Posts by Deborah
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Pride and Prejudice
Yes. Yes! Yes!!
I guess what I'm saying is that War and Peace isn't so special.
No. No! No!!
It's a fabulous book. I'll grant you that his philosophy of history of boring, and even turgid, not to say just plain wrong, but there's only 50 or so pages of it in my edition. And given that my edition is 1443 pages long, that's a remarkably high content to dross ratio.
The character portraits are detailed - I feel as though I know many of them, as real people. Even if I don't know the person, I know the type. The scenes are fabulously described - young Rostov's return to Moscow recreates exactly the sense of anticipation and reality that so many of us feel. And as for capturing a sense of time and place and essence... Natasha's dance is one of the great episodes in literature.
Tolstoy has an incredible ability to get inside the minds of his characters. He is able to describe the internal life of an adolescent girl, and the internal life of an adult man. He is able to distinguish a spiritual and thinking woman from someone who yearns and dreams after she knows not what, and the intellectual man from the imaginative and sensitve man from the sound and true hearted (even if intellectually ordinary) man.
I think that one of the things I most enjoy about it is that I often identify with the characters; aspects of both Natasha and Princess Maria feel like parts of me - I recognise them, and they make me think about myself. It's a very reflective book, and one that rewards rereading, many times. And War and Peace has little of the misogyny that is evident in the depictions of the female characters in Anna Karenina, where the women are either fallen (Anna), or worn out (Dolly), or childlike (Kitty).
I get caught up in the story, and it's only after having read it (again) that I have time and mental space to think about the people and the events.
It really is one of the best novels in English, ever. If you have not read War and Peace, I urge you to do so, now!
It's worth looking for an edition that has a table of all the Russian names - very confusing otherwise - or one that has anglicised the naming conventions. I have the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Rosemay Edmonds (I think, because one of my children has helpfully torn the title page) in which she uses first name and family name, rather than using the Russian diminutives and patronymics.
If Hitler had bothered to read War and Peace, he would surely have realised the folly of invading Russia.
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Whatever the merits of their position may be, I don't see how supporters of this bill can evade [the] criticism [that they just want to interfere in other people's families].
This isn't a criticism of the bill. Sure, it will involve 'interference' in families, but as it turns out, we really don't have a problem with that. We demand that children are educated, we prosecute parents who 'fail to provide the necessaries of life', we acknoweldge that rape within marriage is possible, we refuse to accept that someone hitting his or her partner is 'just a domestic'. So 'interfering' in families is not a problem, in itself.
And it oughtn't to be. Citizenship doesn't stop at the front door.
So the real question is whether this is (another) case where the state ought to look into what is actually happening in the family.
As you know, I think it is just such a case. And that's because I think children are citizens, not possessions. Moreover, they are paradigmatically vulnerable citizens. If there is anyone the state ought to try to protect, it's the vulnerable.
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Nice quote from Jeremy Waldron, Weston. There's a couple of points to make in response, though. The first is that given that the majority consensus on this is that it's just fine to smack your kids, then it's those of us who oppose that view who are being characterised as deviants. The words used aren't about 'deviancy' - you will find us charactersised as wooly thinking unrealistic liberals, who just want to interfere in other people's families.
That aside (afterall, arguing about who is the underdog in this debate is a futile distraction), arguments from authority are fundamentally flawed. I'm not at all concerned about you quoting Professor Waldron, but it would be good if you could tell us how you see the quote applying to the current situation in NZ.
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Much more comprehensible, thanks, Stephen.
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Sue Bradford is a dick. Fact.
Actually, Weston, that would be an opinion.
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(I cautioned Haywood about this specific error here.)
Oh goody.... Stephen's back to patronize us.
Lose the philosophical gobbledegook, Stephen. Back in the days when I was marking undergraduate Philosophy essays, I gave my students some advice about good philoosphical writing.
Keep it simple.
Always use the most straightforward sentence structure you can.
Never use a 'big' word where a 'little' word will do.
By all means use a complex sentence structure, or a 'big' word if that's the best way to express your idea, but before you do, be very sure that your idea won't get hidden in the complexity.
As for the basic argument - it's very simple. Big people who hit little people shouldn't be able to shelter behind the law. -
some of the complete assholes commenting on [Kiwiblog's] threads are doing [Kiwiblog} and [DPF's]reputation as a site host a disservice.
That would be complete assholes of either orientation...
But "trolls" versus "loons": anyone care to offer a conceptual analysis of the differences between trolls and loons? And is there a distinction between nutters and loons?
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Dammit! I can't get Finlandia out of my head now.
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Nicely put, Riddley.
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By "area best left alone" I meant keeping the status quo. Which is also not satisfactory.
The status quo is an intervention of its own. What you are arguing for is conservatism i.e. there may be good reasons for something to be the way it is, so it shouldn't be changed without long and careful reflection.
Tapu Misa has written another column on this topic in this morning's NZ Herald.
Well, that's begging the question, isn't it? If there is such a thing as reasonable force - implicit in the term smacking, rather than bashing, let's say - then it isn't assault.
Technically, it's an assault, just as technically, time out could be construed as a kidnapping.
The problem with the reasonable force defence is that is has been used 'successfully' to defend beating children wih sticks and rubber hoses, leaving bruises and marks. That is a problem with the current approach, so no, it doesn't seem sensible to leave the existing intervention in place.