It's only one syllable south of the Mason-Dixon line.Fair enough, to me, tire and hire rhyme with liar, which is two syllables, so that's why I consider tire and hire (and their past tense versions) to be two as well.
As in, "Man, I'm Tired" (Man, I'm TAHR'D).
"You're hired" (Yer HAHR'D) (not to be confused with, "You're hard!")
Fair enough, to me, tire and hire rhyme with liar, which is two syllables, so that's why I consider tire and hire (and their past tense versions) to be two as well.I always struggle a bit with syllable count in English. As a rule of thumb, I base it on vowel-sounds, so tire is one syllable because there is only one vowel-sound, while liar is two because there are two vowel-sounds ("lie-ah" in my accent). Regional pronunciation does complicate this idea though, I will admit. I have known people who pronounce liar as "lahr".
Fair enough, to me, tire and hire rhyme with liar, which is two syllables, so that's why I consider tire and hire (and their past tense versions) to be two as well.I always struggle a bit with syllable count in English. As a rule of thumb, I base it on vowel-sounds, so tire is one syllable because there is only one vowel-sound, while liar is two because there are two vowel-sounds ("lie-ah" in my accent). Regional pronunciation does complicate this idea though, I will admit. I have known people who pronounce liar as "lahr".
I once wrote a poem that contained the word "crushed", and was bashed for treating it as two syllables. It certainly has two "beats", I think, but there is only one vowel-sound. On-line syllable counters sometimes treat it as one, sometimes two, so... I don't know.
Oh, same for me. I'm a certifiable nor'easter. Hell, where I come from, the word "yup" has two syllables (eye-up)Carl, have you ever heard the "Bert and I" recording? Droll little stories/anecdotes told in a down-east accent?
I once wrote a poem that contained the word "crushed", and was bashed for treating it as two syllables. It certainly has two "beats", I think, but there is only one vowel-sound. On-line syllable counters sometimes treat it as one, sometimes two, so... I don't know.
The grave accent, although not standardly applied to any English words, is sometimes used in poetry and song lyrics to indicate that a vowel usually silent is to be pronounced, in order to fit the rhythm or meter. Most often, it is applied to a word ending with -ed. For instance, the word looked is usually pronounced /ˈlʊkt/ as a single syllable, with the e silent; when written as lookèd, the e is pronounced: /ˈlʊk.ɨd/ look-ed). It can also be used in this capacity to distinguish certain pairs of identically spelled words like the past tense of learn, learned /ˈlɜrnd/, from the adjective learnèd /ˈlɜrn.ɨd/ (for example, "a very learnèd man").
This further goes to back of my theory that phonics in English is a load of bullshit and should not be taught to impressionable children.When I was young, I went to visit family in Georgia, and got slipped into an elementary school with my cousins while the adults went and did adult things. I recently found a report the school did, noting that for the couple days I was there I struggled with their phonics program, blaming it on the California education system. This amused me, since as I recall my actual struggle was with changing the words from something I could spell and read just fine to weird hyphened gobbledegook.
I think my signature answers that.Speaking of your signature, there's a slice of cake next to your age in your forum profile. Is it your birthday?
Well, he had qualifications (http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=691).Ha, I just noticed that what Tai said after he Marten passed was almost in iambic pentameter. (Although I think I remember someone here telling me a while ago I was wrong about "hired" being two syllables, something I still disagree with.)
That is possibly the nerdiest panel 4 I have ever written. To the 5% of my audience who gets all three jokes, I salute you and your English degrees.Unless I'm missing something, the jokes are the application, her response, and Dewey decimal system, which would make you, for the strips purposes, right.
Hanners in a powersuit. I approve.
I think my signature answers that.Speaking of your signature, there's a slice of cake next to your age in your forum profile. Is it your birthday?
Fair enough, to me, tire and hire rhyme with liar, which is two syllables, so that's why I consider tire and hire (and their past tense versions) to be two as well.I always struggle a bit with syllable count in English. As a rule of thumb, I base it on vowel-sounds, so tire is one syllable because there is only one vowel-sound, while liar is two because there are two vowel-sounds ("lie-ah" in my accent). Regional pronunciation does complicate this idea though, I will admit. I have known people who pronounce liar as "lahr".
