentioned above in about late 1970. My memory is a bit hazy on that detail.
pyzo, the purpose of words are to communicate are they not? The words you quoted adequately communicate the author’s message. Simply because someone uses a different subset of words than you, a subset they are more familiar with and comfortable using, does not invalidate their ideas.
I’ve met people who speak that way too, and they can be intelligent, friendly people who happen to have grown up with a less ‘high culture’ education.
Paul, as an ex drug-counsellor and continuing historian you would know that alcohol has been the traditional drug of choice of the white Australian invaders. More pervasive and dangerous than any other addictive drugs that have slipped in through any war or gold fields rush, like opium.
Aussies, “oi, oi, oi”, pissed since Captain Cook landed and conveniently forgetting that the major social lubricant is a drug.
Just sayin’.
“Why is it that so many people have a craving for weird history? That’s the term the historian Greg Melleuish gives to some massively popular outpourings of fantasy posing as fact. One example is The Da Vinci Code, which of course is a novel, but one many readers believe is based in reality. Another is Gavin Menzies’ crackpot 1421, which claims that Chinese ships circumnavigated the globe in the 1420s, and which has sold more than 2 million copies.”
” What about the truth of 1421? Melleuish says weird history can flourish partly because of postmodernism, “which says one story is as good as another”. Possibly this is the view of the Transworld publisher, Sally Gaminara, who told Four Corners, “It’s very hard to prove that something is or is not correct.”
For the historians among the readers-
http://www.smh.com.au/news/michael-duffy/boom-time-for-weird-history/2008/01/05/1198950077189.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
About the crude inanities of late. Its about to make me avoid LP, particularly after last night’s little read. And this is why:
1. Everybody loses it sometimes but not all the time. If they lose it all the time they are treating LP as the psychic space to work out some wierd unintergrated part of the self and to bring it home. Get a therapist. The minutae of the unintegrated psyche is as boring as hell and why should anyone have to read it over and over without being paid for it?
2. Crudity on a monotonously regular basis as a mode of provocation requires very little intelligence. It doesnt ever subsitute for wit, or humour. And cries of victimisation which accompany it are very laughable, following as they do does on the heels of a steaming pile of abuse directed at just about anybody who is assumed to be middle class, holds a degree or whatever. And that leads me to a good dose of ‘chip on shoulder’ disease which has been going on here and narcissistic dreams of true working class heroes carrying the load for all the wannabe lefties who fail beyond reason. What a delusional load of crap.
3. And just one more thing Gaz. It seems to me that if you are going to enter Wolfe’s kitchen then you should be prepared for the heat and if you are quite happy calling your abusive crudities ‘jokes’ as you go in, then dont cry like a baby, beating at the windows, about the ‘joke’ you get in return, and begging the moderator to deliver you from what you started anyway.
This sort of rubbish really degenerates the quality of argument on LP and certainly destroys any pleasure one might get from reading or participating.
As to this topic, as I said on the monogamy thread last night, I got pretty fed up with it. We were getting a lot of “there are a lot more spaces for free and unmoderated speech in the blogosphere” comments before Xmas, so I thought, hey, let’s just leave it up to people to discipline themselves and do away with the “heavy-handed” moderation for which we were being criticised. And so… there we have it.
I’d appeal to everyone to remember that others are reading and wanting to participate in this space, and I agree with casey that it’s not appropriately a space for working out issues or reciting a monomania. I don’t know if I’d go so far as John Quiggin’s “no profanity” rule, but repeated crudities are unhelpful certainly. As are attempts to provoke a snarky response.
Would it be crude to suggest that JG and Gaz are absolutely begging, panting, even for a bit of external heavy handedness, if only to give their own wrists a rest.
Let’s leave them alone, su. I don’t think it’s productive to go on discussing this – let me just observe that it really isn’t all that difficult to refrain from stereotyping others or imputing motives to them, and to refrain from responding to obvious jibes, or writing in such a way that you know will give offence. It’s called conversing.
Joe 2 [22] and Katz [24]:
Opium was indeed used in Australia prior to the Viet-Nam War – by a very, very tiny number of people – and some of those were quite elderly Chinese with addictions that predated the 1911 Revolution.
It was the U.S. troops coming on R&R leave in Australia who really kicked off the problems here; their arrival on the scene here coincided with an upsurge of youthful rebellion against everything the older generations stood for and it coincided with the successful launch of The Third Opium War – The War Of Revenge. Despite the slanderous propaganda to the contrary, Australian Diggers returning from the Viet-Nam War were not responsible for the drug problem here – in fact, having seen first-hand the effects of drugs on American troops, almost every one was vehemently hostile to any young Digger foolish enough to even think of trying drugs. Drugs – especially heroin – were a far more effective than AK47s, B10s and other weapons that went “bang” and they were very accurately self-targeted too.
Katz [26]:
Both Hashish and Mescalin were often mentioned in intellectual/artistic circles in Brisbane during the early ‘Sixties but so too were their well-known adverse side-effects …. it may have been worry about these adverse side-effects that stopped people going from simply talking about these drugs to actually trying them.
Any other fossils have recollections of those ancient days?
Question to those who know:
1. Does Mescalun have psychogenic effects?
2. does Absinthe?
My friend reckons he hallucinated on absinthe but all my reading suggests that the active ingredient wormwood would be too low for that….
Murph the Surf,
Re weird history. If you’re going to the conference I’d appreciate any feedback. Now some thoughts. I suppose Roy Gilray (or Gilroy?)is the foremost Australian exponent. He was the one that came up with the Egyptian hieroglyphs or paintings in the Blue Mountains. I can remeber these ideas being dismissed with considerable contempt in 2nd. year Archaeology. I think he’s retired now, but I remember hearing one of his last projects was a search for the Yowie. I can remcall when I was living on the south coast of NSW in 1976-7, s Yowie was supposed to have been sighted on the Monaro, and somebody offered an incredible reward for its capture alive. According to rural myth, and I’m pretty sure it was that, hundreds of people set out with guns to capture the poor creature alive. (Even if Yowies don’t exist, I think its nice to believe in them.)
On the more serious level are the stories of the reappearing disappearing Portuguese wreck on I think, the east coast of Victoria. One expedition even claimed to have found it, but the wood was dated to the 19C, and had no semblance of a shipwreck.Reputable historians are willing to concede a Portuguese arrival here on the basis of the 1542 map of Java Le Grande. Ernest Scott, and I think, Russel Ward gave it some credence.Evan McHugh, in one of the more recent works on early European exploration of Australia, 1606, An Epic Adventure,says its ‘an extraordinary claim’but that a Portuguese crew might have crew member who had been on the voyage along the north west coast and down the east coast from Cape York to the south of Tasmania ‘talked’ despite the threat of death for divulging navigational secrets.
Katz at 16, that’s brilliant. You’ve cracked a new genre. Akbar Noir.
Amazing how “l’humour demiseâ€?, jokes about the variety of initiation rites available for membership in the “choir invisibuleâ€?, has evolved so seamlessly from gallows to graveyard to coroner’s dissection room. And now, from pre-emptive cark counsellor to call centre.
In 1975 Richard Pryor on the album, “…is it something I said?â€? did schtick as a preacher in a neighbourhood church eulogising a passed African American acquaintance. Prior, (a knock-shop raised and grazed African-American) is depicted on the cover-shot as what appears to be a Franciscan missionary about to be torched at the stake by persons hooded. The bewildered look on his dial chimes beautifully with the album title.
“Preacher� Pryor to mourning congregation:
We are gathered here today on this sorruhful occasional to say goodbye to the dearly departed.
He was dearly, and he was departed…..in other words,
Da n****h dead!
As you can see him lying here….
ah bin here three days and da boy ain’t moved a muscle,
so ah KNOW da n****h dead.
And it seems that death was quite a surprise to his ass.
(to corpse): Didn’t think you was evah gonna die, did ya n****h ?
I told you about fuckin’ around and what was gonna happen!
(to congregation again): However he faced da Ultimate Test, as each man and wo-main must eventually face the Ultimate Test.
And The Ultimate Test here is: whether or not you can survive death.
That’s the Ultimate Test for yo ass ain’t it?
So far, there ain’t nobody we know has passed…..Da Ultimate Test.
Least of all this n****h layin’ he-ah!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/12/db1202.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/12/12/ixportal.html
“I suppose Roy Gilray (or Gilroy?)is the foremost Australian exponent. He was the one that came up with the Egyptian hieroglyphs or paintings in the Blue Mountains.”
That would be Rex Gilroy http://www.theaustralianyowieresearchcenter.com/ who was chasing yowies when I was a schoolgirl in Katoomba. He had a museum / tourist attraction in the Scenic Skyway complex. I think his father had chased yowies before him. Not sure if either of them were familiar with post modernism tho
Angharad,
Yep. That’s the bloke.
Casey ,though i have never tried it, unlike mesculum, Absinth looks like a most dangerous substance. I saw it at The Dan Murpy, once, and the colour is all wrong.
It may turn you into one noted for sexist comments towards many women like the famed Strindberg. See more…
http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/absinthe.html
Great Granma Matilda inhaled opium in pattersons asthma powder using the lid of the tin it came in and striking bryant and mays dipping the flame in the dope. That was the 40s and legal medication. Happy baccy was also legal and obtainable from a well known Flinders st tobacconist. Reefers yet!Methadrene was the speed of choice for truckies, taxi drivers and shift workers from Fitzroy and Carlton 50s thru 60s. A good laugh and insight into the hippie and academics drug use and experimentation in the US can be found in Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson and includes great stories involving Timothy Leary, Hunter S Thompson and many others I can’t remember as my copy disappeared years ago.My mother died 40years ago from the effects of a lifetime addiction to drugs and alcohol at 49 yrs.Her addictions were WW2 related.
PS. Matilda used the above for all 40yrs she was bedridden after 11 children became too much for her to cope with. Passing that responsibility on to the eldest child,my maternal granma.The memories of my childhood in that house in Carlton includes the wafting scent of chinese dosshouse through the hallway on the ground floor.
Mr Burns, Australia didn’t have a drug problem with speed among hippies because they preferred hooch even though speed was available over the counter. One of the brands, Drinamyl tablets, known popularly as “purple hearts” because of their lilac hue and shield-like shape, were dexamphetamine 30 mg, came in a waxed strip of 20 like Aspros, and cost about 70 cents a box; or about $7.00 in today’s money.
Most of my school friends used them to stay up for two days before exams, cramming. It worked very well, boosting synthetic enthusiasm for Gerard Manley Hopkins and Emily Bronte.
Purple hearts were also popular among suburbanites, as were the Mother’s Little Helper” Mick Jagger sang about:
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill
There’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.
We are of course taslking about Valium, a benzodiazepine drug, easily gotten on prescription. Again, not popular among hippies but used extensively in the community by “respectable” people, as was alcohol. So, there was no drug problem there.
known popularly as “purple hearts� because of their lilac hue and shield-like shape, were dexamphetamine 30 mg,
Dexy’s Midnight Runners indeed.
