Your Kind of Art

[Slawbug]

Sort of indirectly inspired by the comics thread, here is an informal, open-response poll asking who your favourite artist is in a variety of categories. (And yes, more analysis of the other poll is still on its way!)

 

I am putting the poll questions in a second post. You can easily copy them by using QUOTE on that post, and then deleting both the QUOTE and the /QUOTE tags.

 

I've been a bit arbitrary choosing what to include and have left out several major genres (i.e., dance, photography) that I did not expect most people to have answers for. Feel free to add those or other categories if you feel I have left one out!

 

NB: "Comic" can mean webcomic, comic strip, or comic book. Not stand-up comedian.

[Slawbug]

 

Favourite Comic:

Favourite Painter:

Favourite Sculptor:

Favourite Architect/Building:

Favourite Composer:

Favourite Musician/Band:

Favourite Prose Writer:

Favourite Poet:

Favourite Playwright:

Favourite Filmmaker:

Favourite Philosopher:

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above:

 

[keira]

Favourite Comic: xkcd

Favourite Painter: Escher, if he counts

Favourite Sculptor: i am art heathen

Favourite Architect/Building: i am art heathen

Favourite Composer: Daniel Ingram (or Orff if being dead is a prereq)

Favourite Musician/Band: Either Coheed and Cambria or Metric. Favourite song is by Led Zep though

Favourite Prose Writer: Jordan

Favourite Poet: Wilde

Favourite Playwright: i am art heathen

Favourite Filmmaker: pre-stupid Lucas

Favourite Philosopher: Hobbes

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: Faust and Co., of course.

[Cairo Jim]

Favourite Comic:

Favourite Painter:

Favourite Sculptor:

Favourite Architect/Building:

Favourite Composer: Michael Kamen

Favourite Musician/Band: It would have to be between Artillery, Metallica and Slayer

Favourite Prose Writer:

Favourite Poet:

Favourite Playwright:

Favourite Filmmaker: I don't know very many, So I'll just go with George Lucas

Favourite Philosopher:

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above:

 

Did I mention I'm bored to death with the majority of "art"?

[Randomizer]

Favourite Comic: - Dilbert

Favourite Painter: - Marc Chagall

Favourite Sculptor:

Favourite Architect/Building: - Frank Lloyd Wright

Favourite Composer: - George Gershwin

Favourite Musician/Band: - Bangles

Favourite Prose Writer: - Robert Asprin

Favourite Poet: - Rudyard Kipling

b]Favourite Playwright:[/b] - Harold Pinter

Favourite Filmmaker: - Alfred Hitchcock

Favourite Philosopher:

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above:

[Slawbug]

Favourite Comic: The Infinity Gauntlet

Favourite Painter: Paul Klee

Favourite Sculptor: Dr. Evermor

Favourite Architect/Building: Christian Menn

Favourite Composer: Bartok

Favourite Musician/Band: Stereolab

Favourite Prose Writer: John Barth

Favourite Poet: Rimbaud

Favourite Playwright: Goethe, Shakespeare

Favourite Filmmaker: Taymor, Miyazaki

Favourite Philosopher: Berkeley, Kierkegaard

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: Scheherazade?

[Alorael at Large]

Favourite Comic: SMBC is the best; Schlock Mercenary is the favorite. Or Calvin and Hobbes.

Favourite Painter: Huh. Rembrandt? Or Matisse's cutouts.

Favourite Sculptor: Unqualified.

Favourite Architect/Building: Frank Lloyd Wright

Favourite Composer: Bach

Favourite Musician/Band: Unsure. Kamelot is the favorite of the week.

Favourite Prose Writer: Also unsure. Call it Jostein Gaarder today.

Favourite Poet: Um. Keats? Emily Dickinson?

Favourite Playwright: Michael Frayn or Charles Mee. Gilbert if operettas count.

Favourite Filmmaker: Pass.

Favourite Philosopher: Peter Railton for use, David Hume for brilliance.

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: Dr. Seuss

 

—Alorael, who could list totally different answers and still be happy. There are many talented artists out there.

[Slawbug]

Jostein Gaarder's terrific. _The Solitaire Mystery_ is one of my favourite books of all time.

[Sudanna]

Favourite Comic: HERO.

Favourite Painter: N/A.

Favourite Sculptor: N/A.

Favourite Architect/Building: N/A.

Favourite Composer: N/A.

Favourite Musician/Band: Gogol Bordello.

Favourite Prose Writer: R. Scott Bakker.

