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55,000 Sign Twitter Abuse Petition After Jane Austen Campaigner Threats
AlistairCharlton writes "A petition campaigning for Twitter to improve its measures against online abuse has received more than 55,000 signatures in two days. The petition was set up in support of feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who faced a torrent of abusive tweets, including threats to rape and kill her, after successfully campaigning for a woman's picture to appear on a banknote; Jane Austen will appear on £10 notes from 2017."
In even more fairness, 90% of everything is crap.
As long as it apples to everyone.
http://twitchy.com/2013/07/13/twitter-lynch-mob-threatens-to-kill-george-zimmerman/
There's still cavemen in 2013?
I think the current Slashdot quote is appropriate:
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. -- Albert Einstein
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If they really needed a woman to replace Charles Darwin on the notes then surely someone like Marie Curie would have been a better bet? Why not replace a scientist with another scientist?
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Why would you abuse someone for trying to get a woman on a banknote? I can't comment for the UK, but in Australia we've had the Queen on a note since forever, and Edith Cowan on the $50 since the 90s. Some people need to realise that it isn't 1678 any more.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
in support of feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who faced a torrent of abusive tweets, including threats to rape and kill her, after successfully campaigning for a woman's picture to appear on a banknote;
Holy shit, man! What the fuck is this? Welcome to Iran, now available in places other than Iran.
...Jane Austen is just awful.
Then, frankly you have no idea what you're talking about. Well maybe you do. But I've yet to meet anyone who says what you did and does.
If you're reading e.g. Pride and Prejudice as a romance novel then you're basically missing out on most of what's there. There's a lot more there. If you look under the surface even slightly you will see a rather bleaker and very insightful social commentary. There's more to it than that as well. There's interesting observations and reflections on family interaction too. At the most basic level, it seems that parents will never cease to be an embarrassment to teenage children and vice versa.
And he's pretty much the 20th Century equivalent.
Fuck no.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Am I missing something key here? Why is it even a hot issue (campaigning to get a woman's image on a bank note) when the Queen is a woman...
But did you ever stop to think where you'd be without Vandelay Industries?
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Marie Curie wasn't British....
"In fairness?" So it's okay to threaten to rape of kill someone if they don't share your opinion? Wow...
I know you were probably being facetious, but really: You're not helping here.
Marie Curie wasn't English, so there's that. I would have chosen Ada Lovelace instead, who I feel is a sadly underappreciated figure.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I can think of at least a dozen really good female authors (and could probably come up with another hundred halfway decent ones) they could have selected instead of the Queen of Vapidity.
:D
I mean, okay, technically she founded the modern "art" of the Soap Opera - Although she didn't quite advance it to the "interesting plot twist" level, preferring to keep it at the "nothing really happens but someone gets married in the end" level of complexity. But should we really celebrate someone for poisoning 200 years of young girls' minds into thinking their prince would come despite their complete absence of any redeeming qualities whatsoever (except frail "beauty", gotta love that oh-so-attactive dying-of-TB look).
That said, hurling abuse and threats at someone just because they actually did something about what they wanted, while the rest of us sat around and did nothing - Not even remotely cool.
And really, just about anyone must have more merit than the royal family, so... Good show, Caroline!
Rape and death threats over pushing for a woman's face on a banknote? Even if you're not fond of feminism, that's overreacting quite a lot.
I suspect M. Curie did not get chosen because the British would prefer to have the visage of actual British-born person on their currency rather than some Polish immigrant who became a French citizen.
Frankly, I think they should have gone for a picture of Thatcher fighting a grizzly bear with chainsaw arms.
Now THAT'S an image you have to respect.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
If someone makes a threat, arrest them and file charges (which has been done in this case). Only when actions have real life consequences will the trolls Learn.
Just because it's "social commentary" and not a romance, that doesn't mean it isn't awful. Trust me, many well-read, intelligent people think Austin is pretty horrible. It is, and yes, it is pretty much old-school Seinfeld.
Get off your "I studied English Lit" high-horse, please.
For the sake of women and children everywhere!!!!
It does not matter what messages it contains, the writing is awful.
It could be the best social commentary ever written, but the writing is still awful.
I am not sure why the writing styles of so many writers that English Lit majors adore are so terrible to read. I think it is some sort of hipsterish bullshit.
I understand the need for history and seeing how the novel as a work evolved, but some of these writers seemed to be trying for Vogon poetry.
Clearly you haven't listened to this podcast!
http://www.freakonomics.com/2013/07/04/jane-austen-game-theorist-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/
I could care less about women's lib. Quite frankly, I'd give anything to be a women in the '50s. What a great life. I'm still hoping that women take all of the current jobs, and just let me stay at home cooking and cleaning and caring for children. That's all way better than commuting, working in an office, and the general stress of clients and deadlines.
All of that aside, who's on the bank notes really doesn't have any significance to anybody at all. It doesn't affect lives. So if a bunch of people want to put a woman onto a bank notes, I couldn't care less. Quite frankly, it'd be a welcome change from the really really old guy on our some of our current notes. Although, the queen on the most recent quarter around here really is looking quite ancient.
To think that someone would care so much that they'd resort to death-threats, especially after-the-fact, is way worse than criminal: it's just plain silly. There are so many better things against which to argue.
All this tells me is that censorship is alive and well, and at least 55,000 people support it. Makes so much sense!
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Example of having likeness of a queen on a note is quite ironic. The point is to have a Woman that is valued for her achievements not by family she was born to. In addition, women fought hard not to be subjugated be it by Man or government...
Art appreciation is always subjective. One person's trash is another's treasure.
Please leave Ada Lovelace's figure out of this.
The inherent problem with things like this are always with making sure that you don't infringe upon free speech -- hyperbole, sarcasm, irony, humor, and rudeness -- and only get involved in situations where realistic threats are legitimately intended and made. I understand this is in the UK, but do people really want a "zero-tolerance"/TSA style "everything ever uttered is suspicious and must be investigated and vetted" approach? Further, there are already relevant laws in most places to deal with things like this, so . . . how about we leave it at that instead of a business and a mob of users superseding it?