Sir Henry,
Point taken. I wass concentrating on illegal substance emanating from the article about KW and LSD. We used yellow valium and gallons of orange juice (under a doctor’s direction and supervision)to help people go cold turkey on smack while they were locked in an upstairs room for three days.Very primitive and I can’t say it really worked. A lot of the time was spent on phones telling worried parents Indonesian beedies were not grass, or persuading very drugged smackheads to call an ambulance for their unconscious friends and ringing hospitals on separate phones persuading them not to call the police if we could persuade those on the other phone to call an ambulance for their friend. They didn’t want to call an ambulance or go to hospital because they thought they’d all get busted. I saved two lives, and one of those overdosed and died six months later. After two years I was utterly burnt out and steadfastly refused to ever take on that kind of work again.
Joe 2 [28]:
Alcohol has also been a terrific instrument of social control in Australia.
Casey [30]:
]: I don’t like abuse either so I just bypass it and try to find the concepts [if any] hiding amongst the dross.
I can understand your frustration …. but not your sensitivity. A few points [NOT intended to offend
You are meeting a wide range of humanity here so you might ask yourself where consistency, or tenacity for that matter, ends and a “chip on the shoulder” begins. This is a blog, a conversation, not a learned paper for publication, so generalizations are inevitable – perhaps desirable – a single term can become shorthand for what would be elucidated in a couple of pages of a scholarly paper. People do have powerful feelings about specific issues or have had intimate [perhaps even disasterous] experiences so blandness isn’t always appropriate; if blandness and conformity were the hallmarks of Larvatus Prodeo, I wouldn’t bother looking in here. Not every aspect of a participant’s background and identity is revealed on-line – and some sites are not what the seem to be either – and I do get a quiet laugh [and sometimes a real belly-laugh] at some assumptions that are made, even ones about me.
Anyway, please don’t abandon Larvatus Prodeo. If you don’t mind having your views challenged from time to time – whether as a participant or as a reader/lurker – it’s a good place to learn something new or to see something from a completely different angle.
Cheers
Ah, Graham, visiting a blog shouldn’t have to be like going to a local tip searching for a gold tooth!
A blog may well be a conversation but surely, to achieve anything, the conversation must be civil and civilized.
To me, a blog is like a classroom: the teacher sets the limits. If there are none, then chaos is the result which, I think, is what Casey was trying to say!
Casey,
Depends. Mescaline is a psychedelic alkaloid, mesclun is a salad.
Depends. As you say, the wormwood in modern-day absinthes is far lower than in the nineteenth century, but alcohol is well-known to cause hallucination by itself.
“To me, a blog is like a classroom: the teacher sets the limits. If there are none, then chaos is the result which, I think, is what Casey was trying to say!”
Dan the Man, might I suggest you think more broadly about TEh bLOG.
She was meant to be organic, thoughtful and just picked like a bean from the home garden.
And there will be arguments in the kitchen as to how the produce will be best cooked.
What is the etiquette about outing people or identities behind posting names?
Is it frowned on? Was there been a to-do in the past about Weathergirl’s real identity?
I’m asking because someone – Liam perhaps ? wrote that the average poster had 10 identities.
The Devil Drink pops up with a specific regularity and it occurred to me this person may not in fact just be the superevil one.
Christine Keeler and her foul temper is also much missed so but is this person also a constant presence under other names?
All responses as long as they are very polite are welcome.(this especially applies to you Christine ).
i am secretly gummo trotsky.
No, I’m Gummo Trotsky.
Thank fuck I’m not Gummo Trotsky!
Shock ‘n’ horror sublime cowgirl = gummo trotsky.
Keith Windshuttle maybe blowing in the wind, my friend, as well.
Oh, night of nights, how will we survive this tribulation?
nice to see you again fiasco!
With the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art holding it’s Andy Worhol exhibion at present, this story shows the value some place on his work.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119940749725466431.html?mod=blog
That rather assumes that the average LPer is not inventive enough to stoop to personal abuse without the benefit of “gutter language”. I think rather more of our commentariat than that.
Profanity and obscenity is not always personal abuse, sometimes it’s just emphasis. The comments policy already classifies personal abuse as unacceptable content, so I hardly see the need to prohibit terms of emphasis just because they trigger someone’s internal net nanny.
We just need to be more vigilant on the personal abuse front, which as Mark says, is exactly the sort of vigilance LP was being criticised for only a week ago.
Murph the Surf (#49)
Unless there’s some public interest value to it, I would frown upon it. Personal opinion only.
Joe 2, so well done, thanks so much for that Absinthe lesson. I didnt know the fairy was pink!
Devil Drink, yes but is the wormwood available at higher concentrations in Australia? Cause thats what I want to know dude and where to get it -is the real stuff available here? Put your diabolic powers to use and let me know.
Grahame Bell
“if blandness and conformity were the hallmarks of Larvatus Prodeo, I wouldn’t bother looking in here”
Now if you had ever read some of my comments with any seriousness then you would see just how you have missed the point of my earlier post which had nothing to do with sensitivity. And certainly, it had nothing to do with ‘niceness’ in commenting. I am all for strong opinion and even a good stoush, when its done well, with either passion, intelligence, or wit but when boring crudities are repetively put up on each strand purely for the purposes of provoking people into anger, then thats something else again and despoils the reading pleasure of LP. Thats all I need to say about that. Except that if you want to catch an intelligent and devastatingly witty risposte on this site, you cant go past Katz on a good day or Sir Henry on any day for that matter.
I’ve heard that there’s a Croatian (?) Club in inner city Melbs somewhere where it is… I can make further investigations if desired!
Yes Mark do find out. I have waited a long time to see fairies you know.
The Egyptian hieroglyphs are near Gosford north of Sydney. They are held by Egyptologists to be modern forgeries, but there are still plenty of New Age people who think they’re real.
Actually, casey, I don’t know if it’s online and I’m a few sem sauv blancs short of the energy to look it up but there was a very interesting little essay based on an exhibition of Edwardian illustrations by A S Byatt in the last (double) issue of the Guardian Weekly wherein she commented on how in English folk tradition faeries were wholly alien to us and quite malevolent beings sometimes which interested me a lot.
However, I shall certainly make the said enquiries nevertheless!
silkworm,
Tempting as it is, I will refrain from casting aspersions on New Age People. Thanks for the info. As you can tell from the egregious errors in my comment I’ve not been that deeply into Rex thingo. For some reason or other.
“wherein she commented on how in English folk tradition faeries were wholly alien to us and quite malevolent beings sometimes…”
Oh, the nerve!
Och, true for you. Can ye believe the cheek of these mortals, mate?
Dan the Man [46] and Joe2 948]
Very well put.
Fiasco da Gama [51] and Enemy Combatant [52]:
Would you please get Sublime Trotsky and Gummo Cowgirl to behave themselves.
Murph the Surf [49]:
Revealing things that people do not want revealed can be both hurtful and unnecessary; it is very very very bad form – Weathergirl wasn’t the only one damaged when their identities were revealed to all-and-sundry. Multiple identities and shared identities just come with the territory; finding out who is who is easy but rather time-consuming so why bother? Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Glove-puppets, propagandists and paid disrupters are not appreciated though.
Casey [57]:
Agree with much of what you have said. Just bear in mind that you are reading a wide – but not the widest – cross-section of humanity; there are things that annoy me which others would find delightful. Look forward to reading your posts on a variety of topics.
“wholly alien to us and quite malevolent beings sometimes which interested me a lot.”
Folks who haven’t already should read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It’s good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Strange_&_Mr_Norrell
Graham, the following is a part comment from another thread: “…my comment was ironic/sarcastic… and intended to induce outrage (hopefully apoplectic) in certain posters at LP… and was designed to draw flak from them for my private entertainment.”
The author is to be highly commended for such daring honesty but it does expose a problem common to most blogs: the stirring or ridiculing of genuine commenters by some for dubious or entirely selfish reasons.
Casey, Mark, etc.
Green Fairy seem to be one of the popular brands, with a 60% alc/vol and 7-9 ml/L thujone content. My colleagues in the pharma level of Hell inform me that thujone, the active ingredient of wormwood, hasn’t been shown ever to be reliably hallucinogenic or psychoactive, the early 20th century phenomenon probably caused by delirium tremens, other toxicity, and other drugs. Frankly, I’d be very sceptical of any alcohol marketing that promised hallucination and ‘ecstasy’, especially with a novelty drink like absinthe. Why, when real hallucinogens are so much cheaper and safer, and ecstasy so widely available?
If all you want to do is see fairies casey, try a bit of acid, or find yourself a mushroom grower.
Dan, if you are going to quote from one of my comments I’d appreciate it if you’d quote the whole of it, and not just selectively for your personal convenience. The comment, and the arguments I put which preceded it, had a genuine purpose; to draw attention to the economic realities that farmers face, something that many of the sinecured commenters and rentiers at LP, and you too it is apparent, are happy to blithely ignore.
Greg, please don’t lecture me about farmers. I am one! And if you don’t want people to gain an insight into some of your motives, then don’t put them in print!
Cheers.
Dan, nothing on your blog tells me that you are a farmer. You may well be a hobby farmer, and therefore a parasite on my taxes, but a farmer, in the sense that Murph and Yobbo and SATP and Katz know it; get real!
On your second point, all I have asked of you is that if you want to quote me you do so in full and not selectively, as you have done. Then people can see what I have said and get an insight into my motives without having to go through the filter of yours.
I have posted a lengthy and thoughtful response to Marks’ question about High and Low culture., but it seems to have vansihed. PLEASE tell me, you can see it!
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/04/cultural-elites-dont-exist-study-finds/#comment-424782
Greg, I am not here for your entertainment!
If you visited my blog you would’ve noticed at the masthead the clear statement: “Argue not with fools, frauds and fanatics. Seek instead better companions.”
I rest my case!
Hmmmm..it must be the length. As the actress said to the bishop.
Yes you are.
As to the quote on your masthead;
“Argue not with fools, frauds and fanatics. Seek instead better companions.�
it seems to me that you are all three things rolled up into one.
Was the actress referring to the hemline on the Bishop’s vestment, John?
Does anybody know if any of the LP bloggers have been caught up in the Northern Rivers floods? Can we send them a message of moral support or something? Just so they know we’re thinking of them?
Oh, I’m so confused…
Helen likely to become cyclone again
And are you up here in Brisbane, Helen? After a return to normal weather yesterday (ie unpleasantly hot and sultry) we’ve gone back to cold accompanied by tropical downpour. Not that I’m complaining – good for the dams and I hate summer humidity.
John, I think your comment fell victim to the moderation filter’s distaste for the word “luvvie”. I’ve just released it from captivity.
Tamborine Mountain Distillery has its own brand of Absinthe: “Moulin Rooz”. It even won an award. It’s not a bad batch, according to what I’ve heard.
They make very superior liquors generally – though I haven’t tried their Absinthe. Worth a road trip.
