Since the original article does not seem to be allowing anyone's comments through, at least not the negative ones, I would like to post my response to Card's commentary here.
If you read the article, you'll understand why it is I feel compelled to call him out. His commentary is unnecessarily bitter (Rowling is a "greedy witch") and frankly misleading, and I don't feel that he should get away with it simply because he's a famous author. Far from it, his fame demands that he be held to a higher standard than the average man, for his words are given much weight by many.
quote:"Rowling will be forced to pay Steven Vander Ark's legal fees, since her suit was utterly without merit from the start."
Why would Rowling be forced to pay the legal fees of a witness? I was unaware that witnesses had to pay to take the stand; I was under the impression that our legal system wanted to encourage, not penalize, those who testify. Wait, you're not misinformed (or misinforming), are you? Oops!
And where do you find the nerve to call Rowling greedy when you yourself noted in a book review that she donates to charity? Oops again!
quote: "Moreover, she is desperate for literary respectability [...] Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of subliterature, not really worth discussing."
A compromising comment from a man who, up till a few months after Book 7's publication (when Dumbledore's sexuality was revealed), was an avid fan of the series. Given that you were a great fan, you fail by your own stated standards to qualify as a litterateur. Strike three!
quote:"Even though she made more money than the queen or Oprah Winfrey in some years, she had to see her books pushed off the bestseller lists and consigned to a special 'children's book' list."
Her books remain on bestseller lists, as you well know; these bestseller lists are simply ones for children's books. Calling these bestseller lists "special 'children's book' lists" and claiming that her books were pushed off the bestseller lists is next door to an outright lie.
quote:"Mine is not the only work that one can charge Rowling "borrowed" from. Check out this piece from a fan site, pointing out links between Harry Potter and other previous works:"
This is a red herring. The case was never about borrowing (of which you're as guilty as anyone); the case was, and is, about lifting someone else's work wholesale without properly crediting the source. You may disagree with the lawsuit (I'm not a fan of it myself); that does not, however, give you a right to distort the facts.
quote:"And don't forget the lawsuit by Nancy K. Stouffer, the author of a book entitled The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, whose hero was named "'Larry Potter.'"
This portrayal of that court case is simply dishonest. Ms. Stouffer was found to have fabricated evidence in an attempt to create false similarities. If you honestly aren't aware of that, then you're intellectually lazy; it would've been terribly easy to run a fact check before committing yourself to those words.
And will you please shut up about homosexuality? I swear you're obsessed with it. You have to bring it up even here where it interrupts the flow of your article and where it's completely irrelevant to the discussion. Here's a tip: let go of the paranoia. Homosexuals are not going to swoop suddenly down on you and cart you off to somewhere over the rainbow. Really. I promise.
My concluding thought is this: I've lost what little respect for you I had in the first place. You have shown yourself to be a petty, dishonest, blustering old crank. I will be sure to warn my friends and family against buying your books, and I will certainly keep your behavior in mind the next time a Mormon comes knocking at my door; I do not hold with any ideology that allows a person to comport himself with the lack of class and character you have shown.
[ April 27, 2008, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: Nunki ]
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Ok, that was an annoying article. Before he was totally singing her praises and complaining about her being on the Children's best seller list. Now he wants to blast her? Dumbledore's sexuality isn't really part of the Harry Potter story at all. And at least she didn't marry him off to a woman or something the way OSC sometimes tends to do with gay characters. Or he'll spend pages talking about the wrongness of gayness in a sort of code that makes it seem like he's compassionate towards them. Plus there's a difference between having a free website and then selling it for 25 dollars. I can see why this would frustrate her, them trying to profit off of her hard work. I don't think suing is a good idea, but I'd rather have an Encyclopedia from her who knows the characters inside out. of course she'd know if Dumbledore is gay if she's been working on the story for 17 years and has had these characters and their details in here head for ages. I don't think she was just mentioning it to be PC as I was at the event. Plus Ender's game really isn't like HP. HP is probably more like The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman than Ender's Game. Ender didn't even HAVE any close friends and was totally isolated and alone for the most part. He had to wipe out an entire species, not just one mega evil guy. Anyway, dragons, faeries, mermaids and things like that are practically in the sky and water. Tons of stories have them. It doesn't mean a person is ripping off someone unless they are ripping off FOLK TALES and EVERY STORY THAT COMES FROM FOLK TALES.
Dang, he makes me so mad... Seriously.
Posted by Shawshank (Member # 8453) on :
Why sign up just to say- I don't like you and want nothing to do with you? That makes no sense and is disrespectful. I'm sure the OP probably will never check back again, never respond. What a waste of time- to write such a rant.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Why would Rowling be forced to pay the legal fees of a witness? I was unaware that witnesses had to pay to take the stand; I was under the impression that our legal system wanted to encourage, not penalize, those who testify. Wait, you're not misinformed (or misinforming), are you? Oops!
There are numerous situations which can lead to a plaintiff or her attorney being responsible for fees of a defendant or a witness. I won't give a full-blown analysis here, and I don't think it's a likely outcome, but OSC did mention one of the most important factors: the relative merit of the suit. Moreover, your "I was under the impression..." sentence doesn't even make sense. A witness receiving fees from Rowling would not be discouraged in any way.
quote:
quote: "Moreover, she is desperate for literary respectability [...] Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of subliterature, not really worth discussing."
A compromising comment from a man who, up till a few months after Book 7's publication (when Dumbledore's sexuality was revealed), was an avid fan of the series. Given that you were a great fan, you fail by your own stated standards to qualify as a litterateur. Strike three!
What does this even mean? There's nothing in the article that says he doesn't like her work any more.
And he would be proud to be acknowledged as a non-litterateur.
quote:Her books remain on bestseller lists, as you well know; these bestseller lists are simply ones for children's books. Calling these bestseller lists "special 'children's book' lists" and claiming that her books were pushed off the bestseller lists is next door to an outright lie.
Oh, really? You're calling an "outright lie" OSC's account of what actually happened: Here's one account of what happened. How is this not Potter being pushed off the bestseller's list? Moreover, this is an area where he is SYMPATHETIC to Rowling - he thinks it was unjust.
You should get a little better-informed before posting self-righteous rants.
quote:This is a red herring. The case was never about borrowing (of which you're as guilty as anyone); the case was, and is, about lifting someone else's work wholesale without properly crediting the source. You may disagree with the lawsuit (I'm not a fan of it myself); that does not, however, give you a right to distort the facts.
He hasn't distorted anything. In fact, he's given a decent account of the lexicon, and expressly acknowledges the differences between borrowing from one work of fiction and a lexicon.
It's a distortion to say that OSC said the one was just like the other.
quote:My concluding thought is this: I've lost what little respect for you I had in the first place.
And you felt the need to come to his web site to tell him this?
For the record, I have no respect at all for you. You comprehend the written word poorly and make inane comments about things you seem to have little knowledge of.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:It doesn't mean a person is ripping off someone
The thesis of Card's article is that she ISN'T ripping anyone off.
quote:Plus there's a difference between having a free website and then selling it for 25 dollars. I can see why this would frustrate her, them trying to profit off of her hard work. I don't think suing is a good idea, but I'd rather have an Encyclopedia from her who knows the characters inside out.
I agree. This is why one of the four factors of fair use (effect on the market for the original work or derivative works) will weigh heavily against her in the suit.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I'm actually curious about what's caused the rather obvious about-face in Card's opinion of Rowling. He's a pretty stalwart defender of intellectual property, himself (even to the point of sometimes being ridiculous about it), so I'm disinclined to think this whole Lexicon thing is the primary cause.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
A stalwart defender of intellectual property can very easily see Rowling's suit as a significant attack on intellectual property.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"A stalwart defender of intellectual property can very easily see Rowling's suit as a significant attack on intellectual property."
Yes, but OSC has shown every inclination to want to protect the author's rights first, not protect the one who creates derivative work from the author's original work. He's someone who uses laws and lawyers to make sure the the money doesn't stop coming in, not a legal theorist himself. As such, this is kind of an about-face. Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Yes, but OSC has shown every inclination to want to protect the author's rights first, not protect the one who creates derivative work from the author's original work.
Can you back that up? His comments on the accusation that Obama plagiarized a speech don't seem to support your take on things.
To my knowledge, he hasn't commented on a lexicon before. It's pretty strange to say that because he's favored some kinds of limitations on derivative works his reason for disfavoring this one is an "about-face."
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Specifically, my use of "about-face" here regards his attitude towards Rowling, not necessarily his attitude towards lexicons. Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
I'd present his attitude toward Ender fan-fic as evidence. Bear in mind, though, Dag, I'm not making legal arguments here. I'd like to see all the evidence in front of me. That's why I'm talking about this. I am pretty sure OSC's hatred of open homosexuality and the fact that, in this society, it generally replaces marriage/kids, is the cause of this about-face. However, I'm not totally sure, so I'm hoping someone will throw some strong contradictory evidence out there for me to consider, if such exists. Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I'd present his attitude toward Ender fan-fic as evidence.
Again, evidence of hostility towards one type of derivative work is not evidence of hostility towards another. This has nothing to do with legal arguments. It has to do with not assuming that OSC isn't capable of viewing different things differently.
quote:Specifically, my use of "about-face" here regards his attitude towards Rowling, not necessarily his attitude towards lexicons
I wasn't talking about your use of "about-face."
Posted by Nunki (Member # 11594) on :
quote:There are numerous situations which can lead to a plaintiff or her attorney being responsible for fees of a defendant or a witness. I won't give a full-blown analysis here, and I don't think it's a likely outcome
You didn't read carefully. Card referred to "Steven Vander Ark's legal fees." A witness does not pay legal fees to testify in court. Card's comment indicates, therefore, that he isn't as informed about the case as he would like us to believe.
quote: Moreover, your "I was under the impression..." sentence doesn't even make sense. A witness receiving fees from Rowling would not be discouraged in any way.
My sentence makes perfect sense. If witnesses were required to pay legal fees, as Card indicated Vander Ark had done, it would discourage them from testifying in court. Of course, Card knows that witnesses don't pay legal fees to testify; Card said what he said, because he was operating under the false premise that Vander Ark was the defendant. In other words, he didn't have a proper understanding of the situation he was throwing a hissy fit over.
quote:What does this even mean? There's nothing in the article that says he doesn't like her work any more.
I beg to differ. His article is, as much as anything else, an attack on Rowling's skill as a writer. Read:
"I feel like the plot of my novel Ender's Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling." "She was reading – and borrowing from – the work of other writers." "After all her literary borrowing, she shot her wad and she's flailing about trying to come up with something to do that means anything." "She is desperate for literary respectability." "She had to see her books pushed off the bestseller lists and consigned to a special "children's book" list." "Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of subliterature, not really worth discussing."
That's your idea of how someone talks about a book series they like? Are you by any chance a sadist?
quote: And he would be proud to be acknowledged as a non-litterateur.
I'm sure he would, considering how little recognition his books get from literary experts. Making his criticism of Harry Potter even more embarrassing.
quote:Oh, really? You're calling an "outright lie" OSC's account of what actually happened: Here's one account of what happened. How is this not Potter being pushed off the bestseller's list? Moreover, this is an area where he is SYMPATHETIC to Rowling - he thinks it was unjust.
First of all, I said his account was next door to an outright lie. Second of all, please visit this website (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/bestseller/index.html) You'll find that there is a children's BESTSELLER LIST at the bottom of the page, which means you're the one who's wrong. Third, it's not relevant whether Card is sympathetic; what is relevant is the fact that, in keeping with the rest of his article, he was twisting the facts in an attempt to smear Rowling's novels.
quote:He hasn't distorted anything. In fact, he's given a decent account of the lexicon, and expressly acknowledges the differences between borrowing from one work of fiction and a lexicon.
False. After his lengthy accusation that Rowling borrowed her ideas, this is what he says:
quote:But Lexicon is intended only as a reference book for people who have already paid for their copies of Rowling's books. Even though the book is not scholarly, it certainly falls within the realm of scholarly comment.
That has nothing on earth to do with acknowledging the difference between borrowing and writing a lexicon. It leaves us still with the impression that the case is about something that it isn't. Why would Card have peppered the article with "she steals her ideas!," if it weren't related somehow to the lexicon case? It's clear that he is trying to relate, possibly equate, what Vander Ark did to simple borrowing. Otherwise Card would have no reason to mention it.
quote:And you felt the need to come to his web site to tell him this?
Inasmuch as a desire is a need, yes.
quote: For the record, I have no respect at all for you. You comprehend the written word poorly and make inane comments about things you seem to have little knowledge of.
This appears to be a case of what psychiatrists call projection. You have a problem; you see your problem in anyone but yourself.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Nunki, I think you're laboring under a small misconception. Back when the NYT created the children's bestsellers list specifically to get the Harry Potter books off the adult bestsellers list, Card wrote an article defending Rowling's work and sharply criticizing the "litterateurs" who felt the need to relegate her books to a separate "ghetto." In other words, he believes she -- along with most other authors working in the genre, himself included -- has been unfairly denied "literary" status, and perhaps is making poor choices in what he feels is a misguided attempt to "earn" that status.
Around the release of Book 7, he released another article again praising the Harry Potter series and speculating -- and going so far as to offer advice -- about what Rowling was going to do next. IIRC (and I may not), he warned her against going back to the well too often or too soon; he felt that it was in her best interest to do something non-Potter as soon as possible. Her production of an official lexicon might be regarded in that spirit as a grave mistake.
That said, I think his "JK Rowling stole my plot" complaint is more than a bit tone-deaf. I don't for a minute believe that he seriously thinks she lifted anything at all from the Ender books, since after all there are (as he mentions in the same article) far more obvious sources for the tropes in the Potter novels. I'd honestly be surprised if she had read any of Card's books prior to writing her own. It's possible he sincerely feels this way -- he's accused Shyalaman of lifting "The Sixth Sense" out of Lost Boys, too, even though I think that's clearly another case of parallel evolution -- but I don't think there's a serious case to be made for it.
I'm actually wondering whether he's disappointed in her because she didn't kill Harry.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
Welcome Nunki... Don't be flustered by the people who snarl about you for coming here to criticize Card... You're not the first, you won't be the last. Just try to be civil (difficult at times, I realize, especially when others are not.)
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Yeah, I've been a bit frustrated with him for some time... But this about face when it comes to the children's lit list is just another thing that gets under my skin.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:His article is, as much as anything else, an attack on Rowling's skill as a writer. Read:
"I feel like the plot of my novel Ender's Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling."
I'm not sure how you go about missing the sarcasm in OSC's article, Nunki. OSC is not, as far as I can tell, actually proposing that Rowling stole the plot of Harry Potter from Ender's Game.
He is pointing out that it's ridiculous for the suit to charge that Rowling's words were stolen from her, when her plot is so obviously borrowed from a grand tradition of fantasy plot lines.
He is highlighting the absurdity of the suit, not seriously proposing she actually stole anything from him.
quote: "She was reading – and borrowing from – the work of other writers." "She is desperate for literary respectability." "She had to see her books pushed off the bestseller lists and consigned to a special "children's book" list." "Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of subliterature, not really worth discussing."
None of these actually speak to Rowling's skill as a writer.
quote:this about face when it comes to the children's lit list is just another thing that gets under my skin.
What about-face do you think he's made, Syn? I don't see it.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:You didn't read carefully. Card referred to "Steven Vander Ark's legal fees." A witness does not pay legal fees to testify in court. Card's comment indicates, therefore, that he isn't as informed about the case as he would like us to believe.
First, many witnesses engage counsel before testifying. It's very common.
Second, many costs fall under the term "legal fees" other than fees paid to attorneys.
Third, and most importantly, it is common to refer to the parties in interest even when the suit technically names a different party. In this case, Vander Ark is the one who faces the biggest harm if Rowling's lawsuit succeeds.
Two seconds of research would have uncovered this.
quote:My sentence makes perfect sense. If witnesses were required to pay legal fees, as Card indicated Vander Ark had done, it would discourage them from testifying in court. Of course, Card knows that witnesses don't pay legal fees to testify; Card said what he said, because he was operating under the false premise that Vander Ark was the defendant. In other words, he didn't have a proper understanding of the situation he was throwing a hissy fit over.
Ah, I see. So the original sentence makes sense through the lens of your misunderstanding about costs associated with testifying.
quote:That's your idea of how someone talks about a book series they like? Are you by any chance a sadist?
Have you read the thousands of words Card has written praising Rowling and the Potter series? If not, then you need to do a bit more research. If so, then you need to demonstrate that this particular criticsim outweighs all those positive things he's said about it.
quote:Second of all, please visit this website (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/bestseller/index.html) You'll find that there is a children's BESTSELLER LIST at the bottom of the page, which means you're the one who's wrong.
