Ahh the French

[Fake Boris]

Memorizing doesn't hurt.

[Elok]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

I can spend time memorizing a whole list of data that I already have written down in a book, or in a computer file, for easy access; or I can work to comprehend basic principles of the subject that will be applicable to a whole range of information. Do you really think the former is more useful than the latter?

There are exceptions--for example, I understand it's crucial for a chemist to have the periodic table memorized, since he's constantly using it. But these are exceptions, and it's far more important for a chemist to know the difference between covalent and ionic bonds.

[Fake Boris]

The best knowledge is the knowledge you can rephrase quickly, in your own words. It's also data that is always available in your brain to trace new patterns. There is more to this issue that what you "need" to do.

Again, there is nothing wrong with honing up young people's memorization skills in a competitive environment. The debate about what knowledge is the optimal to memorize would be endless anyway.

I shall add to this that Gribbler's (and your) stance on this issue reflects what I've been saying about American culture in general: pragmatic, straight-to-the point, with a favorable bias towards populism.

[Dinner]

Here's culture baby:

[molly bloom]

QFT

I'm always happy to relieve the ignorant of some of their burden.

[molly bloom]

I do have to laugh sometimes when a really bad movie does better internationally than it does in the US. Our standards are sometime higher.

The French esteem Jerry Lewis films.... On the other hand, African American culture was rightly treated with great respect in the U.K. and France and elsewhere. Think of Adelaide Hall, Alberta Hunter, Josephine Baker, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Paul Robeson....

In 1934 Hall and her husband, Wilbur Hicks, took up permanent residence in Europe, opening nightclubs in Paris and London, where they eventually settled. A major star abroad, she achieved that status in the United States only when a Salute to Black Broadway was mounted in 1979 at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City and after she staged a one-woman show at Carnegie Hall.

http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-9218448

Alberta Hunter:

Before leaving for Europe in 1927 she recorded some sessions with Fats Waller on organ. Later that year she performed in England and on the Continent as part of "Showboat" with Paul Robeson, and various other traveling musical revues. She was a hit in Paris, and continued to perform in Europe throughout the 1930s as well as the Middle East and Russia.

http://www.redhotjazz.com/hunter.html

[molly bloom]

Because sales are a direct measure of how many people like it.

You're assuming no one buys anything for anyone else. Or an a (regretted) impulse. Perhaps no one buys prezzies for you, but plenty of unwanted gifts are bought for people by friends and relatives.

[molly bloom]

You've just made that up, there is no language police in France.

Ahem:

" The primary function of the Académie will be to work, with all possible care and diligence, to give our language definite rules and to make it pure, eloquent, and capable of dealing with art and science." - Article 24

(La principale fonction de l'Académie sera de travailler, avec tout le soin et toute la diligence possibles, à donner des règles certaines à notre langue et à la rendre pure, éloquente et capable de traiter les arts et les sciences.)

We've managed to avoid having such a body in Inghilterra despite cries for linguistic thought police down the years:

Now, the body( the Academie) has decided to further embrace the 21st century with a section of its website called “Dire, Ne pas dire” (To say, Not to Say”).

The site aims to be interactive, with visitors invited to exchange views on points of language and even campaign to “rehabilitate” French words fallen out of common usage.

It also contains a section dedicated to Anglicisms. As of Tuesday, the site only had two words on its black list. In pole position was “le best of”, often seen in French magazines and which it suggests replacing by “le meilleur de”. The second was the “franglais” verb “impacter” (to impact), which it urges purists to replace with “affecter”, the proper French equivalent.

“We want to restore courage to all those in France and outside France who endeavour to defend and enrich the language. Let French remain a great language of communication and culture,” Jean-Matthieu Pasqualini of the Académie told Le Figaro.

Agnès Oster, secretary of the body’s dictionary commission, told The Daily Telegraph that more English terms would be added to its online blacklist every month.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8820304/Frances-Academie-francaise-battles-to-protect-language-from-English.html

There was someone in 16th Century England who tried to replace English words derived from Latin and Greek with ones based on more Germanic roots, but the results were so grotesque and lacking in euphony, he never succeeded.

[Fake Boris]

Nice troll.

[molly bloom]

Nice troll.

