Aaron

@JeremiahDJohns @hecubian_devil Also the gay marriage issue was a controversy that liberals would have won no matter what. Is there good evidence that falsely portraying the opposition as bigots made much of a difference?

we did this for gay marriage and it worked - portraying opposition to gay marriage as fundamentally caused by bigotry. The problem is that it simply doesn't work in other cases. "The only reason you want border control is because you're racist" was pretty much tried and failed miserably.

Something Dems/libs need to start doing (which the left and the right both do) is go out and ascribe nasty motives to the enemy—explain their moral worldview in your own terms. It’s incredibly effective, and helps define your own morality as negation

@ChrisExpTheNews “Secular historians” would mean those specializing in that period. But I don’t understand your point, because like the quoted tweet says, it’s a consensus among secular historians that Jesus existed. Is your belief that he did NOT exist?

Most secular historians know fuck all about current theories of composition history and practices of interpretation of biblical literature in that specific time and culture so their opinions mean basically nothing. May as well ask chemists what they think.

Same

@AntigoneJournal *abridged version

Timely reminder of when this guy reviewed that guy... Iggy Pop on Gibbon's Decline and Fall (Classics Ireland, 1995): Caesar Lives by Iggy Pop In 1982, horrified by the meanness, tedium and depravity of my existence as I toured the American South playing rock and roll music and going crazy in public, I purchased an abridged copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dero Saunders, Penguin). The grandeur of the subject appealed to me, as did the cameo illustration of Edward Gibbon, the author, on the front cover. He looked like a heavy dude. Being in a political business, I had long made a habit of reading biographies of wilful characters — Hitler, Churchill, MacArthur, Brando — with large profiles, and I also enjoyed books on war and political intrigue, as I could relate the action to my own situation in the music business, which is not about music at all, but is a kind of religion-rental. I would read with pleasure around 4 am, with my drugs and whisky in cheap motels, savouring the clash of beliefs, personalities and values, played out on antiquity’s stage by crowds of the vulgar, led by huge archetypal characters. And that was the end of that. Or so I thought. Eleven years later I stood in a dilapidated but elegant room in a rotting mansion in New Orleans, and listened as a piece of music strange to my ears pulled me back to ancient Rome and called forth those ghosts to merge in hilarious, bilious pretence with the Schwartzkopfs, Schwartzeneggers and Sheratons of modern American money and muscle myth. Out of me poured information I had no idea I ever knew, let alone retained, in an extemporaneous soliloquy I called ‘Caesar’. When I listened back, it made me laugh my ass off because it was so true. America is Rome. Of course, why shouldn’t it be? All of Western life and institutions today are traceable to the Romans and their world. We are all Roman children for better or worse. The best part of this experience came after the fact — my wife gave me a beautiful edition in three volumes of the magnificent original unabridged Decline and Fall, and since then the pleasure and profit have been all mine as I enjoy the wonderful language, organization and scope of this masterwork. Here are just some of the ways I benefit: I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there were others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day. I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins — military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial — are all there to be scrutinized in their infancy. I have gained perspective. The language in which the book is written is rich and complete, as the language of today is not. I find out how little I know. I am inspired by the will and erudition which enabled Gibbon to complete a work of twenty-odd years. The guy stuck with things. I urge anyone who wants life on earth to really come alive for them to enjoy the beautiful ancestral ancient world.

@HiddenYorkshire @PrinceVogel ithinkspeakersofsemiticlanguageslikephoenicianandhebrewwerewaysabletoreadsilentlybecausetheyalwaysusedspacesorpunctuationtoseparatewordsidontrememberwhetherthatbooksayssoexplicitly

There's a solid distinction (as explained in the replies) between silent reading as an ability and as a social function - I absolutely agree with the idea that notions of public/private literacy and oral performance has changed. But so often it's presented as though the actual ability to silently read was just invented.

If silent reading simply didn't, on a purely cognitive level, exist for thousands of years of human writing systems, then was mental arithmetic invented as well? Could humans only do maths if they said it out loud? Of course not. It's ridiculous.

