[O]n Jan. 28, as Mr. Pycroft watched animal rights demonstrators in Oxford marching to protest the planned testing facility. He tucked in behind them chanting, "Build the lab!"It's fascinating to think of one person, suddenly inspired to dash off a sign, starting a movement. You know, kind of...
"They got quite hostile," he said. So he went to a stationery store and bought a large square of cardboard and a pen and wrote: "Support Progress. Build the Oxford Lab." When he started waving the sign on the street, someone compared him to excrement. Another person tore the sign apart, he said. He went home and shared his experience on his blog. The result was a new movement, called Pro-Test.
In this case, blogging is what makes instant-sign move effective. It's not that he does the sign, but that he goes home and blogs about it. The article doesn't describe the process from first blog post to significant movement, but here's the blog. You can trace the process yourself.
I love the idea of one guy, alone on the other side of a big, active demonstration, and, instead of being outnumbered, using a blog to draw out the numbers on his side that exist, out there, dispersed in the general population. It must often be the case that a person encounters activists and thinks: Yes, these people are passionate and out on the streets, but I'll bet that most people disagree, but they, being more rational, are out living their lives and not inclined to take to the streets. By blogging, you don't need anyone else to be there to respond to your sign -- like the already-assembled workers in the movie "Norma Rae." Your little one-person demonstration comes alive through the description of it on your blog, which also gives you a place to detail your arguments, open a forum for discussion, and touch off debates elsewhere that can link back to you.
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21 comments:
Dave: Here's your reading assignment for today. And then watch this movie.
I agree that you can't call boys Laurie anymore. Weird that the "ie" ending sounds wrong in a nickname for Laurence, when it's used for all sorts of other boys' nicknames. Or is it just that we don't name anyone Laurence anymore?
Laurie must feel like the poor shmoe holding a U.S. flag at these "immigration" rallies. Oh wait -- no one is holding a U.S. flag.
When I was a kid I knew 2 older men (in their 70s in the '70s) -- one named Joyce and another Shirley (can't vouch for the spelling) but both old vets from WW2.
And I agree with Dave -- no to Little Women and Oklahoma.
Noumenon: You're right. We use Larry, not Laurie -- though why one seems feminine and the other doesn't is a mystery. And you can't say it's because girls are named Laurie. Girls are named Bobby too. Girls are named Jo, yet Joe remains one of the most masculine names.
You know, poor Laurie is going to get hits from this blog and come over here only to see that all we're talking about is how we think his name sounds girly! Then he can be all Only in America would...
I grew up with more than one Laurence/Lawrence/Larry as well as female variants of Laurel in my family, so I'm OK with whatever nickname. (At least one of the Laurences was named after English forebears/relatives, known as ... Laurie).
Gosh, nowadays we give girls traditionally "boy" names all the time these days (my son's demographic cohort is awash in them--that, and any girl's name ending in "-ia." I think there are eight of the latter in his class alone.).
Long live "Little Women," "Little Men," "Jo's Boys" "The Eight Cousins" et al, I say! (But not any of the movies.)
Back on-topic:
What this kid did is great (regardless of what side of the issue he was taking), and wonderfully illustrative of the powers of the 'net and the blogging medium.
Interesting how such a supposed "impersonal" (in the sense of *NOT* "in person") medium can allow for more individual expression--with more impact--than taking to the streets en masse. The people demonstrating on the other side only got noticed because they were part of a crowd; individually, who cares who they were or what they think? Laurie, on the other hand, gets noticed for doing something antithetical to the whole notion of in-the-flesh strength in numbers.
As you pointed out.
And as kid, I always got a huge kick out of the fact that "lorry" meant "truck" in England (as did my British grandfather).
Perhaps Laurie will make a comeback with the very rich someday. If a book with Harry Potter-like popularity uses an unusual name, it may come back that way as well.
Ron: It's more likely than Larry.
Other fun male names: Evelyn and Courtney. I had a mathematics professor named Courtney. Excellent teacher. His colleagues called him "Court." And Evelyn, of course, is best evidenced by Evelyn Waugh. Who, if I recall correctly, married a woman also named Evelyn.
Girls are named Bobby too. Girls are named Jo, yet Joe remains one of the most masculine names.
Girls are also named Taylor and Sam(Samantha) and Tommy (Thomasina). Well, maybe not so many with that last. Anyhow, I once had an embarassing experience with some cousins of mine, a male and a female, and both very young (infants), and both with gender-ambiguous names. I guessed wrong.
For that matter, my names in both English and Korean are a bit gender-ambiguous. And the short form of my Korean name (what I go by generally) looks like a Japanese female name, when written in English. This has occasioned some embarrassment from time to time.
There's a book called "The Charioteer" whose main character is a young man named Laurie in World War II.
I've never understood why people think that going to a protest demonstration entitles them to anything.
The protests in the 1960s in the South forcibly demonstrated how bad American apartheid was, when people did something they had a right to were subjected to abuse, or when they violated an unjust law without violence or rancor.
But what do these protesters demonstrate? They're loud and obnoxious, and their demonstrations are quite bullying. They seem to think that the rest of society should take orders from them just because they came out and carried signs. Why?
I guess I was just born too soon to appreciate that "logic."
SippicanCottage said...
personal fave:
Bertie
As in: Bertram. Wilberforce. Wooster.
1:18 PM, April 01, 2006
Bertie Wooster.... as portrayed by Hugh Laurie!
This comment thread has taken a very peculiar turn.
Let me return it to the central topic. I'm a man. I loved Little Women (assigned reading in high school), and I love Oklahoma!, too, except the darkside. And, may I confess?, my favorite musical of all time is South Pacific.
Surely there are fellow travelers dispersed amongst the general population who share with me these characteristics and preferences. But how can we freely associate? What medium of intercourse do we have? Few of them have stumbled into this comment thread. Yet. So how to find each other?
Ah, The Blog. Perhaps I should start a blog devoted to Little Women, Oklahoma!, and South Pacific. There's an audience, I'm sure.
Just as a Man Named Laurie no has me as a follower. Thanks to Althouse, via Instapundit.
Anybody who has not seen "Oklahoma!" is in for an entertainment SHOCK when/if they catch it. All those great songs and avant-corn hoe-downs.
John B. Chilton:
"Most people live on a lonely island,
Lost in the middle of a foggy sea.
Most people long for another island,
One where they know they will like to be.
Bali Ha'i may call you,
Any night, any day,
In your heart, you'll hear it call you:
"Come away...Come away."
Bali Ha'i will whisper
In the wind of the sea:
"Here am I, your special island!
Come to me, come to me!"
Etc.
I'm with ya ...
Damn!
Never thought of that before ...
This has a lot to say about blogging, bloggers, commenters and et cetera et cetera et cetera.
(OK, couldn't resist the reference to "The King and I".)
Hmmm ...
While stationed in Germany in the 1970s, I worked with a gentleman named Wilfred and later with a Chinese Mormon named Wilford.
Who says the military gives you a narrow view of life?
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