I once wrote a poem that contained the word "crushed", and was bashed for treating it as two syllables. It certainly has two "beats", I think, but there is only one vowel-sound. On-line syllable counters sometimes treat it as one, sometimes two, so... I don't know.
I think you're talking about diphthongs, which describe two vowel sounds in what's considered a single syllable. "Loud" "coin" and "side" are offered as examples" LOU-ewd, COE-ane and SI-ed. You can try to pronounce them without changing the vowel sound, but at least in American English, you probably won't succeed.
So I don't see a distinction between TIE-er and LIE-er.
And "crushed" is not CRUSH-ed, but CRUSHT: one syllable. I think in some poetry, t is substituted for ed.
(the word pronounced hai is spelled hi)This just confused me, because to me the word "hi" is also pronounced "hi". The i is just long. If anything, it's pronounced "hae". The word that's pronounced "hai" is spelled "hay" or "hey".
(the word pronounced hai is spelled hi)This just confused me, because to me the word "hi" is also pronounced "hi". The i is just long. If anything, it's pronounced "hae". The word that's pronounced "hai" is spelled "hay" or "hey".
To me the vowel of see sounds just like the one of fit or ship, only longer.
-- we also walk dogs.A priceless Chinese cultural artefact, probably looted, used as the equivalent of the plastic toy handed over with a Happy Meal, so that a few wealthy white people can look at it. The author's racist and colonialist assumptions are revolting. Fuck you, Bob! :x
-- we also walk dogs.A priceless Chinese cultural artefact, probably looted, used as the equivalent of the plastic toy handed over with a Happy Meal, so that a few wealthy white people can look at it. The author's racist and colonialist assumptions are revolting. Fuck you, Bob! :x
Edit: It seems that "We Also Walk Dogs" was first published in 1941, when middle-class white Americans like Heinlein would have taken it for granted that they, and their British counterparts, were fully entitled to do whatever they liked with Chinese artefacts. The depressing thing is that this is still true to a considerable extent, as demonstrated by the behaviour of Western museums, and that, returning to science-fiction, Joss Whedon's attitude to Chinese culture, as exhibited in Firefly and Serenity, is much the same as Heinlein's; that Chinese "stuff" is cool, but who cares what Chinese people think or say?
it really would have been a better story if the physicist had been Chinese and motivated by a desire to put it in a Chinese museum rather than hoard it in his own collection.It would, but a non-white scientist in 1940s American science fiction? The makers of 2010: The Year We Make Contact couldn't stomach that idea in 1984! The Chinese space-mission they cut out of that movie (along with the Indian computer scientist), in the book flew a spacecraft named after Tsien Hsue-shen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsien_Hsue-shen), who actually was working in the American rocket program in 1941, but I can't think of any fictional equivalent from the period. I would have settled for the physicist leaving his collection to the Beijing Capital Museum in his will. A bit patronising, yes, but the most that might have been expected then, I think.
Specifically a unique piece of Ming porcelain that was in the British Museum (how did it get there in the first place? The looting of the Summer Palace perhaps?That's where most such treasures came from. Grand theft. So much was lost though, burnt or destroyed... and then that that survived sometimes got trashed in the Cultural Revolution. *SIGH*
Might the Chinese government have been trying to get it repatriated? Who cares? Not anyone in the story, that's for sure) was obtained by some corrupt means so that the British (again, who cares about China, right?) might not be upset by its disappearance and make a fuss, and then dangled as a prize to persuade a wealthy physicist to work on gravity control.In 1941... there was no China as a nation. There was the Kuomintang regime, but even there it was a gaggle of warlords who sometimes fought Mao's group, sometimes fought the Japanese, sometimes fought warlords who weren't part of the regime in the west (Sheng Shicai of Xinjiang comes to mind), and sometimes fought each other.
The depressing thing is that this is still true to a considerable extent, as demonstrated by the behaviour of Western museumsYup.
