Misattributions, New Zealand, Cthulhu, and more..

[tcpip]

Fighting against misattributions is actually a rewarding task, despite their prevalence. Recently I had the opportunity to correct page an alleged quote from Linus Torvalds that "the future is open source everything" - a comment which appears, erroneously, in numerous books. This is, in a sense, a social bug fix. Inspired by this, I am composing a somewhat longer piece which was originally intended as part of a presentation to the Philosophy Forum, but has been brought forward having discovered that I too have been misquoted! The article will address misquotations, poor use of qualifiers, quantitative research, arguments from authority, all as components to qualitative citations.

Next week I'll be in New Zealand; initially to MC Multicore World, and then to give a presentation to computer science staff at the University of Otago in Dunedin, and to visit my secret South Pacific base. The meeting with the computer science staff will be in part inspired by a meeting this week with Greg Wilson and his software carpentry project, designed to provide scientists the minimum tools for the computation side of their research. It is similar in concept, but different in content, to the training courses I run for high performance computing. Whilst in Dunedin, we'll be staying at Larnach Castle which is surprisingly affordable, and the history of a Scottish gothic-horror-romance novel.

Thursday night was the second-last episode of Horror on the Orient Express, which includes the famous transformation of said locomotive into a living monster and the appearance of a cathedral car attached to the runaway steam monstrosity. Having literally crashed into Paris, one character decided enough was enough and booked themselves into the local asylum. Another catatonic character is in the care of another, and a third is secreted in a Romanian asylum in the Carpathians where they call for Ithaqua each evening.

Earlier in the week doomydoombear and partner visited and we provided a tour of Willsmere. Tomorrow is LUV-Beginners, with Daniel Jitnah giving a talk on an introduction to PHP. On Sunday there's a chance I'll be attending the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, although the circumstances of the ticket are not the best - imajica_lj, you are in our thoughts.

Comments

[zorkian]

A secret South Pacific base, how exciting! :)

New Zealand is lovely, although I'm sure I don't have to tell you that, but perhaps it's worth just mentioning to increase the number of mentions in search engines for "New Zealand is ...".

[tcpip]

Better still, our secret base is a former meeting place for Freemasons.

And of course Dunedin is a favoured port to make one's way to R'lyeh, where Cthulhu lies dreaming...

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

nothing more annoying than misquotes that are more popular than what they really said!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Agreed; some out just downright strange.

For example, it's often claimed the Seneca The Younger said; "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful" (Seneca The Younger).

Although found on numerous websites, there's is no evidence whatsoever that Seneca The Younger ever made the remark. Indeed, it would be quite out of character; Seneca was a Stoic, who believed in an ascetic life and argued instead that "religion does honour to the gods, while superstitions wrongs them" (On Mercy).

Ironically, it is perhaps just as well the latter coined the phrase; "Errare humanum est" - to err is human.

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

LOL, i have a friend who uses that exact quote and who also attributes it to Seneca. Given his age (76) and education, i'd presumed it was true.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It's from Gibbon, more than 1700 years later, referring to the rule of the Antonines, themselves a hundred years after Seneca.

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

Now that is interesting! Thank you!

[castleclear.livejournal.com]

"The problem about quotes on the internet is one can never be certain of their veracity." Abraham Lincoln (or maybe it was Alexander the Great or Nefertiti - in any event I am certain it was from one of the forward-thinking people.)

*grin* Ok, i stole that whole-cloth from another internet friend. Hope you are having an excellent day!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods* I use that "Abraham Lincoln" quote often as well, and especially on Facebook :)

[lifedistilled.livejournal.com]

On the subject of misquotations, you might make a little hay with the evil "triple-ellipsis." The citation of a quotation with a big "..." in the middle is supposed to indicate the removal of text that in no way alters the statement being quoted, but oftentimes journalists overlook this requirement, intentionally or not.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Actually yes, thank you for that. I had overlooked the quotation of quotation of quotations.

As a personal preference I have typically used a nested method, i.e., "Quote 'quote of quote' Quote". Note quite sure what I would do with a a triple level. Maybe "' Quote "Quote of quote 'quote of quote of quote' Quote of quote" Quote'". Or am I breaking grammatical conventions there?