Favourite Poet: N/A.

Favourite Playwright: N/A.

Favourite Filmmaker: Kubrick, I guess.

Favourite Philosopher: Nietzsche, I guess.

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above:

[Callie]

Favourite Comic: XKCD

Favourite Painter: I'm not educated enough on the subject to really pick out a favorite, but my favorite paintings are Nighthawks and Lady With an Ermine.

Favourite Sculptor:

Favourite Architect/Building: No favorites, but I am fond of mosques and similar types of architecture.

Favourite Composer: Mozart or Rachmaninoff depending on my mood.

Favourite Musician/Band: The Beatles/Radiohead/Bob Dylan

Favourite Prose Writer: John Steinbeck (although my favorite novel is 1984)

Favourite Poet: Bob Dylan

Favourite Playwright: Sophocles

Favourite Filmmaker: Stanley Kubrick

Favourite Philosopher: Not particularly a set favorite, because I've read a wide variety of philosophers but not studied any of them in depth, but Adam Smith, Baruch Spinoza, and Milton Friedman come to mind.

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above:

[Dintiradan]

Some of these categories I don't have much interest in (sorry!), others I simply can't choose a favourite, so here's just five:

 

Favourite Painter: Robert Bateman

Favourite Architect/Building: Ferdinand Cheval / Le Palais idéal (I don't think it's particularly attractive, but I'm utterly fascinated by it.)

Favourite Composer:

Favourite Musician/Band: Toss up between

,

, and

Favourite Comic: Calvin & Hobbes

 

 

(Also, this made my day.)

 

EDIT: Favourite Sculptor: George Rhoads (Another one where it might not be my actual favourite, but as a kid I loved the small machine he had in West Ed. And probably still would now.)

[Dantius]

Favourite Comic: Men In Hats.

Favourite Painter: Rembrandt.

Favourite Sculptor: I don't know much about sculpture, sorry.

Favourite Architect/Building: Gustav Eiffel for favorite architect, because he was also an engineer, *COUGH* unlike Frank Lloyd Wright *COUGH* . Favorite building is harder. I think the best looking recent one (past decade) is the London Shard, but of all time? I'd have to seriously think about that. Maybe the cathedral at Chartres? Hardly a monument to technical acumen, though- it would have to lose points for the guess-and-check method of engineering.

Favourite Composer: Richard Wagner.

Favourite Musician: I'm quite partial to Pavarotti, myself.

Favourite Prose Writer: Prose? Is this just a roundabout way of asking favorite novelist? In that case, Asimov.

Favourite Poet: Dante. If that doesn't count, Poe.

Favourite Playwright: Has to be Shakespeare, no other answer is possible. Maybe if Marlowe wrote more stuff, it'd be him.

Favourite Filmmaker: Ingmarr Bergmann. David Lean is also quite good.

Favourite Philosopher: Hobbes by a mile.

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: I'd have to say Leonard Euler is my favorite mathematician, but Gauss comes in a close second

[Student of Trinity]

Favourite Comic: Girl Genius, I guess

Favourite Building: Aya Sofia

Favourite Poet: Auden

Favourite Philosopher: Kant — at least, what I think he meant to say.

 

For the other subjects, I don't feel I know any candidates well enough to make a confident choice of one favorite. I like identifying things I don't like well enough to be bothered with, but I'm not really into determining favorites among the things I decide to keep.

[Erebus the Black]

Favourite Comic: AMD

Favourite Painter: Van Gogh

Favourite Sculptor: none

Favourite Architect/Building: none

Favourite Composer: Beethoven

Favourite Musician/Band: Beatles

Favourite Prose Writer: Hemingway

Favourite Poet: none

Favourite Playwright: Shakespear? (it's either him or Molier as they are the only ones I know)

Favourite Filmmaker: none

Favourite Philosopher: Socrates

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: I. Asimov + J.R.R. Tolkien + D. Adams

 

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S

Jostein Gaarder's terrific. _The Solitaire Mystery_ is one of my favourite books of all time.

I love that, but I think my favorite of his might be The Ringmaster's Daughter. It's a shame that he somehow became famous primarily and almost exclusively for Sophie's World, in my experience, because while it's an engaging primer on Western philosophy it's not a great novel.

—Alorael, who feels another poll coming on between this and the discussion of Go in another thread.

[Necris Omega]

As of the moment...

 

Favourite Comic: Order of the Stick

Favourite Painter: Leonardo

Favourite Sculptor: Michelangelo

Favourite Architect/Building: Alex Jordan Jr.

