Old Eric foresaw the problems with runaway socialism, so he's ok with me.![]()
Old Eric foresaw the problems with runaway socialism, so he's ok with me.![]()
There are times I wish they’d just ban everything- baccy and beer, burgers and bangers, and all the rest- once and for all. Instead, they creep forward one apparently tiny step at a time. It’s like being executed with a bacon slicer.
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise.
"The purpose of a university education for Left / Liberals is to attain all the politically correct attitudes towards minorties, and the financial means to live as far away from them as possible."
Socialism?
This is like the Parental Advisory beeps the yanks put in their gangstah rap songs. And I don't know about you, but I wouldn't put consvative, christian housewives in the socialist category...
Still maintain that crying on the pitch should warrant a 3 match ban
Reference to drugs in a song? Blank it out. Nigger? Blank it out.
A song called Russian Roulette by Rhianna where at the end we hear a gunshot and a body falling to the floor? Perfectly fine (BTW, I really like that song).
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An enemy that wishes to die for their country is the best sort to face - you both have the same aim in mind.
Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings.
"If you can't trust the local kleptocrat whom you installed by force and prop up with billions of annual dollars, who can you trust?" Lemur
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter. Winston Churchill
They censured Shakespeare didn't they?
" Art made tongue-tied by authority. "-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 66
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." *Jim Elliot*
Pathetic Yanks.
Bunch of sad little Rosbifs.
A-cultured Anglosaxons.
Books are re-translated all of the time. They must be, because the language becomes incomprehensible as time passes. Shakespeare is unreadable, Chaucer might as well have been Icelandic.
The connotations of words change. Their register changes. Etc. The polite words 'negro' or 'coloured' of only a few decades ago are pejorative now. One would have to re-translate the respectful 'coloured' of the civil rights movement into the closest modern equivalent of 'Black', or run the risk of making the user of the word sound like those he opossed, a social conservatist.
'Nigger' in Mark Twain's era was offensive. There was more social acceptance of the word back then, but it was nevertheless considered an offensive word. One would not have to re-translate it into a modern equivalent. A conclusion which has the nasty side effect of rendering everything I've written thus far in this post moot and pointless. Which in turn serves me right for not thinking ahead when posting.
Twain deliberatly tries to capture the speech of particular regions in particular eras, down to class, race and gender. It would be a shame if this artistic quality of his work would be lost in a re-translation. Especially when so much is easily understood by the reader, or, if not, has the even bigger benefit of teaching the reader the history of the age.
Still I would not oppose the swapping of the n-word with something slightly less offensive for educational purposes, or even for popular editions. If twelve year olds are confronted with the n-word in the classroom, it will dominate thought and discussion so much that more is lost than gained. Also, should one want to confront a twelve year old black kid with it in the first place? The offensive descriptions in the post above - as those persevering with my ramblings find out here - serve a literary and rhetoric purpose: to serve as an example. To show that one may rationally realise full well they serve a literary purpose, but the confrontation with them still makes one uncomfortable
~~o~~o~~<<oOo>>~~o~~o~~~
I am decidedly bored by these manichean left-right worldviews dominating so many threads. 'It's bad, so it belongs to 'the other camp''.
Yawn...
We do get ourselves in such a muddle about what to call... erm... people who we'd do a sickle cell blood test on.
White, whitey, European, Caucasian are all fine for my skin colour.I've never been to the Caucasus but that doesn't appear to matter.
But black, nigger, coloured, African? Not only does it depend on the era one is in, but also one's own race (black people can use nigger of course...)
Then there's the lot in the middle. The half-cast, oh sorry mixed race. Whoops MEO - multiethnic origin. And how pale before one stops being black and becomes MEO? And how pale before a MEO becomes white?
Nigger is offensive, but the others it seems that one has to be careful as there is something wrong with being of darker skin.
Disclaimer: my WIFE is mixed race. Except she says she's black. How you can have Spanish and Chinese ancestry as well as African and not be mixed race beats me. My son is mixed race for obvious reasons except he appears "white" - easily paler than those from the South of Europe.
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An enemy that wishes to die for their country is the best sort to face - you both have the same aim in mind.
Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings.
"If you can't trust the local kleptocrat whom you installed by force and prop up with billions of annual dollars, who can you trust?" Lemur
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter. Winston Churchill
I think some of you are missing the point. The word was offensive then, and is offensive now. But Mark Twain did this deliberately to highlight the character of Jim against the rest of the white trash in the book. IA is right, this is a whitewashing of a critically satirical book. By removing the n-word, the publisher is attempting to clean up the past.
The word has nothing to do with Twain, it has everything to do with the story and point he is trying to get across. No point in teaching the book if it gets neutered, which may very well be the end-goal of the publisher.
I hear they are also taking out "Injun" as well. Someone on Slashdot said it best, there isn't an editor alive qualified to touch Samuel Clemens' work.
The .Org's MTW Reference Guide Wiki - now taking comments, corrections, suggestions, and submissions
If I werent playing games Id be killing small animals at a higher rate than I am now - SFTS
Si je n'étais pas jouer à des jeux que je serais mort de petits animaux à un taux plus élevé que je suis maintenant - Louis VI The Fat
"Why do you hate the extremely limited Spartan version of freedom?" - Lemur
Noooo, you didn't fix it! It's a very important point that runaway ideologies become authoritarian. I like capitalism and egalitarianism, but I should admit that the runaway versions of them are bad...WITHOUT trying to rebrand them.
What happens when you imagine it?I think this kind of editing is appropriate for use in schools - imagine being the only black kid in your class which was reading Huck Finn and coming across that word over 250 times during the book. Editing such as this allows children and young people to be educated about Twain whilst not feeling uncomfortable.
if they think it is damaging to children...then just take it off the school curriculum...... and even that is a dumb idea.
changing a book to make it PC is a travesty.
"If given the choice to be the shepherd or the sheep... be the wolf"
-Josh Homme
"That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!"
- Calvin
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