I often feel people simply aren't prepared to handle the internet. As if most of us haven't been on the receiving end of "abuse" online? Haven't been "attacked" or even threatened? Or told that they should be killed? Ever read youtube comments? How about the comment section on any news article that Matt Drudge links to? How about if someone "feels threatened" (or simply offended) by something? We see a lot of that in the real world, as it is. People being punished for something, not because of what they said or the intentions behind it, but how some busy-body "received it"? Does it apply across the board? Is it, as the article's commentary seems to imply, only an issue for "women"?
Hell, have I crossed the line, simply for having the wrong genitalia and not simply jumping on the bandwagon of support for this? (Because, yes, my concerns about people's freedom of speech and people not taking everything seriously and as a threat or offense totally means that I'm in favor of people being threatened and stalked and physically abused... right?).
This all goes back to that whole thing with the MySpace girl that was tricked/harassed (verbally) by neighbors (including adults) until she committed suicide. Or that Youtube girl who committed suicide after her escapades with a grown man brought judgement and insults from people at school both before and after she committed suicide. Yeah, it was harassment and bullying, but we also acknowledge that words don't directly force you to harm yourself. We all hate that bitch and her family for what she did to that poor girl and the consensus seems to be that most of the world wished harm on her. . . but that is distinct from using the law to determine when and why to make exceptions. That being a meany-head is suddenly a crime. That free speech isn't so free, any more. That my thin-skin or lack of a support-group around me is your fault. And those events caused a lot of frustration on Slashdot, too -- because people found themselves so angry at what happened and the idea of someone "getting way with it" . . . . yet opposed to infringing on people's rights to express thoughts. Even shitty ones.
In other words, here too, people need to back the fuck up from "wow, that's shitty -- of course we should do something about it!" and take the time to consider the greater impact of some institutionalized response.
Even better if they get off the English literature high horse heard first into the ground.
It could be the best social commentary ever written, but the writing is still awful.
Would you care to expand on that? Ifound the writing to be very pleasent, especially pleasingly terse without being stucatto. Can you give some examples, quotes, etc of things you don't like?
Austen is certainly not one to go into very long descriptive passages.
I am not sure why the writing styles of so many writers that English Lit majors adore are so terrible to read.
No idea. I didn't study English Lit beyond GCSE level and to be honest what we did in my school barely qualifies as "studying". But that's a very long rant for another day :)
Vogon poetry.
That would be: The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
I tried to read it. I struggled to somewhere past the black page and then gave up. It's kind of entertaining in that it this sort of bonkers post modern (about 200 years early) take on the modern novel (written about 50 years after the modern novel format was first invented) and is basically wall to wall memes and pop culture circa 1750.
Basically the result is Vogon Poetry.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
somebody somewhere said something nasty addressed to me, how can I go on living like this??
I honestly think that what people like you have done to Jane Austen's work is worse than book burning
What have I done? My sole interaction with it has been (a) reading it, (b) talking about it (among many, many other books) occasionally with a fellow nerd and now (c) writing a post on slashdot.
I don't know what you think I've done to it, but I can assure you I haven't. Well, probably not.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No idea. I didn't study English Lit beyond GCSE level and to be honest what we did in my school barely qualifies as "studying
And for the record what we studied was some random bits of shakespeare (midsummer night's dream, IIRC) and 1984. I think that was basically about it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Frankly, I think they should have gone for a picture of Thatcher fighting a grizzly bear with chainsaw arms. Now THAT'S an image you have to respect.
Maybe in 2077. When they think that was a normal day for British Parliament.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
Well, it's a good job I'm not then.
novels I think if you're under the impression that Jerry Seinfeld writes romantic fiction, and not social commentary, then perhaps, frankly you have no idea what you're talking about. I mean seriously, watch one episode of his tedious - almost as tedious as P&P show.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Pride and Prejudice was written in 1813. The majority of its style is simply what was commonplace at the time amongst the literate elite; indeed, most English-language writing held echoes of the same manner of elocution until the later half of the twentieth century when it had become strictly a formal mode of communication and literature was reinvented to be more casual. The style reflects the content of the subject matter.
I would highly recommend working your way up to understanding a thing or two about literature before trying to pass such sweeping judgements on it. Literary studies, and indeed most of the Humanities, are concerned with history; to try and pull them apart or to focus only on the present is to completely fail to understand and ignore most of the greatest books ever written. It really does not look good to make such brazen statements.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Isn't there an image of the queen on every note? She's alleged to be a woman, no?
Well, it's a good job I'm not then.
Then what?
Why not elaborate? Either that or it's just a back and forth of "it's crap", "no it isn't", "yes it is", etc.
Here's something concrete:
One of the things I like to see in books is something like social commentary or insignt into the human condition. A lot of no space-opera sci-fi is either overtly about that kind of thing or has strong undertones of it. I like that and it so happens I like it in other genres too.
So go on, what is it that you dislike? Can you point to anything other than very vague impressions?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I have added you to our list.
No aliens. No spies.
Dude, it's a minor work.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Holy crap AlistairCharlton , how about a freakin' triggers warning?!!
Is it misogyny to tip the stripper with these Jane Austin bills?
She sums it up pretty well... http://judgybitch.com/2013/07/29/policing-twitter-is-dumb/
Right you are. If they absolutely had to put an authoress on the banknote, why not pick Mary Shelley, who at least had the sense to write about more than just the prattling of womenfolk. Jane Austen couldn't even write a proper gothic romance-- Northanger Abbey is too self-concious a work, never reaching the magisterial heights of Mysteries of Udolpho. It's almost as if she was trying to parody something.
Stevenson's The Weir of Hermiston. It's unfinished, in a way that makes you cringe approaching the non-end. It has lots of real Vogon poetry style passages because Stevenson relied on his editor to trim the purple prose bits, and the Ex was seriously disappointed that she couldn't find Hermiston anywhere on her map of Pern.
Who is John Cabal?
The USA has Britishmen on their notes, why can't the UK put a French?
A couple of years ago, a user by the name of @goferet was sending regular rape and death threats to women. I saved links to 8 of the rape threats and 2 of the death threats, and contacted Twitter support.
They responded that his actions did not violate their terms of service. I pointed them directly to the terms of service page, and the specific mention of threats.
They didn't see a problem with what he was saying. Specifically things like he was planning to climb in their windows at night and rape them, some of them past rape victims who were campaigning for better investigations and fairer treatment of victims.
I thought maybe it was just the one idiot in support I was getting, but even the @support account didn't think anything of it.
