Farmer versus Fox

I just stumbled across a site called the Stopped Clock, well written politicalish stuff. This was nice and so I’m linking.

sample:

“The mistake behind these reviews essentially boils down to “I agree with this author, so this author must be right”. Sometimes the author has thought about the subject more deeply than the blogger, and perhaps the blogger’s thinking has been shifted by the book. But the uncritical blog entries at issue don’t even suggest that much thought has occurred. This is not to suggest that the ideas endorsed are necessarily wrong – but such a nicety is of little consequence to the blogger’s agreement or endorsement.”

Just want to hand out some praise for Scott McCloud’s site which I’ve been frequenting like a red-hooded child in a Nicholas Roeg movie – not all the time, but enough to matter. It’s a pretty usable site, and McCloud is an innovative figure in comics, which might lend it relevance to the non-converted. He puts a lot of content on-line nowadays – click on ‘On-Line Comics’to view them – and a lot of his formats are pretty unusual. Try ‘My Obsession With Chess’ , for example. He enthusiastically champions new formats like this, and I’ve just read today the second part of ‘The Right Number’, which has a really satisfying interface that is aesthetically interesting (zooming into each panel to the next one), that he makes the most of. McClouds work is often a little cold, detached, which may not be to everyone’s taste, but I quite like that outsider-narrator thing, and it’s impossible to deny his talent and application of imagination.

He is also doing something else fairly new; selling content via the web for 25c a pop. It’s done via Bitpass, a system where you essentially buy vouchers for your account (as little as $3), which you can then spend in a variety of places. So far I’ve spent 50cents on The Right Number 1 & 2, and 75 on a audio-short story by Tom Gerency; currently downloading a Mark Twain audio-story for a buck. I’m quite happy to pay these prices for on-line content, although admittedly it is a novelty now, so I may scale down to only the stuff I really want. But especially in the Right Number case, McCloud as a jobbing artist needs recompense for the considerable work put into this quality item, and its media requires it be online, or at least computer based. So it’s good there are these systems in place to deal with small payments (I’m not about to put my credit card details in every time I want to glance at part of a comic story).

Enough plugging, except to balance my touting of McCloud by lauding Dylan Horrocks. I haven’t been able to get my hands on Hicksville, his highly rated graphic novel, but dearly want to. What I have read is his intelligent analysis of what comics are: a topic that interests many in the field butis generally only equated with McCloud himself (for the unacquainted McCloud published Understanding Comics, and further to that Reinventing Comics, the first particularly seen as the definitive work on what the art and medium of comics is actually all about). Horrocks breaks down the rhetoric of UC and suggests other ways of conceptualising the whole shebang, which are actually a little closer to my heart.

John Quiggin at CT (and others in the comments) turn over the ticking bomb problem regarding torture. What they find underneath is that even if the situation could somehow legitimise torture under some ethical system, this does not necessitate dispensing with punishment for the torturer. If the situation were somehow severe enough to call for torture of an individual, it would also be severe enough to call for punishment of the applicant, even if their intentions were wholly good.

“Torture is wrong, but…” is a step into pragmatism that lends it a conditional legitimacy. Torture should not be treated as a last ditch tool in our carry-case. Even if the hypothetical situation arose, if a moral agent stepped out of bounds and committed the unconsciounable, it would have to do so aware that this isn’t merely a ‘Break in Case of Fire’ operation: it’s playing with the devils fire, with all the consequences that brings.

Look.

Notice the real protesters next to him. Humour + heroics.

Reprazent Yankee Pot Roast!

It’s had a sleek overhaul and is looking tres gauche (hey, I can misuse the French language if I feel – this site taught me the Gallic for ‘Hairdresser on fire’; it’s all going on, baby). Run around and look at stuff, laugh funny ha ha. HA!

Belle Waring over at Crooked Timber has a … ripping post about the modern use of the word Trojan, and whether those who do so onsider what associations it may inadvertently bring. Here’s the gem:

“And then, there are the condoms. What do you think of when you hear the word Trojan? Possibly, you think of the heartbreaking scene of farewell between Hector and Andromache, when little Astyanax is frightened by the nodding plumes of Hector’s helmet. But probably not. Probably, you think: Trojan horse. So consider the context. There’s this big…item outside your walled citadel, and you are unsure whether to let it inside. After hearing the pros and cons (and seeing some people eaten by snakes), you open the gates and drag the big old thing inside. Then, you get drunk. At the height of the party, hundreds of little guys come spilling out of the thing and sow destruction, breaking “Troy’s hallowed coronal”, as they say. Is this, all things considered, the ideal story for condom manufacturers to evoke? Just asking.”

I think i have put comments up ok – if so, anyone who actually reads this know youself out in here. Say hello and some such. Also took a new template for the site. I’m thinking I should get some html know-how, it seems pretty straightforward, and then I can personalise a little. Make this coop a home!

Update: Comments are now squawk-backs. Kill me now. Bwaaak.

The Pollack is back. oh yes. He is added to links forthwith and ye are urged to check in regularly for most satiricalistic man on the In-da-web.

The Iraqi Schoolyard Rhymes in particular, are wrong and yet so right.

Just kidding, I think. John Sutherland is about to retire from UCL’s English dept, and signs off with this piece in the Guardian Education – the good, bad, and ugly of University now vs then (40 years back). I particularly liked this quote:

“the RAE militates against colleagues who are merely (merely!) ‘learned’ but ‘unproductive’. Not all learning needs to be excreted on paper to be useful to the academic community”.

From Crooked Timber.

This summer will see the launch of a new kind of Coke, which should shake people out of their daily stupor with its radical notion of a soft drink with less calories. Yes, less calories. Who would have thunk it?

To be fair, it is selling itself as having “that great Coca-Cola taste”; that would firmly distinguish it from Diet Coke then. But I’ll leave final arbitration to my brother, kingpin of the coke-drinking world. If he’ll switch then they’re on to a winner.