English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Plato and Aristotle will turn you into a sophomoric twit. You'll be spouting chapter and verse of Ethics or Poetics and getting all smug because you have THE ANSWERS, but you won't.

Mahnax

@Robusto False.

Cerberus

Pfff.

The thing with Plato is that he can be long winded and esoteric, so you have to read the right parts.

Robusto

12:28 AM

Fine, don't listen to me. I went to a Catholic prep school and fell into the trap, so what do I know.

KitFox

Oh. How about Crime and Punishment? Is that a good one? I haven't read it, although I've checked it out of the library five or six times.

Cerberus

Very heavy.

Robusto

Crime and Punishment is seminal. A must-read.

Mahnax

@Robusto Well, you just seem to be assuming a bunch of things.

KitFox

For a 15-year-old though?

Robusto

12:29 AM

But again, I think you need to be a bit older.

Cerberus

I would only recommend it if you like Russian literature and heavy books at that age.

Robusto

Jinx.

Cerberus

The Brothers Karamasov may be a better choice.

If you want D.

KitFox

Hey, @Mahnax, I hope you don't mind unsolicited book suggestions.

Mahnax

@KitFox I don't mind them, but telling me I should be older for things makes me want to read them.

(To be perfectly honest.)

Robusto

12:31 AM

Read The Catcher in the Rye. Read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Dubliners. The Sun Also Rises.

KitFox

I understand that.

But I'm serious; it's not that you aren't capable. It's just that you lack context.

You'll enjoy them more when you have that.

Mahnax

I read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer years ago, actually. Those were good.

Robusto

Read something by James: Washington Square, perhaps.

KitFox

Dubliners seriously?

Robusto

@Mahnax Everyone should read Huckleberry Finn every five or ten years. You'll be amazed how much more there is in that book that you didn't see the first time. Or the third.

Cerberus

12:32 AM

I liked Dostoyevsky's The Eternal Husband.

Perhaps we should ask Mahnax first what kind of books he likes.

KitFox

I wish I could remember the Russian author I loved in high school. Nabokov?

@Cerberus I did that already. He said all kinds, just like a good boy should.

Cerberus

Heh.

I see.

Robusto

And whatever you do, no matter who tells you to, if you can possibly avoid it DO NOT read A Separate Peace. It is a waste of paper, and of course a mainstay of high-school English courses.

Mahnax

@Robusto What's so bad about it?

Cerberus

So I wonder what subject this reading list is for: English?

KitFox

12:34 AM

@Robusto You feel that strongly about it? I just felt like it was dated.

Robusto

@KitFox Fo' sho'. Read Lolita. The Defense.

The problem with A Separate Peace is that it's so available. There is no insight to be had, and it's what everyone gets people your age to read. It's turned more people off to literature than I can possibly relate.

KitFox

oh. my. god.

Robusto

It's a stupid, cloying, sentimental story passed off as literature. There, I said it.

KitFox

I just had a rather shocking realization.

Robusto

@KitFox Those are the best kind.

KitFox

12:37 AM

The guy who lent me the Nabokov book (one of his collections of short stories) was the teacher who uh. Well. Had feelings for me, let's say.

user19161

@KitFox Geezis.

KitFox

He would have been hoping I'd pick up Lolita. I know it. I can't believe I never put it together until just now.

Robusto

@KitFox Well, it's a common ploy. "I'll let you read my Nabokov if I can fondle you after class." Sometimes it's Updike. Or Cheever. Never Joyce.

KitFox

Yes, naturally. How odd.

user19161

I learnt "Geezis" from Reg.

Robusto

12:40 AM

@KitFox See, Lolita gets such a bad rap, but it's such a moral book. It's about choices and consequences, and essentially it's about getting to a deep understanding of what childhood is and what art is and how an artist's relationship to art is the same as an adult's relationship to a child: how it grows up and takes on a life of its own no matter how it is treated.

Mahnax

@KitFox Oh dear.

user19161

@KitFox Did you have any for him?

Robusto

@JasperLoy He learned it from me.

Mar 13 '11 at 16:48, by Robusto

Geezis, what does a guy have to do to earn a THWACK around here ...

Earliest use on ELU chat. Of course, that doesn't exactly prove he learned it from me, but I feel pretty confident he did.

user19161

@Robusto Yes, all royalties go to you. QED.

