I've been trying to update my blog more frequently, but like Jules Winnfield says, "It's hard, Ringo."
Anyway, the latest and greatest is as follows. I wrote an article for my day job that I think is sort of alright.
Also, I had this pretty interesting email conversation with my Russian attorney about Christopher Hitchens.
RUSSIAN ATTNY: I guess the old hack has a little life left
JOHNNYFU: I tried to read excerpts from his book on Slate last week. It was so blowhard-eriffic it was impossible to get through. All the ideological/political issues surrounding him aside, he seems congenitally opposed to making a point.
RA: true.He was good on the daily show though. Very clear that he wanted to make sure that faith became a demeaning term.
i am gonna go buy the book today, i can't resist the title. This is decent
JFU: Yeah. Not terrible.
Except here's the thing: the whole first paragraph could easily have been cut out. What's the point of it even being there? so he can fart a little bit about Hemmingway and John Donne? Compare the opening sentence as is: "When people in America say "no man is an island," as Joan Didion once put it, they think they are quoting Ernest Hemingway" to what it could be if the graph was cut: "The grisly events at Virginia Tech involved no struggle, no sacrifice, no great principle."
What gets lost except for the supposition that Hitchens has read a bunch of books and understands them better than his reader? Arguably nothing.
Anyway, it's a little bit of artful misdirection. His essay could be boiled down to "the search for meaning in the Virginia Tech shootings is ultimately pointless and some of the attempts to draw larger conclusions have been embarrassing." You don't have to really do any heavy lifting to construct that point. He threw in some fake heavy lifting to make his point (which isn't a really bad one) seem more important than it is.
Anyway, the latest and greatest is as follows. I wrote an article for my day job that I think is sort of alright.
Also, I had this pretty interesting email conversation with my Russian attorney about Christopher Hitchens.
RUSSIAN ATTNY: I guess the old hack has a little life left
JOHNNYFU: I tried to read excerpts from his book on Slate last week. It was so blowhard-eriffic it was impossible to get through. All the ideological/political issues surrounding him aside, he seems congenitally opposed to making a point.
RA: true.He was good on the daily show though. Very clear that he wanted to make sure that faith became a demeaning term.
i am gonna go buy the book today, i can't resist the title. This is decent
JFU: Yeah. Not terrible.
Except here's the thing: the whole first paragraph could easily have been cut out. What's the point of it even being there? so he can fart a little bit about Hemmingway and John Donne? Compare the opening sentence as is: "When people in America say "no man is an island," as Joan Didion once put it, they think they are quoting Ernest Hemingway" to what it could be if the graph was cut: "The grisly events at Virginia Tech involved no struggle, no sacrifice, no great principle."
What gets lost except for the supposition that Hitchens has read a bunch of books and understands them better than his reader? Arguably nothing.
Anyway, it's a little bit of artful misdirection. His essay could be boiled down to "the search for meaning in the Virginia Tech shootings is ultimately pointless and some of the attempts to draw larger conclusions have been embarrassing." You don't have to really do any heavy lifting to construct that point. He threw in some fake heavy lifting to make his point (which isn't a really bad one) seem more important than it is.