The Chinese space-mission they cut out of that movie (along with the Indian computer scientist), in the book flew a spacecraft named after Tsien Hsue-shen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsien_Hsue-shen), who actually was working in the American rocket program in 1941,Along with the British post-war persecution of Alan Turing, the German persecution of Albert Einstein, the hounding of Qian Xuesen out of the USA were the three greatest pieces of countries shooting themselves in the foot that I can think of.
Specifically a unique piece of Ming porcelain that was in the British Museum (how did it get there in the first place? The looting of the Summer Palace perhaps? Might the Chinese government have been trying to get it repatriated? Who cares? Not anyone in the story, that's for sure) was obtained by some corrupt means so that the British (again, who cares about China, right?) might not be upset by its disappearance and make a fuss, and then dangled as a prize to persuade a wealthy physicist to work on gravity control.
If an item is found in a particular country, does it necessarily belong to that country? If it was owned by a government that ceased to exist, why does the current government that happens to be in the same place have any claim, unless they found it themselves?There is such a thing as "legal successor" in regards to states.
There is such a thing as "legal successor" in regards to states.
For example, after the downfall of the USSR, Russia went and said "we are the legal successor of the USSR. If anyone has any outstanding business with the USSR, come to us", and mostly everyone agreed, I suppose because Russia was where the orders were coming from anyway.
That's interesting, I never knew that. Was Troy on Ottoman ground?
A major Turkish state right at the border of China's Turkish speaking provinces is a nightmare to the Chinese government.Turkeys border is miles away from China. So I'm not entirely sure what you're saying.
A major Turkish state right at the border of China's Turkish speaking provinces is a nightmare to the Chinese government.Turkeys border is miles away from China. So I'm not entirely sure what you're saying.
If you mean Turkmen state, that's a different thing entirely.
It, like "Huckleberry Finn" is a story of its times, and we should feel shamed that things were once like that.
Fuck you, Bob! :x
pwhodges added a soundcloud tag not long ago. Does it work on Apple devices yet?
"Colonialist" is clearly right, but if the creator of Henry Gladstone Kiku and Dr. Royce Worthington was "racist", he deserves much credit for overcoming it.
EDIT: with a little more thought, it's inevitable that someone born in Missouri in 1907 would start out racist. He's a shining example of growing past it.
Not my bulla!
In 1941... there was no China as a nation.There certainly was a de jure nation of China in 1941. The USA recognised what you call the "Kuomintang regime" as the legitimate government of the Republic Of China at the time, had diplomatic relations with it (http://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/PearlHarbor), and continued to recognise it until 1979, when it controlled no territory beyond Taiwan. It is perfectly true that the Republic had lost de facto control of much of the territory it nominally ruled in 1941, but it had no more ceased to exist as a nation than the USA did during the American Civil War.
How fair is it to criticize someone for not transcending his entire time and culture?I don't know. I had never even heard of We Also Walk Dogs until Zoe linked it, and its unreconstructed attitudes took me by surprise. The story's attitude to the artefacts of non-European cultures is still widespread today. Should we give our museum curators a free pass because they are merely reflecting the attitudes of their time and culture?
The story's attitude to the artefacts of non-European cultures is still widespread today.That is the problem.
And still want Paul Verhoven publicly flogged.But he didn't make a Starship Troopers movie. He made a completely different movie form the book, which was then named Starship Troopers after most of the writing and preproduction was finished. I can forgive him due to that, and the shower scene, which as an 8 year old boy I immensely appreciated.
Also in real history is the fact that a good chunk of Ming pottery was even at the time of their creation exported to Europe, and most that were obtained afterward were sold, not looted. There was a fair bit of looting, and a good bit of that went the the BritishThe "Flower Of Forgetfulness" is presented as a one-off, unique artwork, not the simple run of "ordinary commerce". If it had been just another piece of commercially mass-produced Ming porcelain, the physicist would not have been so motivated to obtain it.trophy roommuseum, but it pales in comparison to the scale of ordinary commerce.