Favourite Composer: Thomas Bergersen

Favourite Musician/Band: Nightwish

Favourite Prose Writer: None

Favourite Poet: Edgar Allen Poe

Favourite Playwright: None

Favourite Filmmaker: Francis Ford Coppola

Favourite Philosopher: None

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above:

[JamesMighty]

Favourite Comic: ---

Favourite Painter: Vincent Van Gogh

Favourite Sculptor: ---

Favourite Architect/Building: Empire State Building

Favourite Composer: Bethoven (If he counts)

Favourite Musician/Band: Jason DeRulo

Favourite Prose Writer: Rick Riordan

Favourite Poet: Robert Frost

Favourite Playwright: ---

Favourite Filmmaker: ---

Favourite Philosopher: Myself

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: ---

[keira]

Originally Posted By: Necris Omega

Favourite Musician/Band: Nightwish

Oh hey, I used to listen to them a lot. Not so much anymore, though.

[Necris Omega]

Eh, I recently got their latest album, so there you have it.

 

A lot of people say they're losing their "signature" sound, too "cinematic" and not enough metal, but honestly... even if it is, it doesn't bother me. I'm a big fan of Two Steps from Hell, so...

[Goldengirl]

Favourite Comic: I'll say xkcd, even though it's not ideal.

Favourite Painter: Salvador Dali

Favourite Sculptor: Michelangelo

Favourite Architect/Building: Frank Lloyd Wright

Favourite Composer: Mozart

Favourite Musical Composition: Pachelbel's "Canon in D" or Carl Orff's "O Fortuna". Both carry a lot of memories for me.

Favourite Musician/Band: This one is hard to say in any general sense, as I like types of music ranging from Baroque to dubstep. If I had to choose just one musician/band for the rest of my life, though, it would be the Beatles, if only for the relatively wide range of music.

Favourite Prose Writer: Jack Kerouac

Favourite Poet: Myself.

Favourite Playwright: Oscar Wilde. Shakespeare and Marlowe are close seconds.

Favourite Filmmaker: I couldn't give a name, but I do adore the artsy films that don't have the immediate appeal of superhero, zombie, rom-com type mass appeal films. A shout-out to the Situationist movement in France, but stuff like Black Swan or The Fountain is fine, too.

Favourite Philosopher: Friedrich Nietzsche

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: Dale Chihuly is my favorite professional glass-blower.

[Juan Carlo]

Favourite Comic: Calvin & Hobbes

 

Favourite Painter: Frida Kahlo

 

Favourite Sculptor: Don't know

 

Favourite Architect/Building:

 

Favourite Composer: Living: Michael Nyman Dead: Wagner

 

Favourite Musical Composition: The final aria in "Tristan und Isolde." Especially the Waltraud Meier version. She might not have the best voice, but she's an awesome actress and she embodies the material better than anyone, I think, so it floors me every time I see it:

 

Favourite Musician/Band: Musician: Tom Waits Band: The Magnetic Fields

 

Favourite Prose Writer:

 

American: Flannery O'Conner. I'm pretty much always reading her collection of short stories. Bloody hilarious and biting and grotesque and insightful and slightly mystical.

 

Non-American: Robert Walser. Pretty much the same thing can be said about him as O'Conner, actually: hilarious and biting and grotesque and insightful and slightly mystical.

 

Favourite Poet: William Blake. Especially his later stuff which is the most bizarre, complex, mind blowing literature I've ever read.

 

Favourite Playwright: Heinrich Von Kleist. I love German Romanticism and "Penthesilea" is the most awesomely brutal and underrated play ever (he was also a pretty good philosopher and prose writer on top of being a play write).

 

Favourite Filmmaker: Living: Lars Von Trier Dead: Ingmar Bergman

 

Favourite Philosopher: Kierkegaard, no contest. Derrida is really fun to read too, though, as even if he just ripped everything off from the negative theologians I like the linguistic games he plays.

 

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: Marina Abramovic is a brilliant performance artist. The only performance art that isn't complete BS, I think.

[Triumph]

Every time I see the thread title, I think of Jabba the Hutt saying "This bounty hunter is my kind of scum." Maybe there should be a survey of forum-users' favorite bounty hunters.