That would only mean I'm wrong if I had DENIED that there was a Children's Bestseller list. I didn't. The existence of a Children's Bestseller list is the heart of the matter - they made up that list to remove three Potter books from the Bestseller List. It was a move aimed expressly at Rowling, and Card criticized them for it, repeatedly.
quote:Third, it's not relevant whether Card is sympathetic; what is relevant is the fact that, in keeping with the rest of his article, he was twisting the facts in an attempt to smear Rowling's novels.
First, you fail to show how this is twisting a fact. Second, it's not a smear of her novels. At all. He views the mere existence of the Children's Bestseller list - created EXPRESSLY to deny her a place on the Bestseller list - as an unjustified attack on her novels.
quote:
quote:But Lexicon is intended only as a reference book for people who have already paid for their copies of Rowling's books. Even though the book is not scholarly, it certainly falls within the realm of scholarly comment.
That has nothing on earth to do with acknowledging the difference between borrowing and writing a lexicon
It has everything to do with the difference. He calls it a "scholarly comment." Does he call the borrowing he discusses "scholarly comment"? No. Why? Because they're DIFFERENT!
quote:It leaves us still with the impression that the case is about something that it isn't. Why would Card have peppered the article with "she steals her ideas!," if it weren't related somehow to the lexicon case? It's clear that he is trying to relate, possibly equate, what Vander Ark did to simple borrowing. Otherwise Card would have no reason to mention it.
Of course he sees them as related. That wasn't your original accusation.
quote:This appears to be a case of what psychiatrists call projection. You have a problem; you see your problem in anyone but yourself.
Right. You've twice now totally misunderstood something as simple as the Children Bestseller's list issue.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R:
quote: [QUOTE]this about face when it comes to the children's lit list is just another thing that gets under my skin.
What about-face do you think he's made, Syn? I don't see it.
He seems to have gone from complaining about JKR being pushed to the Children's Best Seller list by intellectual elites to implying that she was pushed on the list for not being good literature. At least that's how I read it. He writes like that all the time in this sort of articles, at least a high percentage of the time. He always sounds so... Vitriolic. And really cranky.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:He seems to have gone from complaining about JKR being pushed to the Children's Best Seller list by intellectual elites to implying that she was pushed on the list for not being good literature. At least that's how I read it.
What phrases does he use that make you think this, Syn?
I think he's criticizing the author; not the work.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I don't know about OSC, but the point at which I decided JKR had reached Lucas-style levels of grandiosity (nigh unto Michael Jackson) was when it was announced her next book -Bard and beadle thingamajig, was to be released in only six volumes hand scribed by monks and sold for a brazillion pounds each. (I'm embroidering the description, but only slightly, I think.)
All you detractors are overlooking the bit where he said Talent does not excuse all this. He does believe her to be talented.
If Card has an unhealthy obsession with homosexuals, it sounds as if you have an equally unhealthy obsession with Mormons, Nunki.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"Again, evidence of hostility towards one type of derivative work is not evidence of hostility towards another. This has nothing to do with legal arguments. It has to do with not assuming that OSC isn't capable of viewing different things differently."
Actually, I seem to recall him mentioning somewhere that the very reason he went after Ender fan-fic so vigorously was precisely because he had been told by his lawyers that he had to prosecute it as soon as he found out about it, or risk his silence being taken as assent, in some legal sense, thus making future legal action re: fan-fic, etc., not fruitful. IOW, he has nothing against fan-fic, except for the fact that it could cost him money in the future, and he only knows this because he has asked lawyers. IIRC, he said all this at one of the Greensboro signings I attended, don't ask which one, I don't recall.
My point being, OSC does not have a particularly scholarly understanding of copyright law, unlike yourself, Dag. His behavior toward fan-fic, etc. is probably entirely driven by what lawyers have told him, plus a desire to avoid losing potential money in the future.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R:
quote:He seems to have gone from complaining about JKR being pushed to the Children's Best Seller list by intellectual elites to implying that she was pushed on the list for not being good literature. At least that's how I read it.
What phrases does he use that make you think this, Syn?
I think he's criticizing the author; not the work.
Stuff like this.
quote:Rowling has nowhere to go and nothing to do now that the Harry Potter series is over. After all her literary borrowing, she shot her wad and she's flailing about trying to come up with something to do that means anything.
And other stuff. I don't know... When every he writes stuff like this what he says really isn't very nice.... At all. It's actually kind of extremely totally mean.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:My point being, OSC does not have a particularly scholarly understanding of copyright law, unlike yourself, Dag. His behavior toward fan-fic, etc. is probably entirely driven by what lawyers have told him, plus a desire to avoid losing potential money in the future.
My point is that comparing an author's views on fan fiction and lexicons and concluding that a different view on each indicates a kind of "about face" fails to account for the differences between the two types of derivative works.
It's along the same lines of saying people who want to make abortion illegal yet keep the death penalty are being inconsistent.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Out of curiosity, what is your position on the death penalty, Dag? I'm more against than not, mostly due to "The Gospel of Life", I think it was called, issued by the former Pope. I hadn't really thought about it being wrong before that, I'd been raised in a very conservative family, but the Pope's position made sense to me.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:It's along the same lines of saying people who want to make abortion illegal yet keep the death penalty are being inconsistent.
Perhaps not all people who support the death penalty and oppose abortion are being inconsistent, those who want to make abortion illegal to recognize the sanctity of all human life but still support the death penalty certainly are inconsistent.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I thought the first half of Card's article was quite good but I have some real objections with what he does toward the end when he moves away from discussing the actual intellectual property issues and starts speculating on Rowling's motivations and character.
He doesn't know Rowling personally. Labeling her a desperate, vain, greedy witch solely because of this incident is unjust, uncharitable and unchristian. Making those kind of statement publicly might even be illegal (slander).
Let's hope Rowling isn't quite the litigious witch Card thinks she is or he could be hit with the next suit.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Which would prove that she IS a vain and greedy witch, Rabbit.
Syn:
quote:Rowling has nowhere to go and nothing to do now that the Harry Potter series is over. After all her literary borrowing, she shot her wad and she's flailing about trying to come up with something to do that means anything.
Again-- that's criticizing the author, not the work.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Which would prove that she IS a vain and greedy witch, Rabbit.
Why?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Perhaps not all people who support the death penalty and oppose abortion are being inconsistent, those who want to make abortion illegal to recognize the sanctity of all human life but still support the death penalty certainly are inconsistent.
Not unless you define "recognize the sanctity of all human life" to mean "think it's always wrong to kill." Since they don't define it that way, they're not being inconsistent. To consistently apply your reasoning, you would need to call those who want to make abortion illegal to recognize the sanctity of all human life but support the right to kill in self defense as inconsistent.
I doubt that you do that, although I don't know for sure.
Moreover, recognizing the high value of human life cuts both ways in the death penalty debate, at least as regards to the death penalty for those who kill.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:ut of curiosity, what is your position on the death penalty, Dag?
I think that society, through it's proper governmental authority, has the moral authority to take a human life as punishment in certain circumstances, but that those circumstances are not present in the U.S.
I also think that the Constitution does not bar the death penalty and that many of the restrictions placed on the death penalty by the Supreme Court are based on reasons that are appropriate for legislatures to consider but not for courts judging the constitutionality of a particular punishment.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Thanks for answering, though I'm now curious why the circumstances are not present in the U.S. Does that mean they could not be? I don't mean to needle you.
Also, Nunki, I just noticed that you titled this a "little" word on Card's commentary. Oops!
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Which would prove that she IS a vain and greedy witch, Rabbit.
Why?
Vain-- because she thinks so much of her image she's willing to litigate against commentary that is not libelous (as far as I know).
Greedy-- Hmm...well, I actually can't back this one up.
Witch-- You've read her books, right?
I admit, that was a dumb thing for me to assert.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Looks like time to stir the Scott pot.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
I don't think writing that a person is greedy or witchy or similar adjectives qualifies as libel. These are very subjective labels and I think our right to choose when to use them is pretty well protected. I think he'd have to stray into more material assertions to be approaching libel...For instance, he'd get into trouble, maybe, if he asserted that she beats up little kids, and was unable to provide any evidence for that claim. However, he could call her a cruel child hater and I think he'd be on safe ground.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Just read the OSC article. He never contradicts his admiration (expressed in the past) for Rowling's fiction. He clearly thinks Rowling is now displaying some failings in character. I agree with him about the lawsuit. I don't see the justification for calling Rowling a coward about the Dumbledore thing.
Posted by Scooter (Member # 6915) on :
Hey Nunki, what religion are you?
I just want to know how to generalize my opinion of you to a bunch of people I don't know that must be as judgmental and xenophobic as you are.
This will save me so much time not having to get to know anything about individuals who share your religion (or lack of religion, if that is the case)--I will know right away that they read way too much into things that are critical about something they obviously cherish. That they won't be able to tell the difference between describing how some view an author and the opinion of the one describing those views--especially since that person has written plenty of flattering things about that author before.
What kind of religion could make you so shortsighted and reactionary!?!
Thanks.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
I don't think I could defend the sort of sheer vitriol and rudeness that has come from too many articles I've read by OSC. It's not an opressing free speech thing. It's more of an I'm stressed out enough as it is and should read something a bit more... Cheerful and less cranky. It's mostly the constant name calling that gets to me. It's not polite at all. Especially since I've been reading these articles for some time and the frustration has only built up because again, it's just not polite and doesn't allow for discourse if it's just constant never-ending mostly dissing... I mean, is it really necessary to call her an evil witch? What did she do to him to deserve that? Suing people sucks, but I don't think it makes her evil and there's always more to anything you hear about anyway.
Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
I'm actually wondering whether he's disappointed in her because she didn't kill Harry.
No. In The Great Snape Debate, he stated that killing Harry off would be grounds for no one speaking to Rowling ever again. Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
quote:I don't see the justification for calling Rowling a coward about the Dumbledore thing.
I think he has grounds for calling this cowardice, though I don't think it really belonged in this article. Card gets a lot of flak for writing about gay characters. Many people of his own religion question his character just for writing about gay people. He gets precisely the kind of flak JKR avoided by not inserting Dumbledore's sexuality into the books.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
It's the leap to Rowling's motivation for not including this in the book that I think is apparently unjustified.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
How about we suggest (to OSC) making and selling an Ender lexicon, completely without offering any profit from or control over to OSC?
Yeah. I think we'd know what he'd say. Whoever seriously suggested it would be in court so fast their head would frickin' spin, if OSC's lawyers suggested that he should sue.
If you disagree, don't tell us why. Simply send him an email, tell him about this thread, and post his response to my proposal, and ask him if it's OK post his response before you do.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
It's not like she could have put Dumbledore making out with some dude in his office. Like Nicholas Flammel or something. The book is about Harry fightig Voldermort.
Unless she could have had Rita Skeeter have a chapter called "Dumbledore-Is he Gay? He does after all wear Flamboyant Purple Robes"
Posted by JustAskIndiana (Member # 9268) on :
OK here's a quote by Scott himself taken from the question and answer section of this site:
quote: As for using characters created by another author: That's where you're going to find yourself sued by any author who understands where the financial future of his work lies. In order to protect copyright and potential filmmaking rights, you have to AGGRESSIVELY protect your own authorship of characters, precisely because it is the characters that film companies need to license and protect when your work is filmed. Anybody writing fiction using my characters without my specifically having licensed it to them will be sued, not because I'm mean and selfish, but because this is the INHERITANCE OF MY CHILDREN, and to write fiction using my characters is morally identical to moving into my house without invitation and throwing out my family. -Orson Scott Card
One might immediately take this statement and call Scott a hypocrite, but believe his point in his latest essay was that the encyclopedia does not constitute a use of Rowling's characters but is rather
quote: a reference book for people who have already paid for their copies of Rowling's books. Even though the book is not scholarly, it certainly falls within the realm of scholarly comment.
Therefore, the aggressive protection of copyright material cannot be sought in this circumstance.
So, my point is that I fully agree with Card's conclusion that Rowling does not have a valid case here, but I disagree with Card's analysis of her character and motives.
Truth is, I don't believe Rowling needs the respect of anybody (especially the Litterateurs), nor does she really believe the encyclopedia is as sloppy as she says.
It's simply that she's jealous that somebody else is going to write the same book she very much wants to write. Scott knows this because he himself has felt the same way at one time:
quote: And then something else happened. The more we talked, the more jealous I became that Neal might be the one to write such a book, and not me....And so, while still hoping that Neal and I can work together on something, I deftly swiped the project back. -Orson Scott Card, Foreward to Ender's Shadow
Luckily, Scott had the opportunity to just cancel the project, but Rowling doesn't have that power here, and her emotions are greater than any rational thinking right now.
Once again though, Scott shows the way to understand other people is by seeing the same desire in ourselves.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Well-reasoned, Indy.
Posted by Ish (Member # 11579) on :
Okay, here it comes, the longest, probably most boring reply to ANYTHING that has ever been published on Hatrack. You may want to just skip it unless you REALLY care about the debate going on here (as brought about by the OP)
_______
Greetings Nunki! Due to the fact that there are so many ASSUMPTIONS (please refer to my first post in the OSC and Bubblegum thread for my belief on those) in your dictation and review of OSC's review of J.K. Rowlings belief about Vander's works, I am going to CLARIFY everything in his article step by step, explain the (at least most likely) thought process and meanings behind his words and then explain where your own understanding went astray and why. Hopefully this will clarify all misconceptions and communication errors that have plagued this thread thus far.
NOTE TO EVERYONE: I do not claim to be a know-it-all, however, it is easier and simpler for one person to give a estimated explanation of everything in one go then to have a million different little contentions about pieces of the work that can be taken out of context and muddled easily.
Let us begin by breaking down the entire authorship of OSC's recent review:
I chose to skip the very first few paragraphs as they area summary of the review that is to come, setting the premise if you will, I quote them here:
quote: Can you believe that J.K. Rowling is suing a small publisher because she claims their 10,000-copy edition of Harry Potter Lexicon, a book about Rowling's hugely successful novel series, is just a "rearrangement" of her own material.
Rowling "feels like her words were stolen," said lawyer Dan Shallman.
quote:Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender's Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling.
A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in midair, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.
In the world of Argumentation and Discourse, this is called Anecdotal evidence. Using personal experience or situations to explain something to an audience which will recognize the situation or experience and relate to the Debator. In OSC's case, he can with some certainty believe his audience will have read his books, and in order to understand what he means when he says that "everyone borrows from everyone" he uses the inherent, although not purposeful to be sure similarities in his work to JKR's. The idea here is that obviously no lawsuits have become of OSC's "intellectual property" being stolen from him by JKR or anyone else in the literary world because it is a common enough practice. As the say, immitation is the greatest form of flattery and only assures to those being immitated, reviewed or discussed that they are indeed important and influential.
This is the THEME and THESIS of OSC's Review. Please Review it through ALL interpretations: A Lexicon is not stealing, therefore we can conclude that this lawsuit is ridiculous. This is an example of a growing feeling that JKR may have in fact run out of steam and may be looking for other ways to gain spot light and retain here prowess over the community of writers.
quote: This paragraph lists only most prominent similarities between Ender's Game and the Harry Potter series. My book was published in England years before Rowling began writing about Harry Potter. Rowling was known to be reading widely in speculative fiction during the era after the publication of my book.
I can get on the stand and cry, too, Ms. Rowling, and talk about feeling "personally violated."
Note that OSC uses the words "I CAN" not I WILL. The inherent difference between JKR and OSC is he respects (for the most part) the right of those who wish to discuss and review his works and other people's works to do so. This is very different from those who would take the characters, story, framework and settings of his books, make something similar and not credit him or pay royalties. Much like how those who write Star Wars novelas are paid but are required to pay a dividend to George Lucas for his intellectual property. Refer to the thesis for clarification.
Also, please remember that similarities can be found in almost EVERY work of fiction to EVERY OTHER work of fiction. This is human brain function at it's best. Learning by association is the easiest way for humans to grow and understand their world. WE connect other things to the items we are trying to assimilate in order to feel more comfortable with them and utilize them fully. This is why we often disregard things we don't like. It is normally due to inability to connect with them due to lack of association and understanding.
quote: The difference between us is that I actually make enough money from Ender's Game to be content, without having to try to punish other people whose creativity might have been inspired by something I wrote.
Be well aware that OSC knows he probably does not make as much as JKR had, or has (depending on her spending/saving habits. This is simply meant to be a furthering of his attack on her strange nature toward this SINGLE instance of comment and documentation of her intellectual property.
