Hemlock, anyone?
Jim Roberts
gymnastics judges, including the suspended ones?
jimbat
Norm
> I'm wondering if there is enough hemlock left in Athens for all the
> gymnastics judges, including the suspended ones?
Coincidences! This morning I was beginning to rifle through
a Gaelic dictionary just as I picked up an email from a
friend offering Gaelic resources; and now here you are
talking about hemlock in Athens when I've just recently
reread Socrates dialogue with Diotima (in Plato's Symposium
on Love 210a-212a), in which she describes the ladder to the
contemplation of ultimate beauty, which caused me to wonder
further about you and the undifferentiated aesthetic
continuum -- wondering about you starting at the top rung of
what she described or whether that was so.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
Would it were so. In theory yes, in practice, no. Because of all the
things that have happened to me, and my - finally finished - drinking, I
| Don't Like People, save for female beach vollyball players, which has
crimped my forgiveness style for 30 years or so.
You can't use the words "ultimate beauty" or any other words to describe
the UAC; whatever you think it might be, it isn't. The DAF is another
matter; I'd call that experience "perfect beauty", but it's only a
bridge to the Void, and quickly vanishes.
I have become a sort of local Socrates, as the parents of my Liars' Club
seem to have concluded that I am "corrupting the young" for questioning
the Gods, in their view, though I did not - I never debated the matter.
I'm waiting for the cup of hemlock...
After a thorough search of my philosopy, ancient history, and poetry
shelves, it seems that I threw out my Plato long ago, as not worthy of
further study, and which in fact leads you into seriously fucked up
lines of thought.
If you wish to consider this matter further, I suggest the poet (The
Poems of) Laura Riding (Jackson), who was a major power in world poetry
between 1919 and 1938, when peole were thinking about serious matters.
In 1938 she abandoned poetry as a tool for leading people to the UAC
(the term was unknown to her), and her lover through this whole period,
Robert Graves. I consider her to be the supreme poet of the 20th
century, and far and away the most intelligent.
Her biography is also essential: "In Extremis: the Life of Laura
Riding", by Deborah Baker, wife of Amitav Ghosh (q.v.).
Her life 1938-1991 was a complete waste: spent on a linguistically
impossible project and enless nasty letters. Just to show you that
those who have experienced the UAF, which she did in her early 20s, do
not necessarily make good saints, nor make wise choices. The experience
and a wise life have nothing to do with each other.
If you read Western, and most Eastern books on Eastern philosophy, you
will read endless hokum abould how it makes you see the wholeness of
life, love your fellow man, and a dump of statements to fill the
Fishkill landfill, where the WTC now resides. That is what Judy and I
had to fight our way through in two months in the summer of '64, before
we figured out the truth, dimly, of the UAC and the DAF. Then to our
great anger we discovered Northrop's book, to which no one else referred.
Books that are too hard generally get few references. I have a paper
only a few theoretical physicists (*not* astrophysicists) can read, so
it never gets referred to, though it introduces new methods, contains no
errors, and completely solves a problem within its (necessary) assumptions.
Perhaps our anger was similar to Einstein's anger when he completely
solved the problem of statistical mechanics in 1902, only to learn that
an obscure American professor, J. Willard Gibbs, had done it a few years
before. Gibbs did not have the courtesy of publishing his paper in a
European journal, and at that time no one in Europe read the primitive
American journals. This was a few years before Einstein's explanation
of the photoelectric effect, and his invention of special relativity.
I have forcefed Gibbs's theory, which I consider unproved, in graduate
chem classes, but prefer Einstein's approach, which can be found in
Landau-Lifshitz, "Statistical Physics".
jimbat
ice...@icenine.org
Breathing Hemlock sawdust has been shown to cause cancer in humans as
well as lab rats in California.
Jim
"Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts."
- Kahlil Gibran, The PROPHET
roooutbackman at comcast dot net (do the math)
http://www.polyorlando.org
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> I'm wondering if there is enough hemlock left in Athens for all the
>>> gymnastics judges, including the suspended ones?
>>
>>
>>
>> Coincidences! This morning I was beginning to rifle through a Gaelic
>> dictionary just as I picked up an email from a friend offering Gaelic
>> resources; and now here you are talking about hemlock in Athens when
>> I've just recently reread Socrates dialogue with Diotima (in Plato's
>> Symposium on Love 210a-212a), in which she describes the ladder to the
>> contemplation of ultimate beauty, which caused me to wonder further
>> about you and the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum -- wondering
>> about you starting at the top rung of what she described or whether
>> that was so.
>>
>
> Would it were so. In theory yes, in practice, no. Because of all the
> things that have happened to me, and my - finally finished - drinking, I
> | Don't Like People, save for female beach vollyball players, which has
> crimped my forgiveness style for 30 years or so.
I was surprised you didn't start this thread with them.
A number of things about the Olympics and the news coverage
of the Olympics make me feel uneasy. Nationalism, for instance.
Did drinking have some bad effects on your life?
> You can't use the words "ultimate beauty" or any other words to describe
> the UAC; whatever you think it might be, it isn't. The DAF is another
> matter; I'd call that experience "perfect beauty", but it's only a
> bridge to the Void, and quickly vanishes.
DAF? Doesn't ring a bell. I was expecting, perhaps, DAC,
"differentiated aesthetic continuum."
> I have become a sort of local Socrates, as the parents of my Liars' Club
> seem to have concluded that I am "corrupting the young" for questioning
> the Gods, in their view, though I did not - I never debated the matter.
> I'm waiting for the cup of hemlock...
Good theism is in continuous need of atheistic scrubbing.
> After a thorough search of my philosopy, ancient history, and poetry
> shelves, it seems that I threw out my Plato long ago, as not worthy of
> further study, and which in fact leads you into seriously fucked up
> lines of thought.
What a pity! Go to your neighbor and say, "Can I borrow a
cup of ... I mean a copy of Plato." Well, nowadays who knows
their neighbor? Still there's the local library.
I don't read Plato for the right answers. I read Plato for
the intellectual journey, for the issues raised, and for
understanding the subsequent development of thought -- or,
in this most recent case, for the background of a term.
I'm afraid I don't even agree with Diotima, provocative as
she is. I wonder if Socrates was taken in by more than her
words. But come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing a
refutation of Diotima.
For those who haven't yet caught on to the obPoly part of
this discussion, Diotima's ladder goes like this (per her
summary of the matter):
"Such is the experience of the man who approaches, or is
guided towards, love in the right way, beginning with the
particular examples of beauty, but always returning from
them to the search for that one beauty. He uses them like a
ladder, climbing from the love of one person to love of two;
from two to love of all physical beauty; from physical
beauty to beauty in human behaviour; thence to beauty in
subjects of study; from them he arrives finally at that
branch of knowledge which studies nothing but ultimate
beauty. Then at last he understands what true beauty is.
"That, if ever, is the moment, my dear Socrates, when a
man's life is worth living, as he contemplates beauty itself."
--> Plato, Symposium 211b-d, as translated by Tom Griffith
(1989)
> If you wish to consider this matter further, I suggest the poet (The
> Poems of) Laura Riding (Jackson), who was a major power in world poetry
> between 1919 and 1938, when peole were thinking about serious matters.
> In 1938 she abandoned poetry as a tool for leading people to the UAC
> (the term was unknown to her), and her lover through this whole period,
> Robert Graves. I consider her to be the supreme poet of the 20th
> century, and far and away the most intelligent.
I have Graves' poetry but not hers. I'll keep an eye out.
> Her biography is also essential: "In Extremis: the Life of Laura
> Riding", by Deborah Baker, wife of Amitav Ghosh (q.v.).
>
> Her life 1938-1991 was a complete waste: spent on a linguistically
> impossible project and enless nasty letters. Just to show you that
> those who have experienced the UAF, which she did in her early 20s, do
> not necessarily make good saints, nor make wise choices. The experience
> and a wise life have nothing to do with each other.
Yet the experience and morals do? I would say that living a
moral life is not unrelated to wisdom.
> If you read Western, and most Eastern books on Eastern philosophy, you
> will read endless hokum abould how it makes you see the wholeness of
> life, love your fellow man, and a dump of statements to fill the
> Fishkill landfill, where the WTC now resides. That is what Judy and I
> had to fight our way through in two months in the summer of '64, before
> we figured out the truth, dimly, of the UAC and the DAF. Then to our
> great anger we discovered Northrop's book, to which no one else referred.
>
> Books that are too hard generally get few references.
Or get too many. Like, perhaps, Ulysses.
> I have a paper
> only a few theoretical physicists (*not* astrophysicists) can read, so
> it never gets referred to, though it introduces new methods, contains no
> errors, and completely solves a problem within its (necessary) assumptions.
>
> Perhaps our anger was similar to Einstein's anger when he completely
> solved the problem of statistical mechanics in 1902, only to learn that
> an obscure American professor, J. Willard Gibbs, had done it a few years
> before. Gibbs did not have the courtesy of publishing his paper in a
> European journal, and at that time no one in Europe read the primitive
> American journals. This was a few years before Einstein's explanation
> of the photoelectric effect, and his invention of special relativity.
> I have forcefed Gibbs's theory, which I consider unproved, in graduate
> chem classes, but prefer Einstein's approach, which can be found in
> Landau-Lifshitz, "Statistical Physics".
Some of those American journals weren't so primitive.
--
Norm
Miche
ChickPea <E-0C0013...@cleopatra.co.uk> wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, ice...@icenine.org (ice...@icenine.org) wrote in
> <jbbpi09fuirnue7t9...@4ax.com>::
>
> >On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:10:48 GMT, Jim Roberts
> ><jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
> >
> >>I'm wondering if there is enough hemlock left in Athens for all the
> >>gymnastics judges, including the suspended ones?
> >>
> >>jimbat
> >Breathing Hemlock sawdust has been shown to cause cancer in humans as
> >well as lab rats in California.
>
> Many researchers are now using spammers rather than rats for their
> experiments; they will do things that rats won't, and the researchers don't
> become fond of them.
Not only that, but the SPCA doesn't give a shit about spammers.
Miche
--
WWMVD?
Jim Roberts
ChickPea wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, ice...@icenine.org (ice...@icenine.org) wrote in
> <jbbpi09fuirnue7t9...@4ax.com>::
>
>
>>On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:10:48 GMT, Jim Roberts
>><jim...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm wondering if there is enough hemlock left in Athens for all the
>>>gymnastics judges, including the suspended ones?
>>>
>>>jimbat
>>
>>Breathing Hemlock sawdust has been shown to cause cancer in humans as
>>well as lab rats in California.
>
>
> Many researchers are now using spammers rather than rats for their
> experiments; they will do things that rats won't, and the researchers don't
> become fond of them.
Good point! From Stanford, right?
But some seem to have forgotten that the Athenians killed Socrates by
forcing him to drink a cup of hemlock. Perhaps the Athenenians can get
it through a naturopathic store....
Stalin would just have lined them up and shot them: "No man, no problem."
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm wondering if there is enough hemlock left in Athens for all the
>>>> gymnastics judges, including the suspended ones?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Coincidences! This morning I was beginning to rifle through a Gaelic
>>> dictionary just as I picked up an email from a friend offering Gaelic
>>> resources; and now here you are talking about hemlock in Athens when
>>> I've just recently reread Socrates dialogue with Diotima (in Plato's
>>> Symposium on Love 210a-212a), in which she describes the ladder to
>>> the contemplation of ultimate beauty, which caused me to wonder
>>> further about you and the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum --
>>> wondering about you starting at the top rung of what she described or
>>> whether that was so.
>>>
>>
>> Would it were so. In theory yes, in practice, no. Because of all the
>> things that have happened to me, and my - finally finished - drinking,
>> I | Don't Like People, save for female beach vollyball players, which
>> has crimped my forgiveness style for 30 years or so.
>
>
> I was surprised you didn't start this thread with them.
My dirty little secret.
>
> A number of things about the Olympics and the news coverage of the
> Olympics make me feel uneasy. Nationalism, for instance.
Yes, it's gotten better, though, with the demise of the Soviet Union.
Now it's just a form of celebration.
>
> Did drinking have some bad effects on your life?
Yes, but it felt so good, up to a point, then there would be a season in
Hell. A comic on one of the talk shows said that he found sobriety
easy, as he had tried it 500 times.
>
>
>> You can't use the words "ultimate beauty" or any other words to
>> describe the UAC; whatever you think it might be, it isn't. The DAF
>> is another matter; I'd call that experience "perfect beauty", but it's
>> only a bridge to the Void, and quickly vanishes.
>
>
> DAF? Doesn't ring a bell. I was expecting, perhaps, DAC, "differentiated
> aesthetic continuum."
Sorry, typo.
>
>
>> I have become a sort of local Socrates, as the parents of my Liars'
>> Club seem to have concluded that I am "corrupting the young" for
>> questioning the Gods, in their view, though I did not - I never
>> debated the matter. I'm waiting for the cup of hemlock...
>
>
> Good theism is in continuous need of atheistic scrubbing.
>
>
>> After a thorough search of my philosopy, ancient history, and poetry
>> shelves, it seems that I threw out my Plato long ago, as not worthy of
>> further study, and which in fact leads you into seriously fucked up
>> lines of thought.
>
>
> What a pity! Go to your neighbor and say, "Can I borrow a cup of ... I
> mean a copy of Plato." Well, nowadays who knows their neighbor? Still
> there's the local library.
>
My opinion of the Dialogues remains the same. I have much more
important books to read.
> I don't read Plato for the right answers. I read Plato for the
> intellectual journey, for the issues raised, and for understanding the
> subsequent development of thought -- or, in this most recent case, for
> the background of a term.
Try Galileo's dialogues for that. He actually knew something. Did you
knew that students of his who tried to verify by measurement geometrical
results were expelled. Open mind that - utterly hostile to science,
even surveying. Thank god Aristotle got away from him.
>
> I'm afraid I don't even agree with Diotima, provocative as she is. I
> wonder if Socrates was taken in by more than her words. But come to
> think of it, I don't recall ever seeing a refutation of Diotima.
>
If it's in Plato, it's wrong.
>> impossible project and endless nasty letters. Just to show you that
>> those who have experienced the UAC, which she did in her early 20s, do
>> not necessarily make good saints, nor make wise choices. The
>> experience and a wise life have nothing to do with each other.
>
>
> Yet the experience and morals do? I would say that living a moral life
> is not unrelated to wisdom.
>
No, that's another misconception.
>> If you read Western, and most Eastern books on Eastern philosophy, you
>> will read endless hokum abould how it makes you see the wholeness of
>> life, love your fellow man, and a dump of statements to fill the
>> Fishkill landfill, where the WTC now resides. That is what Judy and I
>> had to fight our way through in two months in the summer of '64,
>> before we figured out the truth, dimly, of the UAC and the DAC. Then
>> to our great anger we discovered Northrop's book, to which no one else
>> referred.
