Writing

CBP grabs Nigerian science fiction author

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Mike Glyer reports on File 770:

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki was reportedly detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection authorities at the Los Angeles Airport on February 23. LA author Woody Dismukes has been asking people to signal boost this message:

 
Thursday afternoon @naacpimageaward nominee @Penprince_ was detained by @CBPLosAngeles at @flyLAXairport . He has not been heard from in 48 hours and we are concerned for his safety. Please share this message widely so we can ensure his safe release.

— Woody Dismukes (@WoodyDismukes) February 25, 2023

 
Jason Sanford noted on Twitter: “Ekpeki has a valid visa and was on his way to a high-profile award ceremony where the Africa Risen anthology was being honored.”

As of my writing this, there are several comments expressing concern, but none of them have any information about what his current situation might be.

Update: A new post says he was reportedly sent back to Nigeria, probably for exceeding his visa limits. We don’t have to like this, but at least he isn’t locked away somewhere.

“The right side of history” 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged language usage writing on by

Once again, let’s look at an expression which is loaded with meaning that most people don’t think about. Some writers use it without thinking, others because they’re promoting their particular philosophy. The expression is “being on the right side of history.” If you don’t support a certain cause, you supposedly aren’t on the right side of history.

What does that mean, though, and why do you want to be on that side? It’s an idea that comes from the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and its two bastard children, Marxism and Fascism. This idea, called historicism, holds that history inexorably follows a certain path. Your only choice is to go with the tide or against it.

If you put the phrase into your writing without thinking about it, you could be lending support to historicism without knowing it.
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On book-burning 1

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Very recently I came upon a discussion in a Reddit atheist forum in which people talked about what to do with Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms. Suggestions included throwing them in a dumpster, defacing them, and using them as toilet paper. A minority objected, but the dominant sentiment was that it’s fine to do those things. The book-burning mentality is distressingly common in America. A few years ago there was a book-burning campaign against J. K. Rowling, different only in its motivation from many other burnings of Rowling’s works.

Burning books is a confession of intellectual bankruptcy. The burner is saying, in effect, “I can’t answer what this book says, so I’ll destroy it before people can read it.” It has been a favorite tactic of authoritarians for centuries. In The Magic Battery, Gottesmann burns Frieda’s book in public because he can’t bear the thought of people reading it. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice featured a cop grabbing someone from behind and a man throwing books into a fire on its seal. The Nazis publicly burned books by the thousands. It’s a distressingly common phenomenon in modern society as well.
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Redefining “equity” 1

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged usage vocabulary writing on by

In a previous post, I quoted a statement by Hamline president Fayneese Miller referring to “a purported stand-off between academic freedom and equity.” This got me thinking about the way some have tried to change the meaning of the word “equity.” It’s hard to tell what Miller meant, since she’s the only one doing the purporting. Others, though, have tried to shift the meaning of “equity” from its traditional one.

The Merriam-Webster definition of “equity” gives several technical meanings in law and finance, as well as “justice according to natural law or right; specifically: freedom from bias or favoritism.” Equity means applying the same standards to everyone; it rejects, for example, laws giving special privileges to the nobility or denying rights to people on the basis of their appearance, sex, or religion.
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Fayneese Miller’s obsession 3

This entry was posted in Censorship Writing and tagged censorship education Hamline religion on by

The situation at Hamline University, which I blogged about a few days ago, has gotten stranger. President Fayneese Miller’s recent statements suggest that the non-renewal of the contract of a lecturer for including Islamic art in an art course is the manifestation of some strange obsession.

The lowliness of the lecturer plays an important role in Miller’s raving. She emphasizes repeatedly that the lecturer was a mere “adjunct instruction” and insists that “the adjunct instructor chosen to teach the course in art history did not ‘lose her job.'” Easy for a university president to say. Not so easy to hear when you’re told you aren’t coming back next term. Miller adds that “the decision not to offer her another class was made at the unit level and in no way reflects on her ability to adequately teach the class.” That’s exactly the issue. A fully competent lecturer isn’t coming back, not because of any problems with her teaching, but because she didn’t follow the commandments of a conservative branch of a religion. But defending a lowly lecturer against a university president’s wrath is, says the university president, a “privileged reaction.”
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Student journalism and cowardice 1

This entry was posted in Censorship Writer ethics Writing and tagged censorship Hamline religion on by

You may have heard about Hamline University’s recent outrageous action. Not everyone has, though, and there’s been misinformation going around, so let me start by summarizing it. A lecturer (not a professor), in a course on art history, devoted a session to Islamic art. Aware that some Muslims regard it as improper to portray Muhammad visually, he informed the class that he would be presenting such an image, a classic Islamic work from the 14th century, and gave people a chance to leave before showing the picture. A student complained anyway. The university announced that it would not renew the untenured lecturer’s contract, so strictly speaking, it didn’t fire the lecturer. The action, however, was intended as punishment for violating Islamic law. Hamline is a Methodist school, not an Islamic one, in Minnesota.

Since this is at least nominally a blog on writing, my focus won’t be on the university’s vile action, but on what played out at the Hamline Oracle, a student news publication. I suspect they took the actions they did under extreme pressure from the administration, but their rolling over as they did was an act of gross cowardice regardless.
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James Nicoll says no to Hugo nominations 1

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James Nicoll, a well-known reviewer of science fiction, has asked people not to nominate him for any Hugo awards.

Having won, they have gone on make extremely dubious choices for their Guests of Honour. Sergey Lukianenko an avid supporter of the ongoing Russian effort to obliterate Ukraine and Ukrainians, while Liu Cixin supports the Xinjiang internment camps. It’s their WorldCon, and they can do what they like but I am not going to supply implied support by standing for or accepting Hugo nominations connected to this WorldCon.

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Content generation with AI

This entry was posted in Tools Writing and tagged AI computers writing on by

Software is getting steadily better at passing the Turing test. This doesn’t mean computers are people and should have their civil rights recognized, but it raises some problems. Students use computer-generated output to generate essays and answer exam questions. A bot called ChatGPT has gotten a lot of attention for its ability to generate coherent answers to questions.

The issue of using AI to generate what’s euphemistically called “content writing” — low-quality filler for business pages and blogs — hasn’t gotten as much attention. The people who work in that field need to worry, though. If a customer wants some generic text to give the impression of having something useful to say, can a machine do it well enough? Computer-generated output is cheaper than paying content mill rates. It will probably have fewer errors in spelling and grammar.
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It’s not what you say…

This entry was posted in Commentary Techniques and tagged writing on by

“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” A book I picked up today in the library reminded me of that saying. It’s The Reformation, a part of the “Turning Points in World History” series. The book consists of essays by different authors. One of them, “The History and Premises of Protestantism” by Hans J. Hillerbrand, includes a half-hearted apology for John Calvin. Other parts of the book are more straightforward about his career of persecuting heretics, but Hillerbrand’s careful phrasing struck me. I’m thinking of these two quotes, found in the same paragraph:
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Algorithms don’t need defending 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged language software usage writing on by

I’m constantly annoyed by the statements that people ignorant of software development make about “algorithms.” They don’t have the least idea what one is, yet they think they’re competent to declare how evil an algorithm is.

Let me focus on one article, because it’s from Reason, which I expect better things of. The piece is “In Defense of Algorithms,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown. A look at her bio shows that she’s got the background to write about many things, among which she claims “tech,” but she doesn’t mention any experience with the computer industry or software development. She should have known better than to pick up this topic and put a dent in a record of excellent articles.
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