I myself (warning, anecdotal evidence) own several dissertations of her works including "The unofficial guide to Harry Potter Book 1,2,3,4,5" (each a different book) and "Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody". Each of these is a commentary (social or philosophical) on her works that has NOT been given a lawsuit. His argumentation stems from this ideal that there is NO cause except needing to be recognized for her to pick out THIS work has a "violation".
quote: Mine is not the only work that one can charge Rowling "borrowed" from. Check out this piece from a fan site, pointing out links between Harry Potter and other previous works: http://www.geocities.com/versetrue/rowling.htm. And don't forget the lawsuit by Nancy K. Stouffer, the author of a book entitled The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, whose hero was named "Larry Potter."
At that time, Rowling's lawyers called Stouffer's claim "frivolous."
Please re-read my previous statements about the many other works which not only REVIEW her work but also offer insight and commentary on it that have gone un-law suited (is that a word? Yes, it is now in the urban dictionary.) and other-wise green-lighted by her and her advisors. The greatest known of which is Stouffer's story which was (due to the current social climate towards JKR, more than likely) treated incredibly negatively and then shot down. It seems to be that OSC is creating an analysis of double standard. However, the two situations are different, though not in an incosequential way.
Intellectual property is a hot-bed of debate today and the borders of which are constantly being called into question. However, OSC's review is displaying the obvious attack of what many can see is not a violation of her stoy, but merely an opinion and dissertation on it. It in no way pretends to BE her work, merely the explanation and anthology of it. This is different and should not be considered the same, therefore it should not be considered a grounds for lawsuit.
quote: It's true that we writers borrow words from each other -- but we're supposed to admit it and not pretend we're original when we're not.
This is truth. There is a rule of thought that says that every story can be linked to a story from the BIBLE. Does that mean the estate of King James or the Catholic church should sue all literary authors for their fictions and use of the contexts from the bible? Of course not.
Ideas that are COMPLETELY new come few and far between, though it may seem as though pure innovation arrives at our doorstep almost every day, someone, somewhere has probably already come up with something SIMILAR, if not the same. The paranoia of having a BUCK stolen from you over this possibility of others taking your ideas and profiting has gotten so far out of hand that situations like this crop up to often and actually end up CHOKING creative thought.
If we are all to afraid of legal backlash to write new works, where will new stuff come from? So we have a million "Star Trek", "Star Wars" and "based on the new Blockbuster" books that are safe because they contain no facade of originality, safe under a label or a franchise.
Note: I love many of these novels and while some of them contain interesting spins on story lines and such, there main premise is already created for them, be it the universe or context they were written in or what have you. This does no make them BAD or not CREATIVE. But you cannot confuse creative with original.
quote: I took the word ansible from Ursula K. LeGuin, and have always said so. Rowling, however, denies everything.
If Steven Vander Ark, the author of Lexicon, had written fiction that he claimed was original, when it was actually a rearrangement of ideas taken from the Harry Potter books, then she'd have a case.
But Lexicon is intended only as a reference book for people who have already paid for their copies of Rowling's books. Even though the book is not scholarly, it certainly falls within the realm of scholarly comment.
THIS is where OSC explains his thought process and everyone would do well to read and re-read these quotation carefully.
Lexicon is NOT an original work of fiction. It is a commentary ON a work of fiction (original or otherwise). You cannot expect to gain much praise from performing a lawsuit against someone who was praising your works, (or in the very least, explaining them) without sounding a bit rude and vain.
quote:Rowling's hypocrisy is so thick I can hardly breathe: Prior to the publication of each novel, there were books about them that were no more intrusive than Lexicon. I contributed to one of them, and there was no complaint about it from Rowling or her publishers because they knew perfectly well that these fan/scholar ancillary publication were great publicity and actually boosted sales.
But now the Harry Potter series is over, and Rowling claims that her "creative work" is being "decimated."
I explained this portion earlier, but lets review:
Prior to this instance, (noting that the Stouffer situation is in different contexts) Rowling had made NO CLAIMS against works that had been created to discuss the meaning or philosophie's or situations in any of the Harry Potter books. This is the first and an odd first at that.
It is OSC's opinion that she does this at a time AFTER her books have done the best they can do initally. All the hype and new-ness of them has died down. No longer can a "What will happen in book 7" book create hype for her Deathly Hallows, since we already know what will happen, or can find out simply by reading it.
What this means is she would rather have you BUY her books now, rather than read a lexicon or a summary and explination of them. That is form of greed and vanity, meaning she doesn't want to share the glory of her books by letting others fawn and faint over them like she did in the past when it helped HER. Now that it no longer directly benefits her sales, it is a whole different ball game.
quote:Of course, she doesn't claim that it's the Lexicon that is harming her "creative work" (who's she borrowing from this time?); it's the lawsuit itself! And since she chose to bring the suit, whose fault is it? If she had left Vander Ark alone to publish his little book and make his little bit of money, she wouldn't be distracted from her next novel.
But no, Rowling claims Vander Ark's book "constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work."
Seventeen years? What a crock. Apparently she includes in that total the timeframe in which she was reading -- and borrowing from -- the work of other writers.
This is OSC calling JKR out on reprimanding people for STEALING (when they aren't stealing) and for pointing out that if ANYONE was stealing, it is her, and every other author and she should just rightly shut her trap.
quote: On the stand, though, Rowling's chief complaint seems to be that she would do a better job of annotating and encyclopedizing her own series.
So what?
I'm getting a bit cynical now, as you can tell, having to spell out everything that is clear as day to me in this article.
The quotation here is an explination that, as a witness, JKR fails to prove herself abused in anyway. Just because she could do a better job is not grounds for violation, therefore it is not evidence to her intelectual property being stolen and therfore is not helping her case.
quote: Nothing prevents her from doing exactly that -- annotating and explaining her own novels. Do you think that if there were a Harry Potter Annotated by the Author, Vander Ark's book would interfere with her sales in any way?
This frivolous lawsuit puts at serious risk the entire tradition of commentary on fiction. Any student writing a paper about the Harry Potter books, any scholarly treatise about it, will certainly do everything she's complaining about.
Once you publish fiction, Ms. Rowling, anybody is free to write about it, to comment on it, and to quote liberally from it, as long as the source is cited.
The first two paragraphs are re-iterations of the idea that JKR is actually hurting HER image by letting others push her (hopefully she didn't do this on impulse and on her own) to sue a person under false pretenses.
The final paragraph is important to YOU miss Nunki. Once you become published, people can say almost WHATEVER they want about your work, and provide views on it as they see fit. This is protected under the fair use act as Scholarly Commentary and educational or review. Since a Lexicon falls into these categories, it falls under the protection of the Fair Use act and cannot then, be forgone by a lawsuit.
quote:Here's the irony: Vander Ark had the material for this book on his website for years, and Rowling is quoted as saying that when she needed to look up some 'fact" from her earlier books, she would sometimes "sneak into an Internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter."
In other words, she already had made personal use of Vander Ark's work and found it valuable. Even if it has shortcomings, she found it useful.
That means that Vander Ark created something original and useful -- he added value to the product. If Rowling wants to claim that it interferes with her creativity now, she should have made that complaint back when she was using it -- and giving Vander Ark an award for his website back in 2004.
Now, of course, she regrets "bitterly" having given the award.
This is the funny part, and I'll break it down simply.
SHE KNEW HE WAS USING HER WORKS AND COMMENTING ON THEM FOR A LONG TIME.
This is nothing new from Vander Ark. He has been commentating on the works of fiction (predominately JKR's) for quite sometime on his website and in newspapers and magazines for awhile. He even won an AWARD for it from JKR HERSELF. Yet now she is suing him for doing exactly what he has been doing since she started publishing.
quote:You know what I think is going on?
Rowling has nowhere to go and nothing to do now that the Harry Potter series is over. After all her literary borrowing, she shot her wad and she's flailing about trying to come up with something to do that means anything.
Moreover, she is desperate for literary respectability. Even though she made more money than the Queen or Oprah Winfrey in some years, she had to see her books pushed off the bestseller lists and consigned to a special "children's book" list. Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of subliterature, not really worth discussing.
It makes her insane. The money wasn't enough. She wants to be treated with respect.
At the same time, she's also surrounded by people whose primary function is to suck up to her. No doubt some of them were saying to her, "It's wrong for these other people to be exploiting what you created to make money for themselves."
She let herself be talked into being outraged over a perfectly normal publishing activity, one that she had actually made use of herself during its web incarnation.
Now she is suing somebody who has devoted years to promoting her work and making no money from his efforts -- which actually helped her make some of her bazillions of dollars.
This whole dissertation explains what OSC believes her motivations are for per-suing this lawsuit. She has slowed down as an author but still wants RESPECT. If she is to command respect, she seems to think protecting her "rights" is the easiest way to go about it rather than trying to write a novel that wont get forced onto a "children's" best seller list.
quote: Talent does not excuse Rowling's ingratitude, her vanity, her greed, her bullying of the little guy, and her pathetic claims of emotional distress.
More on this quote later. But really, he knows she is a good author and has said it many times? Why in gods green earth would she wish to screw that up by letting her temper and ill-thought through plans of glory make her out to be bully and a wicked witch when she used to be everyone's Favorite story of the little guy (girl) finally making it big and striking it rich. She seems to have forgotten her roots.
quote: I fully expect that the outcome of this lawsuit will be:
1. Publication of Lexicon will go on without any problem or prejudice, because it clearly falls within the copyright law's provision for scholarly work, commentary, and review.
2. Rowling will be forced to pay Steven Vander Ark's legal fees, since her suit was utterly without merit from the start.
3. People who hear about this suit will have a sour taste in their mouth about Rowling from now on. Her Cinderella story once charmed us. Her greedy evil-witch behavior now disgusts us. And her next book will be perceived as the work of that evil witch.
This is what he expects to happen in the lawsuit. I should let you know that;
Though Vander Ark will only be a witness to the lawsuit, as the creator of the book he is one of the few who will have to provide LEGAL representation for his literature to back it as the defendant. Though he himself may not DIRECTLY be the defendant in question, all the precedings will affect him and besides his publisher, he is he only one who has the right to provide representation in this case. Therefore, expenses for such will most likely go to him or affect his own paycheck.
This is how legal representation in lawsuits of intelectual property work. Therefore refunding the cost of legal representation would be provided to him on the grounds that it is his work being sued, and he had to pay to fight for it.
quote: It's like her stupid, self-serving claim that Dumbledore was gay. She wants credit for being very up-to-date and politically correct -- but she didn't have the guts to put that supposed "fact" into the actual novels, knowing that it might hurt sales.
What a pretentious, puffed-up coward. When I have a gay character in my fiction, I say so right in the book. I don't wait until after it has had all its initial sales to mention it.
Many have shown either praise or disgust in the sudden "coming out of dumbledore". However, when deciding whether or not it matters, there are key points to disclosure.
Does it matter to the story? Probably not. It doesn't change who Dumbledore is, or what he did. Therefore, saying it is like saying "By the way, Harry was really good at rhyming." it's really not information we NEEDED or changes anything. It is however different from that analogy in the fact that it created HYPE for the series.
Hype is something that allows attention to be drawn to something that was either already popular or had lost popularity. The former is the case here where her books had started to die down and the need to revitalize the public buzz for them was apparent.
HOWEVER. Let us remember how we discovered Dumbledore was gay. SOMEONE asked her if Dumbledore had ever been in love. Her response could have been yes or no. It could have involved a story, but instead (whether she knew this all along or chose to just spring it on us) She chose to give us more details on a rather mysterious character. It is how WE as a society chose to take the notion of Dumbledore being gay that makes the situation questionable, and how, (as an intelligent woman) JKR knew we would take it.
It doesn't take that big a brain to know the literary community would be in an uproar about the outing of Dumbledore, not because we are homophobes, but because it's so controversial, especially in what could be called a childrens book. Regardless of it's authenticity to the story, many in the world of childrens fiction say that a "yes or no would have sufficed".
Indeed, it is not THAT he is gay that pisses OSC off, but that it FELT like she told us that to put herself back in the lime-light. It is that kind of pop-culture soaked attitude towards literature that scares contemporary writers into believing they may never become classics, because so much of what we write now is criticized and scrutinized by so many people. We cannot write anything good without making it less than what we imagined by allowing the world to chose our words for us.
Writing for your audience is fine, but writing to PLEASE an audience is just selling out. And selling out AFTER the fact, without giving us basis for your claims, can be even worse.
quote: Rowling has now shown herself to lack a brain, a heart and courage. Clearly, she needs to visit Oz.
It's true. Rowling needs to stop letting the world chose her story for her, and she needs to begin turning to the next chapter in her life, and she needs to stop protecting HP like it's a baby, let it live it's own life and let herself live hers. She needs to learn where her passion is and re-claim it. Somebody splash her with some cold water and wake her up from this nightmare.
_________
Honestly, that took me a LOT longer than I thought, so, until I get up the gumption to hash out your own (Nunki's) points, I will leave you with one last argumentation:
quote: Her books remain on bestseller lists, as you well know; these bestseller lists are simply ones for children's books. Calling these bestseller lists "special 'children's book' lists" and claiming that her books were pushed off the bestseller lists is next door to an outright lie.
Alright, others have already called you out on the fact that he Best Seller list that she is currently on was a SEGREGATION of books that had NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE. It in fact was done specifically for her books and was an OUTRAGE.
You need to remember that whilst you are in the world of OSC (Hatrack Forums and the like) You are privy to people who understand literature at it's best and worst. We know the hardships that have befallen people whom OSC has talked about constantly.
By the By; you seem to think OSC hates JKR's works of fiction now that he ridecules her as a legal action seeking author. Though nowhere in the article does it state that he "hates the Harry Potter books now because [JKR] is such a jerk." That would make no sense, and clearly it isn't said, therefore it isn't true.
That said, the Childrens Bestseller list is a bestseller list, but it doesn't even BEGIN to cataloge the immense proportions of how much of a best seller JKR's books are. He (OSC) NEVER says he thinks this was a good thing, he merely states it as truth and why people did it.
Often Nunki, people give FACTS in their argumentation that they may not entirely agree with to show the thought process of those who are wrong. Now that JKR has been shoved aside by the Literature community (at least into the dark world of childrens novels) she seems to need a way to break free. This train of thought may have driven her actions and then caused her to do the thing OSC is saying is incorrect.
Do not use the butterfly effect fallacy; where because this was said, it is a direct argumentation of this belief. You need to follow the rabit down the rabit hole to understand WHY he's late. Don't assume it's just because he says he is.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far, Congrats! You gained 324 exp!
~Ish
[ April 29, 2008, 02:20 AM: Message edited by: Ish ]
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by JustAskIndiana:
Once again though, Scott shows the way to understand other people is by seeing the same desire in ourselves. [/QB]
I don't totally agree with you, but what you are saying makes sense and you're unrude about it.
By the way, I was there when she outed Dumbledore. She did not do it for attention. Some fan just asked about it. Plus, there were a thousand happy people at that event. I doubt the whole HP craze thing was dying down. I don't really agree with your point of view on the situation, Ish. I don't think OSC has the right to call JKR greedy, an evil-witch, ect when he's not totally understanding her motives. It's one thing to have an online lexicon that is free for everyone to use. Selling it if you are directly quoting without siting JKR's book is a bit different though. According to other sources, JKR and WB seemed to have tried to work something out, or to at least view the manuscripe prior to it being published. Just read some of the more sensible comments about the issue. I don't think she's doing it out of greed, she is actually donating the proceeds if she wins this case to charity. How can he call her heartless? She donates a ton of money to Romanian orphans, and they can use all the money they can get since adoption closed for foreigners back in what, 2001? The fact is that no situation is black and white the way some folks like to make it out to be. Everything is more complicated than it seems.
Also I like what NG has to say on the subject a bit better http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/few-final-copyright-thoughts-before-we.html The fact is, I think she probably would not have had a problem with the lexicon being published if it had been changed in such a way that it doesn't copy her work. That part makes sense to me. There's tons of books about HP out there that are actually scholarly in the sense that they site her work. Clearly the publishing company, not so much the fan, are trying to milk the HP cow, one can't blame them. It's still leaking out gold after all. Attacking either authors doesn't do a bit of good, but i'd still rather just have an encyclopedia from her because, well, she wrote the whole thing and knows the characters better than anyone else.
Posted by EmpSquared (Member # 10890) on :
To be honest, after reading about 5 spelling and grammar mistakes I stopped reading that post after the second paragraph.
Posted by Ish (Member # 11579) on :
Firstly,
quote:By the way, I was there when she outed Dumbledore. She did not do it for attention. Some fan just asked about it. Plus, there were a thousand happy people at that event. I doubt the whole HP craze thing was dying down.