>>
>> Books that are too hard generally get few references.
>
>
> Or get too many. Like, perhaps, Ulysses.
>
>
>> I have a paper only a few theoretical physicists (*not*
>> astrophysicists) can read, so it never gets referred to, though it
>> introduces new methods, contains no errors, and completely solves a
>> problem within its (necessary) assumptions.
>>
>> Perhaps our anger was similar to Einstein's anger when he completely
>> solved the problem of statistical mechanics in 1902, only to learn
>> that an obscure American professor, J. Willard Gibbs, had done it a
>> few years before. Gibbs did not have the courtesy of publishing his
>> paper in a European journal, and at that time no one in Europe read
>> the primitive American journals. This was a few years before
>> Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect, and his invention
>> of special relativity.
>> I have been forcefed Gibbs's theory, which I consider unproved, in graduate
>> chem classes, but prefer Einstein's approach, which can be found in
>> Landau-Lifshitz, "Statistical Physics".
>
>
> Some of those American journals weren't so primitive.
>
The scientific ones were.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Coincidences! This morning I was beginning to rifle through a Gaelic
>>>> dictionary just as I picked up an email from a friend offering
>>>> Gaelic resources; and now here you are talking about hemlock in
>>>> Athens when I've just recently reread Socrates dialogue with Diotima
>>>> (in Plato's Symposium on Love 210a-212a), in which she describes the
>>>> ladder to the contemplation of ultimate beauty, which caused me to
>>>> wonder further about you and the undifferentiated aesthetic
>>>> continuum -- wondering about you starting at the top rung of what
>>>> she described or whether that was so.
Another coincidence: Yesterday I was on a twenty-mile hike,
was running out of water, and came across an unopened bottle
of Adirondack spring water just lying on the ground near the
trail.
>> A number of things about the Olympics and the news coverage of the
>> Olympics make me feel uneasy. Nationalism, for instance.
>
>
> Yes, it's gotten better, though, with the demise of the Soviet Union.
> Now it's just a form of celebration.
Yeah, one kind of nationalism I have an especial problem
with is wulaballala-nationalism. That's a nonce term I used
in a lengthy discussion with someone a few years ago.
Wulaballala-nationalism is the impetus towards or the
actuality of employing a government to coalesce and express
the will of an ethnic group within a territory and to make
the interests of that ethnic group primary, whoever else may
be indigenous to that territory.
I have a big problem too with supremacist ideologies, which
sometimes go hand in hand with wulaballala-nationalism.
I wasn't talking about either of those. Or about the Cold
War we've-got-to-beat-'em-or-be-seen-as-weak mentality either.
I have no problem with people celebrating this or that
ethnic heritage. And cheering on a local team is usually
harmless enough.
However, the media coverage of the Olympics tends to focus
on how many medals each country has won, and the games
themselves are set up in such a way as to encourage that
kind of coverage, with athletes wrapping themselves in their
countries' flags and standing on podiums while their
national anthems are played, etc. etc. For some countries,
there's a strong ethnic element involved there, and even for
those countries where there's not, there's reinforcement and
even promotion of a corporate identity and of an us/them
mentality.
What about the Olympics as a set of expressions of the
*human* spirit? as *human* fun and play taken in utmost
seriousness? as a matter of pushing *human* limits? as a
concourse of *humankind*? as an exploration of our
collective *humanity*?
I'd suggest that when the Olympics and the coverage thereof
reinforce division, they are, in that regard, doing
humankind a disservice. I'd say let the individuals be
celebrated for their accomplishments as representatives of
humankind.
Fortunately there's much else about the Olympics that's
positive.
>> Did drinking have some bad effects on your life?
>
>
> Yes, but it felt so good, up to a point, then there would be a season in
> Hell. A comic on one of the talk shows said that he found sobriety
> easy, as he had tried it 500 times.
Alcoholic beverages have never had any hold on or much
appeal to me. With the occasional happy exception, I still
have to force myself to finish a glass of wine. However,
that may have something to do with my wallet, since most of
the wines I try are cheap and, when it comes to wine, my
palate is demanding.
>> What a pity! Go to your neighbor and say, "Can I borrow a cup of ... I
>> mean a copy of Plato." Well, nowadays who knows their neighbor? Still
>> there's the local library.
>>
>
> My opinion of the Dialogues remains the same. I have much more
> important books to read.
Such as?
>> I don't read Plato for the right answers. I read Plato for the
>> intellectual journey, for the issues raised, and for understanding the
>> subsequent development of thought -- or, in this most recent case, for
>> the background of a term.
>
>
> Try Galileo's dialogues for that.
I love reading Galileo. In what I've read, I've felt at ease
with his mind and his ways of thinking.
> He actually knew something. Did you
> knew that students of his who tried to verify by measurement geometrical
> results were expelled. Open mind that - utterly hostile to science,
> even surveying.
No. Who did the expelling?
> Thank god Aristotle got away from him.
Him? Oh, you mean Plato, I take it. Like Jung from Freud and
Heidegger from Husserl and countless other disciples from
their masters.
>> I'm afraid I don't even agree with Diotima, provocative as she is. I
>> wonder if Socrates was taken in by more than her words. But come to
>> think of it, I don't recall ever seeing a refutation of Diotima.
>>
>
> If it's in Plato, it's wrong.
Yet so much of Plato is dialogue. To say a dialogue is wrong
is like saying a novel is wrong.
What was it you read of Plato?
>> For those who haven't yet caught on to the obPoly part of this
>> discussion, Diotima's ladder goes like this (per her summary of the
>> matter):
>>
>> "Such is the experience of the man who approaches, or is guided
>> towards, love in the right way, beginning with the particular examples
>> of beauty, but always returning from them to the search for that one
>> beauty. He uses them like a ladder, climbing from the love of one
>> person to love of two; from two to love of all physical beauty; from
>> physical beauty to beauty in human behaviour; thence to beauty in
>> subjects of study; from them he arrives finally at that branch of
>> knowledge which studies nothing but ultimate beauty. Then at last he
>> understands what true beauty is.
>>
>> "That, if ever, is the moment, my dear Socrates, when a man's life is
>> worth living, as he contemplates beauty itself."
>>
>> --> Plato, Symposium 211b-d, as translated by Tom Griffith (1989)
Sounds a bit like getting more and more evolved, with poly
as a step along the way, doesn't it?
>>> If you wish to consider this matter further, I suggest the poet (The
>>> Poems of) Laura Riding (Jackson), who was a major power in world
>>> poetry between 1919 and 1938, when peole were thinking about serious
>>> matters. In 1938 she abandoned poetry as a tool for leading people to
>>> the UAC (the term was unknown to her), and her lover through this
>>> whole period, Robert Graves. I consider her to be the supreme poet
>>> of the 20th century, and far and away the most intelligent.
>>
>>
>>
>> I have Graves' poetry but not hers. I'll keep an eye out.
>>
>>
>>> Her biography is also essential: "In Extremis: the Life of Laura
>>> Riding", by Deborah Baker, wife of Amitav Ghosh (q.v.).
>>>
>>> Her life 1938-1991 was a complete waste: spent on a linguistically
>>> impossible project and endless nasty letters. Just to show you that
>>> those who have experienced the UAC, which she did in her early 20s,
>>> do not necessarily make good saints, nor make wise choices.
I plan to look for her poetry today.
>>> The
>>> experience and a wise life have nothing to do with each other.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yet the experience and morals do? I would say that living a moral life
>> is not unrelated to wisdom.
>>
> No, that's another misconception.
How so?
>> Some of those American journals weren't so primitive.
>>
>
> The scientific ones were.
Depends on the science. For instance, American ethnography
during the last decades of the 1800s was rather amazing and
is still valuable.
--
Norm
Miche
ChickPea <E-0C0013...@cleopatra.co.uk> wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> (Jim Roberts)
> wrote in <INiXc.11358$%11.10193@trnddc02>::
>
> >ChickPea wrote:
>
> >>
> >> Many researchers are now using spammers rather than rats for their
> >> experiments; they will do things that rats won't, and the researchers don't
> >> become fond of them.
> >
> >Good point! From Stanford, right?
>
> I'm sure I saw it somewhere- possibly about lawyers? Or perhaps
> telemarketers?
The versions I've seen have all been about lawyers.
Miche
--
WWMVD?
Laura Elizabeth Back
I like ChickPea's version better. :-(
--
Laura E. Back
in law school now
Jim Roberts
ChickPea wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> (Jim Roberts)
> wrote in <INiXc.11358$%11.10193@trnddc02>::
>
>
>>ChickPea wrote:
>
>
>>>Many researchers are now using spammers rather than rats for their
>>>experiments; they will do things that rats won't, and the researchers don't
>>>become fond of them.
>>
>>Good point! From Stanford, right?
>
>
> I'm sure I saw it somewhere- possibly about lawyers? Or perhaps
> telemarketers?
I just don't take calls during the day, unless I have just called my
wife and left voice mail. If I accidentally pick up a cold call, I know
it as one within .75 seconds and hang up.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
[....]
> I have no problem with people celebrating this or that ethnic heritage.
> And cheering on a local team is usually harmless enough.
>
> However, the media coverage of the Olympics tends to focus on how many
> medals each country has won, and the games themselves are set up in such
> a way as to encourage that kind of coverage, with athletes wrapping
> themselves in their countries' flags and standing on podiums while their
> national anthems are played, etc. etc. For some countries, there's a
> strong ethnic element involved there, and even for those countries where
> there's not, there's reinforcement and even promotion of a corporate
> identity and of an us/them mentality.
Yes, but it wasn't so at the beginning of the modern games. Maybe it
started with the Cold War?
>
> What about the Olympics as a set of expressions of the *human* spirit?
> as *human* fun and play taken in utmost seriousness? as a matter of
> pushing *human* limits? as a concourse of *humankind*? as an exploration
> of our collective *humanity*?
The way it uzed to be.
>
> I'd suggest that when the Olympics and the coverage thereof reinforce
> division, they are, in that regard, doing humankind a disservice. I'd
> say let the individuals be celebrated for their accomplishments as
> representatives of humankind.
>
Well, I certainly had mixed feelings about watching the US women's
soccer team beat Brazil. On the one hand Brazil is a very racialist
country. On the other hand, a girl is considered to be a lesbian in
Brazil if she plays soccer, and a gold medal would help to put that to
sleep. And who knows, maybe there were a few on both sides, one hopes.
So, though I was rooting for the US, I'd have been happy had Brazil won.
> Fortunately there's much else about the Olympics that's positive.
>
>
I was amazed that Greece was able to get it together, which the gov't
did through payoffs and all manner of questionable business methods. I
didn't hear of any of the street robberies, but that's the discretion of
the networks probably.
>>> Did drinking have some bad effects on your life?
>>
>> Yes, but it felt so good, up to a point, then there would be a season
>> in Hell. A comic on one of the talk shows said that he found sobriety
>> easy, as he had tried it 500 times.
>
>
> Alcoholic beverages have never had any hold on or much appeal to me.
> With the occasional happy exception, I still have to force myself to
> finish a glass of wine. However, that may have something to do with my
> wallet, since most of the wines I try are cheap and, when it comes to
> wine, my palate is demanding.
>
In grad school, when I was poorer than a church mouse, I relied on
Famiglia Cribari Chianti, cheeeep and palatable, as I had terrible
insomnia. Then a woman turned me onto 1-a-day 5 mg Valium, and I
stopped drinking for years, until after 5 years or so I had sleep
disturbances, as if I were not getting REM sleep and HAD to take long
naps at work. I stopped the Valium, stat, and found that my insomnia
had gone away anyway. No more naps needed either.
>
>>> What a pity! Go to your neighbor and say, "Can I borrow a cup of ...
>>> I mean a copy of Plato." Well, nowadays who knows their neighbor?
>>> Still there's the local library.
>>>
>>
>> My opinion of the Dialogues remains the same. I have much more
>> important books to read.
>
>
> Such as?
>
Cognitive Neuroscience, The Future of Theoretical Physics and
Astrophysics, Mahfouz, Hildegard of Bingen, Landau-Lifshitz Quantum
Mechanics, and There Once Was a World, etc. Perhaps the Qur'an again.
>
>>> I don't read Plato for the right answers. I read Plato for the
>>> intellectual journey, for the issues raised, and for understanding
>>> the subsequent development of thought -- or, in this most recent
>>> case, for the background of a term.
>>
>> Try Galileo's dialogues for that.
>
>
> I love reading Galileo. In what I've read, I've felt at ease with his
> mind and his ways of thinking.
>
>
>> He actually knew something. Did you knew that students of his who
>> tried to verify by measurement geometrical results were expelled.
>> Open mind that - utterly hostile to science, even surveying.
>
>
> No. Who did the expelling?
Plato, from the Lyceum.
>
>
>> Thank god Aristotle got away from him.
>
>
> Him? Oh, you mean Plato, I take it. Like Jung from Freud and Heidegger
> from Husserl and countless other disciples from their masters.
>
>
>>> I'm afraid I don't even agree with Diotima, provocative as she is. I
>>> wonder if Socrates was taken in by more than her words. But come to
>>> think of it, I don't recall ever seeing a refutation of Diotima.
>>>
>>
>> If it's in Plato, it's wrong.
>
>
> Yet so much of Plato is dialogue. To say a dialogue is wrong is like
> saying a novel is wrong.
>
OK, how about a dialogue between Hitler and Stalin? If the writer of
the dialogue (those aren't Socrates's) leads you what he thinks is truth
but is in fact unsupportable, it is wrong.
> What was it you read of Plato?
>
Back when I was 17? Several of the dialogues, and the verrrry scary
Republic. I drove my TA nuts over everything we had to read in Plato,
and he could not defend him. Other students just stood around and
listened to *our* dialogues, as they were more interested in the grade
than truth. Now, Aeschylus had more meaning for me in that full-year
course than anything else we read.
>
>>> For those who haven't yet caught on to the obPoly part of this
>>> discussion, Diotima's ladder goes like this (per her summary of the
>>> matter):
>>>
>>> "Such is the experience of the man who approaches, or is guided
>>> towards, love in the right way, beginning with the particular
>>> examples of beauty, but always returning from them to the search for
>>> that one beauty. He uses them like a ladder, climbing from the love
>>> of one person to love of two; from two to love of all physical
>>> beauty; from physical beauty to beauty in human behaviour; thence to
>>> beauty in subjects of study; from them he arrives finally at that
>>> branch of knowledge which studies nothing but ultimate beauty. Then
>>> at last he understands what true beauty is.
>>>
>>> "That, if ever, is the moment, my dear Socrates, when a man's life is
>>> worth living, as he contemplates beauty itself."
>>>
>>> --> Plato, Symposium 211b-d, as translated by Tom Griffith (1989)
>
>
> Sounds a bit like getting more and more evolved, with poly as a step
> along the way, doesn't it?