What eventually did stop him making the threats was that I contacted people that he was associated with on Twitter and suggested they read his feed directly, so they could see what he was doing in his mentions, outside of the regular feed they saw. There was some disgust, and one person who knew him got him to finally shut his mouth.
Obviously there was an element that could have been "Leave it to the police", especially when some of the people he was attacking lived in the same city. But since Twitter was ignoring their *own* policies to let him threaten other users it was pretty vile on their parts.
To be fair, I doubt even five percent of those leaving shitty comments to supporters have ever read Jane Austen.
Actually, I doubt even five percent of those supporting the bank-note thing have ever read Jane Austen.
It does seem weird to have an author on currency, but whatever.
I'll ignore the most stupid parts of your post, since there's really nothing I can say except let your own words speak for themselves.
Jane Austen couldn't even write a proper gothic romance-- Northanger Abbey is too self-concious a work,
It's almost as if she was trying to parody something.
Well done! You understood the book! No woosh for you!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You know they're only ever going to allow one computer science figure at a time, and I'd prefer Alan Turing, myself.
Way to ignore his actual point... the second paragraph.
Seinfeld is social commentary, but you do not happen to like it. on the flipside JA was social commentary, the other poster happen not to like it.
You also happened to disagree with Seinfeld being social commentary with a nice "fuck no", how is that for an argument?
You may not be, but you sure do come off sounding like, an elitist
If you don't like what people say on Twitter. Don't go on Twitter. Simple as that.
I'm really surprised at what people can get worked up on.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Every time I gain a little faith in humanity, it falls into a sinkhole as we see here with the twitter abuse, only to be built back up by good hearted people (the 55,000). We live in extra bizarre times thanks to mass communication. Across the whole of the earth, I often wonder which dominates: good or evil? Is evil hereditary for some and good others, or do social conditioning factors override that very notion? I doubt it's that simple anyway, but I really truly don't understand much of what drives hatred, except perhaps ignorance.
I would ask if humanity as a whole can be repaired, but I suspect we were overall broken from the start. Barring a technological singularity event that has us all holding transcended hands after it occurs, this is a reminder that we need to leave the planet and go our separate idealogical ways... forever.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I swear to god. just make it stop
Try as I may, I've been unable to unravel your layers of sarcasm to understand what your opinion is.
In even more fairness, 90% of everything is crap.
Which makes "of" the only non-crappy part of your comment (and mine).
Ezekiel 23:20
Since you used "of" twice, doesn't that mean your post is only 80% crap?
And if so, doesn't that violate the rule that 90% of everything is crap?
I'm so confused.
It could be the best social commentary ever written, but the writing is still awful.
Perhaps it's like with Shakespeare - foreigners like me enjoy it more because we have modern translation. I liked the book. But then again, I have an unhealthy interest in [pre]history.
Ezekiel 23:20
"Look at me! I'm gonna bash hipsters while referencing one of the lamest, most painfully drawn-out 'funny' books in the history of the world."
Bashing Jane Austen while referencing Douglas Adams in a non-ironic way pretty much invalidates your opinion on anything literary, champ.
Applying this rule recursively to the remaining 10%, we can prove that everything is crap.
Isn't there already the picture of a woman on various banknotes? Specifically, Elizabeth Windsor, aka the Queen?
The majority of its style is simply what was commonplace at the time amongst the literate elite; indeed, most English-language writing
Note that you've just used a semicolon, and put an "indeed" right after it to boot, without having to have your forehead tattooed beforehand. That places you in the top five or so percent of English-speaking population and means that you live brains apart from the people whose life has a very small intersection with the realm of ink splodges forming legible patterns on a processed cellulose substrate, making your attempt at explaining quite futile.
Ezekiel 23:20
I would love to be alive in another 200 years when English Lit majors like yourself start defending Twilight for it's deep social commentary. Some people read books for the story, not to figure out what the author was really trying to say. If an author has a message, they should write what they mean. Besides, everything is open to interpretation. Just because you see certain meaning in Austins work doesn't mean that's what she intended. I have read and dissected Pride and Prejudice. I didn't like it. That doesn't mean I didn't understand it. It means, I didn't like the story, or her writing style. And, let's face it: most Americans who have read Jane Austin have done so because their high school English teacher made them. That's not the best way to instill a love of literature in people.
Jane Austen is irrelevant, I always thought that the Queen was a woman so there is already a woman on a 10 UKP note.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It does not matter what messages it contains, the writing is awful. It could be the best social commentary ever written, but the writing is still awful. I am not sure why the writing styles of so many writers that English Lit majors adore are so terrible to read. I think it is some sort of hipsterish bullshit.
This is the most hilarious thing I've ever seen you write. The key point you are missing is that people actually talked that way back then. English actually evolves. I know, history is confusing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The Queen is a woman and she is already on the thing...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Kinda funny thing really. Most people who have opinions on JA and P&P have done some kind of English Lit course. In these courses, you're generally expected to read the articles you comment on in full before commenting on them, largely because if you just read the first few words and immediately made an answer you'd, well, look like an imbecile.
Given your responses both to my original comment and to this one, perhaps, maybe, you should take one of these courses?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Even back in 1813 people were churning out books to make money. I'm not saying that's what Jane Austin was doing, but others were. The books they wrote are the equivalent to today's best sellers. They were intended to tell a story that would entertain people for a time. Some books get over analyzed, and I believe Pride and Prejudice is one of them. I think Austin wrote it to tell a story, primarily, and to mock current social norms secondarily. Lord help us when 200 years from now Harry Potter is being studied to figure out what Rowling was really trying to say about society.
Alan Turin was almost a woman...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It does seem weird to have an author on currency, but whatever.
Well, it would be more fitting to put great financiers that benefited society on their currency.
They just haven't been able to come up with any suitable candidates yet.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
because they are French...
"There's a lot more there. If you look under the surface even slightly you will see a rather bleaker and very insightful social commentary. There's more to it than that as well. There's interesting observations and reflections on family interaction too. At the most basic level, it seems that parents will never cease to be an embarrassment to teenage children and vice versa."
So it is a novel then?
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Putting Alan on the notes would certainly be lot nicer than the pardon he was given, it would also be a nod to the gay/lesbian people. But perhaps thats still not good enough for this person advocating JA - because it seems to be mostly a matter of it having to be a woman - any woman, than the right _person_
Reptoids don't count.