You create an ad-populous (or populumn, I can't quite remember) fallacy that just because there were lots of happy people at an event created for fans of Harry Potter, that that means Harry Potter craze has NOT died down.
A good explination of how this is not accurate would be to say that, several years after star wars first came out, we can still have conventions on the subject, but there is nowhere near as big of hype towards Star Wars as was when it first came out and was in theaters (with all the original toys and everything!).
There can still be fans, and they can still be rabid, but that doesn't mean its in the media, on the top of the blockbuster/bestseller list or a daily piece of conversation for most Americans.
Secondly,
quote: I don't really agree with your point of view on the situation, Ish.
I like how you automatically think that it's MY opinion. I thought I stated quite clearly it was a simplication and a clarification of OSC's opinion and column.
Other than that, your opinions and beliefs show merit. Good job for doing research!
Empsquared -
I apologize. I didn't realize a persons thoughts were dependent on there ability to spell. My mistake, I have made the neccessary adjustments to my post and hope you will actually give it a READ instead of just disregard it for trivial things like spelling.
I mean, if you didn't want to read it, you didn't have to. And if you didn't have a rebuttal worth contributing to the discussion, you didn't have to reply.
But thanks for calling me out on the fact that I, as a human, make errors. I appreciate the humanizing tone you have given me.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
I haven't read the entire transcript yet, my attention span is bad these days, but still, I think the issue is way more complex than OSC is saying. The ones who aren't cussing him out crankily had a lot more insight about the whole case.
Posted by EmpSquared (Member # 10890) on :
Relax. I was essentially trying to point out that if you were going to go through the trouble of the huge post, don't have that many mistakes that early on, since I'm sure you actually wanted people to read it, right?
Posted by Ish (Member # 11579) on :
True. But your history of posting has a few of these "bad spelling" comments in it. I was just defending my work, though admitting to the mistakes in it. And I hope my fixes worked.
I apologize for jumping the gun on the defensive.
~Ish
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: To my knowledge, he hasn't commented on a lexicon before. It's pretty strange to say that because he's favored some kinds of limitations on derivative works his reason for disfavoring this one is an "about-face."
He has in fact commented on a lexicon before. I'll have to search the archive for the article, but it was a lexicon of Science Fiction, and he was decidedly in favor of it. He commented on the fact that he was sited as a source for the word, "ansible," after Le Guinn herself, iirc. Just for the record.
Edit: The OP may have read a great deal of strong discouragement from OSC regarding "derivative" works in general, rather than "scholarly" works in particular. OSC is on record in countless instances talking about his feelings on fan fiction and the like, and I think he has even commented negatively regarding some HP fan fiction and the debacle Rowling was involved in with a fan of hers several years back. He took her side on that rather strongly, but it was nothing like this situation.
Regardless of the particulars of the article, I agree somewhat with Synesthesia that OSC's vitriolic language here seems a little out of proportion with the subject. It's hard to judge, but I can imagine him chalking this lawsuit up to motivations other than greed and villainy, were it the doing of another author. But there is this bit about Dumbledore and her supposed motivations for claiming that he may be gay. Why would OSC mention this in the same breath as the lawsuit, if his feelings about the issue were not indeed clouded by the Dumbledore issue? He even connects the two to the same motivation, namely greed, and frankly the greed angle is unconvincing on both counts. OSC doesn't think Rowling is downright stupid, (I don't think), and yet he would have to think so if he thinks that this lawsuit is greed motivated- because he thinks it's monumentally stupid. So I have a hard time believing that this assigned motivation is the right one.
I might not jump to conclusions about her motivations with such very broad strokes if I were an author who regularly derided those who gave him the same treatment- myself included. And the broad strokes he paints her with are SO much more negative than they need to be. Why?
[ April 29, 2008, 05:37 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I do not claim to be a know-it-all
Of course not! That would require that you admit to possessing at least one flaw. *rolls eyes*
quote:I appreciate the humanizing tone you have given me.
Do you? Do you really? Because I suspect otherwise.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:...I suspect otherwise.
*I* suspect you have 2350 better things to do than look down your nose at n00bs, Tom.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
But this is a newbie with a Forensic League pin, Scott! Surely that makes it okay. Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
You can always come back and tweak his nose when you've done that other thing.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
*shameful whisper* Honesty demands that I admit to also having once owned a Forensic League pin. I believe I may once have also been a newbie.
Posted by Ish (Member # 11579) on :
Huzah then! I applaud you for comming out on this issue Tom. You know, they say the first step to recovery is admitting the problem.
You are well on your way to recognizing that, it's okay to be a speechie.
Well, sort of, I wouldn't go starting any "speechies rule!" clubs or anything.
~Ish
P.S. On an almost un-related note, not ONLY do I have the pin, but I got a Lettermans jacket for the 4 years in highschool I went to state (and the one year to Nationals). I think that qualifies on a whole other level of shame. Not just because I have it, but because I still wear it (it's warm).
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I went to Chesterton High School from '88 - '91. 'Nuff said. Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
I can't help but think that after reading that vitriolic, angry cranky article of OSC, i'm more sympathetic to JKR than ever. I see where she's coming from. It's sort of if someone took the Dir en grey song Embryo, took Kaoru's whole entire sitary guitar part in it and put it in a rap song and didn't give him credit, he'd have every right to sue. It's different sampling songs and giving credit or coincidentally using about 4 notes from a song or something instead of lifting a whole chunk.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Giving to Charity does not make you a saint folks.
When you make billions, it is the only way not to be taxed out the bum.
Just because you give some of your money to charity, or the proceeds of this and that lawsuit/event to the homeless, does not automatically make all your actions godly and mean you can not be a huge jerk.
It's called good business tactics. If you want to LOOK good, you make the gestures to those less fortunate. It puts you in good standing, that does not mean your actions reflect your good nature. It just means you know how to conduct proper business.
Therefore, the charity aspect of your argument has absolutely no merit. It doesn't make her right to file the lawsuit, that is a strawman fallacy. (there I go again!)
And name calling is not NEARLY as deplorable as some of the other things that could be done to JKR for slapping the literary community that PUT HER WHERE SHE IS, in the face. The could disown her and never publish another thing about her again, thus black listing a great author because she doesn't respect those who respect her.
I say calling her a witch is a greater compromise, in favor of her future as an author.
By the way, the reason for the name calling is this: She is a witch because it is a PLAY on her novels, she is also a witch because when you step on the little guy or do something wicked or mean to someone who is nowhere near your status level, it is seen as incredibly coarse and cruel, much like the early pilgrim's and dark age european's outlook on witches, who sought prey that was weaker and much less intelligent then themselves.
Hope that makes sense.
Though complaining about name-calling is like complaining about OSC's writing style. He is a blunt author who doesn't pull punches. If you don't like the way he writes his reviews, don't read them. It's all there in every single review, black and white. Exactly how he feels. Audience agreeing not withstanding.
~Ish
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Dude. She's not really stepping on the little guy. it's not that cut and dried. I can see why she would be frustrated with someone taking a free website and trying to sell it as a lexicon of her work. She's not suing the fan directly, but the book company whose idea it was to sell the thing.
And do you have any idea what it's like for Romanian orphans? They live in horrible conditions. It's been going on for decades, but they shut down adoption from Romania to anyone but relatives and Romanian citizens back in 2001 I think? Not only do these orphans, especially the disabled, live in horrible conditions but many live out on the street. Many babies are abandoned in hospitals there. It depresses me that it's still going on.
I don't like that style of writing articles. I know it's an opion column, but it really doesn't equal discourse, conversation, but someone sledgehammering you with their opinions and stating that if you don't agree you are XYZ. It's deeply irratating because it's just not right or useful to namecall a person like that unless you know the whole picture! I hate this black and white concept so much because the world REALLy doesn't work like that. There are shades of grey and colour to the world that folks who write that way just don't understand.
Plus, exactly how is she slapping the community that put her there if she is trying to stop a book from being published that could have a lot of errors in it. Why isn't there someone who sees the shades in between black and white, who has subtlety and understands that things are never as simple as they seem?
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: It's sort of if someone took the Dir en grey song Embryo, took Kaoru's whole entire sitary guitar part in it and put it in a rap song and didn't give him credit, he'd have every right to sue.
I think a more accurate analogy would be if someone took the guitar part and transcribed it and wrote up a harmonic analysis of it. IMO, using someone else's song in your song is more akin to using someone else's fiction in your fiction.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I think a more accurate analogy would be if someone took the guitar part and transcribed it and wrote up a harmonic analysis of it.
In the specific case of this lexicon, it's as if someone took the guitar part, played long snippets of it back in random order, and interjected observations like "Here are the three loudest parts of this song, played back to back" in between them.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
So you've read the lexicon and found it to be lacking as a scholarly work? Tell us more...
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: It's different sampling songs and giving credit or coincidentally using about 4 notes from a song or something instead of lifting a whole chunk.
I'll just interject that the act of sampling is not directly analogous to "lifting." There is articulation of concrete material involved. Sometimes.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I've been to the website in question. It's a reference work, and in total contains a significant chunk of her text. I don't know how legal that may or may not be.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
what defines a significant chunk? Would a Shakespeare reference work contain less? Aren't the harry potter books something like 3 or 4 thousand pages in total?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Shakespeare's already out of copyright.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Indeed, it is not THAT he is gay that pisses OSC off,
That's just your judgement, and it's a different judgement than mine.
If someone had asked her about Dumbledore's religion, and she had replied "In my mind, Albus Dumbledore was a Mormon" I'm judging that OSC's attitude about the revelation would have been vastly different.
quote:And selling out AFTER the fact, without giving us basis for your claims, can be even worse.
Yes, once we assume that JKR is an evil sell-out, every action of hers can be easily portrayed as evil selling-out. But it's the initial assumption that needs to be justified, and which neither your nor OSC justify.
Many of her fans had noticed the Dumbledore teenage fascination with Grindelwald as something with extreme subtext behind it. (If Grindelwald had been female, the idea that Dumbledore's fascination with her had a romantic/sexual texture would have been the possibilility that would leapt out to *everyone* before anything else.)
JKR simply confirmed that we weren't seeing things that weren't there.
Of course OSC chooses to blame his selective blindness on JKR rather than on himself.
quote:
quote: Rowling has now shown herself to lack a brain, a heart and courage. Clearly, she needs to visit Oz.
It's true.
I am stunned at how EASILY and how RUDELY, both OSC and you pass such harsh judgments on someone you've probably never meant, whose motives you're only guessing at (with your superior intellect and all) -- you two are basically committing every sin of elitism that OSC condemned on Barack, except in your case it's even worse, as you're not commenting on statistics of populations but rather on one specific person's character.
quote: Somebody splash her with some cold water and wake her up from this nightmare.
And while you're at it, take a good look in your mirror and tone down the arrogance of your presumption.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Aris:
Do you mind being a hypocrite?
quote:you pass such harsh judgments on someone you've probably never meant, whose motives you're only guessing at
Reread your first paragraph or two.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Scott R, I reread my first two paragraphs. I don't see much hypocrisy.
You didn't see me calling OSC an evil warlock, or saying that he lacks heart, courage, and a brain, or that he needs to be doused in cold water? You didn't see me doing an amateur psychologist's job of trying to figure out the worst-possible interpretation of all her actions and describing them as fact?
The harshest judgement I've made of him, is that I don't believe him to be as impartial about homosexuality as he and his supporters in this thread believe, and that he's selectively blind towards evidence in the text.
*If* I was hypocritical, I'd have tried to find the worst possible psychological reasons for all of the above -- as OSC has attempted to do with JKR.
E.g. I could have said that some hidden homosexual latency is what made him blind to the homosexual subtext of Dumbledore's letter to Grindelwald, and it's this combined with jealousy that makes him attack JKR so fervently now.
Such a claim would be utterly stupid and unsubstantiated. But no less stupid and no less unsubstantiated than the cheap psychological profile OSC crafts for JKR.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Ah. So hypocrisy is a matter of degree, is it?
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
How is a person being hypocritical by calling Card on his... well, impolite words? Who'd even get this annoyed with him if he didn't do things like namecall JKR or imply that gay people are children dressing as adults and other things that really get under people's skin? I just can't defend stuff like that. Or implying, unless I misunderstood it that inner city people are on welfare and do drugs. That's the sort of stuff that gets to me. It's not polite, it doesn't add to any discussions and it doesn't make me feel like I've learned anything about another perspective.
Posted by manji (Member # 11600) on :
Isn't Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them already in encyclopedic format? Don't those portions in the Lexicon at least constitute infringement? I don't own that particular book, so I can't say if those portions of text are lifted wholesale or if they're "transformative", whatever that means. In that case, one can't say that JKR is motivated by greed in the Lexicon diverting sales from Fantastic Beasts, since the proceeds were donated to Comic Relief.
I'm probably wrong since I'm new. But this is the manuscript.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:How is a person being hypocritical by calling Card on his... well, impolite words?
They don't have to be.
Aris, however, called OSC down for making a judgment about JKR which he couldn't know; Aris also made judgments about OSC that cannot be known.
Thus, hypocrisy.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Eh, I think it's reasonable to assume OSC's reaction would have been different in that scenario. After all, OSC has said he's reacting to the Dumbledore thing because he thinks it smells of PC. I can't think of a similar way to construe the hypothetical claim that Dumbledore is Mormon, so I imagine the reaction would be quite different.
Of course, it's a lame point. If A led to X, B (being different from A) would have led to something else, which we'll call Z. So what?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Ah. So hypocrisy is a matter of degree, is it?
Well, of course, isn't all sin a matter of degree?
I judge OSC on his judgement, sure -- but IMO I judge him significantly more leniently than OSC has judged JKR. That's my point. That he's being too harsh, that he's attributing to JKR the worst motivations and the worst psychology possible.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Isn't all sin a matter of degree?
It depends on the sinner. But I wasn't aware we were talking about religion.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:It's called good business tactics. If you want to LOOK good, you make the gestures to those less fortunate. It puts you in good standing, that does not mean your actions reflect your good nature. It just means you know how to conduct proper business.
Therefore, the charity aspect of your argument has absolutely no merit. It doesn't make her right to file the lawsuit, that is a strawman fallacy. (there I go again!)
I'm not sure how you could characterize this as a strawman fallacy. In a strawman, you attribute an argument to an opponent that may superficially resemble what they've said, but is easier to refute.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Aris, however, called OSC down for making a judgment about JKR which he couldn't know; Aris also made judgments about OSC that cannot be known.
That's an extremely incomplete description of what Aris said.
This is actually a good example of a strawman, by the way.
---
edit:
Also, Scott, don't you feel a little like the pot calling the milk jug black, calling someone else a hypocrite? Do you actually hold any principle that doesn't have "except when I do it" as a caveat? I mean, you're trying to push the same "you can't know things like this about people" you've been caught directly violating.
[ April 30, 2008, 02:37 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
I don't think it's incomplete at all. What do you feel is incomplete about it, Squicky?
And in what way is it a strawman argument? It doesn't seem to fit with your definition.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Also, Scott, don't you feel a little like the pot calling the milk jug black, calling someone else a hypocrite? Do you actually hold any principle that doesn't have "except when I do it" as a caveat? I mean, you're trying to push the same "you can't know things like this about people" you've been caught directly violating.
Aw. You'll never get in the club with an attitude like that!
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Aris said nothing as simplistic as what you are saying, and in fact identified many qualities and degrees that are present in what OSC wrote that are not present in what Aris wrote. There are other differences that are implied but not stated that seem readily available to me. He is not, as far as I can tell, taking OSC to task for violations that he himself is making.
Posted by CRash (Member # 7754) on :
Thank you, manji, for the manuscript link. I had not ever read the Lexicon, but now I have read a few pages, it seems to be actual lifted material, that is, direct quotations from the sources. Essentially, this person is doing a copy-and-paste with the books, only putting the quotes under "entries."
I actually think there is a very good argument for Rowling's case, after looking at it. I can't think of any "scholarly" text that I have read that does not include any original material but is merely a compilation of quotes (except Bartlett's, of course). I own a couple of unofficial Potter books, but they actually have material written by the author, not just recycled published material. OSC says it's okay for people to "quote liberally" for literary analysis, but I don't think this is what he meant.
I'm more on Rowling's side here, although I think OSC had some interesting points in his article. But what really disturbed me about his rant was inflammatory phrases like:
"I can get on the stand and cry too, Ms. Rowling" "Seventeen years? What a crock." "Rowling has nowhere to go and nothing to do now" "She's shot her wad and she's flailing about" "Talent does not excuse Rowling's ingratitude, her vanity, her greed, her bullying of the little guy, and her pathetic claims of emotional distress." "Her greedy evil-witch behavior now disgusts us." "It's like her stupid, self-serving claim that Dumbledore was gay" "What a pretentious, puffed-up coward."