Ariel

@JasperLoy you are here! I see.

Mahnax

12:42 AM

Bah, I have to do an oral presentation on a Greek god for English class.

I was assigned Dionysus.

user19161

@Ariel Er yes, this is my favourite room.

Robusto

Also, read Nabokov's Pale Fire. A perfect novel, damn near.

@Mahnax Lucky you. Make sure you learn about the cult of Dionysus.

Ariel

@JasperLoy why? (you know this report will go to the tex room and you could be in trouble ;-))

user19161

@Robusto Well, I never knew any internet speak or lolspeak until I came here. SE chat rooms are the first in my life.

KitFox

@Robusto makes notes What else do you recommend?

user19161

12:44 AM

@Ariel Just happened to share quite a bit of stuff with some other people here over time.

Mahnax

@Robusto Hmm, is that the bunch of maenads and satyrs that follow him around?

Robusto

Read Euripedes' The Bacchae.

Cerberus

It was a popular mystery cult all through Antiquity.

KitFox

I can just imagine an oral presentation on Bacchus.

Cerberus

Another fun fact: Dionysus is one of the oldest Greek gods, and they may have taken him from the Egyptians.

I believe Herodotus says so.

Mahnax

12:46 AM

@Cerberus Or people in what is now Turkey.

Robusto

@Cerberus No high-school fantasy would be complete without a dip into the subject of the Maenads.

Cerberus

@Mahnax What do you mean?

Robusto

@Cerberus You mean the Father of Lies?

Mahnax

@Cerberus Well, in the area that is now Turkey, but used to be called something else.

Cerberus

@Robusto Now I know how to imagine your high-school years.

Robusto

12:48 AM

@Cerberus Hey, I said I went to a Catholic prep school.

Cerberus

@Mahnax Eh...do you mean that the Greeks in Asia Minor imported him from Egypt? Or that Greeks in general imported him from another culture in Asia Minor?

Mahnax

@Cerberus I mean that he may have originated in what was once Turkey.

And then was stolen by Greece, or something.

Cerberus

Don't forget that Asia Minor was part of the heartland of Greece after the Mycenaean age.

Mahnax

I have never learned anything of the sort.

Cerberus

So you mean some other culture presumably. I have no idea; where did you read this, and which culture?

Okay, well, now you know.

user19161

12:51 AM

But I am still waiting for Reg to tell me if HB is used frequently as an exclamation!

Cerberus

Herodotus, for example, wrote in the Ionian dialects, which was mainly spoken in Asia Minor.

Many of the richest Greek cities were there.

Mahnax

@Cerberus mythencyclopedia.com/Cr-Dr/Dionysus.html#b

Schools here don't teach much history or geography at all until grade 11 or 12, it seems.

Cerberus

Ah OK, Phrygia.

user19161

I wish I spent less time memorizing those geog and hist books.

Mahnax

@Cerberus Yeah. Sound plausible to you?

Cerberus

12:53 AM

In any case, the question is where he came from before that.

Robusto

@Mahnax What school system?

Cerberus

@Mahnax No idea.

user19161

Physical geog was nice, but I did not like human geog.

Mahnax

@Robusto The public one.

Cerberus

I don't know much about the subject—just what Herodotus says.

Robusto

12:54 AM

@Mahnax I mean, are you in a decent district?

Mahnax

@Robusto Yeah, I guess.

It's just the curriculum.

Robusto

You're Canadian, right?

Mahnax

Yeah.

Cerberus

> His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete.[2] His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek.[3][4][5] In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; in others, from Ethiopia in the South.

Wiki.

KitFox

oh noes...cat hipnoses...so sleepeeeee...

Robusto

12:58 AM

I don't have much experience with Canadians. I'd bet if you are in a decent suburb of Toronto, say, you probably have a decent district.

KitFox

He's further west.

Robusto

Don't know much about Calgary or Saskatchewan. Or Edmonton. Vancouver is probably OK.

Mahnax

Well, I wish they'd have taught us some geography.

KitFox

Is there a difference between single quote and double quote in jQuery?

Robusto

@Cerberus You're no doubt familiar with Plutarch's views on Herodotus?

user19161

1:01 AM

@Mahnax You can always learn yourself. Exams make you memorize stuff. Learning yourself makes you appreciate stuff.

Robusto

@KitFox No. I use single quotes, for one simple reason.

