241 thoughts on “Comments for 8/27

  1. @onyxpnina wrote:

    Chip Hitchcock: My late brother lived for about a year in Walnut Creek.

    So, you call that living? ;->

    I saved for posterity on my Web site the only version of the Wikitravel article about Walnut Creek worth reading (IMO). Some Wikitravel admin with no sense of humour quickly came by and did a joke-ectomy on the wiki’s copy, so it lasted only for a few months in 2004.

  2. Rick Moen, heh, your wiki-travel entry for Walnut Creek looks surprisingly similar to the town I grew up in, in the midwest. Except we had a large evangelical Christian college, and no bars at all — the town was dry.

  3. Cora: In other news, Brad Torgersen is white knighting MCA Hogarth.

    I note that he is calling her “another liberal”. Hogarth is a good person, based on my observations — but I would not classify her as a liberal.

  4. In other news, Brad Torgersen is white knighting MCA Hogarth.

    Isn’t it interesting to hear a call for the “good old days of civility” from a man who has spent the better part of the last two years coming up with insulting names to call people he dislikes and attacking the validity of every award won by a woman or minority in the last several years?

    Wait no. It’s not interesting. Brad is a giant hypocrite who can’t write anything on his blog that isn’t a whine (complete with the predictable “woe is me, I am so persecuted because I am a conservative Christian Randite” routine he and his buddies are so fond of throwing out there).

  5. In other news, Brad Torgersen is white knighting MCA Hogarth.

    OMG many words! Is MCA Hogarth president of Earth? Is Brad doing some kind of charity stunt with nonstop typing?

  6. @JJ

    I note that he is calling her “another liberal”. Hogarth is a good person, based on my observations — but I would not classify her as a liberal.

    I did a doubletake at that as well, because I’m pretty sure from what I could tell from her livejournal that M.C.A. Hogarth is not liberal. Also “liberal” does not equal “left”, but that’s a different debate.

    Then in the comments, someone claims that Orson Scott Card has all the right liberal opinions, he just happens to oppose same-sex marriage for religious reasons. Which so does not match what I’ve seen of OSC ever since getting on the internet.

  7. I did a doubletake at that as well, because I’m pretty sure from what I could tell from her livejournal that M.C.A. Hogarth is not liberal.

    Then in the comments, someone claims that Orson Scott Card has all the right liberal opinions, he just happens to oppose same-sex marriage for religious reasons.

    In their circles, it seems that anyone who is left of David Duke is a liberal. I recall that during Sad Puppies 2, Correia was claiming that Torgersen was a really liberal guy. Effectively, they’ve descended so far into the grip of the alt-right sphere of influence that they probably think Gary Johnson is a super liberal guy. Now Brad is telling everyone that when the SFWA Bulletin decided to discontinue the column written by Resnick and Malzberg, the SFWA was engaged in “thought control”.

  8. @Aaron:

    Brad is a giant hypocrite who can’t write anything on his blog that isn’t a whine (complete with the predictable “woe is me, I am so persecuted because I am a conservative Christian Randite” routine he and his buddies are so fond of throwing out there).

    Randite? Randinista, surely. ;->

  9. “Brad is a giant hypocrite who can’t write anything on his blog that isn’t a whine (complete with the predictable “woe is me, I am so persecuted because I am a conservative Christian Randite” routine he and his buddies are so fond of throwing out there).”

    The new Masema.

  10. Cora: in the comments, someone claims that Orson Scott Card has all the right liberal opinions

    *snort*   I’d love to see that commenter’s definition of “liberal”.

  11. @JJ – I’d love to see that commenter’s definition of “liberal”.

    Me too. However, apparently libertarians are old fashioned liberals. I’m a little flummoxed by that one.

    Also, to be fair, although I didn’t read all of it, Brad Torgerson didn’t seem to be frothing, which is a nice change.