[JamesMighty]

Well if that's the case, Jango Fett

[Actaeon]

Favourite Comic: Calvin and Hobbes

Favourite Painter: Renoir / Magritte

Favourite Sculptor: Bernini

Favourite Architect/Building: Chrysler Building / Palenque / Pantheon

Favourite Composer: Tchaikovsky / Bach / Brahms

Favourite Musician/Band: Pink Floyd / Paul Simon / Led Zeppelin

Favourite Prose Writer: Bradbury / Vonnegut

Favourite Poet: Ferlinghetti

Favourite Playwright: Shakespeare (sorry to be so cliché)

Favourite Filmmaker: William Goldman / Woody Allen (it's the writer that matters)

Favourite Philosopher: Hume

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: Dorothea Lange

 

Edit: Dinti appears to have very similar music taste to me. It's comforting, since I'm pretty incompatible with most of the Spiderwebbers on last.fm except for Aran.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Actaeon

Edit: Dinti appears to have very similar music taste to me. It's comforting, since I'm pretty incompatible with most of the Spiderwebbers on last.fm except for Aran.

Your show frightened me last night. I'm convinced you broke into my house and stole all my favourite music.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Every time I see the thread title, I think of Jabba the Hutt saying "This bounty hunter is my kind of scum." Maybe there should be a survey of forum-users' favorite bounty hunters.

Hmm. I'd have to go with Urdnot Wrex on that score.

[nikki.]

I'm a little sad that nobody has mentioned Slavoj Žižek as their favourite philosopher yet, but not sad enough I want to subject myself to the torture of picking favourites.

[Randomizer]

Favorite Bounty Hunter - The Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood back in his spaghetti Western days)

[Balladeer]

Favourite Comic: X-men from comic to cartoon to movie series. <3

Favourite Painter: VanGogh - Dr. Who may have colored my view a bit...

Favourite Sculptor: Korczak Ziótkowski - I love his ambition at least. There are not many sculptures that I really enjoy.

Favourite Architect/Building: The Egyptians w/their pyramids and whoever designed/built them.

Favourite Composer: John Williams - Though the big classical composers of yesteryear are all fond favorites, too.

Favourite Musician/Band: Al Yankovic - Before you roll your eyes consider his actual talents. He does EVERY genre of music; rap to swing to ballad to hip hop to rock to blues to pop, etc., so my taste for variety is satisfied. He has impeccable rhythm and timing not to mention the multitude of sounds he uses to keep that rhythm, his enunciation lets his audience understand every word of every song, therefore sing along, and his pitch is perfect even with the incredible range he has. And on top of all that I smile and laugh through almost all his songs. I could listen to him all day long and not get bored.

Favourite Prose Writer: Mike Yankoski - actually I don't really have a favorite Prose writer at the moment but Mike's book was one of the most recent that I really enjoyed.

Favourite Poet: Dr. Seuss - I loved reading fox in socks to the kids. Twas great fun and dexterity practice.

Favourite Playwright: Shakespeare - No one else comes close.

Favourite Filmmaker: Peter Jackson - For the Shire!

Favourite Philosopher: Jesus - Crazy radical.

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: In Digital Art, it is difficult to pick only one favorite because there are so many great artists, but the work by Anne Stokes embodies the kind of digital art I fall in love with.

[Lauren CW]

Favourite Comic: Sin City.

 

Favourite Musician/Band: The Killers/Cake/Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Favourite Prose Writer: Tough one... Probably Michael Crichton.

Favourite Poet: Jeffrey McDaniels

Favourite Playwright: I actually honestly really like every Shakespeare I have seen. Can't say that about any others.

Favourite Filmmaker: Tarantino/Rodriguez.

Favourite Philosopher: Philosoraptor. Or Jesus.

 

Other Category: Steven Moffat.

 

Everyone else's answers make me feel like an uncultured swine.

 

[Juan Carlo]

Originally Posted By: The Boy With A Thorn In His Side

I'm a little sad that nobody has mentioned Slavoj Žižek as their favourite philosopher yet, but not sad enough I want to subject myself to the torture of picking favourites.

I like Zizek quite a bit. In fact, I don't think there's any philosopher more fun to read than him. He has a brilliant way of taking initial positions on things which seem incredibly (and almost deliberately) counter-intuitive, then constructing an argument for them which, by the end, makes everything seem obvious. Plus he's a film buff, which is awesome.

My only problem is that I've always thought Lacanian psychoanalysis to be silly, outdated, mumbojumbo and thus I've always been confused as to why Zizek insists on drawing so heavily from Lacan. The very philosophically grounded concepts from Lacan tend to work quite well in Zizek's writing, but whenever he goes into Lacan's ideas about psychology I think he's on shakier ground. To his credit, Zizek has done some awesome things with certain Lacanian concepts and they've allowed him to elucidate some interesting ideas, but Zizek's use of these ideas is unique enough that I've often wondered why he doesn't just divorce himself from Lacan entirely.