@HiddenYorkshire justfortherecordtoanyonereadingthistheresanentirebookwrittenonthistopicinanutshellthereasonpeoplereadaloudwastohelpthembreakcontinuoustextwithoutspacesintodiscretewordsthiswasdoneinlanguagesthathadwrittenvowelssuchaslatinandgreekasopposedtosemiticlanguages sup.org/books/literary…

Reminder that Gazans are a bunch of cowardly wusses just like the rest of us (complimentary)

@LucasGageX Why are all the people here replying as if they were talking to the real Lucas Gage? Do you really believe that’s him who’s been insisting that Bibi is alive? You don’t believe the Mossad has the ability to take him out and post under his name?

I'm getting called a traitor and Zionist because YOUR INFLUENCERS KEEP LYING TO YOU?

By the way, like you said the story of Jesus writing on the ground is irrelevant, because no one spoke aloud while writing. But anyway, assuming that Jesus was writing in Aramaic or Hebrew, he was writing with spaces or some other separators between the words. Without word separation or vowelization it would be extremely hard to read a Semitic language, either silently or aloud.

@Rongwrong_ @HiddenYorkshire @nosilverv But if speaking while reading may have been normal behaviour - what about writing? I suppose in writing, you aren't trying to solve a puzzle. This isn't exactly evidence but in the bible, John 8:1-11, Jesus apparently writes without speaking - on the ground with his finger.

Reminder that EVERYTHING is an achievement: St. Augustine was shocked to find St. Ambrose reading *silently* (reading was then social and aloud) and private silent reading only really took off 700 years after in the 12 century.

@rja_carnegie @HiddenYorkshire @nosilverv I guess you could compare reading and writing yourself, in English if you don’t know Latin. Take some text you haven’t read, remove all the spaces and punctuation, and read it. Then write some of your own text without spaces or punctuation, and see which was easier.

@bloatinus @L0m3z NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is the other movie I’ve seen based on his writing and it was also really really camp, but I didn’t read the book so I can’t say how much is McCarthy camping out and how much is the Coen brothers. Cuz they’re also happy campers.

@bloatinus @L0m3z It’s so camp!

My Cormac McCarthy take is that he’s a very funny writer and the cruel—worse than cruel, indifferent—and senseless Gnostic void into which he’s pulling you all becomes human and warm and full of meaning once you find the humor in it.

@steven_lynn_ @JPUATX @HiddenYorkshire @nosilverv correctionithinkthewholepremiseofthebookistheexactoppositeyoureadthetextaloudinordertobeabletoreaditinyourheadinotherwordsinordertodistinguishthediscretewordsincontinoustext

@steven_lynn_ @JPUATX @HiddenYorkshire @nosilverv ithinkthewholepremiseofthebookistheexactoppositeyoureadtjetextaloudinordertobeabletoreaditinyourheadinotherwordsinordertodistinguishthediscretewordsincontinoustext

@rja_carnegie @HiddenYorkshire @nosilverv Maybesobutagainthisiscompletelydifferentfromdoingmathitssaboutfindingdiscretewordsincontinouswrittentextthatisthereasontheyreadaloudyoucandoitsilentlylikeambrosebutapparentlyitseasierifyouvocalizeatleastinlatinandgreek

@HiddenYorkshire @Rongwrong_ @nosilverv "Maths" is... quite difficult. I'd guess that over history, and perhaps today and in the street where I live, or in your street, relatively few of us can do maths without moving our lips - those who can do it at all. If we're not speaking it, we're imagining speaking.

@si_rubinstein The value is in pointing out that the person’s work is worthless. That makes the point that people should still have the right to free expression even if they’ve got nothing worthwhile to say.

Just defend the principle of academic freedom or don’t bother. No need or value in these silly rituals.

This is a good letter. Cofnas shouldn't be fired (and it appears he will not be). Cofnas is a deeply unoriginal thinker and a sloppy researcher; his recruitment is an embarrassment. But once hired, he has a right to academic freedom of expression.

@bopy_petal If that’s true then it sounds like he’s a shitty writer

@gran1te_mtn Rufo is too old (and too straightlaced) for these books now. You have to get McCarthy into your bloodstream when you are younger

Lomez do you have the strength to do what must be done?

@JPUATX @HiddenYorkshire @nosilverv What is related to culture and society is the question of whether it was seen as a problem that reading was difficult. But the use of reading aloud is purely about solving a cognitive task.

@JPUATX @HiddenYorkshire @nosilverv To make it very clear, silent reading HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH READING AS A SOCIAL PRACTICE. It is ENTIRELY about the COGNITIVE ABILITY to read silently, which is about spaces between words.