I am not sure why the writing styles of so many writers that English Lit majors adore are so terrible to read.
I just re-read Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, after over 9000 years.
The writing was painful. Still an epic, ridiculously insightful story - but my god, the writing.
It isn't just English Lit majors and their objects of affection. The facts are, writing anything worth reading is hard work. Most authors concentrate on the story. Few concentrate on the wordplay. And even fewer are any good at it.
...and little less Pride and Prejudice, I think. Perhaps if we tried some Persuasion...
Then, frankly you have no idea what you're talking about. Well maybe you do. But I've yet to meet anyone who says what you did and does.
If you're reading e.g. Pride and Prejudice as a romance novel then you're basically missing out on most of what's there.
The problem with Jane Austen is that she exhausts her repertoire. If you only read "Pride and Prejudice", you end up ahead. "Emma" is probably the best of the rest, but already more tiresome. And then you should really stop because the other novels are just the same same essence spread thinner.
It's similar with the Brontë sisters: read the best from each of the sisters, and then stop. Possibly before reading Anne altogether.
That's not highly unusual for the era: you would not survive much more beyond Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" either (but on its own, it is a reasonably entertaining enterprise), but then nobody in his right mind would think of putting him on a banknote.
If we are talking about Victorian one novel wonders, W. M. Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" beats "Pride and Prejudice" pants down. Again, nobody would put him on a banknote. Banknote calibre would be more like Dickens.
I don't know what you think I've done to it, but I can assure you I haven't. Well, probably not.
The GP means that you've retconned her work into some modern narrative of suppressed female authors semi-secretly penning a body of deeply insightful social commentary, rather than letting it stand as the tripe bit of fluff Austen meant to (and did write.
Yes, it contains quite a lot of vaguely interesting trivia about pre-Victorian English society - In much the same way that "Dallas" contains quite a lot of vaguely interesting trivia about the geography of Texas.
Standing on her own, without the rosy tint of modern revisionism, Austen produced nothing but poorly-written cheesy romance novels, the era-equivalent of a Harlequin Romance (minus anything even remotely titillating, so as not to incense the sensibilities of her contemporaries).
So it's okay to threaten to rape of kill someone if they don't share your opinion? Wow...
I really don't understand why people don't understand trolling when it's applied to women. None of these rape or murder threats are serious; they're just done to get a rise out of the recipient. And it works every fucking time.
In every one of these situations, it's almost like the target is brand new to the internet. "Ooh, I got some nasty messages. It must be misogyny!" No, it really isn't. Get the fuck over yourself. Anyone who sticks their neck out for any reason gets vitriol spewed at them. But when it happens to a woman? OMG! Stop the presses!
Think the guys who reclassified Pluto as a non-planet received nothing but messages saying "I disagree with you, but I understand your reasoning"?
Honestly, that use of a semicolon, I would count as wrong: the two clauses aren't related enough to warrant it. In either case, the writing is certainly a run-on. It's grammatically correct (ignoring the opinion that the semi-colon is inappropriate because it's not related enough,) but it's still bad writing.
Sure, for escalating degrees of elitism, that is absolutely true.
FYI troll, this is an article about Britain, a land where "liberal", "socialist" and "universal healthcare" are not dirty words. "Crevice"... now that's a dirty word, and "leak" is apparently positively disgusting, so at least we've got some common ground after all.
Try harder next time, or don't.
Actually, just don't.
after successfully campaigning for a woman's picture to appear on a banknote
Tits or GTFO.
His point, regardless if it's valid or not in this instance, is how much we the reader see in books that isn't actually there. Due to our own personal beliefs, we see things relevant to those beliefs in the books we read, when more often than not the author never actually intended for such a secondary meaning in the first place. It can become so pervasive that the original intent of the author is completely lost as these secondary meanings become accepted as the truth.
Totally! Just because it is social commentary and not a romance doesn't mean it isn't awful, you should totally trust the anonymous coward and the many well-read, intelligent people he is making up!!
And yes, he did not provide any counter-arguments other than his inexpert opinion (which is so much better than your English literature major opinion on English literature), but still this is something that he just knows because of his faith and if you believe in something with enough faith we all know it automatically makes it truth.
Of course some people will argue that even if she was a terrible writer that does not give people the right to harass a woman that campaigned for something she wanted but those idiots are missing the point, and I don't have to tell you what the point is because several well-read, intelligent people I am making up know what the point is.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
Sure it does, but newsflash people are still writing new works and translating the old. I don't read Dante in the original either.
Try to put Thatcher on the tenner and you'll have a civil war before the ink is dry. If you thought the North vs. South thing was bad in the States, just wait and see what happens when the two sides have a few centuries of enmity behind them.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
I think you mean 95% of the population is un-datable.
If we are to enter a truly non-sexist non-whatever then sex etc, should not be a relevant criteria so to choose JA is sexist and I am opposed, but as elsewhere I still have to say that there is already a picture of a woman on the other side...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Lose the comma after "semicolon", and use a dash instead of a colon. I would terminate it with an exclamation point and a :)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
And, much like Jane Austen's characters, you speak in hyperbole. Her prose is tepid at best.
You can only converge on absolute crappiness, but never actually achieve it, like a perfect vacuum.
By that theorem, even the crappiest thing has a tiny percentage of non-crappiness.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I hope you're trolling, but if not you must be functionally illiterate. Jane Austen is one of the few authors where you feel that every word is just right and couldn't be improved. Seriously, as a guy I waited a long time to read anything by her, and when I finally did I was blown away by the quality of her writing.
Screw that. A picture of a grizzly bear with chainsaw arms would be awesome enough.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." -Vonnegut (being partially sarcastic)
I'm sure those scientists didn't receive correspondence anywhere near as eloquent as your example, but I also sincerely doubt they received rape threats.
My point being, whether it's death, rape or any other type of threat it's unsuitable. It's unnecessary. In the shroud of anonymity the internet provides it gives people a chance to show their true inner ass-hat, that they aren't afforded the opportunity to show on a daily real life basis, for feel of social stigma or physical repercussion. (Threats in person hold much more legal consequence than online; unless you're a LoL player anyways...)
