The Postmodernist Generator uses all the vagueness of postmodernist writing (see Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language“) to generate meaningless text which looks surprisingly (especially considering this is all automated) realistic. Refresh the page to get new text.
– Dara
I think most of us enjoyed reading Swift’s A Modest Proposal so I thought it was worth noting the similar essay A Modest Proposal: Three-Strikes for Print written by a Princeton computer science professor, Ed Felten. The essay refers to the recently-adopted “three strikes” policy in France (in Cory Doctorow’s words, “if you’re accused of [copyright] infringement three times, you lose the right to access the Internet”).
Yesterday the French parliament adopted a proposal to create a “three-strikes” system that would kick people off the Internet if they are accused of copyright infringement three times.
This is such a good idea that it should be applied to other media as well. Here is my modest proposal to extend three-strikes to the medium of print, that is, to words on paper.
A Modest Proposal: Three-Strikes for Print
– Dara
Joe, I hope you don’t mind, but I couldn’t resist doing my English assignment on persuading you not to go through the army path, no matter how futile my attempt is. I understand that you’ve made up your mind — your argument is certainly compelling — so don’t feel pressured (not that you would be) in any way.
Ethos
I strongly believe in ethics and acting in a morally correct manner. I also tend to care (at least more than is apparent) about people I know, from acquaintances to close friends. When I heard that Joe, the man who in Pippin says the line “Your brother Lewis is an ideal soldier: he is strong and stupid,” I could feel that something was wrong. I had always expected Joe to be successful in business or whatever specialty he liked. With such a tall posture and deep voice, how could you think otherwise?
Being an officer instead of a private is not a significant improvement. While an officer might have less a chance of getting killed, the more important issue has not changed. According to several studies, a soldier’s worse fear is not dying, but rather killing another human being. An officer would be in charge of maximizing enemy casualties and therefore maximizing the realizations of these fears.
I’ve met ex-soldiers personally, and I can tell you their experience with the army has fueled their hatred for the military.
Pathos
The Army doesn’t make men out of boys — it certainly better not. This stereotype blindly skips over the horrible idea of treating a boy to war. Men killing men is bad enough, how can you justify treating boys to the same. How can you possibly think that this is a form of education? It’s institutionalized murder on a massive scale! Any justification for war is less valid than a justification for a duel, which is far more limited in the scope of its atrocities.
We need to starve Uncle Sam’s monster by refusing any form of enlistment and convincing our congressmen that the War on Terror is not a good idea. The best service we could to for our country is to stand up with a true army of one.
Logos
Granted, Joe is not likely to be doing much combat, but that is not a solution to the problem. The problem extends far beyond risking your life for a pointless war. It’s about putting others in danger as well. This service to our country is precisely what’s resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of human beings, not just the roughly 5,000 Americans.
Combined
I’ve met ex-soldiers personally, and I can tell you their experience with the army has fueled their hatred for the military.
I strongly believe in ethics and acting in a morally correct manner. I also tend to care (at least more than is apparent) about people I know, from acquaintances to close friends. When I heard that Joe, the man who in Pippin says the line “Your brother Lewis is an ideal soldier: he is strong and stupid,” I could feel that something was wrong. I had always expected Joe to be successful in business or whatever specialty he liked. With such a tall posture and deep voice, how could you think otherwise?
The Army doesn’t make men out of boys — it certainly better not. This stereotype blindly skips over the horrible idea of treating a boy to war. Men killing men is bad enough, how can you justify treating boys to the same. How can you possibly think that this is a form of education? It’s institutionalized murder on a massive scale! Any justification for war is less valid than a justification for a duel, which is far more limited in the scope of its atrocities.
Being an officer instead of a private is not a significant improvement. While an officer might have less a chance of getting killed, the more important issue has not changed. According to several studies, a soldier’s worse fear is not dying, but rather killing another human being. An officer would be in charge of maximizing enemy casualties and therefore maximizing the realizations of these fears.