Mr. Card, I like hearing your side of the story and seeing some different arguments, but I don't want to have to sift through garbage like those quotes in order to do so.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
I don't even see how saying stuff like that is NECESSARY. It doesn't add anything to the argument at all. It's really mean and not very empathetic. I'm more disgusted by statements like that than JKR suing a publishing company.
And how does he know she "has nowhere to go and nothing to do now?" Is he her? I don't think so.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
CRash, I've become very tired of sifting through OSC's bile. What points did he make that you found interesting or particularly worthy of consideration?
Posted by Ish (Member # 11579) on :
Wow Aris I totally see your point...
I mean, when you chop up my posting, and start refuting my statements BEFORE YOU READ THE ANALYSIS, sure, I would say you might have a point that I'm being rude and inconsiderate.
By the way, no one has yet asked me if I believe the LAWSUIT itself is incorrect. My only argumentation deals with people whining that OSC's vocabluary and wording is too harsh.
IT'S NOT. (and please don't just quote me on that, read what I have to say as to why FIRST and then maybe discuss that. Don't be rude and try and make it sound like I didn't explain myself.) She (JKR) is a member of what we call a celebrity status group, and celebrities are constantly second guessed. Much like the media is the watch dog of our government, they have a moonlight job of being the watch dog of our celebrities. Now, assuming we can analyze their actions, there needs to be a equal and balanced re-action from both sides. Outrage from supporters of JKR's lawsuit constitute the positive side, while articles like OSC's explain the negative side.
NOW READ THIS PART CAREFULLY:
If you are going to call someone out on an error in judgement, would you say it like this: "well, I mean, it's not all that good what your doing... not that you aren't perfect and wonderful and I love you... but... re-considering all this lawsuit business, might be good, I don't know... cause... it's a little mean to Vander Ark, who helped you before. Not that your mean, cause your really nice and... ect."
OR
"Listen, you are screwing someone over who did your work for you in the past, who you gave an AWARD to. He's doing nothing more than he's done in the past, and just making the lexicon available for purchase does not hurt YOUR pockets. You can make one too if you want. It shows GREED that you can't respect someone who you used to respect just because it involves a dollar you think you might lose. It shows VANITY that you think you are the big fish and the end all be all of your literature now that the story book is closed, when you used to praise and thank your fans who had pushed the envelope of discussion before you finally ended the series. It shows you to be an EVIL WITCH when you allow yourself to create lawsuits against people and cause a ruccous over something you have never cause a ruccous over in the past.
Those are three explanations of the three "dirty words" OSC used against JKR in his article.
CRash - All of your "Quotations" were taken out of context. People need to learn to finish READING before the throw there arms up in disgust.
Aris - You seem to think it's so easy to pass judgement on MYSELF, while you ridecule me for passing judgement on others. What makes you think it was so easy? Analysis of a situation, the lexicon, articles and issues that JKR has created in the past and situations she put herself in now can be time consuming. However, if you have been an avid fan of HP for quite sometime, alot of this is common knowledge.
Don't decide I came to this "Sudden" conclusion about JKR when you wont even READ my full explanation. I was showing a possible conclusionary map that OSC may have drawn, displaying in clear cut terms what his words meant.
I will give you that it is just MY analysis. But it is a LOT better than fifteen people mis-quoting him or taking his words out of context.
If YOU are going to decided I am inconsiderate, maybe you should make your case a little better by showing what words I actually said that prove inconsideration, and show them IN CONTEXT, with all the analysis I put into them, then ask me if thats what I meant instead of point the finger.
Listen, I know it's easy to just scream "oh yeah? Well, you are just being a meanie too!" rather than refute the argumentation, believe me, I've done it before. But thats not good debate, and I like good debate. So don't try to prove to me why I AM WRONG, because thats impossible. Try and prove to me why you are right or you make more sense. That is where real debate happens.
Understand all sides, think about where OSC is coming from in his article. We all know he isn't just some crazy ill-informed nutter. So he must have a REASON for saying what he said. Find it. refute it. Don't just call him a crock, because thats the cheap way to argue...
And NO-ONE on hatrack should be cheap, we are all waaaay waaay to smart to be cheap.
~Ish
Posted by manji (Member # 11600) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ish: NOW READ THIS PART CAREFULLY:
If you are going to call someone out on an error in judgement, would you say it like this: "well, I mean, it's not all that good what your doing... not that you aren't perfect and wonderful and I love you... but... re-considering all this lawsuit business, might be good, I don't know... cause... it's a little mean to Vander Ark, who helped you before. Not that your mean, cause your really nice and... ect."
OR
"Listen, you are screwing someone over who did your work for you in the past, who you gave an AWARD to. He's doing nothing more than he's done in the past, and just making the lexicon available for purchase does not hurt YOUR pockets. You can make one too if you want. It shows GREED that you can't respect someone who you used to respect just because it involves a dollar you think you might lose. It shows VANITY that you think you are the big fish and the end all be all of your literature now that the story book is closed, when you used to praise and thank your fans who had pushed the envelope of discussion before you finally ended the series. It shows you to be an EVIL WITCH when you allow yourself to create lawsuits against people and cause a ruccous over something you have never cause a ruccous over in the past.
Why are these the only two choices?
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Exactly. I hate simplifying issues. When you come out howling about how greedy a person is and how vane and evil they are, you're not really looking at it from her point of view. Just because she's no longer a single mother on the dole doesn;'t mean she doesn't deserve respect and honour. It's not honourable to go on and on about how much of an evil witch she is when she objects to having a FREE WEBSITE turned into a BOOK for people to pay for that she doesn't think is accurate or that she believes to be a direct lifting from her work. There's a difference between the lexicon as a website and the lexicon as a book. It's not completely accurate, for example, alohamora doesn't necessarily mean good-bye in Hawaiian plus something else. The writer knows a lot more about the series having worked on it for nearly two decades. Disagreeing with someone is all well and good, but you don't have to call them names and disrespect them. It doesn't give a complete enough position. She knows at this point she's richer than the queen. She's got at least two more HP movies she'll get some loot for. But it still doesn't mean she's just suing for her own gain. Like I said, every issue, every situation is MORE COMPLEX than folks think. But OSC articles are frustrating because I don't think he understands that concept. To me most of the articles read, "This is right and if think it's wrong you don't know ANYTHING." And then there's more vitriol. All that does is create more frustration and bitterness and who needs more of that? Why not first do research on each issue from different sides and try to understand someone else without name calling and dissing.
And now I've got to make sure I didn't Diss OSC too much lest someone jump on me for being hypocritical. It's really diffucult to be polite when you just want to yell CHILL ALREADY! DAMN!
Posted by andi330 (Member # 8572) on :
I didn't like some of the phrasing in the article, but perhaps the part that I found most upsetting was this quote:
quote:And don't forget the lawsuit by Nancy K. Stouffer, the author of a book entitled The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, whose hero was named "Larry Potter."
The judgement in that case clearly pointed out that Stouffer falsified her evidence and was fined an additional $500,000 for bad behavior. The judgement included the following:
quote:The motion for sanctions is based upon Stouffer’s alleged perpetration of a fraud upon the Court, namely her production of at least seven pieces of falsified evidence: (i) the altered Playthings advertisement that was attached to her counterclaims (SAAC, Exh. 12); (ii) the altered copies of The Legend of Rah and the Muggles (Choe Decl. Exh. 17-20); (iii) the altered copy of the “RAH” screenplay (SAAC, Exh. 18); (iv) drawings of “Muggles” merchandise that were altered to include the word “Muggles TM” (Choe Decl, Exh. 63); (v) altered copies of Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly (Choe Decl., Exh. 24-27); (vi) the forged invoices that purport to record sales by BCI to Great Northern Distributors (SAAC, Exh. 16); and (vii) an altered draft agreement between BCI and Warner Publisher Services. (SAAC, Exh. 17; Choe Decl., Exh 37)
It was very upsetting to see a court case which ended in a summary judgement against the plaintiff for falsifying evidence used to support the theory that much of the plot in the Harry Potter series was borrowed from other works.
Beyond that, the name calling left me much more in upset about the tone of the commentary, than the article. I've used the Lexicon in the past, VanderArk does lift whole passages in the articles. He does usually site the work, although not necessarily to the point of the page which the information came from, (the book is almost always listed). I'm not a lawyer of any kind, so I don't know the legalities, but I know that when I was a college student, lifting a passage from a source without proper citation would have likely gotten me expelled, and proper citation generally includes page numbers in addition to the name of the book.
Do I really think that publishing a few copies of an unofficial encyclopedia is going to reduce the number of the official version that Rowling intends to publish in the future? Probably not. She's stated multiple times that she doesn't intend to even start work on the encyclopedia for some time, it will likely be several years before it reaches bookstores, and most of her fans will be willing to pay for the official version. I'll wait for the outcome of the lawsuit to see what happens.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ish: I mean, when you chop up my posting, and start refuting my statements BEFORE YOU READ THE ANALYSIS,
Ish -- if you can't write a concise summary of your argument (e.g. in two paragraphs) don't complain about people chopping up your quotation.
quote:She (JKR) is a member of what we call a celebrity status group, and celebrities are constantly second guessed. Much like the media is the watch dog of our government, they have a moonlight job of being the watch dog of our celebrities. Now, assuming we can analyze their actions, there needs to be a equal and balanced re-action from both sides. Outrage from supporters of JKR's lawsuit constitute the positive side, while articles like OSC's explain the negative side.
Interesting though your social theories may be, I'm not convinced at all by any "celebrity" division line where (if I gather what you mean) it's somehow okay to bash "celebrities" because "they explain the negative side".
I've heard that particular argument used by trolls in every single internet community I've been involved in. Even in the Interactive Fiction community, which probably only numbers some dozens active members, one can find the resident troll that pursues and harasses and bashes the local "celebrities" -- meaning the people who've happened to have contributed slightly more than others. In webcomic forums you likewise get the people that only appear to bash the webcomic, never to praise it.
So basically this is an argument where bashing unjustly on someone or something more popular than yourself is somehow inherently labelled as a service for the community.
I don't buy that. At its core it's not an anti-celebrity message, it's an anti-community message, since "celebrity" is nothing more than shorthand for "those the community admires". At some point, as I've personally witnessed, it becomes hostility towards anyone who achieves anything well-liked.
And I don't believe this is OSC's attitude either, since he's never shown hostility towards JKR before (that's why I find claims that he's now motivated out of jealousy ridiculous) -- therefore if you're excusing OSC's words via this reasoning, I think you're doing him a disservice.
quote:I was showing a possible conclusionary map that OSC may have drawn, displaying in clear cut terms what his words meant.
I think that pretty much everyone with a working understanding of the English language knew (or should know) what OSC's words meant -- I found your explanation thereof pedantic and condescending at spots, but that's of course a matter of taste and opinion. Perhaps some people needed it.
But in clear cut terms, when OSC makes a harsh judgment about JKR's character and you comment "It's true", I tend to believe that you agree with it. Because that's what the English language says it means.
quote:If YOU are going to decided I am inconsiderate, maybe you should make your case a little better by showing what words I actually said that prove inconsideration, and show them IN CONTEXT, with all the analysis I put into them, then ask me if thats what I meant instead of point the finger.
No. I'm not gonna do that. I found your so-called "analysis" meandering and largely meaningless, one of the best examples of what Orwell argued against in his "Politics and the English Language".
When you write sentences like the following: "WE connect other things to the items we are trying to assimilate in order to feel more comfortable with them and utilize them fully. This is why we often disregard things we don't like. It is normally due to inability to connect with them due to lack of association and understanding." ... then there's nothing either to agree or to disagree with. It's merely irrelevant nonsense -- its only meaning being the pretense of meaning but actual lack thereof.
quote:Understand all sides, think about where OSC is coming from in his article. We all know he isn't just some crazy ill-informed nutter. So he must have a REASON for saying what he said. Find it.
No, I'm not interested in guessing at his reason, if he's not interested in communicating it explicitly to me. The very point of my argument is that I find it presumptuous and arrogant and rude to try and figure out the hidden motivations of people I've never met. I'm not a psychologist. I won't try to psychoanalyze people from a distance.
It's much simpler (and IMO politer) to judge whether people are right or wrong on their positions in particular issues, rather than try to psychoanalize their *motivations* for those positions. I don't care about your motivations. Perhaps your motivation is that your superego is having sex with Freud's mother. That's fine with me.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Aris said nothing as simplistic as what you are saying, and in fact identified many qualities and degrees that are present in what OSC wrote that are not present in what Aris wrote. There are other differences that are implied but not stated that seem readily available to me. He is not, as far as I can tell, taking OSC to task for violations that he himself is making.
I'm sorry, I still don't understand how you feel my post qualifies as a strawman.
Do you believe that Aris criticized OSC for judging JKR on character traits which he cannot know about without extensive personal experience?
Do you believe that Aris criticized OSC for things which he, Aris, cannot know without extensive (or even some) personal experience?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Much like the media is the watch dog of our government, they have a moonlight job of being the watch dog of our celebrities. Now, assuming we can analyze their actions, there needs to be a equal and balanced re-action from both sides.
Ish, as a former member of "the media," I should point out that you're voicing a common misconception. It is often thought that the media should display "fairness" by giving equal time and weight to "both sides" of a story -- but this is wrong. This is a lazy man's substitute for both fairness and accuracy; it's a way of admitting that the reporter hasn't done enough homework to find the facts, and is instead just reporting unsubstantiated opinions.
In other words, that Rowling is a celebrity beloved by many does not mean that the media -- here embodied apparently by OSC -- needs to be extra harsh and/or insulting to her to provide a "balanced" picture. His tone is not somehow justified by her popularity.
quote:I will give you that it is just MY analysis. But it is a LOT better than fifteen people mis-quoting him or taking his words out of context.
Do you think that is what you've seen in this thread? People misquoting Card or taking his words out of context?
quote:We all know he isn't just some crazy ill-informed nutter. So he must have a REASON for saying what he said.
This contains several illogical steps. Consider: 1) We don't actually know that OSC is not crazy, although it's fair to assume he is not. 2) We don't actually know he's not ill-informed about J.K. Rowling's legal position or the specifics of British copyright law. Again, though, we might as well charitably grant this one. 3) Even if he were crazy and ill-informed, he might still have a reason for saying what he said. However, even if he is not crazy or ill-informed, it does not necessarily follow that he has a reason for what he said -- or that his reason(s) are necessarily any good.
quote: So don't try to prove to me why I AM WRONG, because thats impossible.
This, Ish, is why I don't think you're actually any good at debate. You fail to understand that it is possible for someone -- for you, even -- to a) be wrong; and b) be proven wrong to his or her own satisfaction.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Do you believe that Aris criticized OSC for judging JKR on character traits which he cannot know about without extensive personal experience?
Do you believe that Aris criticized OSC for things which he, Aris, cannot know without extensive (or even some) personal experience?
"You are a woman, and therefore dishonest, impure, and unclean! I must kill you now!" "Get back, you evil man! How can you claim to know the state of my soul?" "You don't know me well enough to call me evil, you hypocritical sow!"
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Ooo! Can I be the hypocritical sow?
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
I LOVE how upset people can get at a total stranger just over an essay! What really gets me is, if they didn't hold him in any sort of esteem, they wouldn't care WHAT he said. You can think he's wrong, or you can think he's right. (Personally, on this Rowling thing, I think he's right. She's only one SHORT step below Lucas at the moment, and this law suit may just push her over the top - btw, I like Potter and Star Wars). However, you don't get THIS fired up over someone you consider to be an inconsequencial idiot saying something. Thus, you have to admit you think his intellect has prowess by the very fact that it so deeply offends you that he holds these views.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
It's not that he holds those views. It's the way he presents them that is getting under my skin.
Posted by Ish (Member # 11579) on :
quote: This, Ish, is why I don't think you're actually any good at debate. You fail to understand that it is possible for someone -- for you, even -- to a) be wrong; and b) be proven wrong to his or her own satisfaction.
I didn't say it was impossible for me to BE wrong, I just said it was impossible for you to get me to believe I am wrong. When a human being, albeit a stubborn human being believes something, and feels strongly about it, there is rarely anything another person (such as you) could say that would make them believe that are wrong.
And THAT is why I don't particularly like your style of debate (though you may be a good debator), because you fail to understand the nuances of the human language and take everything at first glance. Without making sure you are reading properly.
By the way, I feel like I am in a HS or even College debate round right now... but it's lasting forever ( a good thing) and I'm getting to mention all the little things you never seem to have time for...