Except, c'est vrai. I liked the satire of 'new' French thought in 'Intellectual Impostures':

Irigaray, like Kristeva and Lacan, betrays a thorough misunderstanding of the science she exploits in her writings. She evinces a particular interest in hydrodynamics and is fond of technical terms such as `laminated planes', `solenoid movements', and `spring-points'. But S&B's main concern is with the way she uses hydrodynamics to underpin some pretty large assertions about sexual politics and the oppressed and marginalised situation of women. Her conclusions are, to put it mildly, somewhat underdetermined by the science she invokes.

Irigaray has famously argued that science is sexist; for example E=Mc2 is `a sexed equation'. The reasons she gives for believing this are extraordinary.
' The equation privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possibly sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather its having privileged what goes the fastest ...' (quoted p. 100).

The muddle here is so dense that it is probably not worth unpicking it. Suffice it to say, as S&B do, that Einstein's equation has been verified to a high degree of precision. Whatever Irigaray might feel about privileging the speed of light over `other speeds that are vitally necessary to us', the equation would not be valid if the speed of light (c) were replaced by another speed -- by, for example, the speed of a woman running after an escaping toddler in a supermarket. To put this another way, if the equation is sexist, so is nature; if scientists are sexist in respect of this equation, it is because matter is. And if matter is sexist, so are women, who are made of matter (though on that there is more to be said, as we shall see).

The sexism of science, Irigaray argues, explains why fluid mechanics is not as well developed as solid mechanics. The inability of (masculinist) science to deal with turbulent flow is explained by the association of fluidity with femininity: whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. Hence male science cannot cope with fluid dynamics. This seems somewhat to overlook that men, like women, are 90% water, that like women, they have 5.5 litres of blood circulating round their bodies, and that they bleed, salivate and, yes, take a leak -- just like women. Notwithstanding these elementary observations, this is Irigaray's explanation of why women are erased from masculinist theories, and fluids have been erased from science.

http://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/tallis.html

Perhaps Deleuze, Lacan and Irigaray et al., make some kind of sense in French. I never thought they have in English. I prefer James Joyce's character's response:

— O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/joyce/james/j8u/section4.html

[Elok]

To be fair, at least that nutbar actually comes right out and says something, however crazy. The few American PoMos I couldn't avoid reading in college just made vague insinuations and said there were "elements of" something, so nobody could pin them down to an actual statement. Like the lady who argued that every damn reference to ugliness or horror in Hamlet was really talking about Ophelia's vagina. She didn't actually say it that way explicitly, she just threw out a lot of quotes from Hamlet and a lot of quotes from contemporary descriptions of gash and let it be strongly implied that common word choices couldn't be a coincidence.

[Fake Boris]

Perhaps Deleuze, Lacan and Irigaray et al., make some kind of sense in French. I never thought they have in English. I prefer James Joyce's character's response:

Irigaray is bull****. But then again, postmodern feminism is more developed in the US than in France.

Oh, and who forgot to mention she was Belgian?

Lacan is a mixed bag, but Deleuze definitely makes sense.

[molly bloom]

Irigaray is bull****. But then again, postmodern feminism is more developed in the US than in France.

Oh, and who forgot to mention she was Belgian?

Lacan is a mixed bag, but Deleuze definitely makes sense.

Not me. She writes en Francais, not some Dutch hybrid. What is amusing about 'Intellectual Impostures' is that it shows a whole swathe of alleged 'thinkers' expressing themselves through the use of what re in science, fairly specific terms with well-defind meanings. Alas, because of their inability to understand science and scientific texts, these terms are misappropriated pell mell and applied regardless of their suitability, forming Proustian sentences of turgid impenetrability. Useful, because what they say is essentially nonsense.

Almost forgot- one of my favourite people:

According to Godin, a well-aimed pie can break through the victim's public image and lay bare his true character. New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, for instance, reacted in good-humoured fashion and refused to press charges. By contrast, Bernard-Henri Lévy reacted violently and was flanned on at least five occasions as a result. The vendetta against the pop philosopher turned into a running gag in France.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/20/jonnie-marbles-history-pie-activism

Godin should flan the whole PoMo gaggle.

[Fake Boris]

What does that have to do with the discussion?

[Dinner]

Nice troll.

That is disingenuous. You claimed there were no word police, he showed the frogs do have word police, and now you call him a troll. How very French of you.