Granted, Joe is not likely to be doing much combat, but that is not a solution to the problem. The problem extends far beyond risking your life for a pointless war. It’s about putting others in danger as well. This service to our country is precisely what’s resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of human beings, not just the roughly 5,000 Americans.
We need to starve Uncle Sam’s monster by refusing any form of enlistment and convincing our congressmen that the War on Terror is not a good idea. The best service we could to for our country is to stand up with a true army of one.
I admire Fowles’s analysis and notes on comparing Victorians with his audience. Fowles’s arguments and notes seem very logical and straightforward yet still insightful. His use of diction, syntax, and imagery is elegant and attractive.
Fowles repeats the word “where” at the beginning of every clause (anaphora). Each sentence consists of two clauses separated by a semicolon. The clause before the semicolon describes the Victorian ideal and claim; the clause after the semicolon describes the reality. By juxtaposing these two contrasting ideas (antithesis), the reader receives the impression that the Victorians are hypocritical.
For example, Fowles begins by comparing the Victorian ideal of women as sacred with the grim reality of abuse. Mentioning a thirteen-year-old girl is very emotionally appealing because it disgusts the reader: these Victorians with their ideals of “sacredness” have no guilt about violating a thirteen-year-old! Bringing the price even lower to “a few shillings” then further outrages already-disgusted readers. Finally, Fowles treats “woman” as an object both during the description of the ideal (”An age where woman was sacred”) and later as something to want and buy, furthering his argument of Victorian hypocrisy.
While Fowles digresses from the novel’s narration, his narrative persona remains. The paragraph is still written as a description of the Victorian era, not an analysis. Based on the language, Fowles’s writing style, and certain key words, it is clear, however, that Fowles has an analytical argument: “because the claimed ideal is in fact the opposite of reality, therefore the Victorians are hypocritical.”
The anaphora (”where”) in this paragraph is an example of Fowles’s unique writing style. The word “where” is usually used for a description, but in this case the paragraph is not purely descriptive of the Victorian era — it is analytical and possibly critical. As a result, “where” is an understatement because it appears to place less emphasis on the appalling hypocrisy. Since the reader does not interpret any less emphasis, the conveyed message is ironic and very effective.
In this passage, Fowles uses effective metaphors, imagery, diction, and verbal irony to both portray Charles’s mind and to critique the Victorian age for its artificial treatment of feelings.
He begins using the fire metaphor as a way to explain Charles’s feelings. “He had been very foolish … had run an absurd risk,” but like the attraction of a fire, “he felt exhilarated.”
In the next paragraph, Fowles turns to a series of metaphors to detail Charles’s thoughts. Charles first analyzes himself, claiming to be pure but threatened of infiltration by impure thoughts (antithesis), using the metaphor “mint sauce to the wholesome lamb.” Fowles repeats the fire metaphor, further detailing through the additional metaphor of “a moth infatuated by a candle” and “dangerous waters, “emphasizing his original point and effectively portraying Charles’s attraction to Sarah amidst danger. For even more emphasis, Fowles tells the reader that “mixing metaphors … was how Charles’s mind worked.”
Fowles then begins using verbal irony to critique the Victorian age’s social standards. He first makes it clear that Charles is repressing his thoughts, but ironically says he will be using free will to accomplish that. He then repeats the phrase “free will” at the end of several consecutive sentences which portray Victorian restrictions. It is clear to the reader that a repression of feelings cannot be done with free will, and therefore it is the social standards of Victorian age that have forced artificial restrictions. This irony is effective because it shows that these restrictions are so ingrained into the Victorians that they can be enforced by what ironically appears to be free will. Fowles then makes the claim of Victorian “free will” detaching Charles (and therefore the same applies to other Victorians) from his feelings, and writes with a detached tone: “he had free-willed himself most convincingly into a state of self-congratulation … and one in which he could look at Sarah as an object of his past. A remarkable young woman, a remarkable young woman. And baffling.”