Perhaps if rape wasn't treated as a non-crime in even developed countries it wouldn't be seen as such a severe and serious threat. If so many rape's weren't a he said she said, rape kits are abortions nonsense festival, perhaps we could have less irrational fears against someone who anonymously threatens it. (I say irrational because statistics like to claim most rapes aren't by the shrouded, cloaked mystery alley man, but a friend or family member.)
... this is about silencing dissent, nothing else... You can guarantee that all the rape 'threats' were made up by JEW rabble rousers, so that we can 'think of the children' and report anything that anybody says, if the JEWS don't like it...
You know, little problems like the homicidal gas chambers being a myth... little lies like that...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Kl6RHKIQk
Watch the video and THEN tell me I'm wrong.
You're wrong.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Lord help us when 200 years from now Harry Potter is being studied to figure out what Rowling was really trying to say about society.
There is that whole "muggles" thing going on. Quite racist/elitist.
You should have used "median" rather than "mean" to contrast with "average". The average is precisely the same as the arithmetic mean.
Making of threat of a serious crime should already be prosecutable, (as far as I understand). It's time for the Police to start doing their job.
Feminism, at least modern version of it supported by many liberals, is all about asking the state to intervene to help a (supposedly) disadvantage special interest group, at the expense of the rest of society who are (supposedly) richer than the special interest group.
I think a "whoosh" may be in order. At the time such questionable applications were quite commonplace, as the rules hadn't quite settled in. If you keep going back, then by the Middle Ages you will discover that entire paragraphs are concatenated out of wildly independent clauses using rather stilted-looking conjunctions and puncti. I was hamming it up a little for the sake of theatre. Perhaps I should berate you for such a rare and archaic use of a colon?
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The colon's right: dashes aren't real punctuation marks. Any time you see a dash, it's either a comma or a colon that's been drawn out into a breathing mark. Colons were once employed widely whenever a statement explained the previous one.
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"In fairness?" So it's okay to threaten to rape of kill someone if they don't share your opinion? Wow...
I know you were probably being facetious, but really: You're not helping here.
Rape threats and other cases of "angry menz syndrome" are actually agent provocateur campaigns made possible through the anonymity of the internet, for the express purpose of gaining allies to their cause, no matter what the cause is. Under fictional assaults, women who may not care either way of course defend their sisters, but even men join the cause and join a white knight campaign to prove that they themselves aren't misogynists and in order to gain favor with women called to action.
Consider: if these were genuine threats, why weren't the authorities involved? Why has no one been arrested or investigated? From Anna Sarkeesian to Caroline Criado-Perez, perhaps if they pressed charges then it would be discovered that all these claims are completely fabricated for publicity and as an appeal to emotion.
Not only that, statistics show that a rapist is most likely to be someone the victim already knows. There is no purpose to threatening a complete stranger, and no chance of follow through. It's still a crime, however.
More Twoson than Cupertino
I take it you're not exactly friends, then.
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Overanalysis is inevitable (you'd be absolutely appalled at how many analyses have been written of Shakespearean characters) but not really pertinent to h4rr4r's complaints.
Going slightly off-topic, don't even bother with Rowling; we already have plenty of examples of earlier 20th Century literature being mangled. You'd be amazed at how many people have interpreted Lord of the Rings as anti-industrial despite Tolkien's explicit pleas.
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I hope you're trolling, but if not you must be functionally illiterate. Jane Austen is one of the few authors where you feel that every word is just right and couldn't be improved. Seriously, as a guy I waited a long time to read anything by her, and when I finally did I was blown away by the quality of her writing.
Good for you?
Then, frankly you have no idea what you're talking about. Well maybe you do. But I've yet to meet anyone who says what you did and does.
I realize you've never met him, but:
To me his prose is unreadable -- like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
- Mark Twain in a letter to W. D. Howells, 18 January 1909
The main criticism I have with Pride and Prejudice is that I found it to be incredibly boring and the majority of the characters were rather annoying. Additionally, not being a teenage girl when I was forced to read this novel in high school, I found it difficult to relate to anyone in the story. Between that, Tess of the D'urbervilles, and The Awakening, I was finally cured of my insomnia.
You want Austen translated? It's crystal clear!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Feminist, like their racial counterparts, sometimes exist to ensure that their group isn't discriminated against. However, as discrimination has become nearly irrelevant (compared to 1800s, early 1900s) that activist attitude can't magically just turn off. It is fairly common for people who are passionate enough about a particular movement to actually be so violently for that group because they are discriminatory the other direction (Men suck, women rule!). Some do that because they feel they have to swing the pendulum far enough past the line that any pushback will only return it to the parity that they originally sought. Others do that because they really are just as misandristic as their targeted opponents are misogynistic. Jane Austen could just be a person to be submitted for consideration to fill the spot on a bank note, just as valid as any other notable historical figure.
I can't believe I'm arguing English literature with someone who confuses "trite" and "tripe", but whatever.
To look at the social commentary all you have to do is examine the fate of some of the secondary characters. It is very clearly not a good fate.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And in yet MORE fairness, for everything you think goes in that 10%, you will find people online loudly telling the world how much they hate that thing.
I will demonstrate this by trolling for such people:
Ahem... I LOVE the following things:
-Rap music
-Halo 3
-Team fortress 2
-Sex
-The Matrix
-Inception
-Beer
Anyone care to comment on... hang on, just got a text that TF2 is extremely overrated and blah blah blah.. and oh, I've just been tapped on the shoulder and someone is telling me that sex is overrated. My wife.
And Jesus wasn't a Christian, but those humps sure put his mug on everything. Then again, they chose the instrument of his death as their symbol, so I guess that kind of cancels it out.
That's just the 90% of everything being crap plus half the remainder for your gender preference.
Marie Curie was French. British pound notes have British people on them. My preferred choice is Ada Lovelace.
Everyone just calm the fuck down. The correct way to handle this is to troll the hell out of this feminist by drawing a big set of tits on every one of these bills you encounter. Not because of any disrespect for women, mind you, but because loud humorless complaining feminists deserve to fail. They ever put Bill Clinton on a bill over here, I'm drawing cocks & balls on it. Difference is Bill would probably laugh where as serious public feminists don't appear to know how to.
