Randy McDonald ([info]rfmcdpei) wrote,
@ 2004-02-19 19:52:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend  Next Entry
Current mood:eclectic
Current music:Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse, "Moment of Clarity"

Roundup


  • Over at Abiola Lapite's blog Foreign Dispatches, an excellent series of posts (1, 2, 3) on South Africa's tortuous 20th century history. It'd be nice if the white supremacists stopped popping up in the comments, though.

  • At the rewarding Far Outliers blog, fascinating excerpts on China's historic ethnic diversity and, over at Language Hat, a related discussion of Chinese multilingualism.

  • Is there hope for the revival of Angel? One can hope.
  • There's an excellent post by Maria Farrell over at Crooked Timber on the inevitability of outsourcing of technically skilled jobs in the current biased world economy. Great stuff.

  • Over at A Fistful of Euros, a fascinating discussion on the so-called Anglosphere. While I'm skeptical of the applicability of the theory (at least as Bennett wants to deploy it)
  • An interesting article, from the French-language Cursus long-distance education site, on the impact of la francophonie on non-French languages. Interesting statistic: "[On] voit de plus en plus en Afrique, et surtout dans les mégapoles, les langues locales au profit du seul français. Au Cameroun, par exemple, le français est devenue la langue maternelle de près de 25% de jeunes urbains qui ne connaissent plus un traître mot de la langue des villageois."

  • Making Jews Modern is a fascinating book on Yiddish and Ladino print culture in the former Russian and Ottoman empires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I have to write on it, one of these days.

  • Via Charlie Stross, The Grey Album. This album, remixing the Beatles White Album with Jay-Z's The Black Album to great critical acclaim, is being banned for copyright violations. You can download copies starting from here.

  • While looking at my livejournal friends' friends, I was surprised to find the livejournal of a male escort. Just goes to show everyone has a blog these days. Remarkably literate guy, too. Really.


That's the most notable things I can think of.

(5 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]talktooloose
2004-02-19 07:53 pm UTC (link)
Do you find his literacy remarkable because he's a prostitute or are you simply disspirited by the general level of writing in the world today?

I was following the diary of a transsexual sometimes-streetperson for a while. The bookmarks for it are in my old install of Explorer in System 9 and I'm not sufficiently motivated to retrieve it. But I did learn some interesting things about where to find good places to sleep on city streets should such a need arise. His/her pictures were nasty, though.

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re:
[info]rfmcdpei
2004-02-19 08:33 pm UTC (link)
Do you find his literacy remarkable because he's a prostitute or are you simply disspirited by the general level of writing in the world today?

The latter, but it was mainly made in the spirit of a bad joke. (It's the writing, you see, not anything else ...) He has a good command of narrative. And, of course, interesting art on his website.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]halibut
2004-02-20 12:02 am UTC (link)
an excellent series of posts (1, 2, 3) on South Africa's tortuous 20th century history

They're certainly interesting, but I'm not sure I'd jump to use the adjective "excellent" -- I'd expect a little more critical discourse for that.

They're good in that they do emphasise the inhomogeneity of this particular historical context. "Whites" vs "Blacks" is a fundamentally validbut equally inadequate tool for analysing SA history. The posts do get that across.

What I didn't like is the almost hagiographical treatment of the British who, in many respects, behaved abominably during the early 20th C here. Yes, apartheid was a product of Afrikaner ultra-nationalism, but that nationalism arose within the context of shoddy treatment by colonial forces. Bear in mind here that these (the British colonials) constitute most of my forebears. Further, the British implemented the first racial segregation law in SA (the Pegging Act in Port Natal, subsequently Durban). So saying that they were entirely in favour of full equality for all is, well, not particularly borne out by their behaviour either here or elsewhere in the Empire.

Yes, Afrikaner Nationalism turned into a horrible monster, yet it arose from a context. The author of said blog doesn't seem to have very much interest in exploring that context at all, which makes it, IMO, irresponsible as an exercise in history.

I suppose it's always strange reading outside analyses of one's own society. It's potentially a good thing, since it can help to illuminate some of one's own blind spots, but sometimes there can be a bit of a jarring effect, particularly when you get a sense that an author hasn't really earned the right to speak with the kind of authority on the subject which they're trying to exercise.

As I'm sure you're intimately aware, history is a complex and subtle thing to do. I think we owe it our best. (I mean for instance, several of that author's posts were so laden with emotive language, dismissive of some group or other (particularly socialists, it seems) that I think they really need to look at how they think about things).

Oh yeah, and lumping together "Mugabe, Nujoma and Mbeki" as representative of leaders of "less-developed countries" with comparable policies on education is just drivel TBPH.

Hope you have a good night, Friday and weekend :)

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re:
[info]rfmcdpei
2004-02-20 06:58 am UTC (link)
[deletia of correction]

Yes, Afrikaner Nationalism turned into a horrible monster, yet it arose from a context. The author of said blog doesn't seem to have very much interest in exploring that context at all, which makes it, IMO, irresponsible as an exercise in history.

OK, fair enough.

I suppose it's always strange reading outside analyses of one's own society. It's potentially a good thing, since it can help to illuminate some of one's own blind spots, but sometimes there can be a bit of a jarring effect, particularly when you get a sense that an author hasn't really earned the right to speak with the kind of authority on the subject which they're trying to exercise.

Foreign coverage of Canada is always fun to read for me, for just this reason. (How are things going, incidentally? It's been a while.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2007-04-02 12:57 pm UTC (link)
was just wondering...what are ur views on Muslims?

(Reply to this)

(5 comments) - (Post a new comment)

Create an Account
Forgot your login or password?
Login w/ OpenID
English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…