Mahnax

Well, I have Physics to do and bikes to ride.

Bye!

user19161

@Robusto Less typing.

Cerberus

@Robusto Eh alas, no.

KitFox

@Robusto You love them?

Robusto

1:03 AM

It's easier to write HTML elements as strings: $('selector').html('<div class="foo">This is a div.</div>');

On the malice of Herodotus

Plutarch in his On the Malice of Herodotus, with the original title in Greek criticizes the historian Herodotus for all manner of prejudice and misrepresentation. It has been called the “first instance in literature of the slashing review.” . The 19th century English historian George Grote considered this essay a serious attack upon the works of Herodotus, and speaks of the "honourable frankness which Plutarch calls his malignity." Plutarch makes some palpable hits, catching Herodotus out in various errors, but it is also probable that it was merely a rhetorical exercise, in which Plutarch...

user19161

OK announcement: I just learnt how to type a message as a block using shift+enter. Sorry for being slow.

Robusto

@JasperLoy That announcement was not OK.

user19161

Let
me
try

Cerberus

@Robusto Hmm funny.

There's lots to be criticised in Greek historians.

Robusto

And philosophers. Aristotle, for example.

Also, Plato.

Cerberus

1:07 AM

In anyone, basically.

Robusto

Socrates I like, except he is seen only through the filter of Plato.

Cerberus

I often find Socrates annoying.

KitFox

Did you like The Unbearable Lightness of Being?

Cerberus

It is really Plato speaking anyway.

Robusto

We wouldn't have Christianity and all its mummery without Plato, nor its pseudo-intellectualism without Aristotle.

Cerberus

1:08 AM

Not sure so about Aristotle.

But I do dislike Plato's idealism.

On the other hand, Platonism civilized Christianity a bit.

user19161

Christianity has the distinction of being the only religion site on SE right now.

Cerberus

Don't we have some Jewish site?

KitFox

Yeah.

Cerberus

Ah.

user19161

Oh yeah. Jewish is confusing. It's a religion and a people and a culture all at once.

Cerberus

1:10 AM

And we had Atheism.

Robusto

@Cerberus It gave Christianity license to believe in the nous as a mystical entity and the immanence of the soul.

Cerberus

@JasperLoy Those three things cannot really be separated anyway.

Robusto

@JasperLoy Don't forget bagels!

KitFox

I don't know the word "immanence." What a sneaky word.

Cerberus

The same trinity can be found in Christianity to some degree.

user19161

1:11 AM

Let me tell you a secret. I have been saying "Geezis" quite often to myself after that Reg incident!

Cerberus

@Robusto Yeah, well, is Judaism any better off?

Robusto

@Cerberus That's not an argument.

Cerberus

Immanence is very Neo-Platonic and annoying.

@Robusto Hey, I said I disliked Plato's idealism. And what the Neo-Platonists made out of it is even worse.

Robusto

@JasperLoy You still owe me the royalties.

user19161

It's amazing how there is imminent and immanent.

Cerberus

1:13 AM

And it can be found in Christianity, where it is equally annoying.

Robusto

@Cerberus And Aristotle gave Thomas Aquinas' the impression that what he was spouting was reason and logic.

@JasperLoy Are you high? No, really.

user19161

@Robusto Nah, I am just easily amused.

KitFox

Who said anything about being high?

I mean, not that there's anything wrong with being high.

Robusto

@Mahnax: As soon as you possibly can, read Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy. Free your mind from its constraints and get an understanding of Western thought through the ages.

user19161

But maybe I am naturally high.

user19161

1:16 AM

Anyway high is not well-defined.

KitFox

@Robusto Oh brilliant suggestion! That's very good.

user19161

But I ain't drunk now.

Robusto

@KitFox Jasper is seeing amazing things in words that sound alike. That doesn't happen to me unless I'm really baked.

Cerberus

@Robusto Well, you could say Aquinas took some of the worse bits of Aristotle and expanded them; on the other hand, his exercises in logic are well written and interesting.

@Robusto Don't let Vitaly hear this!

KitFox

@Robusto We should get stoned together sometime.

Robusto

1:17 AM

@Cerberus Well, you did not grow up Catholic; you have that luxury.

@Cerberus Why? What does he have against Russell?

user19161

@Robusto You see, it's only a difference of one letter in this case.

Cerberus

Did they make you read lots of Aquinas?

