"No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."
Is that really true? The first Orwell book I read (Homage to Catalonia) was required for a history class -- a class that had previously assigned some truly awful literature. So I was pessimistic and I read it grudgingly at first. But halfway through the book, I realized I loved it.
I was set to read it when I was 14 or 15 in English. What 14 or 15 yo boy wants to read a book about a rabbit? I was wrong, and loved it, then went and read every other book Richard Adams wrote.
So I guess it's not impossible, but at the same time I was probably broad minded enough to change my mind. Many people won't.
OT, but I can't thank you enough.
I read part of this book as a kid in my school antology, loved it butn ever read all of it. Now that I know it's name I can go and fix that missing part of my life :)
That's not how I interpret him. Here's the quotation with more context:
"Of course, those who approached Ender's Game skeptically or because they were 'forced' to read it can hardly imagine their response is valid for those who read it as volunteers or with belief: No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading."
I'm understanding the term "hostile reading" as Card defines it in the above quotation. A hostile reader is one who approaches a book skeptically or is forced to read it (in the sense of being required to read it to complete a class). A hostile reading is what he does.
Wait... So if someone reads it voluntarily but skeptically it is somehow a hostile reading by the definition you cite? It seems to me you are selectively ignoring the part where he explicitly declares voluntary reading not hostile.
No, Card does not explicitly declare that in the quotation I posted. (Did you mean elsewhere in his review?) He's saying: It's a hostile reading if it's skeptical rather than "with belief". It's also a hostile reading if it's forced rather than voluntary.
You probe his definition by asking, If someone reads it skeptically but voluntarily, does that count as hostile? That's a good question. I don't think we have enough information to answer it, because Card does not state how to weigh skepticism and forcedness against each other.
I was actually a hostile reader the first time I read Ender's Game. I was totally turned off by the horrible cover and not very interested in reading it, but it was assigned for school, so I read it and it became one of my favorite books.
The original Ender's Game series covers are some of the best science fiction art I've ever seen, by an amazing artist named John Harris (examples below). Did your edition have a different cover?
"Just amazing - harbored by friends in the Pakistani military for years while they received billions in aid from the US."
This is completely normal, and it's long been the case for the Taliban too. The Taliban operate, and sometimes govern, fearlessly and openly in parts of Pakistan. This includes proper towns and city districts, not just remote regions in the mountains. The old guard of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is largely pro-Taliban and provides political protection, funding, supplies, training, etc. Other parts of the Pakistani government help them too.
I noticed you switched from talking about al-Qaeda to the Taliban. The Bush administration tended to group the two together, but what's a good way of looking at the two groups?
Yes, I mentioned the Taliban simply because that's what I had read about. I don't know much about Al Qaeda, so I couldn't say much about that group in particular. I was not conflating the two groups; rather, I was using the Taliban as an example to make a broad point about Pakistan: that it is not simply "America's ally in the war on terror." It's also a quasi-ally of the Taliban (and Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and other terrorist groups). "It's complicated," as they say.
The relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban is also complicated, and I'm probably in the dark as much as you are. My understanding is that they've never seen eye-to-eye, but apparently bin Laden was responsible for bringing the groups closer together. Al Qaeda has often resided in Taliban territory, with the latter's permission and protection.
According to this CNN article: "in a January 2010 interview for Reader's Digest, founder Rob Kalin finally revealed the secret: "I wanted a nonsense word because I wanted to build the brand from scratch. I was watching Fellini's 8 ½ and writing down what I was hearing. In Italian, you say 'etsi' a lot. It means 'oh, yes.' And in Latin, it means 'and if.'"
I always assumed it was 'etc' as well. Maybe only *nix people assume that because thinking about it, the only time I've ever heard 'etc' pronounced 'etsy' is with reference to the /etc directory.
It's a vote of confidence, yes, but insurgents look at more than just reliability when making their purchasing decisions. They also like the fact that Hilux-specific spare parts and expertise are relatively common in Afghanistan. And they like that they can add machine-gun turrets to it. Presumably you don't care about a truck's performance on those dimensions.
That's a common sentiment. Indeed, I hear people liken "I'm not on Facebook" to "I don't watch TV" more often than I hear people say "I'm not on Facebook."
I get that this is a joke, but I believe it touches on an important subject. And this article was much more than the author announcing that he doesn't use FB-- That announcement was only an introduction to an article about possible downsides to sharing social information
I know it isn't a popular sentiment among hacker circles but if you stop to think, there are a lot of reasons to be cautious. Information about people has always been a precious commodity and now we're giving it away.
Another subtlety I noticed is this generation's concept of Self is becoming contorted into your number of 'Friends' and quantity of 'Likes'. Not really this intelligent HN crowd but, more so the other 99% of society that unconsciously uses fb.
> Another subtlety I noticed is this generation's concept of Self is becoming contorted into your number of 'Friends' and quantity of 'Likes'. Not really this intelligent HN crowd but, more so the other 99% of society that unconsciously uses fb.
Yes, us intelligent folk here on HN would never stoop to accumulate arbitrary, meaningless "likes" (or "points" if you will) based on some groupthink valuation of our opinions. And us hackers would never consider shaping our published opinions to match the group's thinking so that we could accumulate more of these..."likes".
This reminds me of the concept of "whuffie" in Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" where he posits an entire future society based on these principles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie
It did not occur to me at the time I read it that this was based on contemporary online media. It is interesting to consider that society might actually be moving in that direction.
From the article: "The irony is that The Exile was always far harder on America than Russia and, by the end, was probably more widely read by Russians than Americans."
Perhaps that's part of the reason The Exile was allowed to continue for so long.
Gmail doesn't even have substring search (e.g. searching for "hack" will not find instances of "hacker"). I think that would be a prerequisite for Instant-style searching.
True. But it's worth noting that those predictions are sufficient for a slow, partially-working substring search. Gmail could search for the n most likely completions of your query terms in addition to the normal search, and collate the results.
