Slashdot Mirror

An Insightful Guardian columnist has finally come out and said what literate people have known all along. J.K. Rowling's writing is RUBBISH.

... I don't think I'm going out on a limb here. Of course, if she has turned into a first-class writer with her forthcoming Potter book, I will happily, no, joyously, eat my words.

But until then, we have to swallow hers. ...

... Do I need to explain why that is such second-rate writing?

If I do, then that means you're one of the many adults who don't have a problem with the retreat into infantilism that your willing immersion in the Potter books represents. It doesn't make you a bad or silly person. But if you have the patience to read it without noticing how plodding it is, then you are self-evidently someone on whom the possibilities of the English language are largely lost.

This is the kind of prose that reasonably intelligent nine-year-olds consider pretty hot stuff, if they're producing it themselves; for a highly-educated woman like Rowling to knock out the same kind of material is, shall we say, somewhat disappointing.

(If you find that revelation shocking, just don't ask about Dan Brown, ok?)

Predictably, a chorus of twit commenters felt driven to argue that the Potter Phenomenon's sheer Scale and Success makes it self-evidently Valuable to Society (much like B. Gates must be an Important and Clever Person because he's Really Rich.) Uh-uh. Crappy writing is not good for anyone, just like crappy food (this may also come as a surprise to some), and on this point I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Lezard:

Children exposed to this kind of writing aren't learning anything new about words, or being stretched in any way; as Harold Bloom said, they're not going to be inspired to go off and read the Alice books, or any other enduring classic.

All the Potter franchise does, like 99% of TV and Hollywood output, is entrench the hold of pointless and mediocre culture. The only thing unusual this time, is it's Made in Britain.

So, does this mean Morgan Spurlock now needs to film a documentary in which he lives in the suburbs for a month?

Even so, you're not going to get as wide a variety of nutrients as someone on an omnivorous diet.

That depends on the type of omnivorous diet - the Supersize Me diet is omnivorous, after all.

And once you've gotten what your body needs, further "variety of nutrients" doesn't have any benefit.

The consumer is being sold a dummy here, with supermarkets emphasising quantity over quality.

On that, we can agree.

I heard that Steve Jobs rides to his Apple Expo keynotes in a car not made by Apple!

Apple doesn't make vehicles. And you can bet if they did, Steve would drive one everywhere.

And sometimes when the CEO of McDonalds goes to lunches with business clients, sometimes he goes to restaurants that don't serve Big Macs!

That's because if you eat Big Macs all the time, it'll practically kill you. The McDonalds corporation is all about feeding cheap crap to people who don't know better, not about making quality products.

Hell, I work in an architecture firm, but I live in a house that someone else designed.

Architecture firms tend to do projects, not mass-produced houses. And single-run houses tend to be expensive, while most people live in more affordable housing. I'm sure the people who design Bentleys don't drive Bentleys, and not because a Bentley is incapable of driving them to work.

I must think I'm crap!

If the only reason you didn't live in a house designed by your firm was that it was technically incapable of housing you, then yes, that would be true. I sincerely hope that the houses you design are livable, though.

They're basically saying, rather than roll our own online "environment" for this project, we'll just use a pre-existing one, and save our company some money by not doing a lot of extra work. That seems to make sense to me.

Hey Schwartz, great idea. I've got some more for you. Why roll your own operating system? Ditch Solaris, and save tons of development money. And if you didn't waste time on that SPARC architecture, you'd save more money and even more extra work. That UltraSPARC T1 can't be cheap to develop. Makes sense to me!

If he makes a film as good as his last one (or better), more folks will be in the know.

(Granted, a lot of people won't see it because it challenges what they already believe to be true. If you find such a person, do your patriotic duty. Kill them.)

Really? Thats one of those things people say a lot, but which is clearly not true. I can think of plenty of instances where publicity has been a bad thing.

We all everyone has an asshole. Oops, wrong word. I meant opinion. That doesn't make other people's opinions incorrect. Theirs has the same flowery aromas as yours, mine, and the fat guy in the next cube.

Supersize Me.

Some things are just plain wrong, and ignorance about bad food, like computer illiteracy, is one of them.

First the Mini-me. Then the iPod mini. Mac mini. Now a whole solar system mini? OK, the Hummer and Super Size Me showed something broken with society, but this kind of overreaction is worse than the disease!

it's really not that bad.. and it's just ham.


Kinda in the same way in which McDonalds very simply just sells hamburgers, eh?

"lard-assed docu-comedy director"
There's moore than one...

I mean, no it doesn't absolve them of one ounce of being freaks, but to say media has no effect on the way we think is a massive and dangerous understatement.

Think about it, your brain only contains the stuff you fill it with. (well "duh" right) Like in Supersize Me, you reap the rammifications of what you decide (emphasis on "you decide") to take into your body. Its that whole garbage-in-garbage-out scenereo played out on a biological host.

Even so, who decided what went in to their deranged little minds to start with? They did! So again, even on that level, they are still responsible.

All in all, not a good scapegoat. For my screwups, I'll stick to blaming cosmic rays!

McDonald's providing arithmetic practice sheets driven by its products and pricing for use as in-class exercises. This would have been fine as a hand-out at its restaurants. The justification was that teachers can always use free teaching materials, whatever the source or motivation.

The only role that these sorts of things have in the classroom is in a high school level civics style class that discusses why they should not be used in the classroom.

So, if Microsoft is like McDonalds, will using Windows every day for a month have the same effect as eating McDonalds everyday for a month? Maybe we should ask Morgan Spurlock if he is a Windows user too, eh?

http://www.supersizeme.com

I highly Recomend it and so do a lot of other people

the SuperSize Me guy must be ticked... he coulda at least got some song downloads for all his trouble/liver damage =)

e.

Before buying any more fast food, check out Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I'm reading it right now, it has lots of interesting information about the fast food industry that might effect your desire for their food.

Of course there is also Super Size Me the movie about the guy who ate nothing but McDonald's for a month & the effects on his body. I haven't seen it yet (I'm waiting to finish "Fast Food Nation" first) but I hear it's good.

yes, someone said that was in relation to http://www.supersizeme.com/

good flick, kid eats Mickey-D's for breakfest, lunch AND diner, gains 25 lbs and almost dies.