That place, if one was to go for the “road trip”, would need the trusty Comby parked about one kilometer, down the road, and not to be moved for about a day and a half after the tasting.
Absinthe, Arak, Pink Gin and Grappa. Whoops, almost forgot the poteen.
Lots of backpackers for sure and more than a few headaches. Thanks Down and Out.
And how about the amazing graphics for Moulin Rooz Absinthe.
http://www.tamborinemountaindistillery.com/products/product_absinthe_detail.htm
Heh!
Well thankee for that link to Tambourine, DAOIS. Never heard of them before but about to engage with ‘em in at least one transaction now. The interwets are great like this.
Yes, there’s always been some doubt about whether wormwood is a truly psychoactive ingredient in absinithe. I have researched this issue at length abroad and at home but unfortunately most of my field notes were swept off the table along with the rest of the coasters and cocktail napkins. However I do have a few cryptic words scrawled on a shirt cuff or two. Let me examine them.
“Rhinos are God’s CSR.” Hmm, no. I think that’s from a calvados tasting session in Normandy.
“Bust that fucknut loose LOL.” OK, that’s definitely bundy and pot in FNQ.
I have had a few nights drinking wormwood-enhanced absinthe with the whole sugar cube and trowel thing and yes boy did I get crazy flamboyant drunk and have thick richly detailed dreams but I sorta suspect the impact is partly pyschosomatic and partly because absinthe is one potent brew anyway. Certainly leaves you with a hangover like a green goblin with a beatbox crapping in your skull.
And yes Mark, the old Czechoslovakian Social Club in North Melbourne used to have the wormwood-enthused drop behind the counter – available for a nod, a wink and a couple of lobsters but sadly it is no more.
A bit of googling will allow you to purchase the real thing and ship it here and as far as I’m aware AQIS generally lets such orders through.
If anyone in Melbourne wants to try it, my expert tasting and evaluation services are unsuprisingly affordable.
Thanks, Nabs, I thought it was you who’d mentioned it. I’d thoroughly encourage some sampling of the Tambourine liquors – some friends of mine brought me some back from a jaunt up there.
Check your bigpond email Mark.
Very good, Nabs, Alibi Room is re-opening on Tuesday.
Although, perhaps we should go to Bowery. I think several interstaters have been entertained there, but I have a feeling it’s been closed on your previous visits.
http://www.thebowery.com.au/
“Bust that fucknut loose LOL.” OK, that’s definitely bundy and pot in FNQ.
Not San Pellegrino Limonata in AGB? LOL
Or fennelnut brandy in Madras. I report, you throw up.
Dan the Man [way back at 67]:
I myself have been guilty of posting comments knowing that the result would likely be, for some, apoplexy and outrage and calls for burning-at-the-stake …. but I’m sure I have never ever been guilty of making such a comment for the sole purpose of amusing myself by causing others to become angry. Much the same could be said for many regular posters here at LP. Nobody here takes kindly to spiteful, purposeless, nasty provocation.
Anyway. Stick around. There’s always something interesting on the boil. Have you checked out the LP Archive yet? …. lots of gems hidden in there.
I will stick around, Graham! L.P. is an interesting site.
Besides, it’s good to get away from the responsibility of running a blog and simply enjoy being a commenter though the ‘baiters’ and the ‘vulgarites’ do tend to spoil things a bit. Of course, there are a few ‘intellectual wankers’ whose comments are virtually unintelligible. Perhaps their mothers swallowed a dictionary or they don’t realize that good writing involves clarity?
But them aside, the bulk of people on L.P. are very nice and well-meaning. You take care now.
The correct Keatingism is “Just because you swallowed a fucking dictionary when you were about 15 doesn’t give you the right to pour a bucket of shit over the rest of us”. God the man was a legend.
…
To continue the meta-discussion on language which as Kim rightly says is way off-topic, I’d like to take up with the idea that it’s somehow anti-democratic or elitist to express concepts precisely.
The articulation of ideas though precise technical language, to which Dan and Jinmaro so object, isn’t a process designed to exclude, but merely to be correct. Insisting on undefinables like ‘clarity’ and ‘plain English’ isn’t necessarily inclusive or democratic, if you lose precision and add ambiguity. “Persuasion” and “teaching” rely also on people being able to use the specific terms they mean, when they’re referring to definable concepts, instead of having to fumble around with plain-English metaphor. If we’re talking about terms like “transcendence” and “immanence” that aren’t even disciplinary jargon, but perfectly normal English words, Keating’s fucking dictionary might be a good place for some commenters to start.
Dan the Man’s insistence that this is a blog not a postgraduate seminar is flat out anti-intellectualism. If people are talking above your head Dan, get a high chair.
BTW, Klaus:
I’ll happily take on the work on subcontract, if you don’t want it. I’ll even chuck in a bit of patronising condescension for free, and I’ve got a special this week on profanity.
It might pay you to actually read my comments, Liam, just as you expect people to read yours. I did not say that I was having trouble reading the comments on the other thread but that some of them were…well, lacking in clarity! But whether by intention or by accident I do not know!
Regarding your high chair, anti-intellectualism jibe, one based upon absolutely zero knowledge about my background: let me say that a high chair seems a more appropriate means of support for you than me! Cheers!
GregM above has said to you everything on this that needs saying, Dan.
Liam, fancy an intellectual like you having to let GregM (of all people) speak for you! You are a real disappointment, Liam.
Sure, Liam, the work is yours, but all I can pay you in is ‘unclear’ prose. BTW thanks for the Keating insult link, I had a good laugh working my way through those.
I do think it is ironic (to say the least) that ‘clarity’ is such a damned unclear, context specific concept. What I found most problematic about the injunctions offered on the earlier thread was that they were so inattentive to context: I mean, if you read the thread, I was merely running with what was offered already by glen and JG.
The classic example of the ‘anti-democratic’ argument appears in John Carey’s ‘The Intellectuals and the Masses’ which seems to equate modernism with fascism. Actually, Carey embodies perfectly the ambivalence of those who defend high culture but reject ‘intellectualism’.
It would be nice if this discussion could go forward without personalising it (though I recognise that’s the way it was started and Dan may be being ironic – sometimes hard to tell with just text.)
Look at this one, get a giggle and cry.
“New South Wales Attorney-General John Hatzistergos says he fears academics are trying to pressure the Federal Government into creating a national charter of human rights.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/05/2132326.htm
Via weez at mgk.
http://machinegunkeyboard.com/
Joe, most academics are like the prelates of religion: they develop consummate skills in intellectual hocus-pocus and semantic pea and thimble tricks and use them to dazzle the unwary and the gullible. They pretend they know much when in fact they know a lot about very little. They present themselves as messiahs when, beyond the cloisters of the academy, they have little of value to offer.
Joe, look at the state of our world if you don’t believe me! It’s full of academics yet chaos reigns and the end of the world is nigh!
Beware Greeks bearing gifts, men wearing vestments and those wearing mortarboards, I reckon!
P.S. This comment is made as a Public Service.
Dan, your version of a “trahison de clercs” narrative seems to accord academics far more importance in the great scheme of things than I think is warranted.
And just quietly, speaking as someone who works in that capacity, it’s a tad annoying to have to read constant attacks on one’s profession. No doubt lawyers feel the same. Just sayin…
Longstanding software problems resolved so now I’ll be back on rare occasions. No. No glove-puppetry intended.
Yep Dan, could not agree more.
Academics on every corner spinning nonsense and not dressing right. I see them in the supermarket. Lately at swimmin hole readin’ Kant.
Interleftuals for sure. Thanks for your tireless/tiresome public service as horse and public moralist over the holiday season
Hey, Mark, I don’t accord most academics much importance (yourself excluded) though, to be honest, I wish they were. Our world is crying out for help and inspiration and leadership and direction.
Once, Universities were placed where bright people went, where new ideas prevailed, where students were frequently revolting, where revolutions were hatched. Now they seem to be dull places that churn out technically skilled workers and, as a reward, are funded by Big Business! Yawnnnnnnnnn.
Whatever happened to Universities? Mark, tell me please!
“Perhaps their mothers swallowed a dictionary…”
Dan, the Man: Swallowing the dictionary is not really a good analogy in this context.
In my workplace we have a running joke and daily practice where someone will write on the whiteboard for the sheer joy of it and to share with others “The Word of the Day”, and its meaning: typically a newly learnt word, the wackier or ribald the better.
I’ve read English dictionaries like one would read a book, from A-Z, since primary school because, I suppose, of a hunger to learn words and their meaning. This has resulted in some dreadful faux pas and malapropisms along the way, written and verbal. But who cares?
It’s not the length or complex meaning of individual words that’s at issue, as Liam simplistically imputes, but the way in which words are put together. Banal, pretentious, reactionary crap is just that. No matter how it is dressed.
Poetry is definitely the literary form that has taught me the most about language and meaning and it has required a lot of time and effort. But the pleasure has been boundless and exponential. And this love of words and their meanings, learnt above all through the reading, and reciting, of poetry, was instilled in me at age 7-9. I vividly remember the first poem I learnt at school (by E.V. Rieu) which always makes me cry when I recite it to myself now because it marked the beginning of life-long joy in word-meaning and communicative human thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._V._Rieu
The Hippopotamus’ Birthday
He has opened all his parcels but the largest and the last;
His hopes are at their highest and his heart is beating fast.
O happy Hippopotamus, what lovely gift is here?
He cuts the string. The world stands still. A pair of boots appear!
O little Hippopotamus, the sorrows of the small!
He dropped two tears to mingle with the flowing Senegal;
And the ‘Thank you’ that he uttered was the saddest ever heard
In the Senegambian jungle from the mouth of beast or bird.
Now who’s basing comments on zero knowledge about background?
Here we go again. First, your non-comprehension is not evidence of unintelligibility, and second, that’s not a argument, or even a coherent metaphor. You couldn’t mix a metaphor with a fucking Kitchen Aid (as PJK might have shouted from the dispatch box).
What have you got to “offer” besides glib banalisms and naive cliché? Perhaps you could surprise us with blogger’s libertarianism, shake the foundations of the Western canon with vulgar atheism, or make my fortune at Idiot Bingo by quoting Orwell at me.
Go on. Try the Collected Essays.
[Snort]
Judging the non-empirical aesthetics of fellow swimmers, I’m sure, joe2.
No chance, Mark, sorry. It’s easy to dish it out Dan, but can you take it?
I don’t mean to be personal, but as I think I’ve previously hinted, Liam’s bird droppings on LP I invariably find a combination of unfunny, what the fuckery, smelly adolescent male hi-jinkery, cemented with god-awful provincial state-based right-wing ALP politics.
All of which amounts to a pretty unappetising if indigestible brew not to mention dull and uninspiring as the proverbial…mudflat.
“Judging the non-empirical aesthetics of fellow swimmers, I’m sure, joe2.”
Oh shit yer Liam and we need a stop to it!
And those academics dribble, in the pool, larger than the little kids.
[[Mark:
Would you kindly delete my post in error at No.102 at 7:14pm.; it adds nothing to the discussion]].]]
