Astounding literature

[Bikewer]

Our university newspaper, the Student Life, ran a clever article on a piece of fiction that was reviewed by the Washington Post.

Seems they've deemed this particular work the "Worst piece of English fiction".

Here's a link to the article, be sure to read the excerpt at the bottom, which is one of the most tortured pieces of sentence structure I've ever seen, fully worthy of Bulwer-Litton.

http://www.studlife.com/news/2004/02/04/Cadenza/the-Great.American.Parade-596594.shtml

 

[Fade]

Oh my.

 

[roger]

Have you browsed his accompying website? Here is one gem :

The Beast, they maintain, is like a set of those Russian dolls which contain within the largest a collection of smaller replicas. This Elephant Gigantica, upon close examination, magically reveals that it contains a myriad of large Elephants, one for each of the ninety million American families. In this transformation the Elephant Gigantica still keeps its ominous bulk in Foggy Bottom, but the ninety million it has magically contained make a herd so phantasmagoric that the Elephant keepers in Washington have hidden these gargantuan offspring out on the vast plains of the Dakotas, fearing that otherwise the populace would be terrified if they discovered that each American family has the full financial responsibility for the care and feeding of one of these beasts.

 

[Bikewer]

Seems the good prof is in need of an editor.....

 

[DrMatt]

Seems the good prof is in need of an editor.....

I've recently been delving into the work and autobiography of math guru and schizophrenic John Nash. His unique way of expressing himself shows self-centeredness, humility or embarrassment, intellectual brilliance, clarity of communication, and social ineptness all at once.

His plight--perhaps a bit like this writing prof--reminds me of the logical flaw in setting a system to evaluate itself. Back in the 1980s at Oberlin College I saw a computer system which was malfunctioning horribly, but the computing center personnel denied it left and right because this same system was collecting statistics about itself in which it alleged that it had never malfunctioned (the statistics could only be collected during timeslices when it was actually able to accomplish something).
The poor computer was generating a reality internal to itself without the ability to distinguish it from external reality.

And that brings us full circle to self-deception--one of the main causes for strange beliefs, and for the sorts of claims which the JREF investigates.