>
??? Evolved???
>
>>>> If you wish to consider this matter further, I suggest the poet (The
>>>> Poems of) Laura Riding (Jackson), who was a major power in world
>>>> poetry between 1919 and 1938, when people were thinking about serious
>>>> matters. In 1938 she abandoned poetry as a tool for leading people
>>>> to the UAC (the term was unknown to her), and her lover through this
>>>> whole period, Robert Graves. I consider her to be the supreme poet
>>>> of the 20th century, and far and away the most intelligent.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have Graves' poetry but not hers. I'll keep an eye out.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Her biography is also essential: "In Extremis: the Life of Laura
>>>> Riding", by Deborah Baker, wife of Amitav Ghosh (q.v.).
>>>>
>>>> Her life 1938-1991 was a complete waste: spent on a linguistically
>>>> impossible project and endless nasty letters. Just to show you that
>>>> those who have experienced the UAC, which she did in her early 20s,
>>>> do not necessarily make good saints, nor make wise choices.
>
>
> I plan to look for her poetry today.
>
>
>>>> The experience and a wise life have nothing to do with each other.
>>>
>>>
>>> Yet the experience and morals do? I would say that living a moral
>>> life is not unrelated to wisdom.
>>>
>> No, that's another misconception.
>
>
> How so?
>
I know very moral persons, my step-father for instance, an 18-yr
travelling preacher in "The Work" who never took a dime for his
religious activities, certainly was not wise.
>>> Some of those American journals weren't so primitive.
>>>
>>
>> The scientific ones were.
>
>
> Depends on the science. For instance, American ethnography during the
> last decades of the 1800s was rather amazing and is still valuable.
>
Like what led to the erroneous book Ishi? Most of the work in the time
you refer to was ethnocentric (not that European work wasn't), and the
ethnographers fell victim to many tall stories. I took Cultural Anthro
at Harvard which had a 40-book reading list for a one-semester course,
mostly monographs you couldn't even buy. Besides the sexual practices of
the Truk teenagers, my favorite memory of the course, which was being
taught as a corrective for just the period you are praising, was about
Appalachian farmer's spring planting. Apparently one farmer made up
this story, told some neighbore, and it spread like wildfire, so the the
ethnographers got the same story from everyone. Thus it must be true.
The story: husband and wife do the planting naked, the wife pulling the
plow, while her husband guided it and blessed the corn/cereal's
fertility by bouncing it off his wife's bare ass. There were many
similar japes; backcountry folk may not have been able to read, but they
weren't as stupid as the ethnographers of the time assumed.
Kluckhohn did much better work than Kroeber, but that was later. I
dated Kluckhohn's daughter for a while.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
ChickPea wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> (Jim Roberts)
> wrote in <OcsXc.2306$Cc.1899@trnddc07>::
> We don't get them any more, since registering with TPS, but I still
> remember how intrusive they were.
I didn't, because I thought it would never work. But since you've had
success, I'll try it, thanks.
In the last two days I've gotten 30 items of pornographic spam. Would
that something could be done about them. My wife, with a clearly female
name, gets several spams a day about how to enlarge her penis.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>> However, the media coverage of the Olympics tends to focus on how many
>> medals each country has won, and the games themselves are set up in
>> such a way as to encourage that kind of coverage, with athletes
>> wrapping themselves in their countries' flags and standing on podiums
>> while their national anthems are played, etc. etc. For some countries,
>> there's a strong ethnic element involved there, and even for those
>> countries where there's not, there's reinforcement and even promotion
>> of a corporate identity and of an us/them mentality.
>
>
> Yes, but it wasn't so at the beginning of the modern games. Maybe it
> started with the Cold War?
I doubt it. Jesse Owens, Hitler, and the Olympics of 1936
come to mind. But I'm no Olympic historian.
> [snip]
> In grad school, when I was poorer than a church mouse, I relied on
> Famiglia Cribari Chianti, cheeeep and palatable, as I had terrible
> insomnia. Then a woman turned me onto 1-a-day 5 mg Valium, and I
> stopped drinking for years, until after 5 years or so I had sleep
> disturbances, as if I were not getting REM sleep and HAD to take long
> naps at work. I stopped the Valium, stat, and found that my insomnia
> had gone away anyway. No more naps needed either.
There are still lots of simple, little four-letter words
that throw me, like "stat." From the Latin "statim," I see.
"Immediately, at once."
>>> My opinion of the Dialogues remains the same. I have much more
>>> important books to read.
>>
>>
>>
>> Such as?
>>
> Cognitive Neuroscience, The Future of Theoretical Physics and
> Astrophysics, Mahfouz, Hildegard of Bingen, Landau-Lifshitz Quantum
> Mechanics, and There Once Was a World, etc. Perhaps the Qur'an again.
I have a CD I love to play: Vision: The Music of Hildegard
von Bingen (c1994). Hauntingly beautiful.
>>> Try Galileo's dialogues for that.
>>> He actually knew something. Did you knew that students of his who
>>> tried to verify by measurement geometrical results were expelled.
>>> Open mind that - utterly hostile to science, even surveying.
>>
>>
>>
>> No. Who did the expelling?
>
>
> Plato, from the Lyceum.
Oohh! I thought you meant Galileo's students. My 9th grade
English teacher taught that you can usually expect the
antecedent to be the last noun in agreement.
I'm surprised I remember that much, since I was seated in
the back of a rowdy class.
Where is that story to be found, about Plato expelling
students? It's not in the biography of him by Diogenes
Laertius. Right now am wishing I had Riginos' Platonica (1976).
>>> If it's in Plato, it's wrong.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yet so much of Plato is dialogue. To say a dialogue is wrong is like
>> saying a novel is wrong.
>>
>
> OK, how about a dialogue between Hitler and Stalin? If the writer of
> the dialogue (those aren't Socrates's) leads you what he thinks is truth
> but is in fact unsupportable, it is wrong.
"They say that, on hearing Plato read the Lysis, Socrates
exclaimed, 'By Heracles, what a number of lies this young
man is telling about me!' For he has included in the
dialogue much that Socrates never said."
--> Diogenes Laertius, Lives 3:35.
Of course, Diotima's contribution is actually Plato's
"reportage" of Socrates' "reportage" of Diotima. But it's
easier just to say Diotima.
As for novel vis-à-vis dialogue, many a novel reflects an
authorial position. But since the reader is suspended in a
fictional realm, propositional engagements with regard to
correct and incorrect don't quite suit, not without first
rendering the supposed authorial position propositionally.
(I say "supposed" with Roland Barthes' "death of the author"
theory knocking about in the back of my mind.)
Similarly with dialogues, although there the reader is
suspended in a give and take. However, in Plato's case,
usually it was Socrates (and alternatively Timaeus or the
Athenian Stranger or the Eleatic Stranger) who supposedly
had the word of truth, and therefore his Socrates (or
Timaeus or whoever) can sometimes be argued against on a
propositional basis. Of course that's the trick, finding
where and how Plato's version of Socrates (or one of the
others) went wrong, when he did.
I notice that the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.,
1996) has this to say: "Plato is unique among philosophers
in this constant refusal to present ideas as his own,
forcing the reader to make up his or her own mind about
adopting them." However, Diogenes Laertius didn't seem to
have any problem making a long list of ideas that were,
supposedly, Plato's own.
>[snip]
>>>> For those who haven't yet caught on to the obPoly part of this
>>>> discussion, Diotima's ladder goes like this (per her summary of the
>>>> matter):
>>>>
>>>> "Such is the experience of the man who approaches, or is guided
>>>> towards, love in the right way, beginning with the particular
>>>> examples of beauty, but always returning from them to the search for
>>>> that one beauty. He uses them like a ladder, climbing from the love
>>>> of one person to love of two; from two to love of all physical
>>>> beauty; from physical beauty to beauty in human behaviour; thence to
>>>> beauty in subjects of study; from them he arrives finally at that
>>>> branch of knowledge which studies nothing but ultimate beauty. Then
>>>> at last he understands what true beauty is.
>>>>
>>>> "That, if ever, is the moment, my dear Socrates, when a man's life
>>>> is worth living, as he contemplates beauty itself."
>>>>
>>>> --> Plato, Symposium 211b-d, as translated by Tom Griffith (1989)
>>
>>
>>
>> Sounds a bit like getting more and more evolved, with poly as a step
>> along the way, doesn't it?
>>
>
> ??? Evolved???
I'm plucking at that poly-as-more-evolved motif, which keeps
weaving (or worming) its way through thread after thread in
this newsgroup and which usually elicits negative reactions.
What's interesting, though, is that that Diotima quotation
potentially, with just a little tweaking, connects your
discussion of the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum with
poly, even if the constructive reaction here should happen
to be mostly negative.
>>>>> Her biography is also essential: "In Extremis: the Life of Laura
>>>>> Riding", by Deborah Baker, wife of Amitav Ghosh (q.v.).
>>>>>
>>>>> Her life 1938-1991 was a complete waste: spent on a linguistically
>>>>> impossible project and endless nasty letters. Just to show you
>>>>> that those who have experienced the UAC, which she did in her early
>>>>> 20s, do not necessarily make good saints, nor make wise choices.
>>
>>
>>
>> I plan to look for her poetry today.
Visited three bookstores. No luck. Will have to order online.
>>>> Yet the experience and morals do? I would say that living a moral
>>>> life is not unrelated to wisdom.
>>>>
>>> No, that's another misconception.
>>
>>
>>
>> How so?
>>
>
> I know very moral persons, my step-father for instance, an 18-yr
> travelling preacher in "The Work" who never took a dime for his
> religious activities, certainly was not wise.
There are many things to be wise about. But if you're moral,
then you're wise in at least one thing.
>>>> Some of those American journals weren't so primitive.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The scientific ones were.
>>
>>
>>
>> Depends on the science. For instance, American ethnography during the
>> last decades of the 1800s was rather amazing and is still valuable.
>>
> Like what led to the erroneous book Ishi?
Ishi, the last of the Yahi, emerged in 1911. I first learned
about him through a book on archery, Hunting with the Bow
and Arrow, by Saxton Pope (1974).
Which book Ishi are you referring to? and how was it erroneous?
> Most of the work in the time
> you refer to was ethnocentric (not that European work wasn't), and the
> ethnographers fell victim to many tall stories. I took Cultural Anthro
> at Harvard which had a 40-book reading list for a one-semester course,
> mostly monographs you couldn't even buy. Besides the sexual practices of
> the Truk teenagers, my favorite memory of the course, which was being
> taught as a corrective for just the period you are praising, was about
> Appalachian farmer's spring planting. Apparently one farmer made up
> this story, told some neighbore, and it spread like wildfire, so the the
> ethnographers got the same story from everyone. Thus it must be true.
> The story: husband and wife do the planting naked, the wife pulling the
> plow, while her husband guided it and blessed the corn/cereal's
> fertility by bouncing it off his wife's bare ass. There were many
> similar japes; backcountry folk may not have been able to read, but they
> weren't as stupid as the ethnographers of the time assumed.
There was some of all that. Although as I read I am often
surprised at the mildness or even absence of ethnocentrism.
Of course, attitudes varied widely, especially among those
who utilized the work of the ethnographers, such as the
politicians.
I am reminded of a manuscript I once catalogued by John
Charles Fremont: "I must soon be wending my way along the
track of Empire" (to a Mr. Lester, June 12, 1879) -- a
smoking gun of imperialism if ever there was one, although
I'll cautiously refrain from calling it ethnocentric
imperialism.
> Kluckhohn did much better work than Kroeber, but that was later. I
> dated Kluckhohn's daughter for a while.
Hmm, A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn: culture as "an
abstraction from behaviour." Provocative.
--
Norm
Bill Seligman
> Many researchers are now using spammers rather than rats for their
> experiments; they will do things that rats won't, and the researchers don't
> become fond of them.
The problem is that the researchers have trouble extrapolating the test
results to human beings.
--
Bill (seligman at nevis dot columbia dot edu)
umarc
>In the last two days I've gotten 30 items of pornographic spam. Would
>that something could be done about them.
Mail server whitelisting. It does work.
umar
--
Bookmarks: Q 3:100; T I/490
What man hath joined together let no god put asunder.
rm -rf /luser/bush 66 days, 13 hours, 55 minutes
umarc
>I am reminded of a manuscript I once catalogued by John
>Charles Fremont: "I must soon be wending my way along the
>track of Empire" (to a Mr. Lester, June 12, 1879) -- a
>smoking gun of imperialism if ever there was one, although
>I'll cautiously refrain from calling it ethnocentric
>imperialism.
Has there ever been a non-ethnocentric imperialism?
umar
--
Bookmarks: Q 3:100; T I/490
What man hath joined together let no god put asunder.
rm -rf /luser/bush 66 days, 13 hours, 53 minutes
Cat
<p5tui09d7p1qpkhv3...@4ax.com>
<total context-ectomy>
>Marc
>
>Relationships and shoes should always be cared for......and sometimes to hell
> with the shoes. (Cat)
eek! ::blush::
:) thank you for making my day.
Cat
----------------------------
princess of all she surveys
loved by many
possessed by few
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>I am reminded of a manuscript I once catalogued by John
>>Charles Fremont: "I must soon be wending my way along the
>>track of Empire" (to a Mr. Lester, June 12, 1879) -- a
>>smoking gun of imperialism if ever there was one, although
>>I'll cautiously refrain from calling it ethnocentric
>>imperialism.
>
>
> Has there ever been a non-ethnocentric imperialism?
I'll tell you what I had in mind.
I don't conceive of the American citizens of 1879 (the date
of the Fremont letter) as all belonging to one ethnic group.
I don't even conceive of the English-speaking immigrants to
America as being all of one ethnic group. The Scottish,
Welsh, and Irish were not English; and the English
themselves were a mixture of various tribal groups.
Certainly American imperialism was part of the picture.
Certainly that imperialism was under girded by various
ideologies inimical to the North American aboriginals.
Certainly various supremacist and racist theories tinted
(and tainted) many minds -- the "civilized" over the
"savage," "White" over "Red," us versus them, etc. Certainly
a clash of systems -- English property law versus tribal
ranges, for instance -- contributed to the clash. Certainly
treachery with regard to treaty formation and to the
(non)keeping of treaties played a huge role. And this list
can go on and on. I'll even throw in the (heretical)
hypothesis that nationalism on the North American continent
-- and I'm thinking here of a phenomenon among some Indian
nations -- predated classic European nationalism, which is
associated with the Napoleonic era.
However, for all of America's racial exclusions --
aboriginal and African, to some extent Asian as well -- from
1492 to 1776 the European presence in North America was
never of just one ethnicity. And from 1776 to 1879 and
after, American citizenship has never been of one ethnicity
nor has American policy ever represented just one ethnicity
or, for that matter, any particular ethnicity.
