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On September 07 2008 05:36 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2008 01:31 Caller wrote:
i have no idea why you're mad at capitalism
capitalism hasn't existed in any form since the articles of confederation
you're talking about corporatism, i.e. facism, i.e. the united states, australia, canada, russia, china, etc.
socialism is simply facism, but the government is on top this time. 1) Capitalism is the economic system in which the means of production are owned by private persons, and operated for profit[1] and where investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are predominantly determined through the operation of a free market. 2) Historically, corporatism (Italian: corporativismo) refers to a political or economic system in which power is held by civic assemblies that represent economic, industrial, agrarian, social, cultural, and/or professional groups. 3) Fascism is a totalitarian nationalist political ideology and mass movement that is concerned with notions of cultural decline or decadence, and which seeks to achieve a millenarian national rebirth by exalting the nation or race, as well as promoting cults of unity, strength and purity. 4) Socialism is the economic theory of social organization advocating that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be regulated or owned by the community.[1] You claim 1 does not exist in any form in the USA. I believe it mostly does exist in the USA, with some exceptions. You claim 3 is an example of 2, but I don't really see it. You claim 4=3, but I don't see it.
Thanks, I didn't want to do all that work lol. I knew I was right though.
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On September 04 2008 22:40 fonger wrote:
I heard people who overuse commas are usually more thoughtful and when they write it's more like a constant stream of thought. It made me feel better about my run on sentences. : ]
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If anyone has read "Atlas Shrugged" they know how a run-on sentence with 6 commas stretching for 5 lines can be art.
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United States24768 Posts
On September 07 2008 16:09 mahnini wrote:I heard people who overuse commas are usually more thoughtful and when they write it's more like a constant stream of thought. It made me feel better about my run on sentences. : ]
On September 07 2008 17:03 fanatacist wrote:
If anyone has read "Atlas Shrugged" they know how a run-on sentence with 6 commas stretching for 5 lines can be art.
Just to clarify on this issue...
I often get accused of writing run on sentences because they are really long, and have at least half a dozen commas (I tend to cut back in academic writing though). They are not run on sentences though (well maybe occasionally I make a mistake). A run on sentence has to have something specifically invalid about it... it isn't simply too long.
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I don't know, the qualification for a run-on always seemed to be just length when we were just learning about them in grade school. Things like:
So then I went to the store, and I wanted to buy myself candy, but the mean vendor wouldn't sell it to me, so I kicked him in the shins and stole all the candy I could grab in my tiny little hands and ran out of the store as fast as I could, but then he started chasing me so I had to drop all the candies on the ground as I ran for my life, but because I was small he caught up to me and beat the shit out of me, now he is in prison and I can buy all the candies I want from the money from the lawsuit, good game no re.
There is really nothing specifically invalid about it I think... The fact that you use ", but" or ", and" to continue the thought makes it a run-on, and most really long sentences make use of these or others to do so. If you could provide an example of a long non-run-on sentence (in your opinion) I think it would make things much easier.
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United States24768 Posts
On September 08 2008 02:26 fanatacist wrote:
I don't know, the qualification for a run-on always seemed to be just length when we were just learning about them in grade school. Things like:
So then I went to the store, and I wanted to buy myself candy, but the mean vendor wouldn't sell it to me, so I kicked him in the shins and stole all the candy I could grab in my tiny little hands and ran out of the store as fast as I could, but then he started chasing me so I had to drop all the candies on the ground as I ran for my life, but because I was small he caught up to me and beat the shit out of me, now he is in prison and I can buy all the candies I want from the money from the lawsuit, good game no re.
There is really nothing specifically invalid about it I think... The fact that you use ", but" or ", and" to continue the thought makes it a run-on, and most really long sentences make use of these or others to do so. If you could provide an example of a long non-run-on sentence (in your opinion) I think it would make things much easier.