  12. Me too. However, apparently libertarians are old fashioned liberals. I’m a little flummoxed by that one.

    ‘Liberal’ certainly has a historic sense in which it overlaps with ‘libertarian’, the sense in which, for instance, Adam Smith is a classic liberal.

    And Card does have liberal views on some issues, notably immigration – though ‘liberal on everything except same-sex marriage’ definitely doesn’t describe him.

  13. @Andrew M:

    ‘Liberal’ certainly has a historic sense in which it overlaps with ‘libertarian’, the sense in which, for instance, Adam Smith is a classic liberal.

    That’s the back-to-the-origin meaning, so far as I know, and the sense in which it’s used in neo-liberalism. Not that different from the hijacking of libertarian by the right when it was actually coined by French socialists to describe themselves. I’ll cheerfully trade them back liberal if they’ll back libertarian.

  14. “‘Liberal’ certainly has a historic sense in which it overlaps with ‘libertarian’, the sense in which, for instance, Adam Smith is a classic liberal.”

    Adam Smith was a classic liberal. Alas, his views were very, very different from the libertarians.

  15. Alas, his views were very, very different from the libertarians.

    Of course. But they still overlap.

  16. “Of course. But they still overlap.”

    Yes, but they overlap with socialdemocrats also. To call libertarians “classic liberals” and refer to Adam Smith would be a lie.

  17. My view: Libertarianism is what you get if you take classical liberalism and extend some of its ideas ad absurdum. Some libertarians like to claim that they represent classical (‘true’) liberalism, but they don’t.

    Libertarianism acts like any ideology that is extended too far, and that does not take into account actual people: it fails to work as its proponents would like it to do, even as they keep proclaiming their ideology’s – really, their own – infallibility.

  18. @John A Arkansawyer

    Not that different from the hijacking of libertarian by the right when it was actually coined by French socialists to describe themselves.

    How is it that French socialists coined an English word?

  19. Because normally French people coin French words, as in “libertaire” (first recorded “in a letter French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque wrote to mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857.”) Then, English people adapt those words into English words, as in “libertarian”.

    Except, in this case, “libertarian” is recorded in English as far back as 1789, nearly 70 years before John’s French socialists. So, my question stands. Cause if those French socialists (or communists, as the case may be) had a time machine, that would be cool.

  20. That’s an argument that English didn’t steal this word, not that there’s something strange about the French coining this word. You may have meant that this word existed in English before the time John says the French coined it–but that’s not what you said.

  21. I didn’t say that it was strange that the French coined a word. The French coin words all the time. What I said was a question — I didn’t make any statements at all in my original post.

    I questioned John’s statement that English speakers “highjacked” a French term for two reasons:
    1. English speakers invented a new English word. The etymology of “libertarian” is pretty straightforward — a combination of “liberty” (from the ancient Latin “liber”), and the suffix “-arian” (also from Latin), which had been used to modify English nouns into adjectives since the 1500s. There is nothing special about “libertarian” to suggest it came from the French.

    2. The socialist/communist movement in France is mid-1800s. Socialism didn’t even exist until 1820s or so. “Libertarian” is an English word that existed well before the movement that John says coined it.

    John’s statement, that “[It is] Not that different from the hijacking of libertarian by the right when it was actually coined by French socialists to describe themselves” is patently wrong. Rather than directly say “John’s statement is wrong, and here is why,” I asked a question that I hoped would prompt him to expand on it. That’s not what happened. (and I’ll not even get into challenging the part where he says this was done by “the right”; if you think of right and left as being on a political axis, libertarianism is generally considered to be a movement orthogonal to that axis).

    You may have meant that this word existed in English before the time John says the French coined it–but that’s not what you said.

    Good gosh, that is exactly what I said:
    “Except, in this case, “libertarian” is recorded in English as far back as 1789, nearly 70 years before John’s French socialists.”

  22. No, Bill, that’s what you said in response to me, when I questioned your response to John A, to wit;

    “How is it that French socialists coined an English word?”