Ah, but you're mistaken; there were popular-but-terrible books in every era. You just don't know about them because they're so awful no one bothered to preserve them, hence the moniker "penny dreadfuls." Twilight will not be remembered; perhaps the only trash of this period that will is Fifty Shades of Grey, and even then only because it broke sales records. There are still good writers around today, they're just not so respected or well-known because of the current bloatedness of presentism and popular culture. (Stick around, though; that last part might change as we millennials get sufficiently picky.)
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Uff, friends with...whom exactly? (I only have one personality (that I'm aware of!) so I must have missed some context.)
Ezekiel 23:20
That is true. He's unlikely to change his routine.
the two clauses aren't related enough to warrant it.
I'm puzzled by that. CMoS claims that "[in] regular prose, a semicolon is most commonly used between two independent clauses not joined by a conjunction to signal a closer connection between them than a period would." I don't know, but that seems to make it acceptable to me, perhaps even preferable. Not being a native speaker, however, I'm always willing to learn something new.
Ezekiel 23:20
With h4rr4r, who I was replying to?
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making your attempt at explaining quite futile.
Indeed.
Frankly, I think they should have gone for a picture of Thatcher fighting a grizzly bear with chainsaw arms.
That would be promoting cruelty to animals with chainsaw arms.
You remind me of that South Park episode... "Smug Alert".
H4rr4r? I vaguely remember disagreeing with him on some issues in the past, but otherwise I don't care either way. I quite like Austen, although as I said, that could be due to me having been exposed to her translated works first; I still have to read the originals. (I'd like to use the bitexts for some private NLP research.) As with Shakespeare, it makes the work much closer to the contemporaries for foreighners that is the case with English theatre patrons, even though the translation is still a little bit idiosyncratic - as in, it uses a language that is a little bit historical (but one that is probably still closer to our modern vernacular, it's certainly nowhere nearly as weird as the Czech language of the 1810's).
Ezekiel 23:20
Are you implying his motive for going against you was purely in defense of his "friend"? Typical drama misdirection, or some sort of psychological denial on your part, perhaps? Maybe you should take some of your own advice and work your way up to understanding a thing or two about conversation and debate.
You were deliberately being archaic? Seeing as I fail to interpret it as anything else but a normal text, my L2 speaker knobs must be adjusted improperly. (If we're discussing the development in prose style, try reading some English prose from king Alfred's time - it's sentences beginning with "Ond.." all over the place.)
Ezekiel 23:20
I can't believe I'm arguing English literature with someone who confuses "trite" and "tripe", but whatever.
I can see your confusion, but believe it or not, I actually meant to call it a load of dingo's kidneys, rather than overused and banal. For some reason on revision I added "bit of fluff" after the fact, totally throwing that sentence off. Mea culpa.
To look at the social commentary all you have to do is examine the fate of some of the secondary characters. It is very clearly not a good fate.
I didn't say it lacks in social commentary. I implied that any meaningful social commentary it contains occurs purely by accident. Thus the analogy to Dallas-vs-the-geography-of-Texas. Or perhaps more apropos, like an in-depth analysis of the late 20th century culinary arts as expressed through the medium of home pizza delivery service in such classics as "Did you want sausage with that?" and "Anal sluts 7".
I'm fairly sure that dashes can also be used in the manner of matched commas or ellipses – as is common in gothic literature – but they do carry a little ambiguity. I find the main benefit is that they reduce the formality of the text – as in speech, sometimes the pacing of a flow of ideas is of more interest than the exact relationships.
Perhaps the rule should be that a person has to demonstrate proper use of a semicolon before they are permitted to use a long dash?
Youch, you're totally misreading things. I was more concerned that he seemed to be passing judgement on h4rr4r as being "not in the top five percent."
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Let's see who wins this smackdown.
Police were involved. A man was arrested.
FTA: "Scotland Yard has confirmed that a 21-year-old man was arrested by police in the Manchester area on 28 July on suspicion of harassment offences."
Whether it's a fabricated appeal to emotion is irrelevant; It's unacceptable. It's also really easy to avoid: don't threaten to rape people.
It was an elaborate attempt at a joke. Or an attempt at an elaborate joke? Anyway, I'm really bad insofar impressing ironic intonation into inscriptions is involved, innit?
Ezekiel 23:20
Rape threats and other cases of "angry menz syndrome" are actually agent provocateur campaigns made possible through the anonymity of the internet, for the express purpose of gaining allies to their cause, no matter what the cause is.
Yup, it's all just a conspiracy. Applekid is in fact also a woman, only pretending to be a misogynistic douchebag in order to gain support for her radical feminist notions (such as allowing women to be depicted on bank notes!).
(Of course, by Applekid's logic, I am also just a woman seeking to defend my sisters and/or a man trying to gain favors with women by posting snarky comments on Slashdot. Because OkCupid is so last decade.)
That is an amazing sig, sir.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
I don't read Dante in the original either.
I didn't expect you read Italian. Or any other language besides English, for that matter, given how provincial your taste in literature seems to be.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm 99% certain the Bank of England has never done that.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
FWIW, James Watt is going to be on the new 50. More of an engineer than a scientist, but still a fine choice.
My pick would have been Mary Cartwright, but that might be too soon. How long do you have to have been dead for to get a banknote?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Hmmmmm. Okay. I think I can see that with enough squinting. Try slathering on more italics in the future.
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No wonder you found it boring. High school English classes have this way of making even the best books tedious and mind-numbing.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
That sounds like a good plan all around. (And, yeah, of course they can—such 'matched' punctuation marks are really just different ways of marking parenthesis, which is a much broader category of rhetorical phenomena than most people think.)
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Glad to hear it. Men may brush off threats and abuse on the Internet - and perhaps women need to grow a thicker skin in some cases - but the reality is that women who state anything remotely challenging are subject to harassment and abuse, and indeed death and rape threats on a regular basis. My wife gave up playing a few MMOs due to the *continuous* sexual harassment she received whenever she logged in - and this when its a given that every female character is actually a guy according to most male gamers (silly but it is the reason so few women want to actually admit they are female).
Were it not for the anonymity we enjoy on many websites, this would happen a lot less. That anonymity lets us post our thoughts and opinions freely and should be treasured (although seemingly its not really anonymity given the NSA etc) and its a shame that asshats feel compelled to spew forth idiotic and offensive vitriol just because they can - or because they were abused, or can't get laid, or are so obnoxious no one wants to be their friend or whatever other source of all that mindless rage and anger is. Trolls ruin the web for a lot of people.
