Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation.”—Alasdair Gray.
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
Russian press agency Novosti's reporting of the US/UK confrontation with Iran is a little more calm in English than it is in French. In particular, two recentarticles citing 'Russian military experts' including Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, claiming that an air attack on Iran is imminent (a date mentioned is 6 April), have so far appeared in French (and German) but not in English.
I have no idea what this signifies, but I'm sure someone out there does.
How many languages do you speak? I understand that the more languages one speaks, the better, but in terms of efficiency of getting those languages learned, would you say there are certain languages that would take precedent over others?
In other words, I want to teach my child another language besides English, and I might as well learn the new one myself. Would you have any recommendations as to where to begin?
Thanks, and I'm glad the broadband is working for you.
Thanks for the link to the 300 article! Laugh-out-loud funny.
Seriously, though, funny as the article is, I think the "300 celebrates Fascism!" crowd need to read more books.
Surely the point of Miller's graphic novel, and the film, is just how goddamn sexy fascism can seem. I mean, Nazis bad, no question, but great-looking uniforms and great team spirit...
The "Hoo-ya!" uttered by the Spartans in the film is, yes, directly taken from the Marine Corps, but that's the point. Who can forget Jack's cool "this world has walls and those walls are guarded by men with guns" speech in that otherwise totally forgettable Tom Cruise Marine-courtroom drama? Jack was the bad guy...
The Spartans are the bad guys AND the good guys in 300. And I know that's a little more complex than people generally like for amusement during their popcorn feast, but that's also, surely, Miller's point.
The Nazis talked constantly about saving Europe from Bolshevism, Bush talks constantly about saving the world from terrorism, Spartans talk constantly about saving the world from Persian tyranny. Are we seeing any connections here?
Bolshevism sucked. Terrorism blows. Persian tyranny wasn't a clown sandwich. But hang on, didn't you just say the guys saving us were the bad guys? Wait... Oh! Popcorn!
Hope you don't mind an OT comment: There is a great post on The Carpetbagger Report from a few days ago about the mainstream media's (specifically Time magazine's) ignoring the prosecutor purge scandal.
What explains the failure of the mainstream media to cover the purge scandal for so long, and so many other scandals? Do you think somebody just set up newspaper editors to cheat on their wives, and threatened to tell if the editors wouldn’t play ball when they come back some day and ask for something?
It wouldn’t be that hard to do, when you think about it. People wouldn’t talk about it.
Kelson, I speak only English. The best second language to learn depends on what you want to do with it. Some are more difficult for native English speakers than others - French, Italian and Spanish are easier than German, as far as I know.
I have to say the french I've seen you use online and in your books (though the latter may be edited) has been exceptional - do you use software to translate, or do you simply have a trove of expressions you use.
Then again, I'm from Québec, so my version of french might scare the French... Who knows?
Hi, just discovered your blog after reading 'The Execution Channel' - hell of a novel. No doubt some critic somewhere has beaten me to the analogy, but I'd say it's the '1984' for the post-9/11 generation. I'm looking forward to reading your other works.
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Yo Ken
Maybe those Brit soldiers were taken to stall any imminent attack.
Patrick
By Anonymous, at Thursday, March 29, 2007 1:46:00 pm