@Robusto You said the Ph-word.

Robusto

@Cerberus Are you kidding? Aquinas is the god of the Jesuits.

Cerberus

Hmm so lots of religious education? I really have no idea what a religious school is like.

I only read Aquinas later.

Robusto

Apr 6 '11 at 1:34, by Robusto

We were studying Thomas Aquinas, whom the Catholics dearly love.

Read starting here. My story of how I was screwed by religion as a sophomore.

Cerberus

1:18 AM

Ehh...

user19161

@Robusto Yeah I remember that time you were shouting amen in this room!

Robusto

Lies!

@Cerberus Actually, it was a conversation I had with you.

user19161

Jan 10 at 20:47, by Robusto

One more! Can we get an amen? I say, can we get an AMEN here on reopening this question?

KitFox

That's hilarious.

Cerberus

@Robusto Right, I remember now.

Robusto

1:21 AM

I love how Russell puts Aquinas in his place. He compares his reasoning to that of lawyers: arguing a case from a pre-ordained conclusion. He calls it "special pleading."

Cerberus

Still, didn't you find it interesting at all to thing about first causes and all, even though the conclusion of Aquinas/Aristotle is wrong?

Joseph Weissman

So, what's all this then? Philosophy in my incomprehensible room? :)

Cerberus

@Robusto That Vorwurf could be made against a great many people, and not only philosophers.

Robusto

@Cerberus You mean to think about it? Only when I'm high. It's of no use otherwise. Not something that can be answered, so why bother?

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Haha! Look who's here!

@Robusto But never to have thought about it at all? Reading Aristotle is (now) supposed to make you think, not provide conclusions.

user19161

1:23 AM

@JosephWeissman Your room? :-)

Robusto

@Cerberus: Who said you could bring friends? We only made enough incomprehensibility for the regulars. I don't know if we have enough to share.

Joseph Weissman

Theory is useful, @Robusto! The difficulty is perhaps that you have to figure out how to use it for yourself :)

Cerberus

Rob was/is bashing Aristotle and Aquinas.

Joseph Weissman

@Jasper I hope the familiarity did not impart offense, your grace

Robusto

@JosephWeissman I use religious theory to wipe the shit off my shoes.

Cerberus

1:24 AM

@Robusto I did not call Joseph. He moved here of his own volition.

I don't know what the Cause of his appearance is.

Robusto

The first cause?

Or the proximal cause?

Cerberus

@Robusto Thinking about causes is not primarily religious.

user19161

@JosephWeissman Theory and practice are perhaps one and the same. If they are different then they are not deep enough.

Robusto

@Cerberus Well, now look who's being disingenuous.

Cerberus

You?

KitFox

1:25 AM

giggles

gets popcorn

user19161

@KitFox I am trying to figure out why you are giggling.

Cerberus

@Joseph, don't mind our bickering, it's just play.

KitFox

This is way better than writing jQuery code.

Robusto

BTW, @Cerberus, Vitaly is a deeply religious person. He believes in the Singularity, that it will enable him to live forever. So I'm not too worried about incurring his wrath vis-à-vis philosophy.

user19161

@KitFox Popcorn in cinemas make me feel nauseous.

Cerberus

1:26 AM

@Robusto You are assuming consistency. A dangerous assumption.

Robusto

@KitFox No, no, no. jQuery is pure and decent, and all-loving.

Cerberus

For example, it is possible that a thorough reading of Aristotle helped Hume come up with his theory about causality.

Robusto

@Cerberus I can handle whatever he has to dish out.

KitFox

@Robusto then y it no werkin, huh u?

Cerberus

You know, dwarves and giants and all.

user19161

1:27 AM

@Robusto You will only incur his wrath by calling him Witaly.

Robusto

@KitFox cuz u suk.

KitFox

frowns

user19161

Hejudas.

user19161

I learnt that from Grace Note.

KitFox

Hey Jupiter, nothing here's the same. So are you gay? Are you blue? Thought we both could use a friend to run to.

Robusto

1:29 AM

@Cerberus I think Hume was more influenced by the Skeptics than by Aristotle.

KitFox

stoopid codez

Robusto

no stoopid codez only stupid coderz

user19161

If only one can write code to write code.

Cerberus

@Robusto I don't know, they were/are not often read.

KitFox

@Robusto NO U!