There is nothing wrong with academics but the ones involved in some of the airy fairy arts like philosophy,and yes I am serious, what good is this to society ?.
I mean I am a plumber I can do tangible things for you like fix a tap washer or a backed up toilet.
Wow, I’m glad I’m not a humanities academic, or I might begin to feel like I had a lot of enemies out there after visiting this blog a couple of times. For once it’s a relief to be merely unemployed!
Klaus K
Jan 7th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Well if your looking for a job, I am doing the plumbing on a set of villas next week, you can give me a hand to dig the trench.
Indeed, Klaus K, humanity has taken a large hit lately and it is reflected in the university. Enjoy unemployment and thanks for providing stimulating, online reading, for me.
Really? I don’t know why you then go on to be! I’m allowing that comment @ 107 to stand only because I know Liam enjoys them. But it’s not a precedent. I find a lot of what you have to say interesting, Wolfe/jinmaro, but I certainly don’t enjoy your habit of characterising others by politics or whatever (which you often get wrong anyway) with the apparent intention of provoking. I don’t know why you feel the need to do it, but I wish you’d stop doing it. There are people who post on this blog with whom I disagree. Saying so, and saying why, is productive. Speculating on their personal beliefs or characteristics and doing so in a manner that’s disagreeable is most unproductive.
Never have understood the need that some people have to deride an entire profession, occupation or calling.
Hell, I’ve even met some fairly reasonable farmers in my time.
Without philosophy graduates, we’d have no taxi drivers.
Too Right, adrian, Phill has done a good job of making plumbers look like fools.
Thus, one more pretender who would not know his way around an s-bend if he saw one.
I agree entirely, wolfe/jinmaro, but since you made such a big deal of telling Klaus K how unintelligible his comments were, how would you know? You hacked on him for his style, not the content, and you had no contribution whatsoever to his argument, or anyone’s. If you’re looking for banal reaction, follow the link back. In fact, let’s be honest about the real anti-democratic phenomenon here: that of dismissing any argument as ‘reactionary’ that isn’t short, predictable, easily digestible and and facile.
De gustibus non est disputandum, or at least that’s what’s printed on my can of condensed whatthefuckery. I’ll keep my copy of Whatever It Takes, you can keep your pious ultra-romantic sentimentality.
Oh yes, Mark, indeed. I feed on the contempt of strangers.
Adrian [115] and Klaus K [111]:
It doesn’t hurt, though, to look at the causes of negative stereotyping and at who benefits from promoting such stereotyping.
For example, some of the contempt towards farmers and graziers now arose during the Waterfront Dispute when the NFF went bananas, supposedly in their name, and this was exacerbated when a very very tiny handful of rural folk were found to be rorting drought relief a few years back. At least there, possible causes can be found
Hostility towards humanities academics, however, is a bit of a mystery. There are the good, the bad and the ugly, just as there are in any occupation …. and of the “bad” I can think of some real doozies but that’s not enough to condemn the whole group, no way.
I expect to see that on the inside cover of your first book, Comrade Haiku.
Straight to the top of my CV, Citoyenne Winter.
PS. Comment in moderation.
There now at 118, Liam.
Once upon a time, a long long time ago, when I was an Arts student, I was in the cab. The driver asked me what I was doing at Uni. Fearful of the usual riposte, “so you paint mate?”, I nevertheless said “Arts” and the driver informed me he used to be the Dean of Arts at UQ. Apparently, this was true. He got sick of it all and decided driving a cab was more fun.
“Too Right, adrian, Phill has done a good job of making plumbers look like fools.
Thus, one more pretender who would not know his way around an s-bend if he saw one.”
That is an unfortunate mis-reading of my occupation Joe,but if you need a job, I have a shovel with your name on it as well. It is a long trench.
Bit of a full moon round here lately, eh, ladies and gents.
[hums the "Addams Family" theme song, snaps fingers]
j-p-z [128]
Haaawwooooooo ….
[How did you guess? L=O=L]
It’s somewhat egotistical to proclaim that anything you don’t understand is bogus.
Sometimes complex language is necessary to describe a complex world.
Jus’ sayin’.
“Once, Universities were placed where bright people went, where new ideas prevailed, where students were frequently revolting, where revolutions were hatched. Now they seem to be dull places that churn out technically skilled workers and, as a reward, are funded by Big Business! Yawnnnnnnnnn.”
I made this observation in number 104. I’d hoped for some intelligent response especially from the academics amongst us. Yet nothing.
Cat got your tongue?
“where students were frequently revolting”
Sounds like somebody’s never read The Wizard of Id. HINT: students frequently ARE revolting, but just don’t say that about my roommate’s girlfriend.
“where new ideas prevailed”
Why should ‘new’ ideas necessarily prevail? Because they’re ‘new’? You have a great career ahead of you as a structural engineer! Apply today!
“where revolutions were hatched”
‘Attend lovely Princeton University, and hatch a revolution of your very own! Read our mission statement, which is all about hatching revolutions…’ At least, that’s what it said in the pamphlet when I wrote to them.
“I made this observation in number 104.”
What observation?
“I made this observation in number 104. I’d hoped for some intelligent response especially from the academics amongst us. Yet nothing.”
Hey Dan the man,I thought Mark gave you an answer,some academics find it more fun to drive a taxi.
Hey, Plate of Shrimp, aren’t you in the wrong thread (see A Weighty Problem)?
Seriously though, you haven’t answered my question. Instead you tried to justify the status quo.
An example. The French Revolution was inspired, in part, by university students who, one assumes, were in turn inspired by their lecturers who must’ve been radicals who questioned the status quo.
Where are the radical, inspiring academics who set the pace, who lead the society? Have they become extinct or has the system lobotomized them?
So there you have it Dan,Uni is not the place for new ideas according to the plate of Shrimp.Structural engineers are using the same syllabus they built the leaning tower of Pisa with.
Phill, I am unemployed but I am not looking for a job at the moment. Thanks anyway. I happen to have some experience as a labourer – mostly destroying things, which I thoroughly enjoyed at the time. The hours were good as well: I like an early start.
“Hostility towards humanities academics, however, is a bit of a mystery. There are the good, the bad and the ugly, just as there are in any occupation …. and of the “badâ€? I can think of some real doozies but that’s not enough to condemn the whole group, no way.”
I’ve met some of the good, the bad and the ugly myself, and plenty in-between, but the hostility has little or nothing to do with real direct experience of academics. It comes from the fact that a humanities academic, as a subject position, represents a crime against ‘common sense’ (which is a concept that is even shakier than ‘clarity’, of course).
“It comes from the fact that a humanities academic, as a subject position, represents a crime against ‘common sense’ (which is a concept that is even shakier than ‘clarity’, of course).”
I think they are viewed a bit like a vetinarian,very useful if you have a pet.
Klaus K, in my degree I took as many humanities courses as I could and I loved them all. They are the courses which open your mind to the world rather than focus a microscope on a tiny, technical part of it.
Of course, as you go up the academic ladder you specialize even more and reach the stage of knowing more and more about less and less.
Perhaps that’s why some academics find it impossible to discuss broad topics? But they really love minutiae!
I don’t know why you would assume that French universities would have been particularly instrumental in inspiring the French Revolution. Take the University of Paris for example (later to be called the University of France, and later still the Sorbonne).
Here is an extensive list of famous alumni of the University of Paris. Not a single one of them had any input at all into the ideas or the organisation of any phase of the French Revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Paris_people
On the contrary, in 1793 the revolutionary National Convention abolished the University of Paris because it was deemed not to be a suitable institution for a revolutionary society.
“Of course, as you go up the academic ladder you specialize even more and reach the stage of knowing more and more about less and less.”
And this is based on what, exactly? Your assumptions? I find the opposite is true: you start with a specialised area of expertise, and then move outwards from there and end up in places that you never expected.
Er, I did a bit more digging on that.
It seems that the Abbe Sieyes did attend the University of Paris.
He was an important revolutionary dude.
However, the books he read were not recommended by the University. Like Lenin Sieyes established his own curriculum hose books were not only frowned upon by his professors, but which in some cases were banned by the French state.
Sometimes universities become unwitting agents for revolution, despite themselves.
Piquing the curiosity of students is sometimes a dangerous thing to do.
Phil,
Very useful ifyou have a book.
Nore seriously,and this might be because I went to a rural uni, but I don’t think unis are that revolutionary at all. Quite conservative really, as you quicxkly discover if you buck the system.
Katz, the students must’ve got their ideas from somewhere. Perhaps it was from the local brothel?
Klaus K, are you being deliberately obtuse or do you not know how academia works, the ever-narrowing progression from Masters to Doctorate?
Phill, keep the bastards honest!
Everyone gets their ideas from somewhere.
What has happened has been a transition from one mode of conservatism to another: bucking the system means different things now. While the potential breadth of ideas and methodologies that you could encounter and pursue has increased exponentially, the limits imposed now are to do with measurable productivity.
Bucking the system is thus no longer meaningful in terms of reading the wrong books in the way that it once may have been, but resistance emerges where you don’t produce enough articles, pass enough students, stick to the time-frame given for a project, or complete your administrative tasks. This can effect the quality of research and teaching, but it also tends to produce the opposite effect to that proposed by Dan: academics are increasingly jacks of all trades. Of course there are positive and negative aspects to these changes, it’s not all dire from what I have observed.
Paul, you’ve put your finger on it: don’t buck the system!
There’s no place for radical thought or ideas in a stolid, mandatory ‘jumping over long established hurdles’ and an elitist ‘mortarboard-doffing’ system!
“Klaus K, are you being deliberately obtuse or do you not know how academia works, the ever-narrowing progression from Masters to Doctorate?”
Dan, a Doctorate is the beginning of an academic career. A doctoral thesis is also, by definition, usually less narrow than a masters thesis.
I blame Voltaire!
I like Phill’s idea though. Never is one more in need of a quick overview of Boethius than when one is told the septic is stuffed and the water hammer is actually the death rattle of the plumbing nightmare you inherited from the ancien regime.
I wouldn’t quite agree with you, Dan. I did not mean in terms of study area, but pretty wild anti-social behaviour, and stirring up political strife. Bein a bit mad, actually.
“Everyone gets their ideas from somewhere,” says Katz.
Have you never had an original thought, Katz?
Didn’t mind Boerhius, but I enjoyed Abelard’s letters, Procopius’s Secret History and the gossipy bits of Seutonius heaps more. Of course, none of them help with the plumbing, but I rely on real estate agents to fix that if it goes wrong. Anong the many good things I will say about the uni experience, (and for me. despite my outrageous behaviour, it was mostly very beneficial and one of the happiest times of my life on all levels),sometime in third year, maybe because of the (mostly) brilliant teachers I had since first year,, maybe because of the subjects I had taken, I had what I can only describe as a brain-snap, which changed entirely, the way I looked at the world, forever. It was a very positive educational experience, and one I will alwaysd be grateful for. I have had a more complete life because of it.
