Posts Tagged: Arguments
The Internets
10

"Google Has Forgotten Why We Love It"

| March 22nd, 2012

Search is just about retrieving information. Actually answering subjective questions requires a deep knowledge of the person doing the asking: Where you are, who your are friends, what your interests are, what you like and don't like…. Google has forgotten why we loved it. It has degraded its premier product in service of promoting others. It has done devious things to ferret out information from its users that they do not willingly provide. It is too much focused on the future, and conversely too scared of current competition.

—This is a fantastic and understandable explanation and argument about what Google is, what it wants to be and what [...]

Culture and TV
45

Two McNally Jackson Booksellers Argue About Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom'

| September 3rd, 2010

Sam MacLaughlin: Hi Dustin!

Dustin Kurtz: Hello Samuel. So, introductions of our various stances, maybe?

Sam: Maybe! We are both sad young white literary men, yes?

Dustin: Emphasis on the sad and white, yes. Our manliness being in dispute at times.

Sam: At times. I do carry a tote bag. And: you're not a female novelist, are you?

Dustin: No, so I think we can agree that my dislike of this book won't come from anything as disagreeable as politics. Unless there is a political party fighting for better prose?

Rhetorical Tactics
15

Suicide and the 'Slippery Slope' Argument

| June 8th, 2011

Are we still arguing about "assisted suicide"? Times web thinkie-typer Ross Douthat is, as he is "making an argument premised on the idea that suicide is generally wrong and helping someone kill themselves is generally a form of murder." Also he starts referring to the deaths of people who choose suicide who are of "sound-enough mind and uncoerced" as "self-slaughter"—while making the case that it's a "slippery slope." Why, if we let mortally ill people have control over their own deaths, then maybe everyone will just give up and die. (Also people will start gay-marrying pigs and sheep.) Yeah, that's why Jack Kervorkian assisted in all of [...]

Culture and TV
42

Where Have All the Sontags Gone?

| June 24th, 2010

It would be easy to dismiss Lee Siegel's piece-"Where Have All the Mailers [he means Norman] Gone?") in the New York Observer this week-but what fun would that be? Siegel, writing in typically bombastic fashion, obviously intends to start an argument. His essay is essentially a lament for the disappearance of fiction from just that sort of debate: the shared (and perhaps largely imaginary) upper-middle-brow cultural conversation many of us try to engage in by reading magazines like the New Yorker and going to see certain movies, etc. I enjoy that conversation, too; so let's have at it.

19

'Jane Eyre': Does It Totally Suck? An Argument

| April 1st, 2011

Dan: Claire Jarvis! I really liked Cary Fukunaga's film of Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender. But I know next to nothing about Brontë, having read maybe one-fifth of the novel in 11th grade. You're an assistant professor in the English department at Stanford, a Brontë scholar and a superfan. Tell me why I'm wrong to like this movie so much!

Claire: Dan Kois! I really suggest you read this novel. But, right away, I don't know if I'd say I was a Charlotte Superfan. I'm more of an Emily girl.

Dan: See, whereas I am like "Oh right, there are TWO Brontës."

Claire: More, even.

Dan: [...]