American imperialism then, in 1879, as now, was a more
complex phenomenon than a theory of ethnocentrism can
explain. Hence my caution.
Of course, some amalgamate white American into a single
ethnicity; some confuse "nation" in the sense of a country
with "nation" in the sense of an ethnic group; and the word
"nationalism" itself is extremely problematic, both
historically and otherwise. So trying to converse
intelligibly about such matters is like trying to climb a
steep muddy hill with smooth soles: Every place one steps
ones slips and sends others slipping as well.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>>> However, the media coverage of the Olympics tends to focus on how
>>> many medals each country has won, and the games themselves are set up
>>> in such a way as to encourage that kind of coverage, with athletes
>>> wrapping themselves in their countries' flags and standing on podiums
>>> while their national anthems are played, etc. etc. For some
>>> countries, there's a strong ethnic element involved there, and even
>>> for those countries where there's not, there's reinforcement and even
>>> promotion of a corporate identity and of an us/them mentality.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, but it wasn't so at the beginning of the modern games. Maybe it
>> started with the Cold War?
>
>
> I doubt it. Jesse Owens, Hitler, and the Olympics of 1936 come to mind.
> But I'm no Olympic historian.
>
>
Yes, I thought later that this landmark Olympics was more plausible, but
I'm none the wiser.
>> [snip]
>> In grad school, when I was poorer than a church mouse, I relied on
>> Famiglia Cribari Chianti, cheeeep and palatable, as I had terrible
>> insomnia. Then a woman turned me onto 1-a-day 5 mg Valium, and I
>> stopped drinking for years, until after 5 years or so I had sleep
>> disturbances, as if I were not getting REM sleep and HAD to take long
>> naps at work. I stopped the Valium, stat, and found that my insomnia
>> had gone away anyway. No more naps needed either.
>
>
> There are still lots of simple, little four-letter words that throw me,
> like "stat." From the Latin "statim," I see. "Immediately, at once."
>
>
Yes. I forgot the period, just like doctors do.
>>>> My opinion of the Dialogues remains the same. I have much more
>>>> important books to read.
>>>
>>> Such as?
>>>
>> Cognitive Neuroscience, The Future of Theoretical Physics and
>> Astrophysics, Mahfouz, Hildegard of Bingen, Landau-Lifshitz Quantum
>> Mechanics, and There Once Was a World, etc. Perhaps the Qur'an again.
>
>
> I have a CD I love to play: Vision: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen
> (c1994). Hauntingly beautiful.
>
>
I have an HvB CD, too, but can't find it in our current state of CD
disarray - my wife won't let me get another CD rack "Whenever will it
end, our ages average almost 60." It might be Ecstatic Chants, Music of
the Angels, or Vision, don't remember. What a woman! But the Great and
Holy Church fucked her over, anyway, in their swing toward misogyny in
the 12th century.
>>>> Try Galileo's dialogues for that. He actually knew something. Did
>>>> you knew that students of his who tried to verify by measurement
>>>> geometrical results were expelled. Open mind that - utterly hostile
>>>> to science, even surveying.
>>>
>>>
>>> No. Who did the expelling?
>>
>> Plato, from the Lyceum.
>
>
> Oohh! I thought you meant Galileo's students. My 9th grade English
> teacher taught that you can usually expect the antecedent to be the last
> noun in agreement.
She was a Grammarian, whom I loathe because they took away a lot of the
richness of English, such as using they/them for singular persons of
unknown sex, leading to the present disasters of "he or she" and
"he/her". To me it refers to the main subject at hand.
Sorry about that. Of course Galileo was above all interested in
experiment. In the case of that paragraph, the Grammarians would have a
point.
>
> I'm surprised I remember that much, since I was seated in the back of a
> rowdy class.
>
Where you could shoot spitballs? That was my favorite row too, after I
got glasses.
> Where is that story to be found, about Plato expelling students? It's
> not in the biography of him by Diogenes Laertius. Right now am wishing I
> had Riginos' Platonica (1976).
I don't remember. Perhaps Prof Albritton said it in my Western
Philosophy class. Left out of the class: Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of
Bingen, etc., etc.
>
>
>>>> If it's in Plato, it's wrong.
>>>
>>> Yet so much of Plato is dialogue. To say a dialogue is wrong is like
>>> saying a novel is wrong.
>>>
>>
>> OK, how about a dialogue between Hitler and Stalin? If the writer of
>> the dialogue (those aren't Socrates's) leads you into what he thinks is
>> truth but is in fact unsupportable, it is wrong.
>
>
> "They say that, on hearing Plato read the Lysis, Socrates exclaimed, 'By
> Heracles, what a number of lies this young man is telling about me!' For
> he has included in the dialogue much that Socrates never said."
> --> Diogenes Laertius, Lives 3:35.
>
I didn't know that immediately, and we weren't told it in class, but it
didn't take long for even a 17-yr-old to figure that out. Doi
philosophy profs have some disability in the frontal lobes? Or do they
think they can treat student like idiots.
Another example of idiotic professors. When I was working at Stanford
in '64, I roomed in a business professor's house. One of the other
roomers was a business major and had been admitted to HBS, priving his
grades in the last quarter were satisfactory. The student amde the
mistake of taking a quarter of the only astro class Stanford offered at
the time, call it kiddie-astronomy. He was getting a D, so as I needed
money and he needed the grade, he paid me $35 to take the final for him.
No one recognized me as a stranger; Stanford students are purely into
themselves.
Don warned me not to do too well, as it might be spotted. I took
another dose of amphetamine and went over my Harvard astro texts from 5
years before for 10 hours just before the exam. The exam was
unbelievable. Stanford is the Harvard of the West????? I tried to mark
some silly mistakes on the exam, but I just couldn't. Then at the end,
realizing that I had probably got 100%, I changed one correct answer. I
had a 497/500, far and away the best grade, and *the prof never noticed
it!* Don got an A in the class "What did you do??", while the ancient
prof was probably chuckling about his teaching prowess.
> Of course, Diotima's contribution is actually Plato's "reportage" of
> Socrates' "reportage" of Diotima. But it's easier just to say Diotima.
A woman? I'd like to have met her, as I would have Sappho.
>
> As for novel vis-à-vis dialogue, many a novel reflects an authorial
> position. But since the reader is suspended in a fictional realm,
> propositional engagements with regard to correct and incorrect don't
> quite suit, not without first rendering the supposed authorial position
> propositionally. (I say "supposed" with Roland Barthes' "death of the
> author" theory knocking about in the back of my mind.)
>
I can't stand Barthes. I have a book of his that I threw against a
wall, for which I got a lecture from my wife. I said, "See, the book is
still fine." "Look at the wall, stupid!" I never have done that again.
I had done it often in my Western Philosiphy class, as Harvard redoes
the suites every year. But Susan Sontag seems to have liked him.
> Similarly with dialogues, although there the reader is suspended in a
> give and take. However, in Plato's case, usually it was Socrates (and
> alternatively Timaeus or the Athenian Stranger or the Eleatic Stranger)
> who supposedly had the word of truth, and therefore his Socrates (or
> Timaeus or whoever) can sometimes be argued against on a propositional
> basis. Of course that's the trick, finding where and how Plato's version
> of Socrates (or one of the others) went wrong, when he did.
>
Like my Liars' Club? The kids needed, and still need, a Liars' Club,
but I made the transition to not needing one from 8-12. After, I knew it
was all garbage unless it was science or music. I thought poetry wasn't
worth the effort, which it wasn't at that age, or disgusting: "By the
shores of Gichee-goomee..." (sp?) Geez, looking it up with Google, I had
no idea it was so long. Good I never had to read the whole thing.
I seem to have been born President of the Liars' Club. President of the
Latin Club was much more fun, as we had slaves of the female persuasion,
and as President I got two, and I spiked the Hawaiian fruit punch with 3
fifths of stolen Everclear (95% EtOH). The faculty advisors liked the
banquet *very* much!
> I notice that the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed., 1996) has this
> to say: "Plato is unique among philosophers in this constant refusal to
> present ideas as his own, forcing the reader to make up his or her own
> mind about adopting them." However, Diogenes Laertius didn't seem to
> have any problem making a long list of ideas that were, supposedly,
> Plato's own.
>
>
>> [snip]
[....]
>>>
>>> Sounds a bit like getting more and more evolved, with poly as a step
>>> along the way, doesn't it?
>>>
>>
>> ??? Evolved???
>
> I'm plucking at that poly-as-more-evolved motif, which keeps weaving (or
> worming) its way through thread after thread in this newsgroup and which
> usually elicits negative reactions.
OK, I can understand that you were trying to get a rise out of me, as
the phrase was out of character, and curious as to what it might be. I
suspected. But I wasn't as quick as that samurai in The Seven Samurai
who was walking up to the hut for the job interview while Toshiro Mifune
was waiting to clobber him over the head. He stopped 2 meters from the
door, smiled and said, "No jokes, please." That was enough to hire him.
Wait until we get a myostatin blocker into our genes (Kristof, NY Times,
25 Aug, or nytimes.com/kristofresponds. The Belgian Blue Bull to the
right has had his myostatin blocked. There are occassion human
specimens, often weightlifters, who have the blocking gene naturally.
How to keep it out of the Olympics and sports in general, as it isn't
doping?
>
> What's interesting, though, is that that Diotima quotation potentially,
> with just a little tweaking, connects your discussion of the
> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum with poly, even if the constructive
> reaction here should happen to be mostly negative.
>
>
>>>>>> Her biography is also essential: "In Extremis: the Life of Laura
>>>>>> Riding", by Deborah Baker, wife of Amitav Ghosh (q.v.).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Her life 1938-1991 was a complete waste: spent on a linguistically
>>>>>> impossible project and endless nasty letters. Just to show you
>>>>>> that those who have experienced the UAC, which she did in her
>>>>>> early 20s, do not necessarily make good saints, nor make wise
>>>>>> choices.
>>>
>>> I plan to look for her poetry today.
>
>
> Visited three bookstores. No luck. Will have to order online.
>
>
>>>>> Yet the experience and morals do? I would say that living a moral
>>>>> life is not unrelated to wisdom.
>>>>>
>>>> No, that's another misconception.
>>>
>>>
>>> How so?
>>>
>>
>> I know very moral persons, my step-father for instance, an 18-yr
>> travelling preacher in "The Work" who never took a dime for his
>> religious activities, certainly was not wise.
>
>
> There are many things to be wise about. But if you're moral, then you're
> wise in at least one thing.
>
Right, like I'm wise to sit down to pee, since I lost consistent
directionality when I was about 40, and I hate cleaning up messes.
>
>>>>> Some of those American journals weren't so primitive.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The scientific ones were.
>>>
>>>
>>> Depends on the science. For instance, American ethnography during the
>>> last decades of the 1800s was rather amazing and is still valuable.
>>>
>> Like what led to the erroneous book Ishi?
>
>
> Ishi, the last of the Yahi, emerged in 1911. I first learned about him
> through a book on archery, Hunting with the Bow and Arrow, by Saxton
> Pope (1974).
>
> Which book Ishi are you referring to? and how was it erroneous?
>
>
The first, by Kroeber. He wasn't the last Indian, nor was he of the
tribe he said, Yahi, and he knew a bit more about the white man than he
let on. He knew what Kroeber wanted to hear, and was only too happy to
oblige him.
>> Most of the work in the time you refer to was ethnocentric (not that
>> European work wasn't), and the ethnographers fell victim to many tall
>> stories. I took Cultural Anthro at Harvard which had a 40-book
>> reading list for a one-semester course, mostly monographs you couldn't
>> even buy. Besides the sexual practices of the Truk teenagers, my
>> favorite memory of the course, which was being taught as a corrective
>> for just the period you are praising, was about Appalachian farmers'
>> spring planting. Apparently one farmer made up this story, told some
>> neighbors, and it spread like wildfire, so the the ethnographers got
>> the same story from everyone. Thus it must be true. The story:
>> husband and wife do the planting naked, the wife pulling the plow,
>> while her husband guided it and blessed the corn/cereal's fertility by
>> bouncing it off his wife's bare ass. There were many similar japes;
>> backcountry folk may not have been able to read, but they weren't as
>> stupid as the ethnographers of the time assumed.
>
>
> There was some of all that. Although as I read I am often surprised at
> the mildness or even absence of ethnocentrism.
>
> Of course, attitudes varied widely, especially among those who utilized
> the work of the ethnographers, such as the politicians.
>
> I am reminded of a manuscript I once catalogued by John Charles Fremont:
> "I must soon be wending my way along the track of Empire" (to a Mr.
> Lester, June 12, 1879) -- a smoking gun of imperialism if ever there was
> one, although I'll cautiously refrain from calling it ethnocentric
> imperialism.
>
>
At least he was literate enough to use the right word: everytime I see
winding in the NY Times I give an inner scream. Have they outsourced
theit copy-editing?
>> Kluckhohn did much better work than Kroeber, but that was later. I
>> dated Kluckhohn's daughter for a while.
>
>
> Hmm, A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn: culture as "an abstraction from
> behaviour." Provocative.
>
>
Yes, I think he had it nailed. One of the best things he wrote was on
how language shapes thought, a new idea at the time, using the Navajo
language as an example. The language forced one to think more precisely
than we do, but the by product is that it makes creative thought more
difficult. English veers too far the other way.
Lucy had horses and a nice piece of property, and after she started to
like me asked if I could ride. I told her I once galloped an 18-yr-old
mare on a farm in BC, and knew what a tack room was. She turned
practically purple, "You could have killed her, etc., etc.!" Then she
wouldn't let me near her horses, and we broke up soon after. She was
also uncomfortable with anyone who knew her father's work so well.
Apparently there had been tension between them.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
Certainly correct. In the East the most obvious was the Iroquis Nation
(from which my mother continues to insist that I'm descended). They
kicked out the Cherokees, who speak a variety of Iroquois, apparently
because they were against Iroquois genocide against the French settlers
and especially the Huron, which they almost completely wiped out,
massacring village after village, man, woman, and child. Most surviving
Huron are in Michigan, I believe. Of course there was also the Sioux
Nation. The Athapaskan Apache (Indeh) were hardly even a tribe.
It was a 14-yr-old Alaskan Athapaskan girl in a tribe that stayed behind
in Alaska, and so is related to the Apache and Navajo, who converted me
to atheism. "She must have been a *very* bad girl," my then 9-yr-old
neighbor Clare, as in County Clare, declared with finality. Almost all
Indians in Alaska are Athapaskan.
Indians used to massacre whole villages up and down the East Coast long
before any English ship appeared. People who think the Indians were a
wise, peaceful people in touch with the Great Spirit make my gall
bladder bleed. They started the conflict with the settlers, else we
would have settled quietly as the Vikings did before Charlemagne carried
out his program of genocide against them in the low countries. We would
have taught them farming, and they could have taught us ecology.