I had one brilliant teacher, Paul, a Philosophy Professor who looked like I’d imagine Socrates might’ve looked. He deeply affected both my life and thinking.
Universities, largely, have sold out their students and their society. They have, for various reasons, become predominately job-training institutions rather than places where people can go to become truly ‘educated’ in the broad sense of the word!
Dan, your criticisms make little sense to me because you seem to be placing agency in the hands of the institutions themselves, when it is clear that it is government policy that has produced the changes that you decry. The only way I can see universities in Australia becoming independent of government funding is through privatisation, which I doubt will produce the kind of educational environment you seem to want. To expect other forms of resistance is naive to say the least.
I’ll let others be the judge of that DTM.
However, on brief acquaintance with your own lucubrations I’d say that you are neither intelligent nor original.
(For sake of attribution, let me say that I have made a slight tweak to the usual aphorism that one’s conversant is both intelligent and original, but not at the same time. In the case of DTM that would would be inaccurate.)
Klaus, I agree with your point about government policy. After all, most politicians don’t want voters that can actually think, who can see through the manipulative games they play.
And I guess while there are those who willingly play the academic game so they too can get highly paid, high status jobs by maintaining the inspirationless, vocationally oriented status quo nothing will change.
In an ideal world, a group of really alive, really bright radical academics who were sick of the stultifying system, if they combined with a switched on student body, could embark upon a revolutionary experiment that would blow the barnacle-encrusted drifting hulk of academia out of the water. Yeah!
Then the world isn’t ideal, is it?
Katz, your response to my serious question answers it perfectly. Thanks.
The sound you can hear is me laughing, extremely hard. Not so much in delusional sympathy, more in cruel mocking of your total ignorance. Why isn’t there an internet abbreviation for that? TSYCHIMLEHNSMIDSMICMOYTI.
Nah.
And the Engineers will design a fusion reactor that runs on garbage and emits nothing but kittens and whiskey, and we’ll all live happily ever after. As Klaus said; your vision of ‘resistance’ is naive in the extreme and totally ahistorical. The closest example to your millenialism is that of Paris in ‘68, in which students rebelled against their university, later of course generationally co-opting themselves into an actually functioning bourgeois education system.
If you enjoy living in a modern planned social democracy, thank a technocrat.
…
For the record, JPZ, it’s a new moon where I am.
Let me assure you DTM that the pleasure was all mine.
Yes, ‘highly paid, high status’ is a rare combination in a university, and permanent academic positions may take 10 years or more to find from the day you complete your Bachelors degree.
Now let’s draw a line between my portrait of the University of Paris in 1789 and Liam’s portrait of the Sorbonne in 1968.
As Liam correctly observes, in 1968 students rebelled against the university. And in an analogous way Sieyes rebelled against the clerical domination of all matters of culture, especially in matters of political philosophy,
Like the students of 1968 who found their way to the higher rungs of the French status ladder, so did Sieyes, who eventually found himself as one of the three directors of France, along with Napoleon.
In both cases these insurgencies changed the rules of the national game in France. And in both cases the university hierarchies represented the forces of conservatism.
Most of the time universities are great engines for reproducing social order. And when the order changes universities become great engines for reproducing the new order. The history of universities under the third Reich is a particularly stark example of this. Most academics served Nazism just as they had served the Weimar Republic without missing a heartbeat. (There were exceptions, but relatively few.)
“Argue not with fools, frauds and fanatics. Seek instead better companions.”
When people resort to offering infantile insults, they expose not only their complete lack of intelligence but immaturity as well!
Sorry, I don’t want to play your ‘play the man’ game.
switched on stuent body.
Never seen such an animal, unless you want to get into double-entendres. Apathy is more like it, even back in the golden days DTM imagines to have exited. I’m not a believer in Golden Ages myself. When examined closely they turn to dross.
Just as I thought, Dan. As mouthy and glass-jawed as an Australian cricketer.
In my time on campuses, I found there to be a large minority of ’switched on’ students if by that we mean politically engaged (in the broadest sense) and with some idea of their place in the world. This always tempered my disappointment that students weren’t more active, because nowhere else I have worked have I encountered even a large minority of people who give a shit about those things.
Just to comment on the original accusation that the language is too academic to follow; I think that is a cover for envy and petulance that one can’t respond in kind. I have a bog standard science education and, while I no doubt miss the subtleties, I can still follow the general arguments so I’m sure others can too. I have yet to see a good faith, non-academic attempt to engage with the argument mocked off the page so I don’t see what the problem is. I like being baffled, nothing more boring that ideas that one has already encountered elsewhere.
There is a regretable and most unhappy conflation of “post-grad student,” “academic,” and “intellectual” going on here. While of course the three can be interchangeable, I am sure we all agree that in the current climate of “humanities”"discourse – at least in Australia – the first two are more likely to be revolting vis a vis the latter.
In fact, it is surely the case, that post-grad/academic “work” rooted in poststructuralism is illiberal and art-denying; indeed inhumanist, misanthropic, and ugly. Surely, it is time the brutes had a long bath.
I attended uni in the supposedly golden age of the early 70s, and as an external student 20 years later.
Although the degrees were in different disciplines. the teaching was definitely superior second time around, both in terms of teaching technique, feedback and enthusiasm. Most of the teachers I encountered in the 70s would be hard pressed to provoke enthusiasm in anything much, let alone revolution, or unfortunately the subjects that they were teaching.
As for the student body, I unfortunately had little experience of it as an external student, although there was one particular Greek lady that I distinctly recall in the tri-annual tutorials that were available.
But the students in the 70s, although unecumbered by HECS and decidedly more relaxed than their contemporary counterparts, were mostly only revolutionary if it gave them more opportunity to participate in the more carnal side of university life. Which it did.
Paul Burns
On Procopius’ Secret History, I could not agree more. My dear, how well the writers of the rumoured remake of The Women would do to imbibe Procopius’ observations on the Emporess Theordora; that “daughter of a bear-keeper!” Even better, Edward Gibbon’s trademark restraint and respect for “colourful” ladies, including the good empress herself!
“I am sure we all agree”
Lol.
Klaus
Sweetie, I don’t understand why the sudden flick of the switch to nastiness since Mark’s return. We used to be such friends. Now, you never call, you never ring, only fling aggressive postit patois. Was it the Bach, sweetie? The lime-green Torana, or Kelly Marie’s Make Love To Me?
Yeah, “I’m sure we all agree” is surely the last refuge of the intellectually fraudulent.
adrian
I do not present any claim to expertise or credentials whatosever, so they can hardly be fraudulent!
Heh!
That’s my (fading) memory too Adrian.
It was fun to monkey about with revolution, and there were plenty of Trots (Fourth AND Fourth-and-a-half Internationals!), Maoists, Bakuninists, and assorted freakazoids with whom one could have much fun.
But most of the time it was mostly an opportunity to party, especially after the Libs blinked and started withdrawing troops from VN.
Before that we actually got a bit of cadre work done.
We got a lot of skinny dipping done in the student uprising of the late 80s.
Just sayin…
“I do not present any claim to expertise or credentials whatosever, so they can hardly be fraudulent!”
Adrian, I don’t think ole “cut ‘n’ pasties” really knows what “intellectually” actually means.
“I do not present any claim to expertise”
So, yet another reason to ignore your piffle then?
Hold on weren’t the students of the 70s overwhelmingly middle class? My understanding of the data is that Whitlam’s reforms did extremely little to change the class structure of the universities. That did not happen until the 1990s. Today, the % of the population that enters higher education is more than double that of the golden days of the 1970s. And naturally, a dilution in standards.
And while there were absolutely some fabulous firecrackers – Wendy Bacon, Bob Gould, Keith Windschuttle, Ann Curthoys – during those halcyon times, a hell of a lot of media and imagery I have reviewed from the era was filled to the brim with squares in jackets and ties, twin-sets and pearls.
Double heh.
I have struggled throught this intermittently inaccuracy- and inanity-riddled thread in the hope of a LOL and Liam was the most likely source. I am reminded of Simone’s soulful solo in Shane Warne: The Musical: ‘Is the sun the moon? Is it the same thing just coming around again at night? And if I don’t understand that, how will I ever understand Shane?’
Since we’re talking about Sieyes…
“L’amour, sans phrases.” Well that’s what I woulda said, had I been in his shoes.
Sorry. Couldn’t resist. As you were.
John, I’m in a less generous mood now that I’ve returned from holidays, and I apologise for any nastiness. As a sometime revolting brute, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.
“On Procopius’ Secret History, I could not agree more. My dear, how well the writers of the rumoured remake of The Women would do to imbibe Procopius’ observations on the Emporess Theordora; that “daughter of a bear-keeper!â€? Even better, Edward Gibbon’s trademark restraint and respect for “colourfulâ€? ladies, including the good empress herself!”
It’s sorta like having a flasher online isn’t it? A quick display of the goods but once they were revealed in full, we all had a good laugh at just how small was the revolver he kept threatening to reach for.
Nabakov, Greenfield’s probably just acting on legal advice. Given the dire standard of his comments, if he claimed expertise on anything other than boring the shit out of everyone, he’d be in breach of the Trade Practices Act.
BTW, does anybody else use Scrivener? I’ve just set it up to give it a try, and am very impressed.
Did Sieyes say that?
I had always thought that it was said by Japerz’ countryman Louis LaMort, writer of western fiction.
“Louis LaMort, writer of western fiction.”
You mean like “Étranger Grand”?
Yes, and
Tu t’aimes élan (1955)
And of course other existentialist ttracts like:
The Empty Land
The Lonely Men
The Quick and the Dead
Lonely on the Mountain
Shadow Riders
Lonesome Gods
Passin’ Through
Milles Eaux ta lange
It’s interesting, from a psychological point of view, to look at the change in tone of the comments in this thread since I withdrew at noon.
The comments this morning went from simply attacking bits and pieces of what I was trying to say to attacking me personally. If I hadn’t withdrawn when I did the familiar pattern (found on many blogs) would have been repeated: the attack dogs forming a pack, then circling, then nipping, then biting to draw blood. Eventually they would’ve moved in for the ‘kill’.
Perhaps that’s why Pyzo created such a problem because, being a ‘horse’, it couldn’t really be attacked and destroyed in the conventional manner. As well, it didn’t respond in the usual human way and was therefore no fun. Resultantly some very negative and hostile comments (from males) were increasingly directed at its creator. So Pyzo, a noble but peaceable animal, was put out to pasture.
This presents me with a problem. I want to contribute to L.P. but, though I could put up a good fight, I’m not really interested in playing the ‘fox’ role for the destructive local hunting pack because, obviously, the fox can never win! Besides, I have better things to do with my time!
It’s an interesting conundrum!
Beautifully put, Dan the Man. Did I mention what a pleasure it is to read such a clear writer?
And these same attack dogs who can’t ever comment without personal remarks about other commenters NEVER get “moderated”.
I thought pyzo was a (mostly) unfunny joke that had overstayed its welcome.
