<<thanks for the link, mat. even though it was a bit on
the pompous side, at least it was readable. some academics
seem to thrive on making their writing as complex and opaque
as possible. somewhere out there on the web, i came across a
quote of mario's where he was reviewing such a work, and his
review parodied it. i wish i could find it again. it was
hilarious.>>
Ah, those old times. That must have been part of the online
Postmodern Wars. A couple of people, real sophists, would
wear everybody down with quotes, explanations of quotes,
paraphrases of explanations of quotes, counterquotes, until
nobody knew what the topic was. Something about Derrida,
deconstruction and logocentrism, but not more specific than
that. These exchanges went on for years.
On parodies: a wise guy from New Zealand, perhaps tired of
writing spoofs by hand, decided to write a program (the
Postmodernism Generator) which gives you a full postmodern
scholarly paper, citations and all. It used to be
online.
Based on his idea, I once wrote a perl program that could be
fed actual sentences from pomo papers and would combine them
at random but with a preference for certain word
associations. It worked rather well. Unfortunately, I've lost
the code and I've also lost all enthusiasm for the subject.
On the other hand, perl continues to be a nice tool for doing
things with words.
When somebody writes foggily, I suspect he wants to put one
over me. If it's foggy *and* pompous, then I'm almost
certain. If it contains no evidence for any of its
assertions, then I'm certain.
Best,
MrT
=====
"The skill of man is unequal to the formation of a new man
from old materials, but the battered tenement may, with care,
be long sustained by props" -- From Becklard's
Physiology.
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