I do not understand all this anger. What Westrim says is all correct. On a more basic level: Heinlein does not say that this is the propper way to treat such an artifact. To the contrary, that it is treated so is a sign of how desperate the situation is.The situation is not presented as desperate in any way. It's just an ambitious politician wanting to gain a diplomatic advantage, and the protagonists are in it for the money without even needing any knowledge of what the negotiations are about. At the end of the story, the protagonist characters demonstrate their full voluntary complicity in the situation by taking special steps to ensure their right to participate personally in the elitist private enjoyment of the artefact they have "acquired" without the slightest qualm. No, Heinlein quite obviously had no problems at all with the way the artefact is treated. If you don't either, we will just have to agree to differ.
Akima I confess I'm having a hard time following just what you're arguing for.I think... if a foreign army entered the US, burnt the last copy of the constitution just to keep warm, then decamped with the Liberty bell and a few other such items - and later refused to return them.. you might get the general idea.
Akima I confess I'm having a hard time following just what you're arguing for.In my last posting?
Also in real history is the fact that a good chunk of Ming pottery was even at the time of their creation exported to Europe, and most that were obtained afterward were sold, not looted.
On the general topic of China, I find outrage on behalf of historical artifacts taken from there to be laughable considering their perspective throughout history on the trappings of the past. From 1000 BCE and probably earlier, it was standard practice as part of the cycle of empires to get rid of the stuff from the previous one, and that carried through straight to the Cultural Revolution. The greatest damage to a society's past is usually self inflicted.
It's long, click the linkBeing unique doesn't make it a national treasure on par with the Liberty Bell as ZoeB suggests, it just makes it unique. It's not a national treasure any more than every Monet should go to France. We don't know the history of this piece because it's not important to the story (I can't emphasize enough that it's just a MacGuffin that could have been replaced with anything unique from anywhere and served the same function), so you're interpreting the worst possible one.
I know that WWZ's been turned into a generic zombie movie, but what's the problem with Ender's Game? (I've heard surprisingly little about it)I have no idea, I'm just worried.
The problem with Ender's Game is Orson Scott Card. And especially all of the bad press he's gotten lately of his deeply misogynistic and homophobic world view and writings. It is not to the best credit of the LGBT community as a whole that lately every time his name shows up people start screaming about it because of his beliefs. See the crap storm that was generated when it was announced DC was having him write for Superman. But on the other side, his beliefs are deeply disgusting to me and others, and he is not shy about promoting them to the detriment of people. I know I enjoyed his books when I was a teenager, before I learned about his beliefs and realized how little he would think of me. It kinda puts a damper on things.I don't really give a darn about his views any more than I give a darn that Tom Cruise is a member of a cult explicitly designed to make money. They're unfortunate and idiotic, but ultimately have no bearing on his work if he doesn't put them in. I'll read any good book or watch any good movie regardless of what one person involved in the process says. He still writes good and thought provoking material (it may have been opposite to my politics and the characters way too smart, but I liked the Empire duology), and that's enough for me.
(click to show/hide)
EDIT: Spoilered a...spoiler.
It's a fairly well known book, but the ending is hardly Rosebud=sled or Vader=dad level, so...no, you should not spoil it.Vater, not vader. Or are we not talking about German? :-D
Akima I confess I'm having a hard time following just what you're arguing for.In my last posting?
That treating unique artworks as somehow comparable with commercial products mass-produced for sale is dubious.
That colonialist looting of other people's cultures is bad, even when dressed up by the looters as "legitimate purchase" in a legal context that they force on their victims at gunpoint. That I don't accept Westrim's arguments as offering any justification for it, or for regarding Chinese attitudes as laughable.
That I don't accept that the characters in the story exhibit any sense of desperation as suggested by KOK, or any qualms at all about the appropriateness of their behaviour.
What do you suggest we (as "The West" and one large prison colony) do to rectify the situation? Should all artifacts be returned?How about... Yes.
Or should nations with artifacts stored in national museums pay some form of restitution?The only restitution I can think of is to transfer cultural treasures of equal value to the wronged nation for the same period.