[keira]

He won't do that because then Lacan would get half of his ideas.

[nikki.]

He'd have a job - Lacan died thirty years ago.

[Student of Trinity]

I have heard of Žižek, and read a short article about him, but have no real idea what his ideas are. In fact he is part of a cloud of more recent philosophers whose names I occasionally run into, but never with any indication of what they have contributed. The Wikipedia article on Žižek is about as good as it gets: not good at all. But that seems to me to be typical of what passes for popular exposition of 'theory'.

 

The problem isn't that the expositions are too encumbered with technical jargon. Proliferation of unexplained jargon is what happens when experts with a lot to say lack the time or talent to unpack what they're saying. Too much jargon makes an exposition totally useless, but that's a problem that is easy to fix. All it takes is a couple of decent graduate students adding a basic glossary, and suddenly there's a brief summary that anyone can follow.

 

The problem with incoherent summaries of 'theory' stuff is that there don't seem to be any graduate students brave enough to contribute simple definitions of the terms. That's suspicious to the point of being damning.

 

Advanced students in any field struggle every day with the "Emperor's New Clothes" effect. When you're trying to understand anything difficult, you get so sick of feeling stupid all the time, that you're constantly tempted to pretend you understand when you really don't. Students pretend to their professors, and professors pretend to their students, and everybody pretends to themselves, just so they can claim enough of a victory to justify a coffee break. Fortunately, at least in real, substantial fields of study, it's possible to make enough progress that you don't have to always pretend about everything. But every academic is intimately familiar with ENC thinking, because we all find ourselves falling into it, all the time.

 

That's why a passage like the Wikipedia Žižek article is so suspicious. It sounds so exactly like the sort of thing I would write if I felt obliged to present Žižek as a great thinker, but couldn't really put my finger on any way in which he was more than a regurgitator of discredited predecessors with a modest flair for self-marketing.

 

Maybe the bottom line is just that Žižek is a good philosopher as contemporary philosophers go, and deserves his celebrity within his field, but that philosophy has been in a dry period for several decades now, and hasn't produced anything in that time that really deserves the attention of non-specialists. These things happen; if pushed, I'd be willing to admit that contemporary physics is in a similar state. So maybe Žižek is just a modest-sized frog in a shrunken pond, and lay people who want to catch up on philosophy can safely wait for the movie.

 

But I'd be happy to learn that Žižek was more than that. What has he done for us lately?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

[snip]

Personally, I think it's been quite clear since Sokal at least that shockingly large swathes of the non-scientific academic disciplines not only have no clothes, but have never really had any in the first place and still feel no compulsion to saddle themselves with fabriconormative instruments of loomiarchal oppression.

A rather sad state of affairs, but it's not something that can be fixed from the outside, and all the people who are capable of fixing it are either already in other careers or don't feel compelled to do anything about it in the first place, when they could be studying other fields entirely.

[Harehunter]

SoT, you have touched on a problem I have had to deal with ever since I became a computer systems analyst (there are many kinds of systems, each requiring a slightly different vocabulary to define them). How do I explain the mechanics of a Material Requirements Planning system to someone who has had Zero training in computers, business, accounting and so on? He knows far more about building a product than anyone else in the company, save the engineer who designed that product, and even he can learn from that supervisor. On the other hand, understanding "red-neck" has been of vital benefit for me to learn from that supervisor what he needs for me to do for him.

 

When people ask me what skill they need to develop to become a Data Base Administrator, they often think that math skills would top my list. Wrong. I tell them that language skills are by far the most important. The bulk of my job is translating computerese to the language that is understood by my audience, either accounting, business development, or redneck. And I want to emphasize that being a redneck is nothing to be ashamed of or to be diminished. Some of the smartest people I have had the good fortune to work with are pure redneck. Louisiana has another class of people whose nickname I shan't use here.

 

Developing the ability to communicate across those boundaries has been my greatest challenge. You seem to have a knack for efficiently and effectively 'translating' the lingo used in these scientific arenas of learning to at least the level of a college graduate, regardless of discipline. This ability is as much an art-form as it is a technology.

 

IMHO your expositions here are of a quality that would warrant being published in a medium such as Discover Magazine.