Finally, Fowles critiques the mindset of the Victorian age, by attributing Charles’s faults to it, and by claiming that Sarah’s qualities are un-Victorian. Fowles claims that failing to perceive Sarah’s qualities is Charles’s “greatest defect” — a product of Victorian social standards that prohibit passion and imagination.
I have to give John Fowles a lot of credit for his diction — I think that’s one of his strong points. In the passage starting from the beginning of chapter eleven and ending with the last full paragraph on the next page, Fowles uses appropriate diction, rather than a first-person point of view, to illustrate Ernestina’s character. Specific examples of diction that illustrate Ernestina’s mood include the words/phrases “restlessly,” “sulkily,” “did-not,” “displeasure,” “wicked and irreverent,” “slammed door,” “odious and abominable suspicion,” “deepest fears,” “hiding something,” “autocratic,” “sinful speculation,” and “jealous.” To attract the reader’s attention and still detail Ernestina’s ambivalent mood, Fowles not only describes Ernestina’s journal entry as “not very inspired from a literary point of view,” but also includes its actual text as basic (”feelingless”) sentences that repeat the words “did not.”
Fowles precedes Ernestina’s suspicion with words of negative connotation and then describes Ernestina’s mind. The reader is left to either think of her as paranoid, or to sympathize with her feelings until the next paragraph.
The repetition of “discreetly playful” as “the rub” infers Ernestina’s lack of success with her “interrogations.” The word “interrogations” is itself an interesting instance of diction because it makes her thoughts seem too extreme by comparing them with a word that has a negative connotation.
As mentioned in my previous text analysis, Fowles is effective at using contrast to emphasize a certain point by establishing a point of comparison. He first compares Ernestina’s displeasure with Charles’s flowers to demonstrate that even the perfumes did not have enough power to improve Ernestina’s terrible mood. Then, he compares Ernestina’s thoughts with the reality of the situation (Charles’s plausible experiences with half-prostitutes instead of countesses) to prove that Ernestina’s delusional, paranoid, and overly-complicated ideas are inaccurate. When Fowles says that “Occam’s useful razor was unknown,” he means that Ernestina fails to find the simple and true rationale.
As throughout the book, Fowles compares the Victorian time period to the present. For instance, when he writes “her autocratic ‘I must not,’” he implies that the consideration of these thoughts as “sinful speculations” was basically imposed upon her as a certain Victorian mindset.
The passage ends with an effective sentence that sums up Ernestina’s delusions by stating that Charles’s “calm exterior” was simply as a result of its lack of history than a complicated battle.
I can’t take this anymore. First Vicky analyzes my first choice of passage, and then Francis analyzes my second choice. Since I have no third choice, and have already started working on my second choice, Francis and I will have to share passages.
In this passage from pages eleven to twelve, Knowles takes time to make an aside. He comments on “our sense of time” during Charles’s era and during the present. The passage seems to infer that Charles lives at the end of an era of a static society, without all the troubles of modern society. It becomes apparent why 1867 is chosen as the setting for the novel.
The passage begins with specific diction and continues to describe modern inventions (the airplane, the jet engine, television, radar) as not too surprising for Charles. This contrast with the sense of time emphasizes Knowles argument — the “changed attitude to time itself”.
By including the word “supposed”, Knowles makes it clear that he is referring to our sense of time, not actual business. And again, contrasting the sense of time with the false disinterest for science is part of Knowles’s effective writing. In the same sentence, Knowles mixes tones by including the word “things” yet at the same time employing a philosophical tone when he says “the final aim of mankind.”
The musical allusion with the reference to time signature and adagio is effective because it captures attention. It also is stylistic of the Victorian era, when using foreign words was considered particularly intellectual.
The next paragraph makes many historical allusions to the publication of the Communist Manifesto and its ensuing revolutions, to the Chartist movement, and to Marx and communism. Like before, Knowles employs contrast as a tool for emphasizing his correct point. His diction implies that life in the Victorian era was simple without the complications of modern life. When he makes it clear that the future problems were not apparent at the time, the reader gets the impression that this is the end of an era.
