Scratchpad
(criticality, history, misinformation, quotations, sources, truth — )
18 Feb. 2008
I've been doing a little research project recently on the origin of a particular quotation, and I've found that most sources out there are maddeningly terrible for this particular effort. I mean, truly, truly maddening. In my crankier moments, I ask myself how we as humans can expect to solve any of our problems if we can't even remember our own history. Theoretically easy history. Like who said what when. In my more charitable moments I remind myself that identifying the reality of a situation is actually damn hard, even if it doesn't make it any less frustrating. Sigh.
To take an example, I came across an unrelated quote today and Googled it out of curiosity. I ended up with the following ridiculous hodgepodge of crap attributions:
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
- Doris Lessing
- Just Lessing , not Doris (and another, from 1886)
- Louisa May Alcott
- La Bruyère
- Charles Seymour
- Dorris Tessing (yes, I'm serious)
- Jean Toomer
Doris Lessing is the most popular choice, but the quote was attributed to la Bruyère in a publication printed before Doris Lessing was even born. That, of course, doesn't say anything about the accuracy of the la Bruyère attribution - around the same time period, the quote was attributed to a Lessing, just not the Lessing. Basically, in this entire list, the only three possibilities that fit the time frame of the earliest quote I found are "Lessing," Alcott, and la Bruyère. "Lessing" could apply to Gotthold Lessing, Karl Lessing, or Otto Lessing, but I'm putting my money on Gotthold, based on the subject of most of his work. In an irony of ironies, the quote is attributed to Doris in a book right next to other quotes attributed to Gotthold.
And people ask why I question everything. An apt quote, indeed.
Comments (3)
(academia, books, culture wars, history, whiny illiterate derivative unimaginative fuckers — )
21 Jan. 2008
You know, if I have to read one more single fucking article or hear one more whiny lament about how reading is dying, I am just going to pull out some batshit crazy whupass on the mother fucker that dared to snivel out that ridiculous platitude yet again.
- Books are not the only form of reading, you fucking dipshits.
- Not everyone in the world has the leisure time to sit around reading all day. Some people have to actually work for a living doing all the things you rely on having done but are not able or willing to do yourself. When you learn and actually begin to do every single one of those things, come back to me and we'll rediscuss why reading is more important than all of those other things.
- Please note that historically, reading by the dirty unwashed masses was done as a means of personal and economic betterment. In other words, necessity and personal gain. Reading by the rarefied few was done for fun. The same is still true.
- Please note that both types of reading in point three are just that - reading.
- Stop only counting "acceptable" forms of reading in your bogus studies. It makes them painfully meaningless.
- Stop conflating change in reading habits with decline in reading habits.
- Pick a line in the sand and stick with it. Twats like you were decrying the death of reading over a hundred years ago. Then they were doing it 80 years ago. Then 60. If you are all to be believed, no one left in the world even understands the concept of a letter, much less has the ability to actually read it. Pick a definition of "death" that you can actually quantify and prove to me - one that doesn't involve comparison of others' reading to your own.
- Read a book on the history of reading, for the love of god.
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(history, internet, reminiscence, urban exploration — )
17 Oct. 2007
Perhaps it's because I've just moved back to New York, where I haven't lived since the heady days of college, perhaps it's the miscreants I hang out with or spend time reading online, or perhaps it's the tantalizing sites and tunnels and buildings I've been passing since returning, but something today stirred a long forgotten memory of the time when I got deeply involved in urban exploration.
Perhaps it was the photo essay of the Arroyo Seco Dam that started it, but as I dug through the detritus of this hobby on the Internet, I started unearthing old archaeological memories, some still lingering with the tiniest shreds of neglect that the internet seems to foster. Forgotten websites; still remaining links and references to my own first site which was dedicated to the pursuit (and is now easily 7 years defunct); photos from collaborators whom I corresponded with daily, even as I never met them, but who are still going strong; memorials to others who have since passed away; books written by others still. Names I'd forgotten - Petr, Vlad, Ninj, or Julia - have been swimming back into my consciousness.
I don't know that this nostalgia is necessarily anything but - I don't fancy getting found dirty in a drain in Queens and having to explain myself in a post-terrorist court. And I suspect I get the same thrill of exploration now from books, networks, and ideas that I'd never, until now, considered as subjects that could actually be physically explored as much as they could be intellectually plumbed. But, even so, every day on my way home from work it's everything I can do not to hop off the train at Mount Vernon East and poke my head into the empty holes on the castle-like object under the train bridge.
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(book, cognition, culture wars, history, the more things change — )
30 Jul. 2007
One of my greatest pet peeves is when people come out with statements like, "Harkening back to a more innocent and happier time" (which I just read about 10 minutes ago as a statement describing the vibrancy of swing, which would have been a favorite during the innocent and happy Great Depression, for fuck's sake). Likewise, "Back in my day, [fill in the blank]" or, my personal favorite, "People were just so different then."
Why should this rub me the wrong way, even the most theoretically educated people ask me? Liberals. Conservatives. The religious. The not-so-religious. Men. Women. Poor people. Rich people. I hear this from all sides, albeit on different topics. Perhaps some grow wistful thinking of the glory days of the Victorian era, or others misty eyed thinking of their days hitchhiking cross country, or perhaps back to when everyone still said "Ma'am" and "Sir."
My complaint, though, is that these anecdotes or observations do not describe differences in people or attitudes, they describe differences only in customs. In other words, they don't describe some fundamental difference about the things we believe or desire - something fundamental about human nature itself - they only describe differences in the particulars of dress, actions, or behaviors. In time, nations might change who they hate or why they hate them, but it doesn't stop them from creating enemies of someone. Failing to see this strikes me as simultaneously failing to understand both history and human nature. And, needless to say, if we are to accept the maxim that understanding history allows us to make an attempt at not repeating it, the above attitude suggests to me that we're pretty much doomed to fail.
I've been especially reminded of this lately reading the fairly intriguing Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Written originally in 1841 (yes, that's right, note it again - 1841), it details frauds, fads, and fashions that have gripped entire nations. It makes it quite clear that we keep falling for the same tricks over and over (and over and over), both in the text itself and for the reader who troubles him or herself to draw parallels to modern events that bear resemblance.
But what drew my attention even more than that was the way the author condescendingly talks about the buffoons who could possibly, possibly fall for such obvious nonsense. The disdain just drips off the pages. Without having the book in front of me, one example in particular springs to mind, in which he's deriding the common man for the ease with which he picks up and then drops various fads, and just how easily entertained he is by drek. But, the author decides, in a moment of charity, I suppose these poor, stupid souls must find something to make their dreary existence tolerable, so perhaps we should allow them their silly enjoyments (even though we, as educated men, can clearly appreciate how foolish such things are - aren't we grand?).
How many times have I heard this argument from the self-appointed intelligentsia, of which I sometimes hate to admit I am probably a member of, when discussing, say, Hollywood movies or television? Popular music? Bestsellers? Seriously - it kills me that we're still stuck in 1841 (or, realistically, 5000BC) in terms of how we interact with other people.
Perhaps the secret to all of this is that I should stop caring that we're doomed to fail, and just accept the world as it is. Perhaps that, after all, is the only way change will come to pass.
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