Posts by Keir Leslie

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  • Busytown: A good read,

    Well, the obvious thing to do is look at the distinction between autographic and allographic art; there's a clear interesting divide that is meaningful when talking about plagiarism.

    Then let's see, there's the intentional element -- i.e. what is the art work, and if the art work isn't simply the physical object, then what does that mean for plagiarism?

    There's also the obvious point of attribution, or (and here we overlap with intentionality) intended attribution. That's to say, the passing off question.

    We also have the rather vital distinction between quotation, paraphrase, and plagiarism, which you don't deal with at all. In fact, your examples from painting aren't like plagiarism at all, and while analogies are deprecated, they look a lot more like the relationship between, dunno, Sayers & Wodehouse, or Homer, Virgil and Dante, than a plagiarist and his source.

    (In other words, What Emma Said.)

    Oh, and it isn't a matter of process (& process is of course a legitimate ground for criticism) it is a matter of result. Plagiarism is a quality of the finished work. You are using process to mean something radically different from what I think most people would take it to mean.

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Busytown: A good read,

    Old boy, don't you think there's a wee bit of a difficulty in your position here? I shouldn't like to get overly pedantic, but it seems to me as if you have rather a conflict between your first par., where creativity is a dreadfully complicated and awfully nuanced subject see the SI* not that horrid Peter Jackson† blah blah and then the last par., where it turns into one of those blunt instruments forever turning up as evidence in the police courts‡.

    * Really? The SI? Next up we're going to be meeting the Neoists and Karen bloody Eliot aren't we?

    † Who's actually a bloody good film maker. If I wanted to make a point about authorship then personally I would have gone for the fucking studio film not an art film with a pretty straight up relationship between creator and created.

    ‡ I do apologise for the utter mannerism, and I know it isn't funny, but pal, if you're going to start dividing the world up based on creative/non-creative in order to look clever & devalue people's speech then I am going to be rude. Also, your notion of plagiarism is naive and conceptually impoverished.

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Busytown: A good read,

    Why authorship is so sacred now -- it once had no real meaning.

    Really? That's a bit ambitious. Is authorship sacred now? When did it have no real meaning? Are you comparing apples to apples?

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Busytown: A good read,

    Why do notions of plagiarism exist in writing but not in visual art or film-making?

    Um, I should say they do exist in visual art and film-making; they are merely different in those media, because, surprisingly, concepts express themselves differently in different media.

    Pretty much all his points boil down to the rather dull observation that different things are different. (Mainly in terms of reproducibility and attribution, but in other ways too.) Does he go on to do anything with that? Nah, he just witters.

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Busytown: A good read,

    Oh, and another POV from Pointless and Absurd:

    Yes, let's display our dull ignorance of the specific nature of the medium of writing! Let us assimilate it to other media totally different in process! Let us ignore the generally prevalent standards of an autonomous community of creators in favour of a particularly stupid yay me-ism!

    (I Am Not A Fan.)

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Busytown: A good read,

    the other one i remember is that you make a character a transparent fictionalisation, say bad things about them, and then say they have a small cock.

    'cause nobody will admit to that, see?

    (apocrypha as they all are.)

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Hard News: It was 20 years ago tomorrow ...,

    No, Brickley, don't answer that. Feel free to continue feeling superior to the people who have actually had to deal with the aftermath of apartheid.

    (It was shit then and it is shit now? I dare say people who are rude about the ANC don't jump out fucking windows. Seriously, there's ignorant white utopianism, and then.there's Brickley getting judgemental just because he can. And honestly pal if you think SA is worse than, I dunno, India what planet are you living on?)

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Busytown: A good read,

    (I know this because I was once dragooned into helping mark first-year engineering students' essays on why engineers were professionals rather than, e.g., common tradesmen. Plagiarism would have provided some light relief. And grammar.)

    That bit of first year engineering is hilarious; I was reading one of my flatmate's old textbooks once (nothing else in the house to read and the library was shut) and fell over laughing at those parts. Enculturation in action!

    It really doesn't help that even the textbooks have been written by people who are clearly not too keen on the whole words thing. And often appear to be conservative American Christians with odd ideas about society.

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Field Theory: Entropy,

    Also, Hadyn, your `correct' uniforms leave out Celtic* and River Plate!

    *Yes, a horrible horrible team, but still, worthy of respect.

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

  • Hard News: Body image and the media,

    I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the class system is traditionally far less institutionalised in mainland Europe than in Britain. Case in point - compare the fortunes of the British car industry with that of the rest of Europe (and maybe Japan for that matter). Unions at mainland European car makers seem to have been no less militant than their British counterparts, yet Britain's car industry utterly self-destructed while in the rest of Europe it has soldiered on. Seemingly even without the guiding/coercive hand of the state.

    Myself I'd always thought the sad state of the British car industry was due to a combination of amateurish management, chronic underinvestment and a state devoted to financial industry above all. (If you think that continental carmakers are anything but propped up by the state, I'd like you to meet some folks from the French planning department. And their colleagues in Germany. And Sweden.)

    Since Jul 2008 • 1452 posts Report

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