From Wikipedia:
A run-on sentence is a sentence in which two or more independent clauses (that is, complete sentences) are joined with no punctuation or conjunction at all. It is generally considered to be a grammatical error. Some grammarians also include a comma splice, in which two independent clauses are joined with only a comma, as a type of run-on sentence [1], while others exclude comma splices from the definition of a run-on sentence. [2] [3]
A run-on sentence does not mean a sentence is too long; however, longer sentences are likely to be run-ons only because a writer is stitching together more than one complete idea.
I don't care to do a more in depth study, but that seems to agree with what I originally said more or less.
edit: your teacher was probably wrong (intentionally or otherwise), but with the right intentions
edit 2: real quick:
I think there are two separate issues you can have with a sentence: run on, where it's invalid, and a sentence that's too long, which is just a poor display of style.
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8751 Posts
I love huge sentences with lots of commas. It's one of my favorite styles of writing! I see it a lot in philosophy and Russian literature (translated to English)
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I fall back on commas.
My writing, being mainly a creative writer, is essentially a trail of descriptive thoughts, so I definitely overuse them...
As for Russian writing, anyone want to recommend anything? I started reading Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment, but it was a little heavy, although I was impressed by it. I think I'd prefer to learn Russian and read literature directly from the source...
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Don't try to learn Russian. It is one of the hardest languages out there, and it would take years for you to expand your vocabulary to the point of being able to read Dostoevsky directly.
The problem isn't just vocabulary - it's the fact that any given sentence can be put in any order, as long as you conjugate all the words properly. For example, one could say:
I went to the park.
To the park I went.
Park that I went to.
etc. etc.
Although all of these make sense in English here, some are obviously more grammatically appropriate for a novel, and it's a short sentence - in Russian, they are almost always all considered equally viable, even in longer sentences with many nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, etc. It becomes a lot to process when you have great literature written by authors that like to make full use of this flexibility. You can usually conjugate nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, based on one or more of the following: gender (or lack thereof), time, location, amount, position in the sentence, etc. For a person who hasn't been raised speaking Russian, these conjugations can change a word to the point where you wouldn't understand if it changed meanings, or if it is even related to the original word, simply due to the amount and variety of suffixes available. There are also a lot of prefixes, which can change the meaning of the word entirely. And the rules for using "on," "in," "at," etc... So terrible lol.
Another problem with Russian is that you have to have a wide grasp of both Latin AND Greek roots to guess at meanings or to identify roots, and that won't even cover half of the language; a lot comes from non-Romantic languages. Examples would be words from Slavic origins (ulitza - street), Arabic (arbuz - watermelon), East Asian (chai - tea), etc.
In some words, a "g" is read as a "v," and there are other such rules too (Example: who/whom - "kovo" - written as "kogo"). I mean, they aren't even rules - you just have to KNOW that some words are like that. There are also soft signs and hard signs (part of the alphabet) that entirely change the pronunciation of a word and can often change the meaning too. There are at least 1000 words that never conjugate, which you have to identify in order to not be like "why the fuck did he mess up this word," etc.
Unless you are willing to dedicate at least 2 years of hard study in it, it is unlikely that you will be able to read Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky and the like straight from the source. Sorry ):
As for recommended books, I'd recommend a poetry collection of Pushkin (yes, translated poetry generally sucks and doesn't rhyme or have rhythm, but his descriptions are beautiful - try to find the one that is [allegedly] closest to translating in verbatim, regardless of rhythm), "Hard to be a God" by the Strugatsky brothers, and "Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov. Here are my 2 favorite translations of both, if you can get your hands on these that would be best imo:
Translation by Mirra Ginsburg
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Russian Lit that I recommend very highly:
Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin.
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On September 09 2008 03:41 Track wrote:
Russian Lit that I recommend very highly:
Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov <-- I think this is one of the worst books by Russian authors. He has much better works out.
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy <-- Set aside a few weeks, if you are a casual reader.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin. <-- Didn't read ):
Recommended.
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