Hard News: Friday Gold: An email exchange with Michael Laws
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Books ...
And we all agree that it should be called "Did you even bother to read the damn book?!", yes?
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I have a whole thing about The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum and the limits of interpretation but I can't express it in fewer than three thousand words
I nominate Giovanni to lead this initiative with 3000 Italian accented words on these two books by Umberto Eco.
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But give us a few months to read them first. Although I'm disappointed the second is not about Michel F.
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Although I'm disappointed the second is not about Michel F.
Oh, but it is. :-)
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Then I must read it.
Re books and aut(h)ors Nick (H)ornby going to be on Kim (H)ill next week and (h)ere is a link to just out Prospect interview
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When I asked my school's rep why he was more conservative than me, he said "That's because you're a baby boomer!"
The little germ, already fluent in the jargon of marketing.
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A PA bookclub? What a very scary thought. I'd have to refrain just because I have a horror of big brainy books. Or even very little brainy books. And I never buy books, I only borrow them from the library. Now, what other excuses can I come up with?
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On the other hand, speaking of PA social type things, it's the holidays coming up and I have a hankering to see my PA buddies at a certain neighbourhood bar. With rum. Email me if you too have this hankering.
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Speaking of which: I'm going home for the school holidays. If the much touted Wellington get together gets organised during my absence I shall have to resort to extreme violence.
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Feedback Wanted
I'd be most grateful if any community members shared their thoughts with me about PA as a virtual community.
I'm currently doing a 3rd yr research essay on virtual communities. I'm using PAS as an example to critique Howard Rheingold's ideas about virtual communities. In particular, he said back in 1993, that "hunger for community grows as more informal public spaces disappear from our real lives". He sees the success of virtual comms as residing in "collective goods" defined as "social network capital, knowledge capital and communion". My questions are:
To what extent does PA revitalise citizen-based democracy, by supplying an informed public space for discussion about important issues? Has PA changed your habits in accessing media for news, analysis, debate? What is most valuable about it?
What draws you to PA? Is it one element or a combination? How important is the sense of community to you? How hard was it to join in?
Are you conscious of a sense of collective power, collaborative heft and/or possibilities to effect change?
How would you envisage PA developing in the future - anything you would like to see happening?
If you'd like to reply, just email me, or comment on here, if you wish. I'm not sure yet how I'll use any feedback - as attributed/unattributed comments, a general agreement/disagreement on topics - but I will respect people's privacy.
And, hey, if you'd like to comment more briefly or outside the pesky questions, please do! Really appreciate it.
Thanks, Kerry.
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books - how about this http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/lawsmichael.html
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Feedback Wanted. I'd be most grateful if any community members shared their thoughts with me about PA as a virtual community.
I am willing to help but do you want responses here, or via another route?
I recently--and grandly-- declared PA the 'not just the best blog in New Zealand but the best blog in the world'--adding that we all have experienced the problems of finding new friends or companion spirits as we grow older but (at least for me) PA has provided a whole community of 'friends'.
On the Lfaws thing--the only NZ news I read in the British press when I was in the UK last week was a item on his response to the Otaki students--along the lines of "NZ mayor insults children"
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Kerry; duh! I just read further down your message. I will email you asap
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Giovanni - 'Home'? Will Wellington ever become 'home'? Never having gone very far for very long, I can't imagine what it is like to re-locate half way around the world
Re the Wgtn get-together, we could all gate-crash Russell and your Maria Pia's meatballs.
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Thank you, Geoff.
I feel the same and writing about it has given me the chance to focus my thoughts. I almost never watch TV news anymore and use PA as my main portal for current affairs critique. I sometimes feel a bit over-awed about posting when the experts get going - but I figure I've absorbed a lot of new knowledge, just hanging around. And I can't live in fear of putting hoof-in-mouth all the time!Companion spirits - apt.
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If the much touted Wellington get together
Eh, much touted? When? and count me in, please.
On topic, I mentioned the Whanganui kerfuffle to a child yesterday. When I said some folks were annoyed that the 'h' would be added she said "why? it's *still* the same name isn't it."
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It is so frustrating coming in late on a converstation.
The English are so great at spelling names the way they're pronounced.
I'm off now to visit my cousins StJohn and Featherstonehaugh, in Marjorie Banks street, and then I'm off to Kiribati.
On the pronunciation of Paris, Moscow, etc. I can imagine the outrage of good english speakers of the world if non-english speakers tried to pronounce our cities in their own outlandish lingo.
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The English are so great at spelling names the way they're pronounced.
Good point. I keep wanting to mis-spell 'Marylebone'. Just yesterday, one of my students pronounced Southwell as 'south' + 'well' (rather than 'suthvell') but I didn't bother correcting her. As Kim Hill commented to James Belich this morning, it is just as well we don't have to learn to speak English as it is such a contrary language. Try explaining the distinctions between 'there' and 'their' or 'whether' and 'weather' to a ESL student--or the absence of an apostrophe in 'its'.
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I'm pretty sure the woman who invented 'h' would be very proud to know her letter still has so much influence after all this time.
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Awesome. Just awesome. Thanks, Russell.
I reckon it's only a matter of time until Laws has a Jimmy Swaggart / Jimmy Baker day of reckoning. Someone should go through his rubbish. I bet it's a goldmine of credibility destroying tidbits.
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Try explaining the distinctions between 'there' and 'their' or 'whether' and 'weather' to a ESL student--or the absence of an apostrophe in 'its'.
Jesus Geoff you make my job sound easy. Try explaining the meaning and uses of 'for'...
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Giovanni - 'Home'? Will Wellington ever become 'home'?
Heh... it'll take a while, I think. I'm always happy to come back into Wellington, I would find it really hard to go back to Milan long term (more so than Justine) and yet that's most definitely "home".
Try explaining the meaning and uses of 'for'...
Every good ESL learner knows that phrasal verbs are the work of Satan.
books - how about this
I toyed with the idea of buying Dancing with Beelzebub at the last DCM bookfair. Just couldn't stomach the idea in the end.
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If anyone really wants to track the 'progress' of pakeha attempts to create a written script of the oral Maori language and all its dialects, all known examples of printed Maori are listed and annotated in 'Books in Maori 1815-1900' compiled by Phil Parkinson and Penny Griffith of the Alexander Turnbull Library, 2004. 'wh' and 'ng' are two sounds they found particularly problematic.
(And sorry can't work out how to insert macrons) -
WRITTEN changes everything. the idea that the written is but a rough approximation to the 'primordial oral' is foolish to the max. perhaps even as foolish as attempting to ask what punters hereabouts have in mind when they speak of new zealand being 'conservative' (with the same sort of basic recklessness they evince when they speak of the 'centre'.. WHAT (sic) is it that we say new zealanders are trying to conserve, exactly? And HOW - or perhaps via what mediative center - may that be compared to what the Maori (and all their earnest white educators) are frenetically trying to conserve?
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How would you envisage PA developing in the future - anything you would like to see happening?
Please keep it non-visual, no Skype-type link please.
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