As a historian and an avid museum nerd, the argument that a lot of these items (not China specifically) would have been long destroyed or lost without archeologists and other dedicated individuals preserving them could also be made.The Elgin Marbles would have been destroyed by pollution by now if they weren't preserved in the British museum, for example.
I wouldn't have minded that finish so much if it wasn't quite so out of the blue. I haven't read it in a while, but from what I remember, that's also the first the reader has any idea of what's happening.
First I heard of Card was his short story "Unaccompanied Sonata," which left me profoundly sad -- as I think it would anyone of any even remotely artistic bent.
This further goes to back of my theory that phonics in English is a load of bullshit and should not be taught to impressionable children.My mother was schooled in the 50s and never encounter phonics until I went to grade school in the 70s. She can pronounce a word she's never seen before to save her life. Words are just collections of letters for here with no rhyme or reason. 'b' does NOT make a 'buh' sound for her. It is annoying. So please reevaluate your theory that phonics should not be taught.
Ender's Game is famous because it is a story about a smart boy that young readers seem to identify with. I don't know anyone who read the book after they turned 20 who think it is a good book and too many people who read it when they were younger who think it is a good book.
All this talk of smart children in novels reminds me that only one author that I've come across has ever made their smart children actually childlike.
No one had asked for help, that was the problem. They'd just gone around talking, eating, or staring into the air while their parents exchanged gossip. For whatever odd reason, no one had been sitting down reading a book, which meant she couldn't just sit down next to them and take out her own book. And even when she'd boldly taken the initiative by sitting down and continuing her third read-through of Hogwarts: A History, no one had seemed inclined to sit down next to her.
Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you."
Oh, don't get me wrong.I get what you're saying. Hopefully he himself is still so far below the larger pop cultural radar that it won't hit the fan.
First experiencesMy first experience was in the back of a- no, wait.
Perhaps the problem with phonics then is targeting to those that need it and not wasting the time of those that don't.This further goes to back of my theory that phonics in English is a load of bullshit and should not be taught to impressionable children.My mother was schooled in the 50s and never encountered phonics until I went to grade school in the 70s. She can't pronounce a word she's never seen before to save her life. Words are just collections of letters for here with no rhyme or reason. 'b' does NOT make a 'buh' sound for her. It is annoying. So please reevaluate your theory that phonics should not be taught.
EDIT: OTOH, my son learning phonics is a nightmare. I don't like how the lessons are presented.
I think the problem with Ender's Game (it is the only OSC novel I have read, and I wasn't that impressed) is the basic premise that you need to trick kids into performing genocide because adults can't bring themselves to do it. History offers not the slightest support for this idea. I have the same problem with works suggesting that brainwashing, or raising children in special academies, is necessary to produce assassins. On the face of it, there has never been any shortage of people ready, willing and able to kill. Dehumanization requires no special programmed, training or facilities; it is more like standard operating procedure. The problem is how to avoid it.That wasn't the intent at all of Battle School. They didn't need amorality but elasticity. They were expected to more easily think outside the box because they hadn't learned there was a box yet- except, of course, that they still had plenty of boxes. Enders gift was ignoring the box- symbolized by everyone assuming that the enemy gate was across from them, forward, but he turned it so the enemies gate was down. The reason they didn't tell them it wasn't training was simply to keep them free of real battle concerns about things like lives. The second guessing was bad enough without realizing there were actual people on actual ship they were ordering.
I believe it was Paul Fussel's writings about WWI where I read about people frequently just neglecting to shoot, and I can't remember where I read about the US Army in the 20th century needing to upgrade training so that people would actually aim at the other side.
So far in this discussion of the process and function of dehumanization we haven’t really touched on the focus of what dehumanization is aimed at, allowing a functioning normal human being to kill easily and with minimal moral difficulty. Killing other humans is not something that comes naturally to people. Even for men and women raised around firearms who have been hunting for years the skill to successfully kill someone is there but the heart and intent are for the most part not.
