... though for different reasons, may find it worthwhile to look at this trio of blogging warfare.
I find it fascinating that a number of the professors involved in this are so fond of using the f-word. Why is that? I hope the UK is spared this sort of thing. What shall we call it? Discoarse? And how do you become a professor without knowing what a petitio principii is?
That trio is tame. Bloggers' wars are sooo more civilized than ol' UseNet flame wars. The Great Flame War, I'm told, last nine months and led to the great UseNet reorganization of 1987.
ReplyDeleteBut now we have blogging and tame flame wars. I tell ya, you'd think lawyers were involved. And journalists! We've come to sidewalks in virtual space to be fined for spittin' on? What's the ether coming to?
-blue
Some of that stuff would be very funny if it weren't so sad. The things we spend our time on!
ReplyDeleteBTW, Frank, discoarse is terrific. Do I have your permission to use it with impunity?
ReplyDeletePermission granted, Lee.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to know, Blue, that things have actually improved. You mention lawyers and journalists. But what about the fact that so many of these are academics? What was it Wilde said about academic quarrels being so fierce because the rewards were so small?
ReplyDeleteI read some of it -- the first one at least started out being about something that one could understand (whether beclowned is a word): the other two were too arcane, convoulted and long, long, long, for me to read as my interest waned rapidly.
ReplyDeleteAs with many "academic" arguments, the thread started by Visiting Prof contains many coded points of view that disguise entrenched positions, eg guns are OK, and so there is a lot of mutual winding up going on. There are also time-wasters writing things like "well I don't have an OED handy but I am sure it is a word". And even when someone (on another blog) provided definitive evidence that "beclowned" is a word, Visiting Prof got upset because he/she said that his critics had not looked it up when they started criticising him for saying it wasn't.
They all need toddler training if you ask me. Tantrum city.
Frank, I agree that it beggars belief that these academics are spatting and wasting their time (and the taxpayers' money?) on this stuff. But I say, at least they aren't doing something more dangerous, eg encouraging gun ownwership (as someone, possibly Prof G. R., is doing in Visiting Prof's comments). At least they are keeping themselves off the streets, trying to find a bright side here.
Mxine has made a good point about encoding. And as a writer, it's one of the things I'm struggling with - in dialogue, for example.
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