You are all very interesting to debate with I must say.
Oh, and by the by, sorry my post wasn't concise enough for you, I just felt like the whole essay was worth discussing, not just a few sentences that contained words people didn't like. You shouldn't say the steak is bad just because you don't like that fatty part on the side.
*shrugs* but I digress
~Ish
Posted by CRash (Member # 7754) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: CRash, I've become very tired of sifting through OSC's bile. What points did he make that you found interesting or particularly worthy of consideration?
Mostly that books of "scholarly comment" certainly allow room for quotations from original material, that Rowling has in fact used the Lexicon (in web form) previously for convenience, and the practice of prosecuting one's own fanbase probably won't earn you any brownie points. All pretty valid arguments.
quote:Originally posted by Ish: CRash - All of your "Quotations" were taken out of context. People need to learn to finish READING before the throw there arms up in disgust.
Oh, believe me, I did read the whole thing. I didn't provide those quotes to present OSC's points, but rather his inflammatory word choice, and in that lens I think they were all the context I needed. If you've been a HS debater (oh yes, I share that shame), you probably know how one's choice of each word can completely alter an entire argument. As manji points out, there aren't just two options: wimp and rabid.
A writer like OSC can appreciate the power of words, and so in this case I was struck by how recklessly he tongue-lashed Rowling. It degraded the level of his entire review to that of a mere rant. I agree with Syn that the presentation is everything. Just like I don't enjoy going to forums where people say "OMG taht guy isSO MEAAAN!!!! DX", I don't like reading reviews accusing any person of being a "crock", "evil-witch", or "coward" ad nauseum.
quote:Originally posted by Ish: You shouldn't say the steak is bad just because you don't like that fatty part on the side.
Nope, but when every other bite is grease, it just makes the steak a little harder to swallow. Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:And THAT is why I don't particularly like your style of debate (though you may be a good debator), because you fail to understand the nuances of the human language and take everything at first glance. Without making sure you are reading properly.
Really? You think I'm not nuanced enough for you?
In all seriousness, I think you want to examine your use of language. Consider your last post, which contained the following argument:
1) It is difficult (bordering on impossible) to convince a sufficiently stubborn person of their error. 2) Therefore, because it lacks an awareness of nuance, I do not like your style of debate.
What are you saying, here? How does #1 produce #2? Is there some "nuance" here that causes the first claim to actually lead to the second, or are they as unrelated as they appear?
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
You know there's something wrong with what Nunki said in the OP if Hatrack comes together to actually defend one of OSC's non-fiction pieces.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Perhaps she was a bit rude too, but, if you throw vitriol at people, you get some of it back.
Which is to say, he started it.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
"He started it."
Do you think that justifies responding to him in a similarly uncivil manner?
Posted by manji (Member # 11600) on :
I managed to find a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and compared the entries in that book to the ones in the Lexicon. In those cases, it seems to me that Vander Ark summarizes the details as presented in Fantastic Beasts without adding any original commentary. For example, see lethifold, manticore, etc. He does not, however, outright copy the entries wholesale.
I can see the value in a Harry Potter reference work. But Fantastic Beasts is already a reference work, and not part of the Harry Potter septology. Those entries, at least, should be removed.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: "He started it."
Do you think that justifies responding to him in a similarly uncivil manner?
No, but I can't really blame them. It's not just this article either. It's several others.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Do you believe that Aris criticized OSC for judging JKR on character traits which he cannot know about without extensive personal experience?
Where are you getting this from?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:You know there's something wrong with what Nunki said in the OP if Hatrack comes together to actually defend one of OSC's non-fiction pieces.
How so? There have always been people on Hatrack who have defended OSC's non-fiction pieces. He's insulted them for it, but they've still always been around.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:Do you believe that Aris criticized OSC for judging JKR on character traits which he cannot know about without extensive personal experience?
Where are you getting this from?
What do you mean?
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:You know there's something wrong with what Nunki said in the OP if Hatrack comes together to actually defend one of OSC's non-fiction pieces.
How so? There have always been people on Hatrack who have defended OSC's non-fiction pieces. He's insulted them for it, but they've still always been around.
I don't recall OSC ever criticizing people who defended his non-fiction pieces. When did he do that?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I believe he words were something along the lines that the people who defend him don't seem to have considered their positions anywhere near as well as he had, or something to that effect. I think Dag probably has better recall of it, as, if I remember correctly, he was a little cheesed off by this.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R:
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:Do you believe that Aris criticized OSC for judging JKR on character traits which he cannot know about without extensive personal experience?
Where are you getting this from?
What do you mean?
Where are you getting that Aris said this?
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Aris said:
quote:I am stunned at how EASILY and how RUDELY, both OSC and you pass such harsh judgments on someone you've probably never meant, whose motives you're only guessing at (with your superior intellect and all) -- you two are basically committing every sin of elitism that OSC condemned on Barack, except in your case it's even worse, as you're not commenting on statistics of populations but rather on one specific person's character.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Yeah, and that fits in with what you said because...
I think you are missing a whole ton of detail.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
What do you think I said, Squicky? And why do you think it matters so much?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I think you've said that Aris criticized OSC for judging JKR on character traits which he cannot know about without extensive personal experience and that Aris criticized OSC for things which he, Aris, cannot know without extensive (or even some) personal experience.
I also think you called Aris a hypocrite. Neither of these seems fair or correct to me.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
I think it's fair to say that OSC criticized JKR for things that he, OSC, cannot know about without personal experience with JKR.
I think it's fair to say that Aris criticized OSC for things that he, Aris, cannot know about without personal experience with OSC.
I think that Aris is being hypocritical. I do not think that being hypocritical is a terrible thing. It's not desirable, certainly; but there are worse faults.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:I think it's fair to say that OSC criticized JKR for things that he, OSC, cannot know about without personal experience with JKR.
Yes, but you're wrong. What he actually said is very different from this. The statement that you quoted is pretty clear on this.
You are pretending that he said something that is superficially similar to what he actually said so that you can construct your hypocrisy insult. That's why I think it is a good example of a strawman argument.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
I think my interpretation is spot on. And it's a terrible example of a strawman argument.
It might be a good example of redirection or misdirection-- seeing as how the conversation has now turned away from arguing about the appropriateness of OSC's style of arguing to different interpretations of Aris' post; but strawman?
Nah. I don't think you've justified your reasoning at all, Squicky.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Aris in no way said that all judgements made about people need to come from personal experience. From what he said, even OSC's rude, abusive statements of JKR could legitimately be made without knowing her. That wasn't the nature of the criticism.
He's even followed up with a response point this out, which you seem to have ignored. If you are actually being honest here, you might do well to go back and reread it.
Aris criticized OSC for the easiness and rudeness of the harsh judgement he made without seemingly having any sort of justification for them. As he pointed out, his judgement was not particularly harsh or rude and the idea that OSC has a problem with gay people isn't exactly unsuportable. It should also be noted that Aris's statements were far less absolute or declarative than OSC's.
The nature of things here is not what can and cannot be said or judged, but rather the appropriate judgements that can be made with certain levels and types of knowledge.
Posted by Jeorge (Member # 11524) on :
*grins*
I'm reading all this "he said/she said", and in the midst of trying to figure out who is saying what to whom, all I can think is...
"You can't answer what I said, so you're going to talk about my saying it."
And 10 points to everyone who knows where that's from. Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Aris in no way said that all judgements made about people need to come from personal experience.
Aha. Do you think that I said that he did?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
No.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
I'm not following you.
I'm going to drop this conversation. It's too much of an investment and not a whole heck of a lot of return.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Looks like Card's essay has been slashdotted.
Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jeorge: *grins*
I'm reading all this "he said/she said", and in the midst of trying to figure out who is saying what to whom, all I can think is...
"You can't answer what I said, so you're going to talk about my saying it."
And 10 points to everyone who knows where that's from.
I've never used Google Book Search before but it's pretty impressive.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Threads: I've never used Google Book Search before but it's pretty impressive.
Indeed. Not as good at correctly IDing books as WorldCat, but very good at finding text inside books -- for those books whose authors have enabled that ability.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Shakespeare's already out of copyright.
I was asking for a comparison, not implying that there was a good precedent.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: [QUOTE] Aris, however, called OSC down for making a judgment about JKR which he couldn't know; Aris also made judgments about OSC that cannot be known.
Thus, hypocrisy.
But Scott, you know very well that we all make judgments about each other and others based on what we believe we know. This really IS a matter of degree- Aris thinks she has the evidence to support the assertion, and she thinks OSC does NOT have the evidence to support his.
At a certain point, we have to take for granted that some of the conclusions drawn are going to have to be provisional, but when you consider that OSC's column is less of a dialog than this forum, his burden of scrutiny is much higher, and his rights as mind-reader should be, in my opinion, much more limited. He also initiated the dialog with an apparent aim in mind, to trash JKR, and thus his burden of proof should be even higher.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by manji: [QB Why are these the only two choices? [/QB]
Becaaaaauuuuseee. That way Ish wins.
Edit: It does seem that OSC is spiraling out more and more with the vitriol. It feels like it won't be that long before the ax comes down from somewhere and some influential voice gets really pissed- I've seen it happen before and almost go somewhere.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: I think it's fair to say that OSC criticized JKR for things that he, OSC, cannot know about without personal experience with JKR.
I think it's fair to say that Aris criticized OSC for things that he, Aris, cannot know about without personal experience with OSC.
I would love to know how you do form opinions. You certainly have them. I'm amazed.
Posted by Jeorge (Member # 11524) on :
OSC puzzles me - I don't think there are many writers alive today who understand better how to engage an audience in a story. But for someone who seems to have such a remarkable ability for writing fiction, his nonfiction (i.e. reviews and commentaries) don't show that ability to engage in a way that's productive.
It seems to me that his commentaries will produce a couple different audience reactions:
1. For the choir (those who agree with him), it might produce a chuckle, a wink and a nod.
2. For those who disagree with him, his commentaries produce a sense of vehement outrage, but will do nothing to persuade.
I find it hard to believe that Card, who seems to understand the written word so well, doesn't realize these are the effects he's having, and if he does realize it, I have to wonder who his intended audience is, and what he hopes to accomplish.
Of course, I've left out the "on the fence" audience, and maybe his style of writing will persuade them, but I even have doubts about that.
Posted by Jeorge (Member # 11524) on :
I should add that I don't think my previous remarks hold true for things like reviewing a restaurant or a supermarket or music; it's when he's writing about things that he feels very passionately about, or he knows that there's a large population that feels very passionately in the other direction that his writing style takes a shift in unproductive directions.
Posted by Nato (Member # 1448) on :
I remember being sad when OSC's publishers cracked down on the group that was making the Homeworld mod to recreate the simulator "game".
He said then that if any unauthorized use of the copyrighted material that he let slide could be used as a precedent to make him let all infringement slide...
In both this case and Rowling's recent protest, something of value was prevented from entering the culture in the name of protecting the copyright. Neither of the publishers ever created and offered such a product themselves, so the result is we have never been able to use the little dr. against virtual buggers and Harry Potter fans don't get their Lexicon. And I know how much some Harry Potter fans love that kind of minutia. It is a shame that the authors are stamping out this kind of added value.
Giving away a little control over your work certainly involves a balance with the amount of value that can be added, but I think it is important for authors to think about. You do have the option of letting your fans interact with your work in the many new ways that the Internet makes possible. Fans love doing this. Sure there will be some pretty poorly written Ender fan-erotica that you couldn't demand gets deleted, but people will not have any difficulty separating that from the true canon you have written.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Um....Harry Potter fans will get their Lexicon. That's actually why she's currently suing.
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
Synesth - how ELSE is he supposed to present his views?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Now that this "story" has hit slashdot and digg, the overall reaction on the innernets appears to be the equivalent of a gigangic eye-rolling smiley directed at Card.
The highlighted insightful posts on /. make that clear enough before you even read the digg'd responses.
.. oh well, the internet amuses again.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: Synesth - how ELSE is he supposed to present his views?
Presenting views is one thing. Being outright rude on the other hand.
It's just not polite.
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
Synesthesia - maybe he thinks she doesn't deserve polite treatment in print. It once again brings us back to the point - why do YOU care what he rights? If you don't think that what he rights is in any way valid, then you would just ignore him. After all, there are TONS of sites all over the internet that say terrible things about just about every person alive. Do you bother to respond to all of THEM?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
DDDaysh, I'm not sure what you're getting at. I mean, it's obvious that Syne cares more about what OSC says -- for good and for ill -- than what Random Webizen #100427 says precisely because she respects him more than she respects Random Webizen #100427. So?
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
It doesn't mean he has to add to any of that. He's a smart man and a good writer. Surely he can come up with a better way to denounce her than resorting to name-calling and mud slinging. Why add to the fray? It just creates chaos, not intelligent useful conversation.
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"...Random Webizen #10042..."
I'm tempted to make a username of this.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Scott R:
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky:
quote:You know there's something wrong with what Nunki said in the OP if Hatrack comes together to actually defend one of OSC's non-fiction pieces.
How so? There have always been people on Hatrack who have defended OSC's non-fiction pieces. He's insulted them for it, but they've still always been around.
I don't recall OSC ever criticizing people who defended his non-fiction pieces. When did he do that?
I vaguely recall a rather chilling post he made, maybe three years ago. A rather long one, and in it, iirc, he was rather insulting to his own defenders. I would have no idea where to start in digging up that post, but it was, at the time, a "belief statement," which TomDavidson argued with OSC about. I could be totally wrong, but there is a glimmer of that memory now.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by DDDaysh: Synesthesia - maybe he thinks she doesn't deserve polite treatment in print. It once again brings us back to the point - why do YOU care what he rights? If you don't think that what he rights is in any way valid, then you would just ignore him. After all, there are TONS of sites all over the internet that say terrible things about just about every person alive. Do you bother to respond to all of THEM?
Again, Daysh, you trot out the weakest possible defense of OSC. This is the kind of facile debate and intellectual dishonesty that, ironically, OSC hates the very most, because any of the people you are trying to "reason" with do a better job of articulating OSC's position than you do, and would be far more equipped to understand him than you have appeared to be.
An aside: it's "writes." I don't know of a national variant for that spelling.
First off, we have it established that OSC has the right to say what he wants within the liberties afforded him by the first amendment. You have taken this a step too far in your thinking however– this right does not afford him a freedom from criticism. In fact, this right is bound up with the backlash. Synesth, and many others, are fans of OSC, and have enjoyed, as you have not, many interactions with him through this forum. They read his strong language and vitriol, and they feel the need to respond and to communicate with the audience they know is seeing the same thing. That is why this forum is here, among many reasons.
You state the assumption that synesth or others believe that what he says, thinks, writes, etc, is totally invalid. This is wrong. These people find that there are parts of his discourse which are dishonest, which may be based on poor motivations, and which may themselves be invalid or misleading to other readers. That does not make his opinions totally invalid, or lacking in any value. On the contrary, these posters respond here because they believe that this is the most useful place for the discussion, and because they believe that OSC has the potential and the ability to be very relevant and to have valid opinions.
If they did not believe this, then they would not be here, and you would not be asking them WHY they are here.
Go ask a smoker why they smoke, and you will not get a satisfactory answer, because if you do not smoke, the benefits are necessarily foreign to you. Do you then subscribe to the collective stupidity that states that smoking is a disgusting habit that people do for NO REASON? I agree it's disgusting, but I always did it because I liked it- it did something for me.
So please, Daysh, think of us all as smokers. Yes, all this bandying about of ideas and argument and opinions other than your own is all very stressful and difficult and unfair. You'd love us all to stop thinking, to stop piping up, to stop arguing, to just go with the flow, just have fun, just loosen up, just agree, or shut up and find something better to do. But we can't stop, sadly, we're addicted. But at least we know why. Why are you here? To agree with everything and question nothing? Does that fulfill you?
Are you a small goldfish in a large bowl, content with the space this situation affords you for relaxation?
Posted by DF2506 (Member # 6847) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Eh, I think it's reasonable to assume OSC's reaction would have been different in that scenario. After all, OSC has said he's reacting to the Dumbledore thing because he thinks it smells of PC. I can't think of a similar way to construe the hypothetical claim that Dumbledore is Mormon, so I imagine the reaction would be quite different.
Of course, it's a lame point. If A led to X, B (being different from A) would have led to something else, which we'll call Z. So what?