Consider the average person who can take a human life in modern American society, there are people who have dehumanized through conditioning to be able to kill such as a gang member who grew up in that environment and lifestyle where killing was normalized and even encouraged. A soldier or a police officer who has been conditioned to be able to shoot and kill also falls in this category albeit through a very different process. Removing that type of individual we have crimes of rage and passion, these are very dissimilar from the soldier’s task or the conditioned criminal, with a crime of passion it’s all on chemicals, many people don’t actually go forth with the thought of killing someone according to the interviews after the fact.
There is only one category of person who has the ability to kill others of their species with out concern, we call these people sociopaths. They have a variety of critical mental illnesses that result in them dehumanizing everything and everyone, there is no emotion to the act of killing, no more then a normal human being does washing their hands. Thankfully these individuals are few and far between and this level of dehumanization is the last thing one would want in a soldier. That’s the point where soldiers lose their sense of who the enemy is and civilians go from people to be defended to just more targets.
The warrior and the conditioned criminal for the most part must do their killing in cold blood, going forth with the intent to kill. Situations can arise to change that, the wounding of a close friend or comrade for example but for the most part the soldier must go about his business as a competent professional in the arts of warfare, this detached coolness is literally the difference between life and death in many cases. Which returns us to that same dehumanization of the enemy, the soldier cannot be worried about if the man shooting at him has a wife or child, he is merely the enemy and must be eliminated so the soldier may be himself preserved and the mission accomplished.
Even in an environment with high dehumanization of the enemy like in WW2 that doesn’t mean the soldiers in question are conditioned to killing the enemy. After World War 2 Brigadier General S.L.A Marshall discovered that in the European theater of operations that individual riflemen only took shots against exposed enemy soldiers 15-20% of the time. (7) Firing rates increased when ordered to by a superior or when firing from a crew served/key weapons system like a machine gun or flamethrower but for the individual combatant they appeared to be unable or willing to kill. This research was correlated by numerous other studies of foreign armed forces and by FBI studies of firing rates amongst Law Enforcement Officers. (7)
The US military and indeed armed forces world wide responded by introducing conditioning techniques to their marksmanship programs. This condition exists to this day, when Marines learn rifle marksmanship the basic target at the 200 yard line for the known distance course of fire is a standard bulls eye, but all the other targets are human silhouettes, as are all the targets provided during combat marksmanship training, where coaches also provided pinpoint instruction on these same human silhouettes on where to aim for chest, head and “mobility” (the hips and pelvis) shots. LtCol Grossman in his article “On Killing II” that the Army system where silhouette reactive targets are used, that is targets that fall down when you hit them are actually a perfect model of what is called “operant” psychological conditioning. (7)
This new method of conditioning lead to increased firing rates in Korea and even higher in Vietnam, Other countries such as England has similar results in their own conflicts. (12) Considering the methods for conditioning are still being used by the US armed forces today to condition and prepare troops for combat, I’d say the effectiveness of the methodology and the psychology behind it can’t be questioned as far as an increase of combat efficiency is concerned.
His Dark Materials <3Indeed. Pullman for President etc. and so forth. A pity the films will never be up to scratch as long as they're being funded by religious conservatives.
One childlike moment does not excuse the rest of the seven books. OTOH, Rowling does make most of her adults behave like spiteful playground bullies so I guess it evens out in the end?All this talk of smart children in novels reminds me that only one author that I've come across has ever made their smart children actually childlike.
Hermione? She is a somewhat insecure child.Personally, I think one Mister Yudkowsky caught her personality in his Harry Potter fanfic pretty well:(click to show/hide)(click to show/hide)
Wait, "Hun" is derogatory? I honestly didn't know :psyduck:
The reference to Hun as used by British and American officers in World War I is at the bottom of the Wikipedia link in Loki's post. In the 19th century, German soldiers were told to fight like the Huns of old, if I recall the sense of the reference.
GarandMarine, it's not just conditioning to the kill - you mention the ugly aspect of dehumanising the enemy, and that's an interesting psychological process of its own. My god daughter served recently (Iraq was still on) as a weapons tech in HI and came back from basic talking about "Hadjis", an attempt at a derogatory nickname for Iraqi's rather like Vietnam's "Gooks".
Or even WWI's "Huns".