    At best, you were showing off what a smartass you are. What you weren’t doing was saying that the word in English predated the French socialists John A thought had coined it. You could have, but you didn’t. I responded to what you typed, not to whatever clever thoughts and superior information was floating around in your head.

    You wished to make clear that John A. was Wrong, without sharing the information on which you based it. That’s less effective than you might think.

  23. I am genuinely shocked that on a forum full of nerds people would sometimes try to show off how clever they are. Or be reluctant to grant that someone had a point.

  24. Well, there’s that, for sure, Jim, but Bill failed, until prodded, to do the polite fannish thing, and correct the wrong fact intelligibly! 😉

  25. I had my second music theory 1 class today, and realized that I’m glad to be back with a bunch of college creative nerds again. How I’ll eventually miss college! One can relax along the axis of the group, and not worry so much about saying something too conspicuous—at least in that particular area.

    Which reminds me, I have to be sure I don’t miss the next Shakespeare group meeting. Same thing, only townies my age and older, at Barnes & Noble. The Irish jam group is the same thing, with fiddles and accordions and such. I’m still chuffed they don’t mind me playing an electronic keyboard.

    May we all find our fellow nerds.

  26. @Lis
    Odd that you think that it is polite to correct someone publicly. I really didn’t want to do that (if I had, I would have done so in my initial response to John). What I wanted to do was ask him about what he had said — leaving open the possibility that he knew something that I didn’t (and giving me a chance to learn something new), or that I had misinterpreted his statement. That’s all.

    I would have been happy to let it go at that, or to engage (politely) with John had he chosen to answer. I only said that his statement was wrong after you pushed me there.

    “You wished to make clear that John A. was Wrong”

    You’ve made assumptions about my motives that aren’t true. And also, you missed the spot where I misspelled “hijacked” as “highjacked”.

  27. “Correcting to be polite” is a fannish tradition, at least at RASFF and Making Light. Many of us here are from there, and have never seen much odd about it. The phrase goes back to, I believe, Mary Kay Kare. Of course, tact plays a large part in that, and I do not presume to rate anyone else on this quality. Please take this as a footnote, and perhaps an occasion to raise the question of whether File 770 denizens subscribe to the doctrine. Perhaps I have been assuming too much.

  28. Without going into all the history of it, “correcting to be polite” comes from an assumption that fans like to have their facts correct, and to not be unintentionally spreading inaccurate info. Viewed that way (and no, this won’t always work outside fandom), a simple, factual correction, e.g., “I don’t think that’s exactly right; the word was in use in English as early as…”, would have been, to me, polite, helpful, and interesting.

    What you actually said led me to think that you were objecting to the idea of an English word originating in French, and that’s what I was originally responding to. The info in your response to that was interesting and useful, and I wondered why you had to be prodded to divulge it…

    That you were trying to be polite by not publicly correcting John A didn’t occur to me…

    And thus we have a train wreck of mutual lack of understanding. 🙁

    My apologies. I will try to do better!

  29. Oh that’s nice. Couple years ago I was playing some of my song demos for Patrick and Teresa NH. Patrick was playing along on the guitar, even though he was hearing the songs for the first time, because he’s that good. But then came the bridge of one song, and I said, “You’re about to get screwed!” and sure enough:

    No one expects the tritone substitution!

  30. I still get thrown by diminished chords. Most of what we play at the Irish jam doesn’t get any fancier than those, at least. I’m procrastinating on my homework at this moment, which will involve counting half steps and translating to the correct interval names. Woik, woik, woik.

  31. I’ve never used a fully diminished 7th chord in a song. You are a real musician though, so they are probably child’s play for you! Remind me, what instruments do you play?

  32. Well, I play the grand piano in the living room (I love saying that), and whatever else has a keyboard on it. And recorder, on occasion. Harmonica, I guess, but who doesn’t? I was bringing my accordion to the Irish jam for a while, but the clacking of the keys was getting to me, so I went over to an electronic keyboard, which has all the awkwardness, but once it’s set up, I can play with both hands, as God intended.

