Posts by BenWilson
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linger, my feeling is that he inherited his style from a bygone era, and I can tolerate it because most of my own degree was spent reading boring old philosophers talking at great length about their arguments. Compared to many of them, Chomsky is a light and entertaining read. I actually find it far harder to read people who speak more briefly because they rely on their audience to fill in all the gaps, and a great many of the gaps can't be unambiguously filled. So I have to read, and reread, and then I have to go and find their other works or comments to find out what the hell they meant. Or guess, often wrongly. At least with Chomsky, you know what he means, because he's meant it for decades, and he says it in full every time. Confession: My own style is much the same. I don't like being misunderstood, or worse, deliberately misconstrued. Perhaps it's got something to do with being an engineer.
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Kyle, I guess I mean 'traditional' as in 'in the last quarter of a century'. But point taken, and it's only my 'pick'. I don't have evidence because I don't have a crystal ball. Nor does anyone else.
That was from November, but in truth, I'm struggling to imagine a realistic scenario in which Chomsky would express approval.
Ooops, that was careless. I had been reading several articles by him, one of which was from yesterday, and got confused. Apologies.
Absolutely he's a pessimist when it comes to US governments, and I have read dozens of articles by him that carried a strong feeling of autopilot, reusing the same examples, talking about the same points over and again. Which can be boring since he also talks at great length. And confrontational, since what he is saying is controversial.
But none of that actually refutes anything he says.
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Posted on another near dead thread: Noam Chomsky has a slightly less optimistic take on Obamania. I'm inclined to agree with a lot of what he says, having felt it rather poignantly during Obama's speeches. They were certainly inspiring to an extent I have never felt about any other US president's speeches, but I do wonder how much of that was because I so dislike Bush. If asked to pin down what it was that Obama had actually promised to do, I did feel a whole lot less sure that it wouldn't be business as usual.
Some highly symbolic (and very important) acts, such as the closing of Guantanamo, definitely outshine Bush. But that would not be hard, since Bush himself started the whole idea of using Guantanamo for illegal detention and torture. It's not really that hard to look like a top bloke when compared to a villain. To me, that action really was a total no-brainer, but the hard decisions follow now.
My pick is that Obama will follow the traditional Democrat playbook of focusing most of his attention on domestic efforts. International relations will just be guided by existing policy. Which means no new wars, thankfully, but it also means no new peace either. Internally, I'm not really expecting anything radical, either.
Which, I reiterate, is a big improvement on Bush, but not really a far cry from, say, Clinton.
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When I was first asked (by a francophone German) "Do you like crêpes?" my first response was wondering why anyone would like crap.
German's shocking for that. My father-in-law asked me after a pretty bad trip to his house "How was your fart?", to which I answered "Suss, very suss" (Fahrt in German means journey, and Suss (with umlauts) means sweet). About 2 hours later, his son mentioned about something bad being very 'Suss', and he inquired what that meant. Then the penny dropped and he was laughing about it for the rest of the day. I even got to taste some of his especially nasty Schnapps for that. "Is it suss" he asked. It was, without doubt, or umlauts.
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The dilemna of the possibly over sexed Danes was solved when I realised it seemed to mean something like "Sale"
Heh, classic. I still do mental double takes when Germans talk about their famous philosopher Kant, which sounds exactly like.....
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My mother called me a slut one time. I was horrified until I realised that she meant I really really needed to tidy my room.
I thought a computer game was calling me a slut once, until I realized it was Swedish for "Game Over".
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Not sure if anyone beat me to it, but Chomsky rains on Obama's parade.
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The reason I kept committing myself to unhealthy relationships, was because I was unhealthy.
What made you healthier, in the end?
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I just can't for the life of me see how anyone could watch that advert and claim it even "leans" towards demonising men.
That's why I was careful to use the word IF. I'm hoping to convey to Chuck that he's missing the point entirely, that disputing the extent of man vs woman initiated violence will not invalidate the campaign.
I think he's totally wrong, and that men are responsible for the bulk of it. But EVEN IF he is right, it doesn't matter. The message is still spot on.
Will it work? Time will tell. And we'd never know if it was never tried.
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Chuck, no one is denying that women sometimes initiate violence. There may be dispute over the extent of this, but it's beside the point. The
"It's not OK" campaign is about domestic violence generally. If they lean on the "man beats woman", it's hardly letting women off the hook or encouraging them. That would be willfully perverting the message. Certainly it is not demonizing men. It is demonizing violence, which is a demon.
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