[Alorael at Large]

I'm immediately suspicious of anyone whose ideas are, at first glance, completely opaque. Not that I don't grasp them immediately, but that I don't grasp even most of the terms they're using, or the terms used to define the terms. Highly technical, specialized subfields within sciences are often hard to understand, but I usually get the feeling that I could figure it out if I paid attention. If I don't get that feeling, I've noticed more often than not the article doesn't have anything meaningful to say, or is hiding bad data, or something of the sort.

 

In philosophy, I've noticed this trend is, if anything, magnified. Philosophy doesn't have highly technical measurements, instruments, and objects of investigation. Yes, everything is put into the context of existing philosophy, and yes, terms must be rigorously defined, but everything should be, and often is, understandable if the explanation is halfway decent. When it's not, it's often ivory tower garbage philosophy. Philosophy is the most striking example, but I've seen the same in literary criticism, in sociology, and in other disciplines: the more arcane and incomprehensible the language, the more likely there's no real content.

 

—Alorael, who will gladly agree that a fair swath of the academic establishment in certain fields are contributing nothing to anyone. But sociology, anthropology, English, and philosophy, all hotbeds of postmodern deconstruction, also have their share of academics putting forth interesting ideas of real academic, if not popular, interest.

[Student of Trinity]

I'm still pretty impressed by Chip Morningstar's take on deconstruction. Apparently this guy's name really is 'Chip Morningstar'. I'm guessing he's a child of the 60's. But he's some sort of computer guy, he sounds as though his head is still screwed on okay, and he can write. I'm willing to buy his contention that there is something to all this deconstruction stuff — just much less than its proponents try to make out, because in fact all that's really interesting about it can be stated pretty succinctly in a few pages. As Morningstar says, it seems like a bunch of ideas that ought to have made a pretty good doctoral thesis — not an entire academic industry.

[nikki.]

 

(actually, SoT's link was a really interesting read so thanks for sharing. as a student ive had similar thoughts about jargon and opaqueness myself. as a student of English literature, though and as somebody who has had the briefest of introductions to critical theory (and enjoyed the foucault, zizek, saussure and belsey ive read) it made me realise that perhaps my chosen field isnt taken as serious as it ought to be (in my opinion), and that actually, i may be as windy and incomprehensible when im talking theory down the pub. i like the zizek ive read because of his style, primarily, which now seems a bit shallow on my part.

 

blah, i would choose to do a humanities degree)

[Alorael at Large]

If it's worth saying, it's worth saying well. The first rule of good writing is to take your bloviation and circumlocution and replace them with succinct, meaningful sentences, or at least vacuous verbiage in language that's meaningful to the rest of the world.

 

—Alorael, who finds it acceptable to be windy and incomprehensible at a pub. That's one of the things pubs are for. When you do it in an academic forum, though, you do a disservice to your discipline.

[keira]

My sophomore year of high school I had to write a bigass paper for my biology final. While most of the people in the class predictably went for the copy-paste from Wikipedia method, I decided to actually do the paper. Which meant reading all the articles and stuff on my topic (Biocomputing, in case anyone is curious). There was a lot of the "I know a big word, let's use it!" and a lot of jargon. The jargon I can handle, because biology on the molecular level needs it, but the only thing the vomiting-out-big-words-for-no-reason did was piss me off.

[Dintiradan]

Here's a relevant status update a friend of mine posted on Facebook a couple of days ago:

Quote:

Is amused by a line from Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit: "But philosophy must beware of the wish to be edifying." I know what he means, but it still seems rather ironic.

[Parakeet]

Favourite Comic: Mallard Fillmore (punny punny)

Favourite Painter: Rembrandt van Rijn

Favourite Sculptor: Unknown scupltor of the Winged Victory of Samothrace

Favourite Architect/Building: (sorry, I don't read the building face plates)

Favourite Composer: D. Scarlatti

Favourite Musician/Band: Canadian Brass

Favourite Prose Writer: David L. Meyer & Richard Arnold Davis (A Sea Without Fish) or Murasaki if it has to be fiction

Favourite Poet: Ogden Nash

Favourite Playwright: Mary Chase (for Harvey)

Favourite Filmmaker:George Lucas

Favourite Philosopher: John Locke

Favourite Miscellaneous Artist Not Covered Above: the late Robert Preston

 

 

[Parakeet]

Favourite Architect/Building: The Egyptians w/their pyramids and whoever designed/built them.

 

The original one seems to be the architectural creation of Imhotep, commoner high priest of the sun god at Heliopolis.