I know there are a lot of websites my wife will simply not visit any more because bullshit like this goes on, on a regular basis. I sincerely hope they find cause to charge the guy who was arrested and he receives a harsh punishment that is well publicized if he is found guilty. Perhaps that might deter some idiots in the future.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I vote for Rosalind Franklin, who should be recognized as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA. Also to her credit, she left us no boring novels.
Because THE QUEEN isn't a woman??!?
Second one was obviously cheap ghost-written sequel riding on the popularity of the first one.
never reaching the magisterial heights of Mysteries of Udolpho.
(snort) Well done! You owe me a new coffee and keyboard.
What I love about Austen is how much hasn't changed in the last 210 years:
"But, perhaps, I keep no journal."
"Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am not sitting by you. These are points in which a doubt is equally possible. Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal?"
Ladies and gentlemen, Jane Austen and the Facebook cat macros of 1803.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
You get one, though.
Seriously, how many people have even *heard* of "Mysteries of Udolpho" in any context other than "Northanger Abbey"?
Does this really matter? I mean, there is already a woman featured on every banknote and coin. What was her name again... Oh yes, Queen Elizabeth II.
Thirty four characters live here.
It's mostly a matter of 'indeed' frequency, I think. There are certainly more easily parsed word choices I could have fallen back on.
Also, I must commend you on your impeccable English—am I to understand you're natively a Czech speaker, given your other mention of it?
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(There's actually no "h" in "foreign"—it and "reign" are the only two words like that. Perplexing, yes, but "gh" doesn't like to come before an "n".)
The biggest hallmark of Victorian writing is the use of very cumbersome clause arrangement. This can have great rhetorical power when wielded selectively, but at the time many of the grammatical innovations which we now take for granted were widely seen by educated people as lazy and vulgar. Moreover, some hadn't been invented yet. Along with that we've lost a lot of near-synonyms from everyday use and substituted in coarse approximations or the occasional more-precise idiomatic phrase.
Consider the following from the start of Pride and Prejudice:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
(And note already that, as the rules regarding punctuation were far from standardized in 1813, the second comma is a splice by modern standards, and should be thought of more as a cue to pause very briefly.)
Without re-picking vocabulary, today a casual speaker might say something more like:
It is universally acknowledged that a single man with a fortune must want a wife.
Most obviously there's less use of the passive voice and other methods of phrasing things indirectly. (To be "in want of" something is particularly out of style.) Rhetorically, someone may still say something very similar to this in order to mimic historical authority and to make a statement seem more profound, but it would be rather unusual.
The second paragraph is probably along the lines of what made h4rr4r's eyes bleed:
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
There's a lot of preponderance here (as well as another questionable comma.) Inverting the grammar of some clauses is necessary to convert it into a more colloquial and readily-grasped thought:
When such a man first enters a neighbourhood, regardless of however little is known of his feelings or views, this truth is so fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is already considered the rightful property of one or another of their daughters.
I would guess that this kind of grammatical complication would get deliberately lost in any translation, since it made the English overly difficult to swallow in the first place, although certain parts may be desirable to translate—in the context of Pride and Prejudice, which is a satire about the well-to-do, this is poking fun at use of complicated language as a status symbol, but for the most part literary Victorian writers did this anyway, and you'd have to do a fair amount of reading of her other works to know if/how much Austen was really exaggerating this affectation.
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This has to be the worst Slashdot discussion I have seen in the last decade.
Yeah, I'd go with Linda if choosing a Lovelace, especially if choosing by figure.
or what the hell, go with Amanda Seyfried
ironic captcha: intimacy
I thought Watt had already been on one, although maybe I just think that because Stephenson's Rocket was (is?) on the fiver. The main reason I object to Austen (literary merits aside: I like her books) is that it seems to be saying 'well, we can have a woman on there, as long as she's doing a suitably feminine occupation'. And once that's done, we go back to wondering why it's hard to attract women to STEM occupations. Pick a female mathematician, scientist, or engineer. This list has a few good candidates on it, but if you're only looking for ones that are old enough to already be dead the list is depressingly short for the UK compared to many other European countries.
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"There's interesting observations and reflections on family interaction too. At the most basic level, it seems that parents will never cease to be an embarrassment to teenage children and vice versa."
This is the problem with English literature as a discipline and why it's often bollocks. People make stuff up and read into it more than is actually there.
There is absolutely no way that Jane Austen could've predicted in the 18th century that families would always be the same and wrote what she did so that people 200+ years down the road could say "Wow, things haven't changed much". She didn't do that, she merely wrote a novel and now with hindsight we look back and say "Wow, things haven't changed much". You're making the implication that she's somehow special in pointing this out to us but the reality is she did no such thing, we only realise it precisely because things haven't changed much in this respect and we're looking back on her writing and applying what we know now.
But we could've also realised this from any historic documents detailing such things, it's not about her writing in the slightest it's just a fact that people like you attribute to some mystical power of her to be timeless when the only thing that's really timeless is certain unchanging traits of human nature itself. It's the surprise of recognising said human traits in documents from even 200 years ago and trying to justify it to ourselves as being something more rather than simply recognising it is what it is.
I've seen so many analysis of what Shakespeare, Wordsworth and so forth "really meant" with their writings but it's complete and utter idiocy - it's just speculation, he didn't mean anything other than what he wrote and if you wish to apply your own interpretation to that then that's okay but realise this - you can do that to ANY book no matter the quality of the author. It's like saying JK Rowling was really writing about how hard life is for a fostered child and how they have to slip away in their minds to fantasy worlds to cope with the difficulties of fostered life - bollocks, she wrote an entertaining story about a fucking fictional boy wizard and that's that.
English literature like high art is almost an entirely manufactured industry full of made up shit to justify it's own existence. It's no different to fortune telling - an industry designed to mostly make shit up and convince people it's true to justify it's own continued existence.
It's also no better than the faux scientists you sometimes see, like when the story about how full moons effect sleeping patterns come about the other day and they got a guy to "explain" why that's the case on TV and he came up with the most absurd story about how humans always threw parties on full moons and so we'd evolved to sleep less on full moons because of those parties. Seriously? What. The. Fuck. Correlation is not causation and the most pathetic theory ever invented for the scenario does not suddenly prove causation either. Where do they even find these "scientists"?
