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CiteIt Examples

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Example 1: Pride & Prejudice

In Chapter 5 of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth confesses how Darcy offended her:

I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

Example 2: Tyler Cowen interviews David Wolpe

Tyler Cowen commented to David Wolpe about how social media strips away context:

I think that Judaism has the same problem that any thick civilization has in a world in which,
as you say, context is stripped away. And not only is context stripped away,
but attention to any one thing is scanter and less than it used to be. So, for example,
a lot of Jewish commentary is based on your recognizing the reference that I make.
Who recognizes references anymore? Because people don’t spend years studying books.

Example 3: Quoting the Supreme Court

In Citizens United vs FEC, Justice Anthony Kennedy expressed his concern that the valuable knowledge of corporations would be suppressed.

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data-citeit-cited_transcript_url=’https://apps.oyez.org/player/#/roberts2/oral_argument_audio/22476′,
data-citeit-citing_tags=’supreme-court, supreme-court-citizens-united, justice-kennedy’,
data-citeit-cited_title=’Case 08-205, Citizens United v. The Federal Election Commission’,
data-citeit-cited_authors_names=’Anthony Kennedy’,
data-citeit-cited_authors_urls=’https://supremecourthistory.org/history-of-the-court/the-current-court/justice-anthony-kennedy/, https://www.oyez.org/justices/anthony_m_kennedy’,
data-citeit-cited_authors_twitter=’https://twitter.com/hashtag/justice%20kennedy’,
data-citeit-cited_authors-wikipedia-urls = ‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Kennedy’
data-citeit-cited_author_wikipedia_url= ‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States’,
data-citeit-cited_authors_entities=’https://twitter.com/hashtag/justice%20kennedy’,
data-citeit-cited_authors_entities_urls = “https://www.supremecourt.gov/”
data-citeit-citeit_cited_work_wikipedia_url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC”
data-citeit-cited_series = ‘Oyez Supreme Court Resources’,
data-citeit-cited_eries_url = ‘https://www.oyez.org/’,
data-citeit-cited_event_date=’2009-09-09′,
data-citeit-cited_event_location=’United States Supreme Court, Washington, D.C (USA)’,
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>The government silences a corporate objector, and those corporations may have the most knowledge of this on the subject.
Corporations have lots of knowledge about environment, transportation issues, and you are silencing them during the election.

Though there may be something to his concern, it seems minimal compared to the actual practice of how the most significant corporations “speak”.

Rather than expressing their “knowledge” in the form of a 90-minute documentary, in actual practice, most big corporate donors pay a group of political operators to set up a “front group” to develop a provocative 30-second add on an unrelated wedge issue.

Example 4: Reply-All: The New York City COMSTATS System

cite=”https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2hx34/127-the-crime-machine-part-i”
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data-citeit-citing_tags=’reply-all-podcast, police, crime, crime-history, new-york-city, comsats, jack-maple’,
data-citeit-cited_title=’The Crime Machine, Part I, Episode 127′,
data-citeit-cited_authors_names=’PJ Vogt, ‘,
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data-citeit-cited_authors_entities=’Reply-All’,
data-citeit-cited_authors_entities_urls = “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_All_(podcast)”,
data-citeit-cited_series = ‘Reply-All’,
data-citeit-cited-series-url=”https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/episodes”,
data-citeit-cited-series-youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS8aEHTqDvpInY9kslUOOK8Qj_-B91o_W”,
data-citeit-cited_event_date=’2018-10-12′
>J: The thing that was weird about the job was that Pedro’s bosses didn’t really seem to want him to pursue the actual, violent, serious crimes that he saw. What they wanted him to do instead was just to write summonses. Summonses are just the tickets that cops give out for the low-level stuff, misdemeanors. You’d give a summons to a guy drinking a beer in the street or riding his bike on the sidewalk. There was a lot of pressure to write summonses.

PEDRO: One of the ones that, you know, never leave my head was it was overtime. We’re ordered to write five. And the van–

PJ: Write five like you had to–you have overtime but you gotta come back with five summons?

PEDRO: Five summonses or get dealt with. I’ll explain that later. Well, we, uh, we’re driving around and the senior guy stops and says, “All right. This is one.”

PJ: It’s really early in the morning. The streets are almost completely empty. It’s hard to even find a person, let alone somebody doing something wrong. Their boss is pointing at this man who’s just standing on the sidewalk alone, outside a store. But the van stops.

