Why They Hate Us

[sjw]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ZG8ohlZvE

[Selene]

Can we stipulate, based on this "video" that ex-CIA analysts have equal value as to their testimony?

Adam

[sjw]

Can we stipulate, based on this "video" that ex-CIA analysts have equal value as to their testimony?

The Objectivist movement and the country as a whole has been overrun by this power-mongering imperialist philosophy (one might argue that *Objectivists* have had a hand in creating this philosophy). We hear from these power-mongers all the time, I'm sure CIA analysts who would agree with Bush/Peikoff/Bidinotto are a dime a dozen. A dime is pretty cheap, so I'd say the answer to your question is: No, they don't have equal value.

When one side has been drowning out the other sides for years, it's more valuable to hear the other side. Read the guy's book.

Shayne

[sjw]

Selene, I've noticed that you like to use scare quotes a lot. I interpret them as sarcasm. Usually I think you are being rude--you use the sarcasm as a substitute for an intelligent criticism. This time you put scare quotes around "video", but since it actually is a video, I don't know what you are directing your sarcasm at. Which makes me wonder if you don't know how to properly use quotes.

If you did intend the sarcasm, it does underscore that you abuse it as a rhetorical device since this time I can't even tell what your sarcasm is intended to convey except your emotion of contempt. That would be better expressed by selecting an idea from the video that you find contemptible and underscoring what you find comtemptible it in an intelligent way. But conveying your raw emotion is not only rude and ineffectual, but socially inept, rather like wearing too small a shirt while letting rolls of fat overhang your belt buckle.

Shayne

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The idea of scare quotes denoting sarcasm only became widespread recently. I know this because when I started posting, I often used them as a form of emphasis—most often when I was using the jargon of another person and it was not my own way of saying something. It was a form of tipping my hat to the person. Or sometimes I expressed doubt about meaning that way.

One day a poster asked me why I was so sarcastic and I was genuinely perplexed. I do not know if this practice is in use in Brazil since most all of my translation work was technical, not political or involving discussions. But I don't think so.

I completely missed the boat on that one. I wasn't here when it developed. Since it is recent, I wonder how many posters actually use it for sarcasm. Roger Bissell has a very funny mini-article on this:

Objectivist Punctuation--Two Schools, One Method

Michael

[Selene]

Selene, I've noticed that you like to use scare quotes a lot. I interpret them as sarcasm. Usually I think you are being rude--you use the sarcasm as a substitute for an intelligent criticism. This time you put scare quotes around "video", but since it actually is a video, I don't know what you are directing your sarcasm at. Which makes me wonder if you don't know how to properly use quotes.

If you did intend the sarcasm, it does underscore that you abuse it as a rhetorical device since this time I can't even tell what your sarcasm is intended to convey except your emotion of contempt. That would be better expressed by selecting an idea from the video that you find contemptible and underscoring what you find comtemptible it in an intelligent way. But conveying your raw emotion is not only rude and ineffectual, but socially inept, rather like wearing too small a shirt while letting rolls of fat overhang your belt buckle.

Shayne

Shayne, lets try to build some communication about concepts here.

1) "scare quotes" you are the first individual in my 60 years on the planet [Earth for reference] that has ever used that term.

2) Michael's e-mail opened an awareness that I was not exposed to.

3) Thankfully, Michael's e-mail allowed me to be aware that your "scare quotes" remark did not deserve the savage, sarcastic and sanguine response that I originally felt.

Can we stipulate to the fact that you are a white male, a businessman, and living in Utah?

FYI - my use of quotes is based on a field of thought that I was heavily exposed to when I was teaching and in graduate school during mu early 20's.

Therefore, I take no offense to your statement.

Essentially, it is "my bad" that I did not perceive that you and I were insulated form exposure to quite different interpretatins of "..." marks.

I would hope that you accept my statement - objectively.

Adam

[sjw]

Selene,

The one thing you didn't do is to answer exactly what it was you meant by the quotes.

Shayne

PS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

[Ellen Stuttle]

1) "scare quotes" you are the first individual in my 60 years on the planet [Earth for reference] that has ever used that term.

[....]

FYI - my use of quotes is based on a field of thought that I was heavily exposed to when I was teaching and in graduate school during mu early 20's.

As a long-time professional copyeditor and editor of trade books (for the U.S. market; I don't know what's done in Brazil) and of academic publications, I'm too curious about your remarks not to ask:

Really? You've never heard the term "scare quotes" before?

What "field of thought" are you referring to as being the basis of your use of quotes?

[update: see below.]

Ellen

PS: The bizarrely meandering paths of list discussions... What a peculiar subject to come up on a thread titled "Why They Hate Us." LOL.

==

Update: Subsequent to posting the above, I noticed, Adam, that you talked on another thread (here) about where you acquired your approach to the use of quote marks. I can't say I find the description "enlightening," since I don't discern a system in the approach, but at least I find the explanation informative.

Btw, the use of scare quotes isn't some new acquisition of "todays[sic] 'linguistics.'" I learned about scare quotes, and about quotes used to identify a term as being a term (e.g., the term "quotes") as early as grade school. It wasn't a new usage then. (I'm a few years older than you are.) A convenient rule-of-thumb for when scare-quote employment is apropos is to substitute "so-called." E.g., if you think it would be appropriate to write "the so-called video," i.e., implying that the video isn't properly a video, then scare quotes can be substituted for "so-called."

Hope that helps. ;-)

___

Edited February 18, 2008 by Ellen Stuttle

[tjohnson]

In my experience I learned to use single quotes to denote a word as opposed to what it represents. So might say 'concept' is a vague term, for example. I use double or scare quotes to denote an unusual or non-standard use of a term. For example I would say "space" and "time" do not exist independent of one another, so the scare quotes denote that the entities are somehow not legitimate whereas the term 'space-time' is.

[Selene]

Thank you Ellen. I was teaching rhetoric at Queens College in NYC and we had an Aristotelian approach to rhetoric and then the department changed over to the behavioralists and they brought in content analysis and general semantic principles and this was what I gleaned from some of it.

"General Semantics helps you differentiate, and integrate, what we might think of as four different

'worlds' ...

the world 'out there', beyond your skin, that's always changing, in perpetual process

the world 'in here', inside your skin, your nervous system and senses, through which you (only

partially) experience the world 'out there'

the world that's not words, the non-verbal world that you see, hear, taste, smell and touch

the world of words, your verbal world of names, symbols, labels, opinions, assumptions,

categories, values, beliefs, etc.

In our verbal world of words, we integrate what we 'know' about the world 'out there', the world 'in here' and the world that's not words.

Shows how naive I can be. lol

Thanks again,

Adam