Dan, my only advice to you, and as someone who has been that fox on a thread or two, is that if your ‘contribution’ involves casting broad, ill-informed generalisations about groups of people, some of whose members comment on this blog, you can expect the same and worse. To be honest, you’ve dished it out here, and it is disingenuous not to take it from the few who have offered nastiness in return.
Dan The Man [back at 128]:
Sometimes I read posts and agree or disagree without posting anything myself [why the surprise?]; others are probably like me in that. That slight breeze you feel in all the silence after you have posted something is probably generated by thousand of heads nodding – or shaking – in unison.
Katz [136] and Paul Burns [139]:
From what I have seen, universities are far more likely to entrench the status quo [though with superficial changes] than to stir up revolution. There was one new university that started off with innovative approaches and transdisciplinary interaction – great stuff – but the academic hoodlums and the conformist students soon dragged it back into the mud.
I thought pyzo was great and so did Helen and Casey.
The men who attacked it quite viciously when he was asking legitimate question of great interest to many were the usual abusive suspects, including Liam and GregM, and the other one with the changing moniker – forget his name.
Dan this blog is great.You put a sentence up, some times with a bit of levity, and POW, boy do they come after you.You get a three paragraph reply that as you have said you need a dictionary to understand, but I ask you where would you get after one sentence a free psycho analytical appraisal of your i.q ?
Dan, blog stoushing is much an art as a craft and more like drunken WWF than either.
So the trick is not to actually try and win a stoush but rather to make all the appropriate noises that sound like you’re winning it and more importantly that they’re losing it, in every way.
That’s why so many end up as reflections on and imprecations about the character and motivations of the stoushees, leaving the original topic abandoned in a corner of the ring.
Dan, you don’t seem to have realised that for those of us who are (gasp!) academics, denigration of what we do and what we are is personal. I note also that it was started by attacks that were personal against particular commenters. Why you’re surprised some might respond in kind, I have no way of knowing.
Heh. The other trick to leaving in a huff, Dan, is to leave.
Phill, you have restored my faith in mankind. That is the best comment I’ve ever read on L.P. (although the one about being a dullard in life, politics and sex was right up there)!
Graham, you are a gentleman as always.
Klaus, as I said, beware of Greeks bearing gifts, men wearing vestments, and those capped with mortarboards.
Cheers.
And make sure you have ordered one well in advance too. It can be quite embarassing after you stalked out to end up standing around on the roadside waiting for the huff to show up.
“You sure you wouldn’t like another drink while you’re waiting?”
“Well OK. Just one. And another thing-”
We should start up StoushGym! Liam. I’m sure we can coax Fyodor into guest coaching appearances too (though he’d probably want a cut of the merchandising).
Pyzo made me laugh out loud maybe once, and offered little more than that save irritation. But some of the stuff said about and to Pyzo was hilarious. Maybe there was some value in that? I seem to have missed the vicious attacks referred to.
Let me make a few points, before I get on with doing something more interesting.
(1) As casey alluded to way up the thread at 30, most of this blather about moderation and what type of blog this is and who’s been a naughty girl/boy and been spanked and who hasn’t is terminally boring and tedious and offputting to the very many people who read this blog and don’t comment, and discourages some who might want to from doing so. Those for whom whether a particular comment is moderated or not is a question of critical importance might either like to re-order their priorities in life, or reflect on this. This is not some free for all public space, but a space we provide, and one that takes significant effort and work to maintain and provide, and one for which we ask nothing in return except perhaps a bit of respect for that space and the enjoyment that comes from a good dialogue. Crap about moderation rarely provides that.
(2) Nevertheless, I’ll make an exception to the rule. As with any other form of social space, inevitably there are hierarchies in the blog space. I’ve already alluded to that, and I make no apologies for it. If you want to see what the grand libertarian free speech thing looks like, go round and read some Catallaxy threads.
Some people who’ve been around for a long time have taken the trouble to establish a long record of commenting – often entertainingly and with some considerable edification to others. So they get cut some slack. Arriving in a new place and immediately denouncing others or criticising the house rules isn’t looked on so kindly. Get some runs on the board by actually participating positively before going meta, would be my advice.
(3) Generally I’m a fairly patient and tolerant person, but that patience has its limits. As I’ve remarked a number of times in recent days, there were complaints here before Christmas about “heavy handed” moderation policies. In response to that, I took some of the usual suspects out of moderation and no-one was enforcing the rules. The result, it seems to me, is a succession of boring and petty personal attacks and monumentally tedious discussions like this one.
(4) I’m particularly annoyed by people who create multiple sockpuppets to meta-comment and switch identities to avoid the consequences of continuing to do what they’ve been specifically asked, patiently but repeatedly, not to do (ie make assumptions about people’s personal history or politics, criticise others’ writing style, and generally do so in such a way as to provoke a fight). I think this is in bad faith.
(5) Therefore none of this crap is going to be tolerated in future. If you want to use this blog as some sort of space to work through your own issues or whatever (and casey’s coment was spot on) or display the difficulties you have in civil social interaction, think again. It’s a big blogosphere and you can find somewhere else to do it. It is not difficult to refrain from insulting others and to treat them with respect. It’s called being an adult.
That’s all. If you don’t like it, go away.
Discussion closed.
I’ll re-open this thread tonight and people can start afresh discussing something useful, if they so choose.
“Some people who’ve been around for a long time have taken the trouble to establish a long record of commenting – often entertainingly and with some considerable edification to others. So they get cut some slack.”
Whereas I get away with it ‘cos I’m cute and fluffy. And have a superb sense of timing.
Speaking of superb timing, apparently Peter Weir’s current project is rendering William Gibson’s ‘Pattern Recognition” onscreen.
While personally I would have preferred him to tackle “Idoru” or “Spook Country”, I’m certainly looking forward to this flick. One cryptic old western culture zen master taking on another’s take on the 21st century.
Now if only some benevolent and whacky cyberbillionaire would hand Terry Guilliam the screen rights and a decent budget for the JP Martin “Uncle” books.
Mark [198]:
Right.
Thou shall not question universities, thou shall not question universities, thou shall not question universities, thou shall not question universities, thou…
If that is what you take out of this thread, Dan, then so be it, but some attention to what has actually been said here might be invaluable if you have any desire at all to be in dialogue with others.
I’d agree with Dan the Man. What else can one deduce when no academic here, former or current, would concede that some language used in the academy is unnecessarily convoluted or even be the slightest bit interested in why that is the case and its repercussions.
I’m all for StoushGym®, Nabakov. Personal trainers to the argumentatively challenged, for hire at competitive rates. There’s no disingenuous gambit too shallow, no sarcasm too banal, no pointed reference to fascism too obvious, that a programme of Argument Improvement™ from StoushGym® couldn’t improve.
Nabakov,
I dipped into Gibson not that long after he first came to prominence. (I think I saw an item on the ABC Sunday Afternoon show about him.)Because at that stage of my life I was a bit of a technophobe I don’t think I got as much out of whatever novel I was reading as I would now, that I have a relatively firm grasp of computers, the www etc. Absolutely forget the name of the novel. Will be awaiting the movie with great anticipation.
Klaus’s revealing comment that doctorates are the precursors of academic careers, as if there were no other way of earning a living thereafter, and that this was their whole point, leads us to the real reason why some academics in the humanities write in a jargon-filled meandering fashion, often so complex so as to be understood only by a select few.
This intellectual terrorism relates to the existence of an academic arms race: in an increasingly competitive job market, the ability to deploy a wide-range theory and its related vocabulary sets one apart from other tenure-chasers, regardless of the clarity of the resulting prose.
Instead of competing on clarity, which in any sane world intellectuals would want to do, many, perhaps most, academics have surged in the other direction, differentiating themselves based on the complexity of their explanations.
Must be time for some haikus to lighten the thread. Anyone?
Trolls troll, stoushes stoush,
Still LP keeps door ajar.
Thanks, moderators.
Liam, maybe a list and share thread of all the blog debating tricks could be assembled as a community service. Like a textbook that we could all refer to.
“You just did No2’s and i’m not going to waste my time…” for instance.
Some pommy bloke had a really good and funny go at this, a little while back, but sadly i cannot find it. Anyways, you and Nabakov better get StoushGym®, flying, because it is an idea that will surely float.
How about a limerick?
There once was a stoush on LP,
That involved all except me
It was hard to see why,
The thread shouldn’t die
Unless the site charged us a fee.
StoushGym®!
From Threadworm to Blogblaster in only 27 easy steps*
Paypal accepted.
*test results only.
Will the StoushGym help people to lose weight, lighten up so to speak?
If so, I’ll support it!
The essence of weblog stoush training
Is mental, not physical training.
There’s no skipping feet
Or punching of meat
Or running up steps when it’s raining.
(Sorry, best I could do)
Just think of it as bootcamp for blogbags, maggot!
If StoushGym’s® first client was Greensleaves, I’m sure most of the contributors to LP would be willing to contribute to the no doubt modest fees that they would charge for such a challenge.
“Klaus’s revealing comment that doctorates are the precursors of academic careers, as if there were no other way of earning a living thereafter”
This is just the way that the institution tends to operate now. There are plenty of intellectual, and some academic ways to earn a living without one, but overwhelmingly to become an academic you do a PhD. There are less and less academics in higher positions without them. At the same time, in Australia, funding arrangements mean that doctorates are relatively short with the expectation that one complete in four years of full-time study.
Also, a PhD is not really a competitive project, because it requires only the assent of markers to be awarded. Far from competing towards elevated levels of ‘jargon’, a thesis must only satisfy a handful of experts in your field, and you can certainly direct it towards those who are more sympathetic to your position.
Far from meaning that you must master a great array of theoretical terms and positions, a doctoral thesis must make a contribution to the field that can be recognised by experts in the field. This always involves some component of mastery of relevant technical terms, philosophical concepts or theoretical positions, but what you will be assessed on will depend on the field you are working in. For example, as a historian it is the quality of your historical research (ie archival research) that will be assessed first and foremost. Indeed, as a literary scholar you could submit a New Critical-style thesis from beginning to end, without a theorist mentioned, although you would also have to justify ignoring 50 years of literary scholarship to do so.
I don’t see any logical link between my comment and your conclusions, jinmaro. Clear enough?
You haven’t at all addressed the language issues I’ve raised, Klaus.
So there does seem to be a serious disconnect between what I say and your understanding of it.
I am questioning your leap from my statement – which is de facto the way in which universities operate – to an unrelated conclusion about ‘intellectual terrorism’ and unclear language.
“Instead of competing on clarity, which in any sane world intellectuals would want to do, many, perhaps most, academics have surged in the other direction, differentiating themselves based on the complexity of their explanations.”
Clarity is relative to context, but you act as though it is some intrinsic quality of language. It is not. Clarity of expression, as a concept, relies on the existence of an audience: it is only possible to be unclear if your audience finds you unclear. You cannot speak to all people in every utterance, you cannot say everything about everything in ‘everyday’ language (whatever that is, it differs a great deal between different contexts).