I'm not saying there aren't books out there that were written with hidden meanings, an example off the top of my head would probably be of course Alice in Wonderland, but to apply that mindset to every famous historical book written is taking it to the extreme and completely wrong, just as doing the same for every famous book today is absurd - as in my Harry Potter example. Similarly Game of Thrones isn't a commentary on medieval European history with the likes of the great wall referring to Hadrian's wall, King's Landing and London and so forth - no, it's just a fictional storyline where the author took a few ideas from European medieval history as a basis for that story. It says nothing about how things really were, where they were or how they actually happened.
I'm not an English lit major but I was top of my class in the top class in the school at GCSE despite having felt it was bollocks then, and still feeling little different now. A large part of believing it was bollocks then
(There's actually no "h" in "foreign"—it and "reign" are the only two words like that. Perplexing, yes, but "gh" doesn't like to come before an "n".)
You are right of course, but this is somewhat lost on me. I don't have a problem with spelling [*], at least in this area. The issue at hand is the fact that "h" happens to be next to "g" on my keyboard, and my fingers are not exactly renowned for their dexterity, so this is to be expected. (My lack of finger dexterity might have something to do with me being left-handed; a fact that my nursery school teachers considered too sinister to bear and tried to "fix", with predictable results. (I apologize for the directional puns.)) The problem is somewhat compounded by the spelling checker in Firefox Nightly obstinately refusing to work for me; I probably ought to do something about it right away. (The release version is fine, but I like to try out new stuff.)
([*] As opposed to *pronunciation*, at least sometimes - Kansas, Arkansas...are you kidding me? That one got me stumped even more than finding out about American and English lieutenants - I guess I'm more of a book guy, and you don't notice these things when reading.)
Regarding the examples you're mentioning, I don't find them particularly bothersome. Perhaps it's a quirk of L2 readers, the marginal effort in reading a book two centuries old being less significant than might be the case for L1 readers. But then again, I do enjoy reading Edward Gibbon, so I may be a bit biased in this respect. The only problematic thing I find about reading Austen is the occasional lexical shift that forces me to research what connotations certain expressions have, but even that is a marginal effort since when reading a good novel, not being a native, I'm lost for meaning sometimes and have to do some dictionary diving anyway. OED be blessed.)
I would guess that this kind of grammatical complication would get deliberately lost in any translation
When translating historical works, it is common to use *somewhat* historical means of expression, but it's never taken to the same level as the original writing perceived by a contemporary native speaker of the same language as you don't want to alienate your audience with text that half of them would find too difficult to decipher. Forget Shakespeare for now, even Austen's books happen to have been translated into my native tongue in a style that's noticeably non-modern, not something that even an august and preeminent writer would want to use, but they're *still* a whole lot better than, say, some of our books from the 1920's, and their slight notion of historicity is hardly detracting. (I was once shown one such pulp fiction book by a friend of mine - a book she noticed in a secondhand bookstore and thought it amusing to read. Indeed, it *was* amusing to read, the silliness was almost unbearable. I'm of course familiar with *major* works of that period in our literature, but I had never been exposed to something like this at school and when you combine the date of its origin with the fact that this was what would be considered thrash even nowadays, you're in for quite some hilarity.)
but for the most part literary Victorian writers did this anyway, and you'd have to do a fair amount of reading of her other works to know if/how much Austen was really exaggerating this affectation.
Austen, of course, being a Georgian writer, and perhaps not as amenable to being compared to Victorian writers as would be the case when comparing her writings to the writings of her Georgian peers.
Ezekiel 23:20
am I to understand you're natively a Czech speaker, given your other mention of it?
That happens to be the case.
Ezekiel 23:20
This asshole is modded +5 Insightful for saying Jerry Seinfeld is romantic fiction? WTF?
Lord help us when 200 years from now Harry Potter is being studied to figure out what Rowling was really trying to say about society.
Clearly the unicorn blood was a metaphor for nanoaugmentation and the horcruxes a foreshadowing of host-cloning. That's not even getting into how "Voldemorte" is obviously a reference to Global Overlord Martin Valdez, taken as a whole, the entirety of that character is a warning that GO Valdez will succumb to ever growing inhumanity with each body-transfer, but that his path was already destined for failure when he first had the nanite treatment for his limp. Similarly, the detail of Harry wearing glasses rather than having had biosculpted replacement eyes grown shows the superiority of accepting reality rather than fixing it.
+5 insightful for making an assumption that implies you think Jerry Seinfeld writes romance novels. WTF? What an idiot.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
It may not be that a woman on a banknote is objectionable. I really hope that's not it, at least. The issue that these twitter users have may be that they're replacing Charles Darwin with some author-who-most-don't-even-like.
I mean, it's freaking DARWIN. Also, isn't the Queen already on one or more notes?
Yes, she is another good choice.
Absolutely to this and some more besides. Austen was, particularly in Persuasion, mocking the very society that read her books.
Further, her ideas of the novel as an internal monologue were revolutionary. Before Austen (ok and maybe Murasaki in some sort of weird lost art way), novels were based on action rather than ego.
Austen is a British treasure. She definitely belongs on the bill.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
It was "borrowed" from another Slashdot user. You can borrow it too if you want. The more people use it, the funnier it will be.
Hopefully the NSA guys are bright enough to filter out the exact same meaningless sentence billions of times.
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If you look under the surface even slightly you will see a rather bleaker and very insightful social commentary. There's more to it than that as well. There's interesting observations and reflections on family interaction too. At the most basic level, it seems that parents will never cease to be an embarrassment to teenage children and vice versa.
So, it's like the 19th century version of South Park?
Nobody is justifying making threats. All we're saying is that Jane Austin is just awful. Which she is.
Remember that the defense posted here is "OK, you may have compared her to Jerry Seinfeld, but I'm going to ignore that and pretend you hate her because you think she writes romantic fiction." If you cannot make an argument against someone's view without misrepresenting their view (and doing so to a point that's completely absurd), then you have no argument. Like Seinfeld, she writes low grade social observation comedy, often, but not always, centered around dating and the bizarre social rules that apply. And like Seinfeld, it just isn't that funny to most of us or even insightful or informative in a way a more sober description wouldn't be.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yes, but you also probably think Seinfeld is hilarious.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.