Text Analysis (PDF) (removed)
Text Analysis (Microsoft Word Document) (removed)
I looked on the TED Talks site and found two consecutive talks that interested me. While browsing the site, I recognized the name Jimmy Wales as the founder of Wikipedia. Even if you’ve never heard of him before, you may have noticed his name recently in the personal appeal fundraiser on Wikipedia over the break or right now in a thank-you note. In Wales’s talk on TED, he tries to explain how Wikipedia has become so successful. Admittedly, he doesn’t get very specific, but if you’re interested there are certainly Internet resources that can be used if you have a specific questions. I was interested in his talk because not only do I like Wikipedia as a resource (I like to surf Wikipedia and read articles on topics that interest me), but I like the very concept of Wikipedia. To put it in Jimmy Wales’s words, “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” And to add on to what he says, I would argue that his sentence doesn’t use the word “free” only in sense of price (no charge; gratis), but also in the sense of freedom, as Wikipedia is a free cultural work . Every user of Wikipedia is free to use, modify, copy, and distribute Wikipedia articles, for any purpose. This is an impressive accomplishment, and it’s interesting to note that other more centralized models cannot do the same so efficiently.
The other talk, that occurred right before Wales’s talk, was from Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor. Benkler’s talk noted the bigger picture. He focused on how decentralized collaborative efforts involving the free exchange of information are so effective, citing FLOSS and Wikipedia as examples. He credits this effective nature of decentralized non-commerical development to the emergence of the Internet because the Internet has made exchanging and publishing information much more affordable. I already agreed with most of what he said and (after a Google search) learned about his works, including his book The Wealth of Networks.
Some side notes:
The talks are from 2005. In these past 3-4 years a lot has changed. The concepts expressed are the same as before, but newer specific examples have emerged that better support the concepts.
Wales said there were over 600,000 English articles on Wikipedia. The number is now nearly 2.7 million. He said that there were 2 million articles in total on Wikipedia. The number is now 12 million. He said one-third of pageviews were for the English Wikipedia. The ratio is now one-half in the past month. He said Wikipedia is in the top 50 most popular websites. Wikipedia is now ranked eighth.
Yochai Benkler does not mention the free culture movement and Creative Commons, even though free culture is a core aspect of Wikipedia and the TED talk itself is released under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-ND). Perhaps this was due to different impressions at the time or simply time constraints.
Feel free to ask me a question or otherwise respond in a comment. I’ll try to answer your question when I get a chance.
- Dara
As said in class, Obama will be running a 30-minute television info/commercial at 8 PM EDT tonight on most television networks including CBS, NBC and Fox, but not ABC and CNN.
Please join a real-time discussion via Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC is a means of holding real-time conversations online among many people in discussion forums called channels. With IRC we can easily discuss the info/commercial in real-time with each other, as well as hold any other kinds of future discussions.
A channel unique to our class has been set up.
Server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #chsnaplang
You can use a client to connect to the channel with the above information. Please use a recognizable name as your nick.
Since this is an English class after all, we should avoid instant messaging slang when unnecessary. However, in the interest of being able to discuss in real-time, grammar and spelling do not have to be perfect (as long as your meaning is clear), and certain acronyms (e.g. btw for “By the way”) are acceptable.
If you have any questions about the IRC channel or opinions on the ad in general, please post a comment.
- Dara
Hello everyone.
For the presidential debate tonight at 9 PM, our class can have a real-time discussion via Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC is a means of holding real-time conversations online among many people in discussion forums called channels. With IRC we can easily discuss the debate in real-time with each other, as well as hold any other kinds of future discussions.
A channel unique to our class has been set up.
Server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #chsnaplang
You can use a client to connect to the channel with the above information. Please use a recognizable name as your nick.
Since this is an English class after all, we should avoid instant messaging slang when unnecessary. However, in the interest of being able to discuss in real-time, grammar and spelling do not have to be perfect (as long as your meaning is clear), and certain acronyms (e.g. btw for “By the way”) are acceptable.
If you have any questions, please post a comment.
-Francis & Dara