> However, for all of America's racial exclusions -- aboriginal and
> African, to some extent Asian as well -- from 1492 to 1776 the European
> presence in North America was never of just one ethnicity. And from 1776
> to 1879 and after, American citizenship has never been of one ethnicity
> nor has American policy ever represented just one ethnicity or, for that
> matter, any particular ethnicity.
Thank you, Professor Norm. Perhaps there are readers of this thread who
will find this helpful.
>
> American imperialism then, in 1879, as now, was a more complex
> phenomenon than a theory of ethnocentrism can explain. Hence my caution.
>
Don't say complex when you mean complicated. Complex means assembled
from simpler parts, as are the cognitive metaphors we, and dogs, etc.,
use to get through life. It wasn't until I read "Philosophy in the
Flesh" that I looked at my dog in an entirely different way, seeing that
he thought just as I did - e.g., a dog can always recognize a dog from a
distance, whether it looks like a lion or a shaggy tarantula (coyote
bait). Dog metaphors are just simpler, for obvius physical reasons.
Late last night, Achilles was restless, so I sat down on our
denim-covered basement couch and he curled up beside me. Within a few
minutes he was asleep and a few minutes later began to dream (the nose
twiches first). The dream was very complicated, which I could tell as
my arm lay across him and could feel every twitch. His suppressed
bodily activity alternated among nose-wiggling, jowl twitching, sudden
body jerks, weird eye movements, and entire body violent activity, in
various orders. This went on for over a half hour as I watched the
Olympics. Quite a dream for a dog! I'd like to know what it was. I was
interested that his dream began so quickly after he fell asleep; I've
read that it takes humans about 30 minutes to go into REM sleep, but it
didn't when I was drinking, when I could have an entire dream in a
5-minute doze. There's something here for the sleep experts.
ObPoly: My dream later, in the early morning, was very complicated, but
involved, after a complicated, somewhat dangerous hike with an astro
friend and another woman, my getting halfway from 3rd base to Home with
a Vaulter making an unsuccessful last try in her 20s, with my wife lying
there approvingly. I held back, not wanting to wake my friend, and got
mildly chewed out for good taste. That taught me a lesson: you *can*
learn from dreams. So we both had good dreams on the same night. Since
Achilles was fixed by the SPCA when he was about 6 mos old, I doubt that
his dreams involve much sexual activity.
Your paragraph (I get to unload first): Agreed. Peaceful settlers were
always being attacked, and the Indians did not follow the Geneva
conventions. It was a lot like the early experience of Nicolas Kristof
of the NY Times (see nytimes.com/kristofresponds), who as a teenager on
his family's sheep farm went out hunting the coyotes that were making
meals of the family's sheep. He's always been an advocate of gun
control, and is a very peaceful person when let alone.
> Of course, some amalgamate white American into a single ethnicity; some
> confuse "nation" in the sense of a country with "nation" in the sense of
> an ethnic group; and the word "nationalism" itself is extremely
> problematic, both historically and otherwise. So trying to converse
> intelligibly about such matters is like trying to climb a steep muddy
> hill with smooth soles: Every place one steps ones slips and sends
> others slipping as well.
>
Well, my German family of pig farmers came up the Mississippi in 1847 to
SE Iowa where they remain and still do much the same, with the addition
of Bt soybeans and anti-corn borer corn. They kept thorough family
records, while the other side is untraceable, with no cohesion -
indentured servants from Scotland (hence my birth name Robertson),
French Canadians, probably Algonquin (*not* immigrants), and god knows
who all married into it, perhaps even freed slaves (I tan dark in the
desert).
The only thing immigrants from Europe, Asia (including American
Indians), Australia - including aborigines, have in common is that our
ancestors all came out of Africa 80,000 years ago, were reduced to about
4,000 (close to extinction) about 73,000 years ago by the greatest
caldera explosion in the last 500,000 years or so in western Indonesia.
Otherwise anything goes. We are all very closely related, all coming
from a mere 4,000 folks. The toll was not so great in Africa, but it
was doubtless great.
And keep in mind that the Yellowstone caldera (q.v.) is on the move.
ObPoly: Many different polygamous cultures rose from the descendants of
those 4,000 ancestors.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
ChickPea wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> (Jim Roberts)
> wrote in <QUtXc.543$vY6...@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>::
>
>
>>Well, I certainly had mixed feelings about watching the US women's
>>soccer team beat Brazil. On the one hand Brazil is a very racialist
>>country. On the other hand, a girl is considered to be a lesbian in
>>Brazil if she plays soccer, and a gold medal would help to put that to
>>sleep.
>
>
> Wouldn't bet on it- it would just make the Brazilians say "Our lesbians are
> better than your lesbians."
Well, my statement was based on interviews with the Brazilian female
players. There are chances for improvement in Brazilian culture.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
> [snip]
>> I have a CD I love to play: Vision: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen
>> (c1994). Hauntingly beautiful.
>>
>>
> I have an HvB CD, too, but can't find it in our current state of CD
> disarray - my wife won't let me get another CD rack "Whenever will it
> end, our ages average almost 60." It might be Ecstatic Chants, Music of
> the Angels, or Vision, don't remember. What a woman! But the Great and
> Holy Church fucked her over, anyway, in their swing toward misogyny in
> the 12th century.
I understand that sixty is old for mathematicians and
physicists. But it's young for scholars in the humanities.
It's about the time many a humanities scholar starts
outlining his or her magnum opus.
>> Oohh! I thought you meant Galileo's students. My 9th grade English
>> teacher taught that you can usually expect the antecedent to be the
>> last noun in agreement.
>
>
> She was a Grammarian, whom I loathe because they took away a lot of the
> richness of English, such as using they/them for singular persons of
> unknown sex, leading to the present disasters of "he or she" and
> "he/her". To me it refers to the main subject at hand.
She gave me a "C" for a beautiful poem I wrote about a
mountain stream. That proved a long-term discouragement. I
wish I could find that poem now. I'd like to revise it.
> Sorry about that. Of course Galileo was above all interested in
> experiment. In the case of that paragraph, the Grammarians would have a
> point.
:-)
> Where you could shoot spitballs? That was my favorite row too, after I
> got glasses.
Exactly. But it was my least favorite row. Couldn't hear
much the teacher said, much less see anything.
>> Where is that story to be found, about Plato expelling students? It's
>> not in the biography of him by Diogenes Laertius. Right now am wishing
>> I had Riginos' Platonica (1976).
>
>
> I don't remember. Perhaps Prof Albritton said it in my Western
> Philosophy class.
Almost everything about Plato's life is disputed. Frankly I
doubt the story. Put it to your Liars' Club, if ever you
have a chance.
> Left out of the class: Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of
> Bingen, etc., etc.
I had to discover them on my own too. Mature minds.
Mature minds of any faith or persuasion are few and far
between; but what good is it to engage a faith or persuasion
if not, at least eventually, in its maturest minds?
>> "They say that, on hearing Plato read the Lysis, Socrates exclaimed,
>> 'By Heracles, what a number of lies this young man is telling about
>> me!' For he has included in the dialogue much that Socrates never said."
>> --> Diogenes Laertius, Lives 3:35.
I forgot to mention, that quotation is from the R. D. Hicks
translation (1925) in the Loeb Classical Library.
> I didn't know that immediately, and we weren't told it in class, but it
> didn't take long for even a 17-yr-old to figure that out.
Apparently some of the speeches found in Plato were taken
down word for word. So, for instance, Diogenes Laertius says
about the speech of Lysias in the Phaedrus (Lives 3:25).
> Doi
> philosophy profs have some disability in the frontal lobes?
No doubt true of some.
> Or do they
> think they can treat student like idiots.
No doubt true of many. And many students live up to the
expectation.
> Another example of idiotic professors. When I was working at Stanford
> in '64, I roomed in a business professor's house. One of the other
> roomers was a business major and had been admitted to HBS, priving his
> grades in the last quarter were satisfactory. The student amde the
> mistake of taking a quarter of the only astro class Stanford offered at
> the time, call it kiddie-astronomy. He was getting a D, so as I needed
> money and he needed the grade, he paid me $35 to take the final for him.
> No one recognized me as a stranger; Stanford students are purely into
> themselves.
>
> Don warned me not to do too well, as it might be spotted. I took
> another dose of amphetamine and went over my Harvard astro texts from 5
> years before for 10 hours just before the exam. The exam was
> unbelievable. Stanford is the Harvard of the West????? I tried to mark
> some silly mistakes on the exam, but I just couldn't. Then at the end,
> realizing that I had probably got 100%, I changed one correct answer. I
> had a 497/500, far and away the best grade, and *the prof never noticed
> it!* Don got an A in the class "What did you do??", while the ancient
> prof was probably chuckling about his teaching prowess.
Risky business.
>> Of course, Diotima's contribution is actually Plato's "reportage" of
>> Socrates' "reportage" of Diotima. But it's easier just to say Diotima.
>
>
> A woman? I'd like to have met her, as I would have Sappho.
Yes, Diotima was a woman. And one to whom Socrates (as
represented by Plato) deferred in matters of philosophy or,
at least, the philosophy of love, which was one of the major
philosophical topics among the ancient Greeks -- although
you'd hardly know it, since most of the treatises on love
mentioned by Diogenes Laertius are lost.
I love Sappho's poems. I first read them through in the
translation of Mary Bernard. (And I correlated her numbering
of fragments with that in the LCL). Since then I've been
slowly accumulating texts and translations of Sappho.
Someday I'd love to render her poems myself, but that may be
a pinnacle I can never reach to my own satisfaction.
>> As for novel vis-à-vis dialogue, many a novel reflects an authorial
>> position. But since the reader is suspended in a fictional realm,
>> propositional engagements with regard to correct and incorrect don't
>> quite suit, not without first rendering the supposed authorial
>> position propositionally. (I say "supposed" with Roland Barthes'
>> "death of the author" theory knocking about in the back of my mind.)
>>
> I can't stand Barthes. I have a book of his that I threw against a
> wall, for which I got a lecture from my wife. I said, "See, the book is
> still fine." "Look at the wall, stupid!" I never have done that again.
You sound pretty lucky to me, to have someone who knows how
to handle you so well.
As for Barthes, I've never really cracked his code. Little
I've read of him has resonated with me. The Dictionary of
Theories (c2002) has this to say about the "death of the
author" theory ("see also" references silently omitted):
"Literary theory. Proclaimed [in 1968] by French critic
Roland Barthes (1915-80), revised and refined by French
philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-84).
"The traditional notion of an author pre-existing the text
and inscribing a fixed set of meanings in it is challenged;
'author' is an illusion produced by the reader's
constructive act of reading. For Foucault, this
author-in-the-text is employed by readers as a control
against a chaos of subjective meanings."
A 1968 article, in Image-Music-Text, by Barthes is cited;
also a 1979 article, in Textual Strategies, by Foucault.
Perhaps Barthes never met some of the crowd I used to hang
around, for whom subjective meanings in a text were just
about all.
By the way, the Dictionary of Theories doesn't have that
donkey paradox you mentioned. I don't think you ever
responded to my query about that in the "Am I Stupid" thread.
> I had done it often in my Western Philosiphy class, as Harvard redoes
> the suites every year.
The presumptive etymology of "philosiphy" would be quite
different from the etymology of "philosophy."
> But Susan Sontag seems to have liked him.
Nevertheless I generally enjoy reading her essays. Haven't
gotten into her novels yet, though. Isaiah Berlin, Frank
Kermode, George Steiner, and Susan Sontag are the essayists
I've probably taken to the most. Well, then there's Susan
Griffin and Adrienne Rich and ... come to think of it, there
are a lot of essayists I enjoy.
>> Similarly with dialogues, although there the reader is suspended in a
>> give and take. However, in Plato's case, usually it was Socrates (and
>> alternatively Timaeus or the Athenian Stranger or the Eleatic
>> Stranger) who supposedly had the word of truth, and therefore his
>> Socrates (or Timaeus or whoever) can sometimes be argued against on a
>> propositional basis. Of course that's the trick, finding where and how
>> Plato's version of Socrates (or one of the others) went wrong, when he
>> did.
>>
> Like my Liars' Club?
Exactly. Give each of the members a copy of Plato.
> The kids needed, and still need, a Liars' Club,
> but I made the transition to not needing one from 8-12. After, I knew it
> was all garbage unless it was science or music.
That was the judgment of a twelve-year old? Needs revisiting.
> I thought poetry wasn't
> worth the effort, which it wasn't at that age, or disgusting: "By the
> shores of Gichee-goomee..." (sp?) Geez, looking it up with Google, I had
> no idea it was so long. Good I never had to read the whole thing.
Ever read Rilke? or Anne Sexton? or Wallace Stevens? Or
maybe Swinburne would be more to your taste.
> [snip]
>> I'm plucking at that poly-as-more-evolved motif, which keeps weaving
>> (or worming) its way through thread after thread in this newsgroup and
>> which usually elicits negative reactions.
>
>
> OK, I can understand that you were trying to get a rise out of me, as
> the phrase was out of character, and curious as to what it might be.
Was more trying to get a rise out of any who would otherwise
be put off by any subthread that mentions an ancient author.
> I
> suspected. But I wasn't as quick as that samurai in The Seven Samurai
> who was walking up to the hut for the job interview while Toshiro Mifune
> was waiting to clobber him over the head. He stopped 2 meters from the
> door, smiled and said, "No jokes, please." That was enough to hire him.
>
> Wait until we get a myostatin blocker into our genes (Kristof, NY Times,
> 25 Aug, or nytimes.com/kristofresponds.
Neither the url nor a Google search brought up the article
to which you refer.
> The Belgian Blue Bull to the
> right has had his myostatin blocked. There are occassion human
> specimens, often weightlifters, who have the blocking gene naturally.
> How to keep it out of the Olympics and sports in general, as it isn't
> doping?
>> [Re Laura Riding Jackson]
>> Visited three bookstores. No luck. Will have to order online.
Which I did.
>> There are many things to be wise about. But if you're moral, then
>> you're wise in at least one thing.
>>
>
> Right, like I'm wise to sit down to pee, since I lost consistent
> directionality when I was about 40, and I hate cleaning up messes.
I think of being moral as a broad thing affecting many areas
of life.
>> Which book Ishi are you referring to? and how was it erroneous?
>>
>>
> The first, by Kroeber.
Are you referring to:
Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in
North America, by Theodora Kroeber (1961)?
> He wasn't the last Indian,
Nobody said he was. I understand that the current Indian
population is about or in excess of what it was when
Columbus stumbled onto some islands off the "New World."
But, of course, estimates vary.
> nor was he of the
> tribe he said, Yahi, and he knew a bit more about the white man than he
> let on. He knew what Kroeber wanted to hear, and was only too happy to
> oblige him.