I won't mention what the Nazi's called their enemies...
Dehumanising takes place on many levels, and she was back for two or three years before she was even able to think of a person with "Hadji" characteristics as human. It was a major breakthrough for her - with a good bit of tears involved.
It honestly sounds complementary. Not intentionally so, but "fear those fuckers, they're crazy" is a pretty big complement to give to an opposing army.
It's not derogatory anymore period, because that usage no longer exists. It would be like trying to say someone is boastful by calling them a cracker- you'd get a totally different reaction.The reference to Hun as used by British and American officers in World War I is at the bottom of the Wikipedia link in Loki's post. In the 19th century, German soldiers were told to fight like the Huns of old, if I recall the sense of the reference.
Exactly. So "Hun" is not derogatory when applied to the people who established a large empire under the rule of Attila the Hun, but it is derogatory when applied to Germans. (Or to anyone else who isn't an actual Hun, I suppose.)
his brother was too ruthlessThis actually isn't true. (The only reason I brought out that tiny bit of your post is because as far as I can tell I agree with the rest)
I realized that was the wrong word after posting, but dangit, I couldn't' think of the right one. A couple other characters describe him that way though, before they learn more.his brother was too ruthlessThis actually isn't true. (The only reason I brought out that tiny bit of your post is because as far as I can tell I agree with the rest)
But Loki, did the reporter or the source confuse "hon" = "honey" with "Hun"?
Draco answers [in English]: “Sorry, Hun. I’m a guy and only into other girls.”
“Hun” is the English word for “Hun [the tribes]”. And for “German”. And it also means a wind instrument formed of clay and played in Korea. I decide that none of the three is an insult and continue on.
Still, I would expect a reporter doing a report on Second Life be somewhat familiar with web slang.
...That said I still refer to hadji as hadji, though I make a point of distinguishing (as do most of my mates) between Iraqi and Afghani civilians and hadji. Hadji is the bad guy who kills your friends, wants to kill you, and murders women and children on the regular, he has no honor, no self respect and only deserve swift violence visited upon him and his ilk. Dehumanization? Yes absolutely. However an enemy who rigs an ice cream cart with an IED in downtown Kabul specifically to target children does half the world on that himself.
Good guys don't do shit like that? Good guys have done a great deal worse.
All this talk of dehumanizing is very interesting, but beside the point as far as Ender goes. The reason he existed in the first place was because his brother was too ruthless and his sister too empathetic, so they hoped he would be a medium, empathetic enough to anticipate the enemy and ruthless enough to annihilate them. Keeping him uninformed that things switched from games to reality was just keeping bothersome details out of his mind, because he couldn't de... sentient them. To use what I said earlier, he had the box of morality and not killing things, so they made sure he didn't know the box applied. Anything otherwise would have broken him- did break him, when it was over- because as Carl-E mentioned, most solders defense is their status in the chain of command. Ender was at the top, with no one to blame. And not just for killing the Formics, but all the soldiers on the ships, all the mistakes that might have killed more in a battle than could have been. He never could have ordered the suicidal final attack had he known he was ordering actual ships to die. He thought he was just delivering an FU to the jerks that programmed such an obviously hopeless battle, where there was no way any ships would survive as they always had before.
TL;DR, Dehumanization doesn't apply because Ender never knew there was someone at the other end.
War is an ugly business Akima
A sense of honour and fairness should exist, and can exist in it, but it's hard to maintain in the middle of an engagement when you're nose to nose with your opponent(s) and ankle deep in gore with the guy in front of you trying to take your head of before you do the same to him/her.
There no good guys in a war. Just bad guys and worse guys.
We're so close to pull a Godwin's law in here... If someone didn't already.
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A sense of honour and fairness should exist, and can exist in it, but it's hard to maintain in the middle of an engagement when you're nose to nose with your opponent(s) and ankle deep in gore with the guy in front of you trying to take your head of before you do the same to him/her.I don't remember who said it, but one quote goes like, "If you're in a fair fight, you really messed up." And then there's that Patton quote about no one ever winning a war by dying for his country.