I noticed something here and I'm sorry if someone else said this, but:
I can totally see OSC reacting the same way if J.K. suddenly came out and said that Dumbledore was a Mormon AFTER the book came out. Here's what OSC said in his article about Dumbledore being gay:
" It's like her stupid, self-serving claim that Dumbledore was gay. She wants credit for being very up-to-date and politically correct -- but she didn't have the guts to put that supposed "fact" into the actual novels, knowing that it might hurt sales. What a pretentious, puffed-up coward. When I have a gay character in my fiction, I say so right in the book. I don't wait until after it has had all its initial sales to mention it."
Basically, OSC is saying that she didn't have the GUTS to put Dumbledore being the gay in the book because she thought it would hurt sales (and it might have). And that she only said it AFTER the book was out!
Well, I think the same thing would have been true if she had Dumbledore as a Mormon. When OSC has a Mormon character, he lets you know. Rowling announcing after the fact that Dumbledore was Mormon would have gotten the same reaction from OSC I believe. He would have thought that she didn't have the guts to make Dumbledore a Mormon.
Now, I don't want to offend anyone and I'm sorry if I do, but there are a lot of people out there who have the wrong idea about Mormons. I know I did until I learned that OSC was Mormon. Mormons just didn't seem as "mainstream" as other religons and this is coming from someone who isn't in any of those "mainstream" religons (I believe in God, but I don't prescribe to any "religon").
I think Dumbledore being Mormon would have been conversational (look at what a big deal was made of Mitt Romey being Mormon). Maybe not as much as Dumbledore being Gay, but close. OSC would have seen that she wasn't brave enough to release that bit of info before the book came out. He would have been unhappy with it.
And btw, you'll notice earlier OSC said he used Gay characters & he said they were gay in his books. So what he said about Rowling and Dumbledore being gay isn't because he has some kind of BIAS against gays. He just thinks that Rowling was a coward for not putting that in the books.
And personally, I have to agree. She was a coward ESPECIALLY if she knew while writing the books that Dumbledore was gay. IF thats important to the story, then put in the book! IF its not, then don't announce it. I think the main thing with the announcement was just Rowling wanting attention. The book was over and she wanted a bit of extra attention, so there you go.
(and just as aside, maybe I'm blind to the whole gay thing too, but while reading the books I did get a sense that Dumbledore was gay. I took his friend to be a person who was his old friend and someone he worked with. So ya, I was little shocked when she said he was gay, but also thought it was stupid because she really didn't set that up or even mention it in the book. Seems like it would be an important element to the character, don't you think? I almost think she made up her mind about it AFTER she was done with the series...).
Now, don't get me wrong, I like Rowling and Harry Potter. I know from reading previous OSC articles that he likes both of them too, BUT it is very cowardly of her to do this. Or at the least, attention seeking of her.
As for the rest of the article, I have to say I agree with OSC. Rowling didn't act this way when Harry Potter was GOING ON. When it was going on, she would have LOVED a book like this. It would have helped sales. And now that the series is over and she thinks she can do this better (and make more money), well, here we go with the lawsuit.
Its all about money people. Rowling has so much money and wants to make more.
I thought she said she was going to move onto something else after Potter? Doesn't see like it...maybe cause she knows she probably won't make as much as money with something else?
Personally, I have lost some respect for Rowling. She's a good writer, but she really needs to move on now that Potter is over. She needs to write something else, even if it doesn't do as well as Potter. She has a lot of money, so she CAN do something else and still survive. (maybe she has nothing else in her? )
Grow up Rowling. Move on.
DF2506
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:" It's like her stupid, self-serving claim that Dumbledore was gay. She wants credit for being very up-to-date and politically correct -- but she didn't have the guts to put that supposed "fact" into the actual novels, knowing that it might hurt sales. What a pretentious, puffed-up coward. When I have a gay character in my fiction, I say so right in the book. I don't wait until after it has had all its initial sales to mention it."
Basically, OSC is saying that she didn't have the GUTS to put Dumbledore being the gay in the book because she thought it would hurt sales (and it might have). And that she only said it AFTER the book was out!
Then what OSC is saying is directly contradicted by the reason offered by the actual author of the book, but why listen to her when you can take a more convoluted answer offered by some other dude?
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
She's going to take the money she earns for her encyclopedia and give it AWAY TO CHARITY, DUDE. She knows she doesn't need any more money so it is NOT about money. Dang. There's been dozens of HP side books. With people's unique thoughts in it, not just copying and pasting the books without siting, but actually adding something to conversations about HP. That's why she's upset about this book. Because it's not a sufficient reworking of her material. If the publishing company had just let her and the WB see the manuscript several months ago when they requested this, the suit wouldn't have happen. That makes pure sense to me, why doesn't anyone else get that?
Also, like I said before. There's all sorts of details about characters that don't make it into the book. HP could have some sort of mole on his behind. If that doesn't have anything to do with the story, like the scar on his head, it's not mentioned. Homosexuality is not really that big a deal. Gay folks don't sit around thinking about their gayness anymore than black folks think about their blackness, though if you're a gay male and someone handsome walks by then it's a reminder. Fact is, for the most part, Dumbledore and all the professors are a mystery to Harry. He does't know who they are dating except for Hagrid who is more like a friend than another teacher. At the HP event she said that Hagrid and Madame Maxine didn't work out together, and the fan who ask this question was rather dismayed about this. Should she not have announced this? She was answering a question of a fan. There's nothing cowardly about not putting every single detail about every single character. What's Dumbledore going to do, tell Harry, "I'm gay." have Harry go, "Really?" and shuffle his feet in an uncomfortable way and then Dumbledore launches into what the story is really about and that's Harry fighting Voldermort.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I, personally, sit around thinking about my white maleness constantly.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
"BUT it is very cowardly of her to do this. "
Pfft.
I agree that JKR behaved cowardly.
But most of us who think JKR to have been cowardly about the "gay" thing tended to have seen her as a coward already for not having *any* gay characters in the books.
If she's a coward *now* for not mentioning Dumbledore's homosexuality in the books, then why wasn't she a coward before the announcement for not mentioning *any* character's homosexuality?
Suddenly you get all these anti-gay people who are complaining about the supposed cowardice that most pro-gay people had already noticed.
This argument doesn't make sense -- and it's what tends to convince me that it's not the 'cowardice' that is bothering these people (or it would have bothered them already), it's the homosexuality instead.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Philip Pullman had gay angels in his story. But folks hate on him for being anti-organized religion. So you can't win. If she had say, Lupin making out with Sirius, I can't say I'd mind, but parents who think reading about gayness will turn their children gay or make them think that gauyness isn't such a bad thing will object. But I don't th ink it's cowardly though. It just isn't part of the book. But, i've read some folks who are fine with homosexualtiy gripe about the concept of him falling in love with Grindelwald or something so you can't please everyone.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris: This argument doesn't make sense -- and it's what tends to convince me that it's not the 'cowardice' that is bothering these people (or it would have bothered them already), it's the homosexuality instead.
Ehhh. Personally I'm not a Harry Potter fan either way, but this move just strikes me as annoying. An author should not be invested with a "controlling interest," for lack of a better term, in the meaning of their work for other people. I think the gay thing could be seen to some people, like OSC, as a kind of liberal "trojan horse," where the stereotypical "leftaliban" (shudder at the small-minded term), traps you into experiencing their extremist worldview... or something. It's all very hackneyed any way you slice it.
I'm just not a big fan of authors telling people what their work "really" means. And as such, OSC is a fairly massive hypocrite if that is what is bothering him. Yes, it is cowardly and annoying to straddle the fence with your ideas that way... but OSC does it too.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I, personally, sit around thinking about my white maleness constantly.
Dude, tanning cream! The glare from the fishbelly whiteness is hard on the eyes.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I, personally, sit around thinking about my white maleness constantly.
Dude, tanning cream! The glare from the fishbelly whiteness is hard on the eyes.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I, personally, sit around thinking about my white maleness constantly.
Dude, tanning cream! The glare from the fishbelly whiteness is hard on the eyes.
What better sign of genetic awesomeness than the fact that a mere 15 minutes in the sun is enough to bake layers off my epidermis?
Without pasty white guys like me, there would be no tanning cream industry. Think about that.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:And btw, you'll notice earlier OSC said he used Gay characters & he said they were gay in his books. So what he said about Rowling and Dumbledore being gay isn't because he has some kind of BIAS against gays.
In fairness, OSC generally has his gay characters mention they're gay nowadays only to add pathos to their decision to not have sex with people of the same gender.
quote:IF thats important to the story, then put in the book! IF its not, then don't announce it.
It wasn't important to the story. But it was the answer to a question a fan asked at a session specifically about answering questions from fans.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:And btw, you'll notice earlier OSC said he used Gay characters & he said they were gay in his books. So what he said about Rowling and Dumbledore being gay isn't because he has some kind of BIAS against gays.
Tom is making sense. Also HAVE YOU EVEN READ some of his articles about homosexuality? Like the one on gay marriage?
GAH!
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html See? Dang this article pisses me off so much. For one thing, having a stigma towards single unwed mothers is extremely unhealthy. Even if single unwed mothers are co-ersed into placing their children for adoption because of this false concept that a child is ALWAYS better off with a two parent home than with their biological mother who genuinely wants to parent, it can have a horrible effect on both the birthmother and the child. Not to mention the adoptive parents. Just look at the baby scoop era and the pain people effected by it have suffered. It's just not right to constantly stigmatize people in the name of morality whwen a child is much better with one loving parent or two parents of the same sex than parents of the opposite sex who are unhealthy. He should really read Alice Miller and what she has to say. Homosexuality isn't destroying society. There's all these other factors that have been engrained in society for centuries that hurt it even more, including some so-called tradition values. dang it, it's just not that simple!
I need to never, ever read another article by this guy again if I want to be sane and happy.
[ May 04, 2008, 02:00 PM: Message edited by: Synesthesia ]
Posted by steven (Member # 8099) on :
"In fairness, OSC generally has his gay characters mention they're gay nowadays only to add pathos to their decision to not have sex with people of the same gender."
I can only think of one gay character, that one guy in the Homecoming series, and I thought he was used mainly to show how someone with gay tendencies should behave.
[ May 04, 2008, 03:28 PM: Message edited by: steven ]
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: "In fairness, OSC generally has his gay characters mention they're gay nowadays only to add pathos to their decision to not have sex with people of the same gender."
I can only think of one gay character, that one guy in the Homecoming series, and I thought he was used mainly to show how someone with gay tendencies should behave.
I haven't read that book yet, but...
Why should a person who is gay give up a relationship with a person of the same sex when it really doesn't damage society even 1/4 as much as all of the traumatized children folks should be caring for instead of caring about gay people. Reforming the foster care system comes to mind.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
In Homecoming, the society was made up of like 6 couples and so it was pretty important that anyone who was coming along was willing to take part in repopulating the new world. The gay character also did not have to give up a relationship as he was single at the time. In a situation where there is limited number of couples to repopulate, then I think it is very appropriate to expect everyone to toss their genetic makeup into the mix. Of course, in that case, monogomy is probably not the best option, though depending on the groups involved, there might be an argument for it.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by steven: "In fairness, OSC generally has his gay characters mention they're gay nowadays only to add pathos to their decision to not have sex with people of the same gender."
I can only think of one gay character, that one guy in the Homecoming series, and I thought he was used mainly to show how someone with gay tendencies should behave.
The character Anton in the Shadow series is gay. First he tells Carlotta that he was encouraged to be gay by the government because they were trying to control the population. He characterizes his gay lifestyle as bereft of real human intimacy- intimating that homosexual relationships are inherently inferior to heterosexual ones in terms of closeness and responsibility.
Then later in the series he gets married to a woman with a bunch of kids to "weave into the pattern" of life and make some contribution to humanity. He then happily notes that he has conceived a child "in the natural way." This is taken as a great personal achievement. So yeah, I'd call that pretty unsympathetic to homosexuality- but conveniently constructed so as to appear understanding and forgiving.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Like a man can't be with a man he loves and contribute to humanity. *mutters angrily* As if gay people can't have real human intimacy. I imagine it would be difficult being a gay man who was strictly gay and trying to be intimate with a female. It would be unature to some, and very unhealthy for the woman as well.
He should read what Rev. White? had to say about it.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
So... I'll rephrase my earlier question then...
Has OSC ever written a book with gay characters that didn't end up married to people of the opposite gender?
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Well, there was the Songmaster, but he got really old and I think he had some sort of implant that meant he wasn't allowed to have sex with anyone without pain and agony.
Posted by CRash (Member # 7754) on :
Yeah, and look what happened to the bisexual(?)character Josif in that book. Not only did he end up in a happy relationship with a woman, when he attempted one with a man he had his genetailia mutilated and subsequently committed suicide. I can't really think of any gay characters that OSC has written that have fulfilling relationships with members of the same gender. So the answer to your question, Aris, is pretty much no.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Well, Rowling's gay character didn't end up in a fulfilling relationship with a man, either. So they're even. Posted by sylvrdragon (Member # 3332) on :
As long as the world population is 6.5 Billion+ and rising exponentially, I will maintain that any system that limits reproduction is a GOOD thing. Homosexuality falls nicely into that category.
I can't actually think of a single objective reason to be against homosexuality; outside of a colonization situation, that is. Everything I've ever heard against it has human insecurity or religion at the base of it, neither of which I consider sufficient reason to persecute a growing genre of people. But then, freedom of speech is good, and freedom of religion is necessary. As such, it is up to the people LISTENING to change the way they think, not the people preaching.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
sylvrdragon- it's quaint the way you hearken back to 20th century fears of overpopulation and chaos.
despite popular belief, there is no real danger of the human population "rising exponentially." Actually the word you're looking for is "geometrically," but the human population is not destined to grow geometrically forever.
Basically, there is no historical precedent for overpopulation because overpopulation, in the strictest sense, is impossible.
If a group becomes overpopulated, its population either moves, or drops. The drop in population occurs when the size of the population and its technical resourcefulness allow it to shift from subsistence to production based economies. In western Europe and Britain, native born populations have been falling by around 1 percent a year for the past 15 years or so- they would have dropped much sooner if they had not had to recover from the World Wars.
The U.S population only continues to grow because we continue to produce WAY more food resources than we need. There is a misconception that 300 million people in the U.S. makes it crowded. In fact, the problem with our population is the inefficiency of our resource use, and that problem will actually be ameliorated by our rising population- more competition= conservation and innovation. Also, the notion that we will become "crowded" is ludicrous.
Britain has about a 5th the population of the US, with a land area of 209,331 square km. The US has a land area of 9,161,923 SQ KM, making it 43 times the size of Britain all told, with a population density about nine times lower, and even lower when it is considered that most of Britain's population lives in England. One could speculate that the US population might reach 2 or 3 Billion before we actually start running out of arable land- disregarding the problem of resource use, which will limit the population long before arable land is ever exhausted.
As the standards of living increase, the need to be educated, and the demands for service and creative work increase as well. As people find it economically beneficial to delay family-making, the population levels off, and may fall slightly until the benefits of family making increase, or immigrants fill the working class, and the native born achieve more education than their parents.
All of the evidence shows that as populations increase, fewer people are needed to feed this population, and so the process of mechanization and industrialization lead first to a higher standard of living, and finally to a population plateau- the world will not be overrun.
[ May 05, 2008, 04:04 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by manji (Member # 11600) on :
That certainly sounds interesting and logical, Orincoro, but are your statements in any way backed up by facts? Preferably within clickable range. I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious to know more.
Posted by sylvrdragon (Member # 3332) on :
The term "Overpopulation" doesn't particularly have a fixed definition. It isn't limited to living space, or even necessarily resources (although resources are a major factor). First off, when you say overpopulation is "Impossible", exactly what do you mean? If you mean eradication via overpopulation, then yeah, that's so improbable that it might as well be called impossible.
I understand that "Overpopulation" is a self correcting problem, hence why people say it's impossible. The point I'm trying to make however, is that the "Correcting" is what we're trying to avoid. The way overpopulation corrects itself is by famine, disease, war, and other such nasty side effects of too many people with ever-lessening resources. There is no set line at which you can say "Ok, that's it, we're overpopulated." Instead, their are DEGREES of it. Right now, we don't feel it too terribly bad, at least in the US. As the population rises, the aforementioned catastrophes WILL increase in frequency and severity.
Also, a little anecdotal trend that I've noticed: As the population rises, the value of human life seems to be dropping. As we are barraged daily with stories of terrible tragedies across the world, we tend to react less and less. It is only a matter of time before society as a whole is so desensitized to death that nobody even takes note anymore.
Oh, and I definitely did mean Exponentially. The growth at each interval is based upon the total from the interval before it, and so on.