This is a very straightforward set of observations about how language operates, and is a poor basis for reasonable critique of universities or academics. I can think of much better ways of going about that, and frequently do.
Bullies keep kicking cyber-sand in my face when I’m relaxing on intertube beaches. Virtual life has become a living hell. My significant other refuses to boot-up with me anymore because of the humiliation she feels when I’m publicly pilloried. Losing spousal respect is one thing, but being exposed as threadbare is something no earnest blogster should have to endure.
Rush me a contract for StoushGym now!
So you admit that your language, which I have to strain to read four or five times to get even a sense of what you are trying to say (and I read the LRB cover to cover and have for 10 years or more without any difficulty, for example, so I am not unused to difficult language and complex argument from world-class scholars and academics) is for the benefit of only a tiny proportion of the population? And that is your explicit aim? I see.
Would you hazard a guess at what proportion of the adult population in Australia could understand your normal academic writing?
I’m sorry.
That was not clear.
Please repeat your title, full name, and request, or press 0 to have my demands explained to you patronisingly, again.
You have been placed fortieth in the queue.
Whatever, jinmaro, you’ve made your point about a thousand times. We’ve got the message. Why repeat it endlessly unless you’re just trying to needle Klaus and start another fight on your ground?
Bored now.
How about you use your linguistic powers for good not mean spirited stoushing? Contribute something constructive for once not an ad hominem critique of another commenter. And you wonder why people get sick of your predictable tricks?
“for once”?
well that sort of bad faith exaggeration, is most mean-spirited, Kim.
Well, the most recent piece I submitted would be readily understood by a majority of the adult population, as would the conference paper on which it was based, although they may have to do a little follow up reading because it’s about a novel. My thesis would bore most people to tears, because a thesis has a lot of sign-posting and so on, but my non-academic friends who have read sections understood them and offered useful feedback.
My explicit aim is to communicate effectively with my audience, whoever that may be. Sometimes that audience is two or three people, sometimes I hope it will be thousands. I don’t like to leave an audience behind, but I don’t like to treat them like morons by ‘clarifying’ to the point of absurdity. I prefer to ask an audience to stretch themselves a little, intellectually speaking, if they are interested in my work.
Kim
Your point would be valid if it were not so selectively applied.
Actually, jinmaro – trying on a “who me?” wounded look on after being called on your repetitive irritations is what strikes me as rather disingenuous.
Just notin.
“You have been been placed fortieth in the queue.”
Thank you so much, Sir, for accepting my queue in your rack-off. Every little thing’s going to be all right now, I just know it. You seem so big and strong. Powerful, even. Strictness is an instructional virtue to which I have readily reponded in the past.
*sighs wistfully*
You give as good as you get, JG.
Jinmaro, “for once” is an exaggeration born of frustration. I apologise as you do often contribute interesting stuff. All the more reason why your campaigns against particular commenters – on endlessy repeated topics which really do appear designed just to offend and provoke – are so depressing.
But no more meta. It’s fecking boring to everyone except the attention seekers who prompt it.
Yeah, feckin boring and feckin ridiculous. If ever there were two frustrated high theory wankers its JG and Jinmaro.
don’t fight it dudes! De Nile is a place in Sudan!
One of us….
One of us….
“My explicit aim is to communicate effectively with my audience, whoever that may be.”
Klaus, I think that is great, crucial, as I have been saying.
I must say though, after all you have written in defence of academic language, which you seem to believe is never guilty of the sins I’ve been referring to, which are well-known and understood amongst academics and the large section of readers of non-fiction in the humanities, I am stunned that you do say this now. I honestly thought you didn’t care about effective communication.
So there you go.
Jinmaro, my statements are fundamentally about defending the use of academic language against populist injunctions like yours. Forgive me if your approval is greeted without enthusiasm, given that you are seemingly agreeing without understanding my point. I have not changed my position, so you’re being ’stunned’ is a little hard to swallow.
My apologies to moderators on this and every other thread I’ve been on lately for having to follow all of this stuff. Your energy and time is greatly appreciated, and I’m sure I haven’t made your job easier. All the same, I think I’ll take a few days away from LP to reflect. Maybe I’ll even get some work done
Oh noes! LP is fuelled by procrastination!
Klaus, I enjoy your comments, and my advice for the future would be not to take the bait.
Well, you feel strongly about this point in one way Klaus and I do too -though in a completely opposed way.
I think the contradiction (which I clearly see in your position) is on your side. And I do not and never will believe that my argument has no legitimacy in relation to the type of language I am referring to and its use to ill-effect in intellectual work.
We will have to agree to disagree or perhaps just put it down to mutual non-comprehension.
Relentlessly sinking in similes, pull it down, gently now, don’t hyperventilate or cogitate or salivate, they’re coming I tell you! It’s a pseudo-Victorian pulmonary bypass with literary complications, only twenty-four hours left, sorry my hands are tied, no funding, blame the government. It’s wrong, stop parsing immediately, Christ, it’s such bad taste all that sociological romanticizing with simulated Elizabethan overtones, poor form, philosophizing at dawn, choose your seconds, quick, upload now…
P.S. No more clear writing from me. I don’t want to be understood!
P.P.S. Please Kim, no, Kim, just a little joke, Kim, no…aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!
You are speaking of a discourse which has been going for a while now. That is, given that the ideal of “plain english” was once explored by critical theorists for its adherance to bourgois ideologies, and embedded structures of power which, they argued, kept people unknowingly enslaved to those structures, then it is appropriate to ask what ideologies and power structures also lie behind academic theoretical writing today, now that that mode of writing itself has become part of an established power structure.
Once, by intentionally writing in a dense and difficult way, theorists often proposed they were refusing those power structures through language, which was after all, one of the tools of control used by the the state or colonialism, or whatever. The first day of my critical theory course I was given a copy of an article published in the U.S on quantum theory using highly wrought theoretical language. (I still have it somewhere) It was a hoax. A hoax which was lauded by the sucked in theorists of the day who thought it was marvellous. It was kind of Ern Malley in that it actually made no sense (except in a pomo kind of way) and caused a lot of red faces. This debate has been about for a while.
Jinmaro, I havent read this, but why not consider the apologias offered by the theorists themselves. Check this out, the editiorial of which is sympathetic to your way of thinking:
http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/sample.html
Having said all that, do you really think its approprate to order the way people write?. You say you like poetry. Lots of people I know despise poetry and find its languange useless and suspect. And the people who quote it wankers. Now how do you feel about that?
My supervisor says this to me. Theory and theoretical language should be a vehicle you use to get to your destination, it should never be your destination.
There is also the argument, my published PHd friend suggests, which is, if you want to be published to the general public, then plain english is better.
There are lots of things to think about. I think the points you raise, that question the ideology behind high theoretical writing, have some valency. It would be worth exploring, but seriously, who wants to touch it when it comes with the guaranteed Jinmaro’s “personal to you” let me nail you a cross if you dont agree with me coda.
And then there is this: You come to a blog started up by an academic, frequented by academics and you complain when they use the tools of their craft?
Jinmaro, seriously, I know you’ve been to paradise, but have you ever been to you?
Top of the class Hombre Dan.
Incoherence, sarcasm *and* appeal to victimhood.
Ive been moderated.
“endlessy repeated topics”
like sexism, Kim? I make no apologies for my “campaigns” as you call them. Actually, that’t not a bad description. I caan wear that. But, I thought you claimed to be a feminist! You’d prefer women shut up about that when it occurs on your blog?
I’d say the major ‘campaign’ of mine (the term is growing on me) is everything that comes under the rubric of radical democracy. A passion of mine. Again, no apologies for that – ever.
casey, sorry but your (hypocritically) ad hom way of arguing and the way you write on this blog – understandably, given you are a product, indeed a work-in-progress of the very system that has been so widely and well-deservedly critiqued, combined with the illogicality of your arguments: “this is an academic blog” – well, my mistake, I thought its founders were leftists who believed in societal democracy – makes me say, I must pass on responding to your “arguments”.
I really don’t see the point.
that article on quantum theory that i was talking about was the Sokal hoax and was called: “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”
found here at wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
“…if you want to be published to the general public, then plain english is better.”
Casey, take it from one who has written books and short stories and earned a very good living for more than a decade from writing and journalism, that the advice you got was very sound.
Liam, your sense of humour and your generosity of spirit are evenly balanced.
Just because I’m not very nice doesn’t mean I’m wrong, Dan.
Casey: after that comment I have nothing more to add, ever.
Which comment Liam?
#235. Bravo.
on the poetry question, though. To ask this question in this way shows you have no understanding (or acceptance) of the political reasons that lie behind the use of this type of language in humanities academia, in contrast with the yes meaning-complex and fabulously skilled use of language employed by the great poets or in poetry in general.
Though for sure, there are pretentious, wanker poets – I’d suspect acid heads or refugees from the post-modernist, critical theory academy. It would be hard to tell the difference.
I love that song.
And I would take praise from Liam only wearing a full body contamination suit and bellowing “Danger Danger” and with plague prevention backup.
This is the man who says he supported the Dawkins counter-revolution (though I gather he is the glorious product of the 1990s-completely-gone-to-seed-academy) including the intro of tertiary fees.
And, ROFL, to mimic John G, he really and truly thinks the almost universally reviled NSW Treasurer Mick Costa, an oaf and dimwit and Blair-ite of the first order, is the smartest minister (not saying much) in the NSW Cabinet.
I rest my case about Liam – forever.
btw, am I the only Aboriginal woman regularly posting here who regularly with a completely two-faced and inconsistent application of the comments policy gets moderated? That is, whose comments are routinely deleted or appear up to six hours later than I posted them. This, of course, is a blatant and vicious silencing of minority politics and people obviously condoned and orchestrated by Mark B and Kim whoever.
If so, if I am the only Aboriginal woman on this site, then this is a clear case of repeated direct discrimination on both the grounds of sex and race.
Just sayin’.
Yes, very well put, and well argued Casey.
I’ve just released a bunch of jinmaro/Wolfe/bridie/whoever comments from moderation, but only to prove my point. Contrast the rather fun little discussion above about the stoush academy with a whole heap of vitriol, and a stack of projection (accusing others of ad homs even as she goes ad hom). Note also that there’s been a specific provision in the comments policy for a long time that people should not invent sockpuppets. Jinmaro has been told that her habit of switching monikers to escape moderation is unacceptable. And I noticed yesterday a number of comments – deleted – from other “commenters” praising jinmaro.
For all this posturing about “radical democracy” or whatever, Jinmaro shows only contempt for the rules of the space in which she is commenting. It’s piffle, I’m sorry.
As Mark said, moderation was relaxed in response to complaints that it was too heavy handed. I think we can see the results.
What bullshit.
You’re in moderation because you’re rude, repetitious, and obsessive. You never take any notice of the comments policy, and now you’re playing the victim card – not for the first time. Why not just admit that you get off on provoking nasty fights and have a total intolerance for anyone who differs from your opinion?
That comment is offensive crap. There’s no conspiracy against you, it’s just that you are incapable of taking any notice whatever of any of the basics of civil discourse. You’ve been given far more latitude here than you deserve.