Hmm, my reference books aren't backing you up. Got a source?
>> There was some of all that. Although as I read I am often surprised at
>> the mildness or even absence of ethnocentrism.
Many ethnographers came to know the people they were
describing and were sympathetic to them.
>> Of course, attitudes varied widely, especially among those who
>> utilized the work of the ethnographers, such as the politicians.
>>
>> I am reminded of a manuscript I once catalogued by John Charles
>> Fremont: "I must soon be wending my way along the track of Empire" (to
>> a Mr. Lester, June 12, 1879) -- a smoking gun of imperialism if ever
>> there was one, although I'll cautiously refrain from calling it
>> ethnocentric imperialism.
>>
>>
> At least he was literate enough to use the right word: everytime I see
> winding in the NY Times I give an inner scream. Have they outsourced
> theit copy-editing?
My general impression, mostly from recent books, is that
copy-editing has grown extremely sloppy over the last
decade. *Groan*
>>> Kluckhohn did much better work than Kroeber, but that was later. I
>>> dated Kluckhohn's daughter for a while.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hmm, A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn: culture as "an abstraction from
>> behaviour." Provocative.
>>
>>
> Yes, I think he had it nailed.
Their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and
Definitions (1952), sounds like something I'd like to read.
> One of the best things he wrote was on
> how language shapes thought, a new idea at the time, using the Navajo
> language as an example. The language forced one to think more precisely
> than we do, but the by product is that it makes creative thought more
> difficult. English veers too far the other way.
Intriguing. But I don't buy into linguistic determinism. For
one thing, I have consciously observed the workings of my
own mind since early childhood, and a lot of those
operations, including many thoughts, are language-free. I'm
continually framing language, sometimes even creating it, to
give expression to such thoughts.
Nevertheless, I recognize an influence of language upon
thought processes. Advertisers and political pros make
effective use of that influence all the time. I would
imagine that the influence of language varies widely among
individuals.
I'm an inveterate reader of bibliographies. (They expand my
awareness.) I recently came across this entry:
"How Inuktitut avoids some ambiguities that English
doesn't," by S. T. (Mick) Mallon, in: Études/Inuit/Studies;
v. 1, no. 1 (1977): pp. 149-153.
So according to Kluckhohn (is it?), less ambiguity might not
always be such a good thing?
> Lucy had horses and a nice piece of property, and after she started to
> like me asked if I could ride. I told her I once galloped an 18-yr-old
> mare on a farm in BC, and knew what a tack room was. She turned
> practically purple, "You could have killed her, etc., etc.!" Then she
> wouldn't let me near her horses, and we broke up soon after. She was
> also uncomfortable with anyone who knew her father's work so well.
> Apparently there had been tension between them.
Tack room: Where bridles and saddles are kept.
I saw on one of the PBS antique shows something new to me: a
hooked blade on a spear used to cut an opponent's bridle so
that he would lose control of his horse while in battle. I
didn't hear what it's called.
--
Norm
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> umarc wrote:
>>
>>> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>> I don't conceive of the American citizens of 1879 (the date of the
>> Fremont letter) as all belonging to one ethnic group. I don't even
>> conceive of the English-speaking immigrants to America as being all of
>> one ethnic group. The Scottish, Welsh, and Irish were not English; and
>> the English themselves were a mixture of various tribal groups.
>>
>> Certainly American imperialism was part of the picture. Certainly that
>> imperialism was under girded by various ideologies inimical to the
>> North American aboriginals. Certainly various supremacist and racist
>> theories tinted (and tainted) many minds -- the "civilized" over the
>> "savage," "White" over "Red," us versus them, etc. Certainly a clash
>> of systems -- English property law versus tribal ranges, for instance
>> -- contributed to the clash. Certainly treachery with regard to treaty
>> formation and to the (non)keeping of treaties played a huge role. And
>> this list can go on and on. I'll even throw in the (heretical)
>> hypothesis that nationalism on the North American continent -- and I'm
>> thinking here of a phenomenon among some Indian nations -- predated
>> classic European nationalism, which is associated with the Napoleonic
>> era.
I should take this opportunity to correct myself: "the start
of which is associated with the Napoleonic era."
> Certainly correct. In the East the most obvious was the Iroquis Nation
> (from which my mother continues to insist that I'm descended). They
> kicked out the Cherokees, who speak a variety of Iroquois, apparently
> because they were against Iroquois genocide against the French settlers
> and especially the Huron, which they almost completely wiped out,
> massacring village after village, man, woman, and child. Most surviving
> Huron are in Michigan, I believe. Of course there was also the Sioux
> Nation. The Athapaskan Apache (Indeh) were hardly even a tribe.
King Joseph's War comes to my mind as a prime example.
Recent scholarship has described it as a nationalistic movement.
> It was a 14-yr-old Alaskan Athapaskan girl in a tribe that stayed behind
> in Alaska, and so is related to the Apache and Navajo, who converted me
> to atheism. "She must have been a *very* bad girl," my then 9-yr-old
> neighbor Clare, as in County Clare, declared with finality. Almost all
> Indians in Alaska are Athapaskan.
What about the Inuit?
> Indians used to massacre whole villages up and down the East Coast long
> before any English ship appeared.
Some Indians.
> People who think the Indians were a
> wise, peaceful people in touch with the Great Spirit make my gall
> bladder bleed.
There I would have said "all Indians."
> They started the conflict with the settlers, else we
> would have settled quietly as the Vikings did before Charlemagne carried
> out his program of genocide against them in the low countries. We would
> have taught them farming, and they could have taught us ecology.
Middle Knowledge -- what would have been. Who knows?
>> However, for all of America's racial exclusions -- aboriginal and
>> African, to some extent Asian as well -- from 1492 to 1776 the
>> European presence in North America was never of just one ethnicity.
>> And from 1776 to 1879 and after, American citizenship has never been
>> of one ethnicity nor has American policy ever represented just one
>> ethnicity or, for that matter, any particular ethnicity.
>
>
> Thank you, Professor Norm. Perhaps there are readers of this thread who
> will find this helpful.
Never thought of cross-posting to alt.native.
>> American imperialism then, in 1879, as now, was a more complex
>> phenomenon than a theory of ethnocentrism can explain. Hence my caution.
>>
>
> Don't say complex when you mean complicated. Complex means assembled
> from simpler parts,
Actually, that's how I meant "complex." So both complex and
complicated.
However, my dictionaries don't agree with you. American
Heritage gives as definition 2 of "complex": "Involved or
intricate, as in structure; complicated."
> as are the cognitive metaphors we, and dogs, etc.,
> use to get through life. It wasn't until I read "Philosophy in the
> Flesh" that I looked at my dog in an entirely different way, seeing that
> he thought just as I did - e.g., a dog can always recognize a dog from a
> distance, whether it looks like a lion or a shaggy tarantula (coyote
> bait). Dog metaphors are just simpler, for obvius physical reasons.
Animal cognition is far more sophisticated than Western
culture has generally credited it with being, until recently
anyway. I have much opportunity to observe, and am often
amazed at the processes that an animal mind must have gone
through.
> Late last night, Achilles was restless, so I sat down on our
> denim-covered basement couch and he curled up beside me. Within a few
> minutes he was asleep and a few minutes later began to dream (the nose
> twiches first). The dream was very complicated, which I could tell as
> my arm lay across him and could feel every twitch. His suppressed
> bodily activity alternated among nose-wiggling, jowl twitching, sudden
> body jerks, weird eye movements, and entire body violent activity, in
> various orders. This went on for over a half hour as I watched the
> Olympics. Quite a dream for a dog! I'd like to know what it was. I was
> interested that his dream began so quickly after he fell asleep; I've
> read that it takes humans about 30 minutes to go into REM sleep, but it
> didn't when I was drinking, when I could have an entire dream in a
> 5-minute doze. There's something here for the sleep experts.
>
> ObPoly: My dream later, in the early morning, was very complicated, but
> involved, after a complicated, somewhat dangerous hike with an astro
> friend and another woman, my getting halfway from 3rd base to Home with
> a Vaulter making an unsuccessful last try in her 20s, with my wife lying
> there approvingly. I held back, not wanting to wake my friend, and got
> mildly chewed out for good taste.
Holding back ever resulting in blue balls?
> That taught me a lesson: you *can*
> learn from dreams. So we both had good dreams on the same night. Since
> Achilles was fixed by the SPCA when he was about 6 mos old, I doubt that
> his dreams involve much sexual activity.
In humans, castration does not necessarily take away sexual
desire. Nor does, for example, a hysterectomy. There are
cases where it does. But there are also cases where it
swings wildly in the other direction. So I hear, anyway.
I wonder how the estrous cycle would affect all that in
other species.
> Your paragraph (I get to unload first): Agreed. Peaceful settlers were
> always being attacked, and the Indians did not follow the Geneva
> conventions. It was a lot like the early experience of Nicolas Kristof
> of the NY Times (see nytimes.com/kristofresponds), who as a teenager on
> his family's sheep farm went out hunting the coyotes that were making
> meals of the family's sheep. He's always been an advocate of gun
> control, and is a very peaceful person when let alone.
The Puritans were pretty savage to the Pequots.
Savagery was a two-way street.
>> Of course, some amalgamate white American into a single ethnicity;
>> some confuse "nation" in the sense of a country with "nation" in the
>> sense of an ethnic group; and the word "nationalism" itself is
>> extremely problematic, both historically and otherwise. So trying to
>> converse intelligibly about such matters is like trying to climb a
>> steep muddy hill with smooth soles: Every place one steps ones slips
>> and sends others slipping as well.
>>
> Well, my German family of pig farmers came up the Mississippi in 1847 to
> SE Iowa where they remain and still do much the same, with the addition
> of Bt soybeans and anti-corn borer corn. They kept thorough family
> records, while the other side is untraceable, with no cohesion -
> indentured servants from Scotland (hence my birth name Robertson),
> French Canadians, probably Algonquin (*not* immigrants), and god knows
> who all married into it, perhaps even freed slaves (I tan dark in the
> desert).
I wonder how many North Americans not identified as American
Indians have Indian blood. I imagine a large percentage of
those with a long family background in North America. I keep
meeting people who are aware that they have an Indian
ancestry in their genealogical tree.
I wonder too about how many Europeans have American Indian
blood, a large number of Indians having been transported to
Europe.
> The only thing immigrants from Europe, Asia (including American
> Indians), Australia - including aborigines, have in common is that our
> ancestors all came out of Africa 80,000 years ago, were reduced to about
> 4,000 (close to extinction) about 73,000 years ago by the greatest
> caldera explosion in the last 500,000 years or so in western Indonesia.
> Otherwise anything goes. We are all very closely related, all coming
> from a mere 4,000 folks. The toll was not so great in Africa, but it
> was doubtless great.
>
> And keep in mind that the Yellowstone caldera (q.v.) is on the move.
>
> ObPoly: Many different polygamous cultures rose from the descendants of
> those 4,000 ancestors.
I've never read a scenario of how that happened that I've
found intellectually satisfactory.
--
Norm
Miche
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I have a CD I love to play: Vision: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen
>>> (c1994). Hauntingly beautiful.
>>>
>>>
>> I have an HvB CD, too, but can't find it in our current state of CD
>> disarray - my wife won't let me get another CD rack "Whenever will it
>> end, our ages average almost 60." It might be Ecstatic Chants, Music
>> of the Angels, or Vision, don't remember. What a woman! But the
>> Great and Holy Church fucked her over, anyway, in their swing toward
>> misogyny in the 12th century.
>
>
> I understand that sixty is old for mathematicians and physicists. But
> it's young for scholars in the humanities. It's about the time many a
> humanities scholar starts outlining his or her magnum opus.
>
Yes, original thinking is then no longer needed. However, I'm unusual
in being unable to resist this odd kind of thought. I can formulate a
testable theory in 5 minutes.
My wife is sure that we have no Hildegard CD. But I remember buying it
from Amazon and playing it. I must have given it to my rotten daughter.
I'll add a pure HvB CD to my "shopping cart".
[Gallileo and referents]
>
> She gave me a "C" for a beautiful poem I wrote about a mountain stream.
> That proved a long-term discouragement. I wish I could find that poem
> now. I'd like to revise it.
>
>
Yes, the harder you try in school, the worse a smart kid does. The
teacher is intimidated by things they can't understand. I got s C in
"class participation" in General Science, an absurd class we had to take
as HS freshmen, which destroyed my false idea that at last in HS I might
learn something in class. The reason for the consistent bad grade every
6 weeks: I kept pointing out where he was wrong - couldn't resist; he
didn't know the 's' in science. I also humiliated him by saying in
class that I could teach it better then he could, and dared him to try
harder. I always got C's in effort and conduct on the report card, but
A's for all the academic subjects, because I knew which teachers to
ignore and who could take a challenge.
So the conundrum: what does it mean to get all A's, but always C's in
effort? The teachers were unknowingly making a flat admission that they
were terrible at their jobs.
>> Sorry about that. Of course Galileo was above all interested in
>> experiment. In the case of that paragraph, the Grammarians would have
>> a point.
>
>
> :-)
>
>
>> Where you could shoot spitballs? That was my favorite row too, after
>> I got glasses.
>
>
> Exactly. But it was my least favorite row. Couldn't hear much the
> teacher said, much less see anything.
>
>
You wimp, or maybe your mother was. My mother, a terrifying school
nurse, would have brought an audiogram and the results of a vision test
to the principal. Anyway, you didn't miss anything.
>>> Where is that story to be found, about Plato expelling students? It's
>>> not in the biography of him by Diogenes Laertius. Right now am
>>> wishing I had Riginos' Platonica (1976).
>>
>> I don't remember. Perhaps Prof Rogers Albritton said it in my Western
>> Philosophy class.
>
>
> Almost everything about Plato's life is disputed. Frankly I doubt the
> story. Put it to your Liars' Club, if ever you have a chance.
>
>
It would be a direct affront to his philosophy.
Asides from terrible professors are often more true than is their
curriculum.
>> Left out of the class: Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, etc., etc.
>
>
> I had to discover them on my own too. Mature minds.
>
> Mature minds of any faith or persuasion are few and far between; but
> what good is it to engage a faith or persuasion if not, at least
> eventually, in its maturest minds?
>
>
>>> "They say that, on hearing Plato read the Lysis, Socrates exclaimed,
>>> 'By Heracles, what a number of lies this young man is telling about
>>> me!' For he has included in the dialogue much that Socrates never said."
>>> --> Diogenes Laertius, Lives 3:35.
>
>
> I forgot to mention, that quotation is from the R. D. Hicks translation
> (1925) in the Loeb Classical Library.