If you take nothing else from this post, I implore you, please just watch at least the first 2-3 parts of this video (it has 8 parts total, and I think that you'll take the most away from it if you watch the whole thing, but I can't expect people to give up 75 minutes of their time just for me to make a point). It explains everything I've said far better than I could without straight plagiarizing it.
quote:Originally posted by manji: That certainly sounds interesting and logical, Orincoro, but are your statements in any way backed up by facts? Preferably within clickable range. I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious to know more.
Alot of the information is physical sociology and anthro texts I've actually had to read. I am remembering a very good google video by a danish sociologist that dealt with population growth in a very dynamic illustrated presentation, I can try and dig that up from several years ago. I believe it started out linked here at hatrack.
Overpopulation on wikipedia seems to be a good article, although wikipedia can be misleading because it is going to talk about the effects of large populations and not about the concept of "overpopulation" in a meta-analytical way. For instance, the article sights the fact that Tokyo is overpopulated, and that Africa is becoming overpopulated, but does not address the fact that in Tokyo people are living to a higher standard, and that in Africa "overpopulation" has to do with the availability of clean water and other resources that would be available in a more developed region of similar density.
Most importantly the wiki article is unlikely to point out that problems of resource management are the primary motivators for either innovation, immigration, or reform. The idea that an increasing population, with its inherent problems, is necessarily detrimental to the worldwide mean living standards is simply not consistent with history. That's all very qualified on my part and not very quantifiable.
The thing is you can state an army of figures to prove that population growth is both a negative and positive thing, but from where I'm sitting, I can see that over the last 5 centuries, population growth has accompanied a rising living standard. You can point out that population growth has had a negative effect in China and Africa, but only because temporary influences retarded the progress of educational systems, mechanization, competition, and everything else that SHOULD accompany population growth. And we're seeing quite plainly now that this state of affairs in China was necessarily temporary, and that we will soon be competing at a much higher level.
Edit: I'll quote an essay by economist Walter Williams, who is referenced on Wikipedia as well:
quote: Planet Earth is loaded with room. We could put the world's entire population into the United States. Doing so would make our population density 1,531 people per square mile. That's a far lower population density than what now exists in New York (11,440), Los Angeles (9,126) and Houston (7,512). The entire U.S. population could move to Texas and each family of four would enjoy 2.9 acres of land. If the entire world's population moved to Texas, California, Colorado and Alaska, each family of four would enjoy nine-tenths of an acre of land.
So-called overpopulation problems are really a result of socialistic government practices that reduce the capacity of people to educate, clothe, house and feed themselves. Poor countries are rife with agricultural restrictions, export and import controls, restrictive licensing and price controls, not to mention gross human rights abuses that encourage their most productive people to emigrate. The most promising anti-poverty tool for poor people and poor countries is personal liberty.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote: The way overpopulation corrects itself is by famine, disease, war, and other such nasty side effects of too many people with ever-lessening resources. There is no set line at which you can say "Ok, that's it, we're overpopulated." Instead, their are DEGREES of it. Right now, we don't feel it too terribly bad, at least in the US. As the population rises, the aforementioned catastrophes WILL increase in frequency and severity.
I don't think you can support that assertion. There has never, to my knowledge, been a time in history where the population of a dominant society was faced with the sudden, catastrophic diminution of resources. In your view, we continue to grow in population and out resources continue to diminish. This view is inherently flawed: as our population grows, we continue to expand our ability to gather resources of all kinds, including intellectual, technological, and raw material resources. There is no historical precedent to indicate that this will ever change. And you can mark my words, when resource pressure related to oil shortages becomes grave enough, the world may fight for resources, for a time, but ultimately the pressure will lead to a discovery of new resources, and the institutionalization of usage reform.
Think about this: the world is vanishingly close to the moment that solar energy will become our primary source of energy. When that happens- when the benefit of launching orbital-tether platforms with solar arrays in space a kilometer wide is recognized by the world, and can be done safely, it will happen practically overnight. Think about the Manhattan Project- we went from a theory to execution in the time it took to build the bomb; it wasn't perfect but it worked very well. When the time comes for innovation on the world energy stage, it will happen so fast that no one will believe it. So I think the "catastrophes" you fear are bogeymen instilled in our consciousness by socialist government theories. In fact, if you think back just 70 years to WWII, you'll see that that catastrophe was not even prompted by a battle over resources, but was instead the expression of vehement nationalism that despises the notion of interdependency and fair competition.
quote: Also, a little anecdotal trend that I've noticed: As the population rises, the value of human life seems to be dropping. As we are barraged daily with stories of terrible tragedies across the world, we tend to react less and less. It is only a matter of time before society as a whole is so desensitized to death that nobody even takes note anymore.
That is anecdotal because it is not a reliably demonstrable trend. In fact I very much doubt that it is at all true, and I think it's quite the opposite of the real situation, especially in America. Instead what you are observing is a bias in the media. You are not alone in believing that the world is becoming "desensitized to death." But I ask you what America was thinking when millions of Europeans were dying in the first 5 years of WWII? They were aware that Europeans were dying in the thousands, and they did not act- the same way that today we do not act in Dar fur. Yet the Europeans dying in WWII were closer to us in culture and economy than Africa is today. We would never stand idle at the invasion of western European nation today- so how desensitized are we?
If you examine your all too common appeal to this idea, you'll see why it doesn't stand up. Are we less sensitive today about plane crashes because we hear about them on the news, or because the people involved are not people we know? How would you feel if you did know someone who died in a plane crash? Are you telling me that you would care less because you are familiar with the concept of crashes?
And why do we call for the government to intervene in our healthcare situation today, blaming it for the fact that HIV is on the rise in Africa? I would suggest that 100 years ago, we would not have had the public support for medical assistance to foreign nations that we do today. But those activities are not exciting, they are not newsworthy.
The media always has, and always will draw our attention to our failings, and we will always feel callous towards the problems the media presents, simply because they are the problems that are easy to see, and difficult to fix. This is why the media loves the concepts of racism, sexism, class struggle, poverty, inequality of all kinds, and disease and tragedy, because they are always happening, and are easily portrayed and ubiquitously understood. The attention of the media will be drawn to the problems that the media know how to cover- that are eminently "depictable." These will be problems that persist, problems that have many causes and many incomplete solutions, problems that are reflected in manifold aspects of the observable world, and will never really go away as long as people exist- so it's a wonder you feel that we are becoming more callous.
But I can tell you that people have been saying that through human history. It has been a constant refrain, and it's evident in the writings of the philosophers of any age, and any land. And yet today our standard of living is higher than ever in history. Our lifespan is longer on average than any period of our history. Our access to information and systems of communication are orders of magnitude greater than they were only decades ago. So what exactly has gotten worse?
quote: Oh, and I definitely did mean Exponentially. The growth at each interval is based upon the total from the interval before it, and so on.
Then you are mistaken. The population does not and cannot grow exponentially, it grows geometrically. A little math to make my point. If the population started with just one couple, and grew exponentially over 80 generations (very roughly 2,000 years worth of growth) then the population would reach a Trillion Trillion people.
If you started with the population of today, and projected exponential growth, in 25 generations (just 750 years), you would end up with over 200,000,000,000,000,000 people, or 200 quadrillion people- more than could fit standing shoulder to shoulder across the surface of the earth.
Exponential growth is not possible over multiple generations because this would not account for the fact that all humans are distant relatives. Lines of growth intersect, so even as families of two have four children, those four children will not amongst themselves alone each have four more- they will have partners of distant relative branches. For the population to grow exponentially, we would all have to split like single celled organisms.
And aside from that fact, there is no evidence to show that populations do grow beyond their means. As I stated before, western European's native born populations DROP every year- their birthrates are going down by 1% a year, and have been for some years. Why do you think that is, if the populations is bound to grow "exponentially?"
You may be confusing certain facts and trends with others. In the middle east for instance, the population HAS doubled in just the past few generations. But it has doubled because of an increase in the number of live births per couple, and this was a response to growing living standards and medical knowledge. This does not indicate that the population in those regions will double again- that would require a whole new set of circumstances.
[ May 06, 2008, 02:48 AM: Message edited by: Orincoro ]
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:I don't think you can support that assertion. There has never, to my knowledge, been a time in history where the population of a dominant society was faced with the sudden, catastrophic diminution of resources.
Then your knowledge appears to be incomplete. May I suggest that you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse", which gives multiple historical examples of precisely this situation?
Or were you being highly specific with the suddenness and catastrophism? Just because a disaster is slow doesn't make it less disastrous.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Then you are mistaken. The population does not and cannot grow exponentially, it grows geometrically. A little math to make my point. If the population started with just one couple, and grew exponentially over 80 generations (very roughly 2,000 years worth of growth) then the population would reach a Trillion Trillion people.
Depends on your constants, actually from the following paragraph I think you're under the misapprehension that exponential growth is necessarily with a rate of 2 (i.e. doubling). An exponential growth function with a rate of 1.01 on a population of 1000 would yield only roughly 2216 people after 80 generations, yet that is still exponential growth.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Orinoco (or others): Would you be willing to help me understand something? I am confused as to how there can be huge populations of starving children dying in under-privileged countries. I mean, I can understand how there would be one generation of it, if some catastrophe caused a sudden drop in resources. But wouldn't a generation or two of this cause a much lower population and less competition for resources? Or am I misunderstanding something fundamental? It's just something that has always confused me and it seems to be related to the conversation at hand.
Thanks.
Posted by sylvrdragon (Member # 3332) on :
The video I linked is actually ABOUT the exponential function. One of the first things said in the video i: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." He then proceeds to put his statement into context using newspaper articles, and research data and applying the appropriate math to them to show how people don't understand the gravity of some of the problems facing us.
It's actually a lecture given by Dr. Albert Bartlett (in front of students), Professor Emeritus from the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It really is a very interesting video.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: Orinoco (or others): Would you be willing to help me understand something? I am confused as to how there can be huge populations of starving children dying in under-privileged countries. I mean, I can understand how there would be one generation of it, if some catastrophe caused a sudden drop in resources. But wouldn't a generation or two of this cause a much lower population and less competition for resources? Or am I misunderstanding something fundamental? It's just something that has always confused me and it seems to be related to the conversation at hand.
Thanks.
The disparity in resource use and allocation throughout the world is a complex function of the interactions of the world's markets and governments.
Essentially though, and in simplified terms, the U.S. government subsidizes the production of food resources within the US in order to encourage an over-production of food that the free market would not have a reason to produce. This way, the US is ensured against famine because we produce MUCH more than we consume, and we are motivated to do it by subsidies.
But what happens to all that food that we don't eat? In order to get rid of it and recoup some benefit for us, the U.S. ships these food surpluses all over the world and sells them to other countries for less money than it takes for those countries to grow their own food.
So, as people in these regions are getting more food resources than they can produce, they slow down their production, and their standard of living increases. They have more children.
But while that is going on, the region is becoming dependent for resources upon a politically based system. The local government presents opportunities for corruption, rising tariffs, the food supplies become a bartering weapon for trade embargos, and the US may at any time withdraw the food surpluses for its own benefit, as it is currently doing to produce Ethanol fuel. This leads to a larger than it should be population with diminishing means to support itself.
When you look at those commercials about shanty towns and huge families living in abject poverty, or scenes like the refugee camps in from Rwanda, you have to remember that the people did not live in a society that naturally tended towards this condition- it was not the inevitable result of breeding. It is the unpleasant result of economic disparity that is difficult for large nations to keep from creating.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
It is worth noting that you can get feast-famine cycles in the absence of subsidies, although Western (not just US) farm subsidies are undoubtedly doing enormous harm to the African countries. If you have ten years of good harvests, people will have children - fertility increases when you're well fed, and infant mortality decreases. Then when you get two bad years, you've got a large cohort of children ages zero to ten, and they are the first to starve. Happened all the time in the past. In certain parts of America you can study it on a scale of centuries, where people would move in to a marginally arable region in a good century, their population would increase for a bit, and then El Nino would crop up or something and you'd get forty years of drought, and the population would drop like a rock, all the way to zero in some cases. (They don't necessarily all starve, at some point the survivors get the hint and move to a more fertile region, displacing the inhabitants there or being massacred or absorbed.) Then a century later the climate changes back and the cycle repeats.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
Thank you both. I was wondering if the US and other affluent countries had something to do with it. This question popped up in my mind while I was reading a nutrition textbook. Information in the margin mentioned that the US produces enough food to end 95% of malnutrition in the world, or something like that. (I just made that stat up.) It made me wonder how that would help, if all those people thrived and had more children. That got me thinking a lot about feast-famine cycles (as King of Men called it) and how you could end up with these huge starving nations. But when you realize that it IS a cycle, it makes a lot more sense. There's probably never a time when there isn't a population starving somewhere. I can see how politics, economics, and climate all work together. It's pretty sad, though.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
I like the anatomy of thread drift. This one went from an osc rant about a 'cowardly' rowling to problems of exponential population growth.
Posted by sylvrdragon (Member # 3332) on :
hehe, my specialty.
Posted by bootjes (Member # 11624) on :
a reaction to Ish. (first: I'm Dutch, so I hope i use the right words to express what I mean) You give a very logical explanation for Cards comment. By being so elaborate it looks as if you demonstrate that there is no reason to attack Card's article. It looks as if you are saying: "pure logic right? No need to argue" And though I like cranberry's, there still is something left to argue. It is in what you don't tell that shows where youre sympathies lie.
I think mr Card (btw I love his books) is generating a mood in his article. The "I'm being generous, and she's really pittifull" mood. not facts but demagougery. quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender's Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling.
and being elaborate about it. (We have read Ender so don't explain, or we didn't read it so it will not mean anything to us anyway.) Besides it is a general theme: a poor child realy being the saviour. Read books from Terry Pratchet and see how he plays with this theme's.
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The difference between us is that I actually make enough money from Ender's Game to be content, without having to try to punish other people whose creativity might have been inspired by something I wrote. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wy the need to say: I do it so much better than you?
quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rowling's hypocrisy is so thick I can hardly breathe: Prior to the publication of each novel, there were books about them that were no more intrusive than Lexicon. I contributed to one of them, and there was no complaint about it from Rowling or her publishers because they knew perfectly well that these fan/scholar ancillary publication were great publicity and actually boosted sales. ___________________________________ Now this is for me the only point he is making. Why be so mean about it?
_____________________________________ And don't forget the lawsuit by Nancy K. Stouffer, the author of a book entitled The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, whose hero was named "Larry Potter."
At that time, Rowling's lawyers called Stouffer's claim "frivolous." ________________________________________ Wy use this when you know it is not true? Because it fits the mood.
My point is: even is Card is right with his statement that Rowlings accusations do not hold, Why be so mean about it? And if people take offence of the tone that Card is using why clinicly disect the speech to tell everyone that Card is right, and completely ignore the fact that his tone is not professional but a bit childish and unnescesarilly mean?
(sorry for my spelling and use of strange words)
Posted by Ish (Member # 11579) on :
Thank you bootjes, that was a very simplistic and understanding way of debating the context of my argument.
And to some extent, I might even agree with your analysis.
WAS there a reason to rant upon a silly lexicon and the fit J.K. Rowling may have been throwing over said lexicon?
Probably not. What does HIS opinion matter on the subject? It doesn't change a darn thing! But it's still there! Why is it there? What purpose does it serve??
Oh the woes of the internet and the opinion collumn for there inexplicable ability to allow people to rant on things that they rarely have authority to rant or present opinions on in away that is portrayed as "Scholarly".
I digress to your questions of me,
The reason to be "So mean about it" was to get readers to buy papers and to log on to his website. Passion, as any tabloid or soap opera fanatic will tell you, drives sales, and sales are the reason people write columns.
The reason to extemporaneously editorialize his column was to;
#1. Eradicate common misconceptions that had been riddling the discussion
#2. Explain thought proccess that seemed to be in disregard at the time of the argument, allowing for a lot more disagreement than may have been if his words were explained a little more thoroughly.
Finally, I did not ignore the fact that he used "childish" or un-proffessional tactics in his commentary. I simply chose to utilize the already incredibly long post I made to discuss something with a little more meaning that
"Gee, I sure wish O.S.C. could be a little more poliet when he writes his columns."
Seems like a serious time-suck to me, and I do NOT encourage time-sucks, that would be like creating a thread to talk about how I wished someone would give me a million dollars, you could... but would there really be a point?
Thanks for the debate,
~Ish
Posted by bootjes (Member # 11624) on :
quote:Originally posted by Ish: Thank you bootjes, that was a very simplistic and understanding way of debating the context of my argument.
Thanks for the debate,
~Ish
thank you too.
This shows what a good debate is about IMO (i.m learning the slang). listen to each other and open up to what someone is saying. I get your meaning, and indeed: a column is a column. But still I like it when people actuly listen to each other and not just make statements. So thanks again.
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