PEDRO: Some guy jumps out. And this one guy, in front of a bodega, doing absolutely nothing, they gave him a summons for blocking pedestrian traffic. You know, we were just shaking our heads like, “What did you give him?” “Blocking pedestrian traffic.” And they just start laughing. I’m like, oh wow. All right. So we move on.

PJ: Pedro says the next stop was this Mexican man who was just sitting alone on a stoop. They wrote him up for the exact same thing: Blocking pedestrian traffic.

PEDRO: And this was all night until all of us–there was like a four or five of us in the van, until everyone had five.

PJ: Pedro was so confused by what had had happened that night, he actually went home, and looked up the definition of blocking pedestrian traffic. These guys had not been blocking pedestrian traffic. This was absurd. And Pedro didn’t know it, but all over the city cops were getting pushed in the exact same way — to aggressively write summonses to people for doing seemingly nothing. I talked to another cop, this guy in Brooklyn named Edwin Raymond.

EDWIN RAYMOND: After the academy, I would run into officers that I was in the academy with. And it’d be like, “Oh, hey, what’s up? Are you still at transit?” And the third question, without fail, the third question was always, “What do they want from you guys over there?” That’s how much this is part of the culture.

Update: (July 16, 2020)

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Code blocks:

Cherry-Picked Quotations on the Jefferson Memorial

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Jefferson Memorial: Panel Three (Northeast Portico)

6 Separate Quotations: Northeast Portico

Although it looks as though the text etched into Panel Three of the Jefferson Memorial is a single quotation from Jefferson, it actually is a compilation of 6 separate quotations.  Can you see what was lost when the context of each excerpt was stripped away?

Notice the text two-thirds of the way down: “

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.

 

Jefferson Memorial: Panel 3

Source: Wikipedia Commons.

Individual Quotes:

These Individual Quotes are broken out on the official Monticello website into 6 separate quotations, although quotation #4 about the slaves’ freedom stops short of mentioning their deportation:

      1. “.. But let them [members of the parliament of Great Britain] not think to exclude us from going to other markets, to dispose of those commodities which they cannot use, nor to supply those wants which they cannot supply. Still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. The god who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” – “A Summary View of the Rights of British America“
      2. “.. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . . .” – Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII1
      3. .. “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. . . .” – Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII2
      4. .. The principles of the amendment however were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at a proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If on the contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors.” – Jefferson’s Autobiography
      5. .. “Preach, my dear sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people.” – Jefferson to George Wythe, August 13, 1786
      6. .. “It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.” – Jefferson to George Washington, January 4, 1786

In Defense of Jefferson:

Some people argue that Historians should throw Jefferson out of the American pantheon for his views on race.  Benjamin Schwarz argues in a March 1997 article in The Atlantic that this would be a mistake:

  1. Even the worst parts of the past are connected to others, and
  2. It “would deprive the United States of the figure central to what is singular and most admirable about the promise of American life — a promise that is already largely forgotten.

Southeast Portico: Open to “progress of the human mind” and “enlightenment”

Jefferson was a complex man.  What he takes away with one hand, he gives with another.

On the opposite wall from the Northeast Portico, the Southeast Portico provides another quote from Jefferson — an edited version of a letter to Samuel Kercheval (June 12, 1816) — that indicates that Jefferson was open to changing his mind and the law.  Here is the original, without the editing:

Source: Letter to Samuel Kercheval

Thomas Jefferson | July 12, 1816

 

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

View Photo: Southeast Portico

In the Jefferson Memorial, the southeast panel advocating laws and institutions change with “progress of the human mind” appears opposite the northeast panel with the cherry-picked quote about deportation. View the full-sized panoramic photo of the Memorial to inspect the inscriptions and see both panels side by side.

Jefferson Memorial

Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC.  Source: Wikiquote

 

Background Reading: Seeing White Podcast Series: Episode 4

  1. Notes, ed. Peden, 163.  Manuscript available at Massachusetts Historical Society.↩

  2. Notes, ed. Peden, 163.  Manuscript available at Massachusetts Historical Society.↩

Article: How Neotext could prevent some types of Fake News

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Last month I posted an article I wrote about how Fake News, in the form of Out-of-Context Quotations, is not a new issue, but the internet poses both challanges and opportunities.

I described 2 examples of how media sources in 1999 and 2008 took quotations by Al Gore and Sarah Palin out of context and how this could be prevented if media outlets used Neotext.

I also expanded the concept of quote context to video and laid out 3 challenges to technologists.

Read Article