I like Foucault's Pendulum too. It's the first Eco book I read! My friend Mike Tracy, then a CBOE trader, turned me onto it when I was in high school; gave me the impression it would be a difficult read. Mike needs to read more Pynchon. I'll tell him tomorrow (I've hired him at 4 different companies, including this one).
Rose is still my favorite; it resonates with my career, for obvious reasons.
Have you read many of his essays? He can get stuffy and pompous. Maybe I just don't understand him.
I think you have a good idea what I think of Umberto Eco at this point. Now, you really think I'm "damning him with faint praise"? Of course I'm not. Could I have written The Name of The Rose, or even Cognitive Types and Nuclear Content? No.
But he wrote a shitty article. It makes banal and, in at least one case, stupid points. It reads as beneath him; less an attempt to cast a lense on the mass-leaking phenomenon and more a chance for him to holler "I'm here! This is my milieu! Include me in the conversation!" I've heard more trenchant analysis of Assange's effort from blog posts, hell, from Megan McArdle.
You are, as always, welcome to disagree with me. But as I am not (in this instance) casting aspersions on your arguments, the "ad hom" label seems lazy. Hominus Eci conpetendus est.
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By the way: Jack Schafer did a fine job sticking up for Wikileaks. And I'm normally inclined to think of him as a curmudgeonly contrarian. There's one.
And, oh, look! Here's Clay Shirky, an acquaintance of Assange's, sticking up for the "short run" value of WL as a corrective. I have a hard time finding anything to disagree with in this article:
Comments
I like Foucault's Pendulum too. It's the first Eco book I read! My friend Mike Tracy, then a CBOE trader, turned me onto it when I was in high school; gave me the impression it would be a difficult read. Mike needs to read more Pynchon. I'll tell him tomorrow (I've hired him at 4 different companies, including this one).
Rose is still my favorite; it resonates with my career, for obvious reasons.
Have you read many of his essays? He can get stuffy and pompous. Maybe I just don't understand him.
I think you have a good idea what I think of Umberto Eco at this point. Now, you really think I'm "damning him with faint praise"? Of course I'm not. Could I have written The Name of The Rose, or even Cognitive Types and Nuclear Content? No.
But he wrote a shitty article. It makes banal and, in at least one case, stupid points. It reads as beneath him; less an attempt to cast a lense on the mass-leaking phenomenon and more a chance for him to holler "I'm here! This is my milieu! Include me in the conversation!" I've heard more trenchant analysis of Assange's effort from blog posts, hell, from Megan McArdle.
You are, as always, welcome to disagree with me. But as I am not (in this instance) casting aspersions on your arguments, the "ad hom" label seems lazy. Hominus Eci conpetendus est.
˚ ˚ ˚ ˚ ˚ ˚ ˚
By the way: Jack Schafer did a fine job sticking up for Wikileaks. And I'm normally inclined to think of him as a curmudgeonly contrarian. There's one.
And, oh, look! Here's Clay Shirky, an acquaintance of Assange's, sticking up for the "short run" value of WL as a corrective. I have a hard time finding anything to disagree with in this article:
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/12/wikileaks-and-the-long-...
Feel free to post that article to HN and collect the karma. I'd rather not add more fuel to the fire.