>
I don't go to the Hopkins Library (actually the Milton Eisenhower...)
except for monographs I've developed a compelling need for - like is the
Great Conveyor going to shut down in the next 10 years? After that, it
takes only 10 years to bring on the next Ice Age: global warming can
lead almost instantaneously to an ice age. If I think the Great Conveyor
is about to shut down, we're selling out and moving to Belize before
everyone else. I have enough at home that I haven't read, or having
tried to read once long ago, but not understood, like Landau-Lifshitz's
Quantum Mechanics (35 yrs ago) and the Qur'an (55 yrs ago).
I'd also like to work through the 5th edition of my freshman 1st edition
physics text at Harvard (got for $5 from ER Hamilton; who needs a 6th
edition?), which is so vastly better than the 1st edition, mostly thanks
to Jearl Walker: Halliday, Resnick, and Walker, Fundamentals of Physics,
as I certainly could use some review, just in case I want to dodder into
one of the 6 or so nearby colleges and scare the bejesus out of the
students to ease the job pressure in the profession. One of the reasons
that the first edition was so bad, besides the opaque pedagogy, was that
1/3 of the answers to problems were wrong, because they were left to a
bunch of slope-headed grad students. 44 years later, they should be better.
>
>> I didn't know that immediately, and we weren't told it in class, but
>> it didn't take long for even a 17-yr-old to figure that out.
>
>
> Apparently some of the speeches found in Plato were taken down word for
> word. So, for instance, Diogenes Laertius says about the speech of
> Lysias in the Phaedrus (Lives 3:25).
>
>
>> Do philosophy profs have some disability in the frontal lobes?
>
>
> No doubt true of some.
>
>
>> Or do they think they can treat students like idiots.
>
>
> No doubt true of many. And many students live up to the expectation.
>
>
>> Another example of idiotic professors. When I was working at Stanford
>> in '64, I roomed in a business professor's house. One of the other
>> roomers was a business major and had been admitted to HBS, providing his
>> grades in the last quarter were satisfactory. The student made the
>> mistake of taking a quarter of the only astro class Stanford offered
>> at the time, call it kiddie-astronomy. He was getting a D, so as I
>> needed money and he needed the grade, he paid me $35 to take the final
>> for him.
>> No one recognized me as a stranger; Stanford students are purely into
>> themselves.
>>
>> Don warned me not to do too well, as it might be spotted. I took
>> another dose of amphetamine and went over my Harvard astro texts from
>> 5 years before for 10 hours just before the exam. The exam was
>> unbelievable. Stanford is the Harvard of the West????? I tried to
>> mark some silly mistakes on the exam, but I just couldn't. Then at
>> the end, realizing that I had probably got 100%, I changed one correct
>> answer. I had a 497/500, far and away the best grade, and *the prof
>> never noticed it!* Don got an A in the class: "What did you do??",
>> while the ancient prof was probably chuckling about his teaching prowess.
>
>
> Risky business.
So is going to the grocery store and eatng the food you buy there, but
unlike Ted Kennedy, I did not get caught. Know your prey. I took one
look at this 70-yr-old radio astronomer and figured, anything goes.
>
>
>>> Of course, Diotima's contribution is actually Plato's "reportage" of
>>> Socrates' "reportage" of Diotima. But it's easier just to say Diotima.
>>
>>
>>
>> A woman? I'd like to have met her, as I would have Sappho.
>
>
> Yes, Diotima was a woman. And one to whom Socrates (as represented by
> Plato) deferred in matters of philosophy or, at least, the philosophy of
> love, which was one of the major philosophical topics among the ancient
> Greeks -- although you'd hardly know it, since most of the treatises on
> love mentioned by Diogenes Laertius are lost.
>
Now we have Ruth Westheimer, a former sniper in the Haganah. Did she
let herself be fondled while on duty; she says she never hit anyone.
But of course there's no Greek idealism with her.
> I love Sappho's poems. I first read them through in the translation of
> Mary Bernard. (And I correlated her numbering of fragments with that in
> the LCL). Since then I've been slowly accumulating texts and
> translations of Sappho. Someday I'd love to render her poems myself, but
> that may be a pinnacle I can never reach to my own satisfaction.
>
>
She had the brains of George Eliot. Her poetical skill in Lesbian Greek
will forever be closed to me.
>>> As for novel vis-à-vis dialogue, many a novel reflects an authorial
>>> position. But since the reader is suspended in a fictional realm,
>>> propositional engagements with regard to correct and incorrect don't
>>> quite suit, not without first rendering the supposed authorial
>>> position propositionally. (I say "supposed" with Roland Barthes'
>>> "death of the author" theory knocking about in the back of my mind.)
>>>
>> I can't stand Barthes. I have a book of his that I threw against a
>> wall, for which I got a lecture from my wife. I said, "See, the book
>> is still fine." "Look at the wall, stupid!" I never have done that
>> again.
>
For me, a novel has no meaning without a moral point. I don't get far
in them, then they go out with our paper recycling. It's nice that
Balto has this service. I won't have to make midnight runs to
dumpsters, and possibly run afoul of the Balto Police yet another time,
when my wife finally demands a purge. After all, what do I need with
even an excellent Russion book on theoretical astrophysics 23 years old?
I read it in '71 when it first came out and what I learned let me
dominate the U of Wash astro dep't, and to get to Caltech. I could keep
it for sentimental reasons, like my First Edition of Il Vangelo Secundo
Tomaso?
>
> You sound pretty lucky to me, to have someone who knows how to handle
> you so well.
I am, and let her know every day. I pissed her off only a few times
when I started on Everclear - the cheapest and purest booze to drink; a
200 ml bottle costs only $3.50, which is cheaper than any drink at the
bar, and it's good for 6 significant drinks - after it was apparent that
Katya was gone for good, though she continued to lie about even that for
a while. But I quickly - it seemed to me - learned to mellow out. My Dr
gave me a prescription (Celexa) for my tendency to get irritated, though
I *think* I don't need it anymore. That's the almost universal problem
of persons on psychoactive drugs: hey, I feel fine to hell with these
meds. My wife's schizophenic older brother, my age, whom she largely
supports, is always going off his very necessary meds, feeling good, if
a bit groggy, unless there is someone to pull his jaws apart, like a
cat, and tamp the pill down.
We don't have to get a new 20" TV set every month or so from my shooting
it up with my .50 Magnum pistol. Very satisfying. [actually, Doris
says she will leave if I bring as much as a child's bow and arrow home.]
Doris's sense of time is rather different from mine when I'm drinking.
I think one day has been two and that 6 pm is 6 am, until I reason
things through.
She handles everyone well, even lying, lazy, German astronomical lovers,
if they have any good points, and Katya certainly did. That's in fact
how I first noticed my wife [Grammarians, take notice!]: not even very
experienced rock climbers could get panicky duffers to go over the lip
on rappel as well as she could. I said to myself, "At last an
intelligent, competent woman who can put up with me after 6 years of
dating space aliens!" A disastrous first date, though. I turned to my
more feminine side, and it worked; besides she loved my kids. She still
likes them better than I do in their "adult" forms.
>
[all Barthes deleted, or thrown against the wall]
>
> By the way, the Dictionary of Theories doesn't have that donkey paradox
> you mentioned. I don't think you ever responded to my query about that
> in the "Am I Stupid" thread.
>
A donkey is pulling a cart. Yet Newton's 3rd Law says that the force
that the donkey exerts on the cart is equal and opposite to the force
that the cart exerts on the donkey. Therefore the forces add to zero.
How can the cart move?
I can write the paradox in a million different forms, which confuses the
students, who prefer to learn by rote. The answer is always the same.
I tell them they are not in a seminary or a nunnery, so grasp the
essential idea and move on to the lectures.
>> I had done it [throwing philosophy books against the wall often
in my Western Philosophy class, as Harvard redoes
>> the suites every year.
>
[picky typo fun deleted; i is next to o, and besides, what are you
talking about?]
>> But Susan Sontag seems to have liked him.
>
>
> Nevertheless I generally enjoy reading her essays. Haven't gotten into
> her novels yet, though. Isaiah Berlin, Frank Kermode, George Steiner,
> and Susan Sontag are the essayists I've probably taken to the most.
> Well, then there's Susan Griffin and Adrienne Rich and ... come to think
> of it, there are a lot of essayists I enjoy.
>
Isaiah Berlin is the best, as he had no ideology except quest, and he
was a lot smarter than the others. Kermode took money from the CIA.
The Steiner essays I read in the New Yorker were good. Sontag is OK, if
a bit airy. There are some good political essayists, but I suspect they
do not interest you.
>
>>> Similarly with dialogues, although there the reader is suspended in a
>>> give and take. However, in Plato's case, usually it was Socrates (and
>>> alternatively Timaeus or the Athenian Stranger or the Eleatic
>>> Stranger) who supposedly had the word of truth, and therefore his
>>> Socrates (or Timaeus or whoever) can sometimes be argued against on a
>>> propositional basis. Of course that's the trick, finding where and
>>> how Plato's version of Socrates (or one of the others) went wrong,
>>> when he did.
>>>
Concocted dialogues do not suit my taste much, as you *have* to know you
are being manipulated and set up - two things that enrage me.
>> Like my Liars' Club?
>
>
> Exactly. Give each of the members a copy of Plato.
>
>
Well, the eldest, a boy, got a copy of the Iliad from me Christmas
before last, and I don't think he's read it yet, as I inserted in it a
question about the rage of Achilles, which he has never answered.
For her 10th birthday in March, I gave the middle girl the book How the
Irish Saved Civilization, as she is the only one in the family that
might object strenuously were I to be forced to drink hemlock. She
looks at me admiringly, like forbidden fruit. The parents better watch
out with her, but I don't think they have a clue that there lies a
spirit longing to be free. I'm sure she's working on it, but it's near
the limit of her reading ability. She's bright, so I think she'll make
it. And how can her Irish Catholic parents object to it? A subtle
nudge toward independence....
I wouldn't any more give anyone a copy of Plato than I would poison.
>> The kids needed, and still need, a Liars' Club, but I made the
>> transition to not needing one from 8-12. Afterwards, I knew it was all
>> garbage unless it was science or music.
>
>
> That was the judgment of a twelve-year old? Needs revisiting.
>
That was implied; and the form of the statement says it has been, as has
practically everything I've written in our various hijacked threads.
Read me as closely as you would Plato, or some other philosophical liar
that you are addicted to, and you will learn more than from them. Are
*we* not conducting a dialogue, thankfully not Socratic/Platonic, as
ours contains knowledge, curiosity, and equality. Perhaps it's time for
another Celexa....
>
>> I thought poetry wasn't worth the effort, which it wasn't at that age,
>> or disgusting: "By the shores of Gichee-goomee..." (sp?) Geez, looking
>> it up with Google, I had no idea it was so long. Good I never had to
>> read the whole thing.
>
>
> Ever read Rilke? or Anne Sexton? or Wallace Stevens? Or maybe Swinburne
> would be more to your taste.
>
>
Sexton and Stevens (long ago), I liked the description of how he walked
to work while composing his poetry: his walk reflected the composition
of the poem. Rainier Maria Rilke, never, and should I?
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I'm plucking at that poly-as-more-evolved motif, which keeps weaving
>>> (or worming) its way through thread after thread in this newsgroup
>>> and which usually elicits negative reactions.
>>
>> OK, I can understand that you were trying to get a rise out of me, as
>> the phrase was out of character, and curious as to what it might be.
>
>
> Was more trying to get a rise out of any who would otherwise be put off
> by any subthread that mentions an ancient author.
>
>
Do you seriously believe that anyone reads our posts?
[Kurosawa's samurai deleted, zap]
>
>> Wait until we get a myostatin blocker into our genes (Kristof, NY
>> Times, 25 Aug, or nytimes.com/kristofresponds.
>
>
> Neither the url nor a Google search brought up the article to which you
> refer.
>
Go to nytimes.com, click on columnists, scroll down to Kristof on 25 August.
>
>> The Belgian Blue Bull to the right has had his myostatin blocked.
>> There are occasional human specimens, often weightlifters, who have the
>> blocking gene naturally. How to keep it out of the Olympics and sports
>> in general, as it isn't doping?
>
>
>
>>> [Re Laura Riding Jackson]
>>> Visited three bookstores. No luck. Will have to order online.
>
>
> Which I did.
>
>
>>> There are many things to be wise about. But if you're moral, then
>>> you're wise in at least one thing.
>>>
>>
>> Right, like I'm wise to sit down to pee, since I lost consistent
>> directionality when I was about 40, and I hate cleaning up messes.
>
>
> I think of being moral as a broad thing affecting many areas of life.
>
>
Such as my moral step-father opening his wife's mail before she saw it,
as that was done in Victorian England, the way he was reared? It
affects many aspects of behavior, but often not the most important ones.
Wish you had been there for the showdown between my mother and
step-father about the mail. I think it took three hours for her to break
him, to show him who wore the pants in the family.
Now, I may not be so "moral", but as soon as I know that my wife is
serious, I stand aside.
>>> Which book Ishi are you referring to? and how was it erroneous?
>>>
>>>
>> The first, by Kroeber.
>
>
> Are you referring to:
>
> Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North
> America, by Theodora Kroeber (1961)?
No, the original by her father, A. L. Kroeber, 1911, probably out of
print. What an industry that liar started! Kroeber broke the first
rule of ethnography: never become friends with your subject.
>
>
>> He wasn't the last Indian,
>
>
> Nobody said he was. I understand that the current Indian population is
> about or in excess of what it was when Columbus stumbled onto some
> islands off the "New World." But, of course, estimates vary.
>
>
>> nor was he of the tribe he said, Yahi, and he knew a bit more about
>> the white man than he let on. He knew what Kroeber wanted to hear,
>> and was only too happy to oblige him.
>
>
> Hmm, my reference books aren't backing you up. Got a source?
>
Google "Kroeber Ishi Yahi", and work from there.
>
I threw out my Cultural Anthro notes long ago. My wife gave away her
copy of the original book, and I must have put mine in a dumpster, among
3 SW loads of books when we left LA for Baltimore in '88. Go talk to a
*respected* cultural anthropologist, one who turned down a job offer
from Harvard, if you can.
>>> There was some of all that. Although as I read I am often surprised
>>> at the mildness or even absence of ethnocentrism.
>
>
> Many ethnographers came to know the people they were describing and were
> sympathetic to them.
>
That's true. Did you see the movie "Songcatcher" (2000), a rather
idealized and romanticized view of musical ethnography. A sort of
Ethnographer in Disneyland, but a fun movie, which Streisand's movie
Yentl wasn't: I called it "Shtetl in Disneyland."
>
>>> Of course, attitudes varied widely, especially among those who
>>> utilized the work of the ethnographers, such as the politicians.
>>>
>>> I am reminded of a manuscript I once catalogued by John Charles
>>> Fremont: "I must soon be wending my way along the track of Empire"
>>> (to a Mr. Lester, June 12, 1879) -- a smoking gun of imperialism if
>>> ever there was one, although I'll cautiously refrain from calling it
>>> ethnocentric imperialism.