Cerberus

1:31 AM

In any case, he was influenced by many writers, no doubt.

KitFox

stoopid catz wif purrin makin me sleepz

user19161

@KitFox Your pet?

KitFox

visible "Z!"

user19161

@KitFox Seeing Z means you are high.

user19161

@cerb Who is your favourite philosopher?

KitFox

1:34 AM

@JasperLoy lolcode.com/keywords/visible

Cerberus

@JasperLoy Hmm not sure. Lucretius? Kant?

Robusto

@Cerberus thinks he lives in κάλλιπόλις. Hey, I wonder if that's where Gallipoli got its name? Weirdly ironic, if so.

KitFox

0

Q: Can there be an adverb between two nouns?

Is there any scenario where an adverb comes in between two nouns? So for instance, given a sentence: The word1 word2 word3 is... I am wondering if word1 and word2 can be Nouns and word2, an Adverb. Any suggestions?

What? What an out-of-the-blue question.

Robusto

@KitFox See my comment.

Cerberus

@Robusto Apparently yes.

KitFox

1:40 AM

OK. Good night, peoples!

Cerberus

Bye!

Robusto

@Cerberus Wow. Now that is an interesting little nugget.

Night @Kit.

user19161

@KitFox Sweet dreams.

Cerberus

@Robusto I mean, the city probably wasn't named after Plato: it's just an obvious name for a new city.

Robusto

@Cerberus A delicious irony nonetheless.

Cerberus

1:50 AM

Why exactly?

Robusto

Anyway, to get back to Aristotle, it's not clear most readers even take away what is worthwhile about his writings. He's often little more than a palimpsest to be written on by whichever philosopher wants to invent something and give it the air of authority.

Cerberus

Uh...

Robusto

@Cerberus The absurdity of philosopher-kings running a republic juxtaposed with the mass-slaughter of war.

Cerberus

I wouldn't say that.

Robusto

@Cerberus No. And perhaps I'm being hyperbolic. But I think I have a case.

Cerberus

1:52 AM

@Robusto Oh, I see. Well, that was just one event in the long history of the place.

Joseph Weissman

Is that first one really a criticism of Aristotle, or defective readings/reactionary interpreters and followers?

Robusto

@Cerberus One is all it takes.

Cerberus

@Robusto Whenever a philosopher bases a new work on that of another philosopher, he is bound to interpret, erase, and add.

Robusto

@JosephWeissman The latter. But I have plenty of criticism for Aristotle. Usually people who profess to follow him don't.

@Cerberus Stop fighting it and succumb to the beauty of my prose. You know you want to.

Cerberus

I like the palimpsest.

Joseph Weissman

1:53 AM

@Cerberus Deleuze says he "buggers" philosophers when reading them -- impregnating them and forcing them to give birth to mutant children

Cerberus

But I'm not sure Aristotle qualifies more than many other famous philosophers, except perhaps in that his subject matter was quite diverse?

Robusto

Much is read into his most famously quoted line: "Man is by nature a political animal." Yet all he really meant by that is that man is a creature whose nature it is to live in a polis. His was essentially a parochial view.

@Cerberus He had an opinion on practically everything, yes.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman And "he" is Deleuze himself? I didn't know buggery could make babies...

Robusto

@Cerberus No, but babies can ride in buggies. Another delicious irony?

Cerberus

@Robusto Uhh wait, and how do you interpret that?

Robusto

1:56 AM

That Aristotle knew only the polis and extrapolated from that.

Cerberus

Yes, so how do people misinterpret his line?

Robusto

With the overtones of modern politics, gargantuan in scale.

Cerberus

How precisely?

He meant, as far as I remember, that man is a social animal, and that he likes to set up a community and function in it as an actor.

Joseph Weissman

We like cooperating :) a very basic, if important, sociological insight

Cerberus

Exactly.

Robusto

1:58 AM

I can't get more precise than that. Can you not see the difference between our notion of politics and the idea of living in what was, essentially, a small town. We have to remember that even at its height, Athens was really just what today would be about the size of a suburb.

@Cerberus Yes, but an actor on a smaller stage.

Aristotle would have been appalled by Rome, to say nothing of New York or London or Beijing.

Cerberus

A small town? Athens had about 400,000 inhabitants and lots of dependencies and colonies.

Robusto

@Cerberus Slaves, etc. There were only about 25k citizens, IIRC.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…