    Been playing with the group for a year and a half, just about, and it’s done wonders. I feel like my musical intelligence is where it would have been 20 years ago if I’d had people to play with. So I’m ready to learn the basics—the closest thing to a theory class in my past was a jazz improv class around 1983, and some rudiments from my piano teacher a couple of years after that.

    I knew a guy for a while who’d gone through Juilliard without being able to read music. Terrific musician, with that one gap. I can read music fairly well, and now I want to fill in the gaps in improvisation and memorization.

  33. @Kip W: That’s interesting. I don”t associate piano and other keyboards with Irish music. (Accordions accepted obvs.) Are you unusual in that scene, or is this just a measure of my ignorance?

    What’s it like playing keyboards at an Irish music jam?

    For travel, I looked longingly at the Roland RD-64 recently – real piano key-action, nice voices, sub-$1,000 and less than 4′ long! But they chose the key range weirdly (from my perspective) and the Transpose function doesn’t go a full 12 half-steps* (like it does on even cheap $300 casual keyboards). Basically, to get to 64 keys they chopped off more low-end than high end. So if you want to play with your right hand mostly within an octave above Middle C – say, from A3-E5 – you often can’t double the octave in the left hand: you run out of bass notes! And if you want to reliably double the left hand, you have to move the right hand up into Tinkly-Town or else change all your voicings.

    ——————–
    *I only use Transpose to take my cheap practice keyboard I keep at the hotel near the job site down an octave for the reasons discussed above. I don’t believe in using it as a crutch. 😉 I do suspect that one can do interesting things in the way of transposing flat keys to sharp keys and vice versa to enable a different range of fingering tricks – grace notes and such – than the native key usually supports. But all my grace notes are accidental anyway…)

  34. I worried about that some, early on, but despite the fact that I was the only one playing an electronic instrument, I’ve gotten no hint that I’m anything but welcome there. The first time I came, I only had my backpack keyboard: 2-1/2 octaves of tiny keys, with two-note polyphony and no volume to speak of. Then I brought my accordion for a while, but wearied of only having one hand (can’t handle buttons, and ONE of the buttons on my accordion will, if pressed, stay down for hours), and the clacking of the keys was getting to me.

    I had purchased a Yamaha PSR… 232 or something… with five octaves, touch sensitive (not weighted) and many sounds. I’d have gone for the five-octave one that only played keyboard sounds, due to its smaller profile, but the limited sounds were a deal killer, particularly as the organ and harpsichord refused to be touch sensitive. I eventually got a cheap stand for it, which is tedious to set up, but fairly stable once it is, and one of the other players learned that I was looking for a keyboard bag and sold me a bowhunter’s bag that holds it well enough, for $7.

    I settled upon a tenor sax for my usual instrument, as it wasn’t obtrusive, but filled a sound space that didn’t conflict with the flutes and violins and whatnot, partly for modesty’s sake, but largely so that I could tell what I was playing. I’ve also had some good times setting it to a harp, though that becomes inaudible, even at top volume, from about four feet away. I sometimes just go for the piano sound, which I’m most comfortable with. Since our repertory includes some fake Irish songs*, the piano’s not a bit amiss.

    Best part of playing a keyboard is that my left hand needed something to do, so I started fumbling for the chords, and now I fumble pretty well. I can even manage some songs that don’t indicate their chords, and when Tony starts playing Neapolitan songs at the end of the evening, I can at least fake with my right, and eventually get the left going as well.

    Which reminds me, I brought my Italian songs book last time, and of course, none of them were in the keys other people were playing. I’ve used the transpose feature for that, but have also transposed up a key at sight, and that went better than expected. No chords, just melody.

    *My grandfather went to Ireland, and [bless his heart] actually requested “MacNamara’s Band” from the group in the pub. The leader gave him a withering glare and said, “That song was written in Brooklyn.

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