That is so funny, if you deleted genuine comments, and if there were some, as I have no doubt there were, you are a manipulator of discussion.
Your long-standing subjective hatred of me is apparent to many readers of this site, and has been the subject of speculation. I don’t think the reasons are too politically or psychologically deep to fathom.
You seem incapable of any political argument, when it comes to my contributions on anything, including bog-standard feminism, except counter assertion, rebuttal, boredom, cynicism and personal slurs. Why are you blogging?
No, why are you still here since you dislike it so much?
I didn’t come down in the last shower. All sorts of people suddenly popping up in praise of jinmaro with the same writing style and the same IP address… And someone who constantly switches monikers. Get real.
Jeez, you must be something kim, to think of such a childish subterfuge as that and attribute it to others. I don’t believe you even really think me capable of it. Though perhaps I shouldn’t over-estimate.
I have never tried to hide my cyber identity. The name change, as every one who would know or care, and as I explained was to evade your silencing of me. I would never post comments praising me from false personas. Perhaps it was work colleagues? You know it is slow at work at the moment and the IP provider number encompasses 1000s of users. Rest assured I have alerted them to this site.
And may I suggest you bone up on anti-discrimination law in Australia before you so blithely dismiss my allegation. And don’t pretend that you don’t know I am an Aboriginal woman. I have brought this to your attention before several times though you have never acknowledged it or shown me the slightest respect.
Again, why? I would really like to know.
Guys and Gals, other than those who are here to stir for their personal entertainment or to pontificate because they are after a job in the Vatican, I feel that most folk are here are for the right reason: that is they want the world they live in to be a better place.
I know I’ve only been here for a short time but I deplore the undercurrent of hate and verbal violence, yes hate and violence, which underlies some of the threads.
The world has enough conflict in it already without it infecting and despoiling the few blogs that have good intentions.
Let’s all be friends? Please!
Are you threatening me with legal action, Wolfe?
I’ve said before I enjoy some of your contributions. I regret the fact that you seem so attached to analysing others’ psyches and politics and doing so in such a way as to offend. But you can hardly pretend that you haven’t been given a fair whack at the ball. You’ve been asked very nicely and very respectfully on many many occasions to bring your comments into what the moderators consider to be appropriate parameters.
The fact that you admit that you try to evade this, rather than accept the rules is significant. You can talk all you like about “sliencing” but the truth is that you are unable to accept that you may be wrong, and unlike many other commenters, you are loath to modify your practice in response to the wishes of the site owners.
Your race has nothing to do with this. This is a private space, and it’s our blog and our discretion. You have no right to comment here if you can’t do so in accordance with the rules laid down. You’ve clearly demonstrated that you are unwilling to do so, and you haven’t shown an ounce of respect for many others, or for those of us who give of our own time to write posts here, comment, and regulate discussion. That’s my final word on it, so please don’t waste your own time replying.
Ok, unfortunately, I think I’m going to do what I did last night and give this thread a cooling off period.
One of our rules is that we don’t enter into correspondence about moderation, and I think perhaps that’s one worth enforcing strictly from now on.
Ok, comments re-opened. No metablogging and no sockpuppetry, thanks very much.
Why are you singling me out, Mark?
Fascist!
I must not be a metablogger or a sockpuppet (whatever they are), I must not be a metablogger or a sockpuppet (whatever they are), I must not be a metablogger or a sockpuppet (whatever they are), I must not be a metablogger or a sockpuppet (whatever they are), I must…
what is this drugs Purpose
what is this dancing
Thank you, spammers, for resurrecting this cracking thread. All the bitching, kvetching and bare-knuckle freestyle stooshin’ that a pith-taker could desire.
I’m hesitant to criticise TPTB/SWMBO, but I think people may have been a little harsh on little j-ro. With a bit perspective, I think it’s easy to see her as filling the blogecological void previously inhabited by such Old Skool favourites as EP and CL. The Old Ones will know what I mean.
Witness:
I mean, c’mon. This is some good shit here, people.
Fyodor, that’s all very well, but the creepy victimhood schtick is offensive, and the lack of respect for LP as a group of people palpable.
If the good stuff were good enough, I’d happily put up with the unfocused superiority complex cut-downs, but it ain’t really.
Yes, boxhead, this thread had to walk the earth dissatisfied and ghostlike until it accomplished its task.
You’re describing assets, eefdeebee, not drawbacks. At StoushGym™, the customer gets disrespected first.
Doesn’t play well with others? Of course. But, consciously or – more likely – unconsciously, she gives good stoush, which is vastly more entertaining than an army of pleasantly docile sheeple in riotous agreement.
Nah-ah, buddy. That’s not a cut-down. It’s an elaborate, comically inaccurate flame; the difference is crucial to the connoisseur.
This StoushGym thang reminds me of my idea for a restaurant:
Snooty’s – where the food is better than you.
“You want a bottle of what with your confit pork belly? Alright, just get out. No, don’t worry about the bill – I’ll give you my share of tonight’s tips to never show your face in here again”.
Oh, I agree. Riotously. I just have a very strong preference for the conscious sort – I got the impression a few times when she was yapping at my heels that there was real visceral hatred and willingness to hurt me. Essentially for refusing to abase myself after using the word ‘chick’ casually. No sense of proportion. It made me feel icky.
2nd last para was meant to be a blockquote, obvs.
Moderator: Fixed!
You are getting romantic in the afterglow.
The Hydra in question sprouted so many fully developed, functioning heads that final night, that I remain convinced that holy water and latin was finally used to exercise her. So many personalities she could have founded a small nation. Prodigious if nothing else.
Yet its always bothered me.
I could never pinpoint what tipped her over with Liam…I tried to locate la parola, il momento , but I couldnt. Well what was it Liam?
Was it on the Pilger thread? Does the secret lie there? What did you do???
Maybe, but you know how it is with flame war, Casey. Do it once, have a snooze, do it again.
I’ve just been reading over that Pilger thread and it was indeed a cracker, though I don’t think I did anything much there, at all, just the usual one-off worthless banal sarcasm.
Oh, BTW:
http://www.flamewarriors.com/
I think you’ll definitely find me listed under “jerk”.
Oh yah. However, as noted above, consciously competent stoushers that are effective AND entertaining are rare, and thus cherished. Unconsciously good stoushers, OTOH, are absolutely necessary to provide dancing partners, scenery, target practice etc. Basically, one needs stoushers with more enthusiasm/ego than ability. I know you know exactly the kind of individual I’m talking about.
Oh, come on. You say that like it’s a bad thing. Harden the fuck up – it’s not a proper stoush until somebody loses the rag.
Fuck off Fyodor you lying COMMIE.
Yairs…yairs…give in to your anger…
Yes, Fyodor, but unconsciously good stoushers have a fairly low survival rate.
Oh, I know, I know. Stars that burn twice as bright, attack ships on fire off Orion, yada yada. The food chain’s a bitch.
It is strangely disquieting that you seem to be keeping tabs on other’s misadventures across the blogosphere/stoushosphere Liam.
Anyhoo Lee Kernaghan is “Australian of the Year”. He was just blathering on about the need for us all to always buy australian .Hmmmmmmm……
Mon Dieux, the flame warriors
and look at this one!
http://www.flamewarriors.com/warriorshtm/ethnix.htm
To Paul Burns
I can remember these ideas being dismissed with considerable contempt in 2nd. year Archaeology. I think he’s retired now, but I remember hearing one of his last projects was a search for the Yowie.
Rex, his wife Heather and I just returned from a successful expedition to the Carrai Ranges west of Kempsey, which is on the mid north coast from Sydney.
These ideas being dismissed with considerable contempt is not confined to just that part of his work. Rex has put up with academia just ignoring the evidence for almost 50 years now. Ask Dr Ritchie from the Australian Museum (retired from that position now)in Sydney what he thinks of Rex.
Yet one of the two Anthropologists down at ANU who spoke to Rex when he had his Yowie cast in the “Eternity Section”, Exhibition at the Australian Museum in Canberra stated that he cut his teeth at Uni reading of Chinese contacts to Australia written by Rex. He did not dismiss Rexs theories as easily though as others try to.
Rex has accumulated a lot of evidence of ancient seafarers to this country. As for the Chinese and Menzies, well…way before Menzies tried to link China to the world Rex had written hundreds of articles on the Chinese and others.
The African congress did acknowledge though that the Chinese must have been in Africa as they had drawings of their mountains which you can only see from Africa.
Then there is the FACT that America schools are going to teach that the Chinese were there before the Vikings and before Columbus.
Chinese contact is to Australia should not be that hard to imagine if you know of their history and the truly immense ships they built, with entire families and stock on board.
Hundreds of these 200-300 foot long ships left Chine in every direction. Australia is not that far away in the scheme of things.
http://www.rexgilroy.com/
The URU a pre-aboriginal/Koori race which even the Aborigines/Kooris have in their Dreamtime legends. The first modern humans- “out of Australia” not “out of Africa” is the theme.
http://www.mysteriousaustralia.com
50 years of research of all manner of things
What a mysterious resurrection of a great battle royal thread, and just in time for lunch, too.
[opens filing cabinet, pours scotch, settles in behind desk for an hour's pleasant reading]
this still has to be one of the best blognames:
Banal Hussein al-Sarcasti
i give greetings from a hundred desert oases: may your camels sail safely in the desert, may your dates always be pitted to your liking, may your sons find themselves richer than a paramount oil-laden sheikh [but please, no more torturing the national teams, by all that is good in the arms bazaars]
Grrrrrrrrowl!
Snnnaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrl…. snark
It was fun wasn’t it?
Always nice to look back and realise everyone you were stoushing against really was totally wrong and mean-spirited, and you yourself behaved with dignity and aplomb.
Indeed!! Not only that, but your interlocutors displayed many weaknesses of argument, intellect and understanding, that have become even more apparent in later contests on other topics.
They consider themselves Renaissance Persons but without fear of contradiction we can easily recognise them as Barbarians Just Out Of The Cave.
Self-accolade: there’s just nothing like it, eh?
How come a SS thread from January, one which got sin-binned for sock-puppetry, at the time, got bumped into September?
Ambi – not to mention the poor grooming and hygiene, which if not for rough contact with the stern righteousness of me and my peers, would surely by now have sent them to an early grave.
It’s a tough and largely thankless job, and it takes a special kind of person to do it.
This reads… interestingly in hindsight. For the record, my comrades and I shared a bottle of champagne when he got sacked.
poor grooming?
no, FDB, tell me it’s not true!!! youse don’t sit around with them picking fleas from their fur, a la Jane Goodall or David Attenborough do you? Yer a better man than me, FDB. I can’t get close enough to do it, because of the horrendous stench.
Im support a retro-series on funniest old threads. its easy of course, just have to comment on your old faves!
I mentioned it before, Izquierdista, but this has to go down in history as one of the best rolling clusterfucks of blog commentary. When I die, scatter my ashes in that thread.