>>>
>>>
>> At least he was literate enough to use the right word: everytime I see
>> winding in the NY Times I give an inner scream. Have they outsourced
>> their copy-editing?
>
>
> My general impression, mostly from recent books, is that copy-editing
> has grown extremely sloppy over the last decade. *Groan*
>
>
>>>> Kluckhohn did much better work than Kroeber, but that was later. I
>>>> dated Kluckhohn's daughter for a while.
>>>
>>>
>>> Hmm, A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn: culture as "an abstraction
>>> from behaviour." Provocative.
>>>
>>>
>> Yes, I think CK had it nailed.
>
>
> Their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions
> (1952), sounds like something I'd like to read.
>
Oh, oh, I haven't read it but it sounds like Laura Riding's disastrous
last project. She thought she could write the ultimate dictionary with
definitions that would inevitably lead the user to Truth, which she
decided poetry could not do.
Sometimes chanting can help, sometimes meditation, sometimes just
stubbing your toe.
>
>> One of the best things he wrote was on how language shapes thought, a
>> new idea at the time, using the Navajo language as an example. The
>> language forced one to think more precisely than we do, but the by
>> product is that it makes creative thought more difficult. English
>> veers too far the other way.
>
>
> Intriguing. But I don't buy into linguistic determinism. For one thing,
> I have consciously observed the workings of my own mind since early
> childhood, and a lot of those operations, including many thoughts, are
> language-free. I'm continually framing language, sometimes even creating
> it, to give expression to such thoughts.
I've seen nothing of the kind in your posts. I think in English, which
I supplement with imagery. For instance, when I was first taught
numbers at the age of 4, I formed an image of them lying on a curved
line that went up and off to infinity on the right. When I was taught
my multiplication tables at 5, I put all the products on the curve for
ready reference. I still do. I know exactly where 2.718.... sits on
the curve. I had independently reinvented the real number line, in a
slightly different form.
>
> Nevertheless, I recognize an influence of language upon thought
> processes. Advertisers and political pros make effective use of that
> influence all the time. I would imagine that the influence of language
> varies widely among individuals.
>
> I'm an inveterate reader of bibliographies. (They expand my awareness.)
> I recently came across this entry:
>
> "How Inuktitut avoids some ambiguities that English doesn't," by S. T.
> (Mick) Mallon, in: Études/Inuit/Studies; v. 1, no. 1 (1977): pp. 149-153.
>
Sounds interesting. It is commonly said that English has only one word
for snow, while Eskimo languages have a dozen or more. This is false.
The Eskimo languages are agglutinative; they just include the adjectives
into the word. When you add our adjectives, we have as many or more
words for snow.
> So according to Kluckhohn (is it?), less ambiguity might not always be
> such a good thing?
>
Yes, that seemed his conclusion to me. But I'm addicted to English.
>
>> Lucy had horses and a nice piece of property, and after she started to
>> like me asked if I could ride. I told her I once galloped an
>> 18-yr-old mare on a farm in BC, and knew what a tack room was. She
>> turned practically purple, "You could have killed her, etc., etc.!"
>> Then she wouldn't let me near her horses, and we broke up soon after.
>> She was also uncomfortable with anyone who knew her father's work so
>> well. Apparently there had been tension between them.
>
>
> Tack room: Where bridles and saddles are kept.
And whips, Oh, boy!
>
> I saw on one of the PBS antique shows something new to me: a hooked
> blade on a spear used to cut an opponent's bridle so that he would lose
> control of his horse while in battle. I didn't hear what it's called.
>
>
I read about it somewhere, sometime, too, don't remember if it was given
a name, but I'm sure the Parthians called it something different from
the Hittites. Curved blades of all sorts have been used since the
bronze age. We still have many uses for them. But if you go to cut a
Parthian bridle, I'd first make sure your life insurance was paid up.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
I think more with Bismarck. All of Europe responded to his unification
of Germans into Germany.
>
>
There really were Red Indians. They lived on some island off the
Maritimes, and commonly rubbed their faces with red ochre.
>> Certainly correct. In the East the most obvious was the Iroquois
>> Nation (from which my mother continues to insist that I'm descended).
>> They kicked out the Cherokees, who speak a variety of Iroquois,
>> apparently because they were against Iroquois genocide against the
>> French settlers and especially the Huron, which they almost completely
>> wiped out, massacuring village after village, man, woman, and child.
>> Most surviving Huron are in Michigan, I believe. Of course there was
>> also the Sioux Nation. The Athapaskan Apache (Indeh) were hardly even
>> a tribe.
>
>
> King Joseph's War comes to my mind as a prime example. Recent
> scholarship has described it as a nationalistic movement.
>
>
>> It was a 14-yr-old Alaskan Athapaskan girl in a tribe that stayed
>> behind in Alaska, and so is related to the Apache and Navajo, who
>> converted me to atheism. "She must have been a *very* bad girl," my
>> then 9-yr-old neighbor Clare, as in County Clare, declared with
>> finality. Almost all Indians in Alaska are Athapaskan.
>
>
> What about the Inuit?
>
They are in Nunavut. No Inuit in Alaska. Alaskan Eskimos - maybe 8-10
different ethnic groups - also turned out to be genius, reliable
mechanics in WW II in Alaska. You have to be clever in the North.
The Eskimo were mostly peaceful. We just had to learn a few of their
customs: wife sharing, and especially that the first teller of a story
had copyright to it. No one else could tell it unless he bought the
copyright from the original teller. See "Confessions of an Igloo
Dweller" for many interesting insights.
But: see the book and movie "White Dawn"; about shipwrecked whalers in
an Inuit village. Not what you'd expect. Both book and movie are by
James Houston, the author of "Confessions of an Igloo Dweller". Some
find the movie boring; I didn't.
The author woke up one morning having slept with his host's wife; not to
do so would have been a grave insult. He implied that Inuit women
certainly knew what to do in bed. Eskimo culture is disintegrating in
Alaska, but not the Inuit, in large part because of the efforts of that
author.
>
>> Indians used to massacre whole villages up and down the East Coast
>> long before any English ship appeared.
>
>
> Some Indians.
>
>
I didn't say 'all'.
>> People who think the Indians were a wise, peaceful people in touch
>> with the Great Spirit make my gall bladder bleed.
>
>
> There I would have said "all Indians."
>
>
>> They started the conflict with the settlers, else we would have
>> settled quietly as the Vikings did before Charlemagne carried out his
>> program of genocide against them in the low countries. We would have
>> taught them farming, and they could have taught us ecology.
>
>
> Middle Knowledge -- what would have been. Who knows?
>
No orcs, either.
>
>>> However, for all of America's racial exclusions -- aboriginal and
>>> African, to some extent Asian as well -- from 1492 to 1776 the
>>> European presence in North America was never of just one ethnicity.
>>> And from 1776 to 1879 and after, American citizenship has never been
>>> of one ethnicity nor has American policy ever represented just one
>>> ethnicity or, for that matter, any particular ethnicity.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank you, Professor Norm. Perhaps there are readers of this thread
>> who will find this helpful.
>
>
> Never thought of cross-posting to alt.native.
>
>
Try rec.games.chess instead.
>>> American imperialism then, in 1879, as now, was a more complex
>>> phenomenon than a theory of ethnocentrism can explain. Hence my caution.
>>>
>>
>> Don't say complex when you mean complicated. Complex means assembled
>> from simpler parts,
>
>
> Actually, that's how I meant "complex." So both complex and complicated.
>
> However, my dictionaries don't agree with you. American Heritage gives
> as definition 2 of "complex": "Involved or intricate, as in structure;
> complicated."
>
In the dictionaries that rely on polling for their definitions, and cite
as authorities Mickey Mantle, Casey Stengel, and Marilyn Monroe, you can
find almost anything. Hold yourself to a higher standard, like
Webster's Unabridged, 2nd Ed., the last good dictionary published in the
US. We have the 1966 printing, inherited from my wife's father. It
uses 'complicated' only to describe the possible assemblage of the
parts, not as a synonym. You should have one and sleep with it at
night, as it is the dictionary of last resort, when you have thrown all
the others against the wall.
With Katya gone there is room for it in our bed. I'd do that but for
the wear and tear, as it is in practically perfect condition, since her
family was not exactly a reading family. "Webster's New Twentieth
Century Dictionary Unabridged, Second Edition". Amazon could help you.
They found some old books for me that I had given up on, like "Denison's
Ice Road" which I stole from the Pasadena library to work on a film
script, and finally returned anonymously almost 20 years later; Amazon
found it on the discard list of a Colorato town library. Why anyone
would toss that book out is beyond me. The barbarians are at the gates,
or is that the young Alexander?
>
>> as are the cognitive metaphors we, and dogs, etc., use to get through
>> life. It wasn't until I read "Philosophy in the Flesh" that I looked
>> at my dog in an entirely different way, seeing that he thought just as
>> I did - e.g., a dog can always recognize a dog from a distance,
>> whether it looks like a lion or a shaggy tarantula (coyote bait). Dog
>> metaphors are just simpler, for obvius physical reasons.
>
>
> Animal cognition is far more sophisticated than Western culture has
> generally credited it with being, until recently anyway. I have much
> opportunity to observe, and am often amazed at the processes that an
> animal mind must have gone through.
>
>
Yes. Achilles's basic metaphors have different inputs from mine as he
smells and hears much better. They also have a different orientation,
for example, the first time he saw a rabbit, he knew it was something to
chase. He is just limited in the hierarchy of metaphors to build. The
authors of the book cited above say that the only thing that separates
us from other mammals is that we are not afraid of vacuum cleaners.
>> Late last night, Achilles was restless, so I sat down on our
>> denim-covered basement couch and he curled up beside me. Within a few
>> minutes he was asleep and a few minutes later began to dream (the nose
>> twiches first). The dream was very complicated, which I could tell as
>> my arm lay across him and could feel every twitch. His suppressed
>> bodily activity alternated among nose-wiggling, jowl twitching, sudden
>> body jerks, weird eye movements, and entire body violent activity, in
>> various orders. This went on for over a half hour as I watched the
>> Olympics. Quite a dream for a dog! I'd like to know what it was. I
>> was interested that his dream began so quickly after he fell asleep;
>> I've read that it takes humans about 30 minutes to go into REM sleep,
>> but it didn't when I was drinking, when I could have an entire dream
>> in a 5-minute doze. There's something here for the sleep experts.
>>
>> ObPoly: My dream later, in the early morning, was very complicated,
>> but involved, after a complicated, somewhat dangerous hike with an
>> astro friend and another woman, my getting halfway from 3rd base to
>> Home in a motel afterwards with a Vaulter making an unsuccessful
>> last try in her 20s, with
>> my wife lying there approvingly. I held back, not wanting to wake my
>> friend, and got mildly chewed out for good taste.
>
>
> Holding back ever resulting in blue balls?
>
>
Never had those, as I am a New Man.
>> That taught me a lesson: you *can* learn from dreams. So we both had
>> good dreams on the same night. Since Achilles was fixed by the SPCA
>> when he was about 6 mos old, I doubt that his dreams involve much
>> sexual activity.
>
>
> In humans, castration does not necessarily take away sexual desire. Nor
> does, for example, a hysterectomy. There are cases where it does. But
> there are also cases where it swings wildly in the other direction. So I
> hear, anyway.
>
> I wonder how the estrous cycle would affect all that in other species.
>
>
>> Your paragraph (I get to unload first): Agreed. Peaceful settlers
>> were always being attacked, and the Indians did not follow the Geneva
>> conventions. It was a lot like the early experience of Nicolas
>> Kristof of the NY Times (see nytimes.com/kristofresponds), who as a
>> teenager on his family's sheep farm went out hunting the coyotes that
>> were making meals of the family's sheep. He's always been an advocate
>> of gun control, and is a very peaceful person when let alone.
>
>
Better to follow the prior advice about how to get to his columns.
> The Puritans were pretty savage to the Pequots.
>
They didn't like to lose to the Pequot at poker 8>)>
> Savagery was a two-way street.
>
>
>>> Of course, some amalgamate white American into a single ethnicity;
>>> some confuse "nation" in the sense of a country with "nation" in the
>>> sense of an ethnic group; and the word "nationalism" itself is
>>> extremely problematic, both historically and otherwise. So trying to
>>> converse intelligibly about such matters is like trying to climb a
>>> steep muddy hill with smooth soles: Every place one steps ones slips
>>> and sends others slipping as well.
>>>
>> Well, my German family of pig farmers came up the Mississippi in 1847
>> to SE Iowa where they remain and still do much the same, with the
>> addition of Bt soybeans and anti-corn borer corn. They kept thorough
>> family records, while the other side is untraceable, with no cohesion
>> - indentured servants from Scotland (hence my birth name Robertson),
>> French Canadians, probably Algonquin (*not* immigrants), and god knows
>> who all married into it, perhaps even freed slaves (I tan dark in the
>> desert).
>
>
> I wonder how many North Americans not identified as American Indians
> have Indian blood. I imagine a large percentage of those with a long
> family background in North America. I keep meeting people who are aware
> that they have an Indian ancestry in their genealogical tree.
Geneologists consider these family stories to be largely false, unless
documented. I'm related to Richard the Lion-hearted, as all persons
with English genes are related to 80% of all English in the year 1100.
Think about the geneological tree backwards in time. When I was a kid
my mother, among many other lies, told me I was relared to ER II. I
doubt that members of the House of Saxe-Coberg had much truck with
dirt-poor Preussen-Sachsen pig farmers, with quite a number of
illegitimate children, according to church records in Dardeshheim,
running back to 1610 or so. Some Mormon relative tracked them down, so
now we are all "Cleared" to enter Heaven. My mother is still not aware
that the House of Windsor is German; they changed their name at the
start of WW I.
>
> I wonder too about how many Europeans have American Indian blood, a
> large number of Indians having been transported to Europe.
>
Perhaps King Carlos? I'd like to see him in buckskin and a headdress,
playing the tom-toms, like Feynman.
>
>> The only thing immigrants from Europe, Asia (including American
>> Indians), Australia - including aborigines, have in common is that our
>> ancestors all came out of Africa 80,000 years ago, were reduced to
>> about 4,000 (close to extinction) about 73,000 years ago by the
>> greatest caldera explosion in the last 500,000 years or so in western
>> Indonesia. Otherwise anything goes. We are all very closely related,
>> all coming from a mere 4,000 folks. The toll was not so great in
>> Africa, but it was doubtless great.
>>
>> And keep in mind that the Yellowstone caldera (q.v.) is on the move.
>>
>> ObPoly: Many different polygamous cultures rose from the descendants
>> of those 4,000 ancestors.
>
>
> I've never read a scenario of how that happened that I've found
> intellectually satisfactory.
>
>
Recent DNA and geological research. Try Google with "caldera explosions
human evolution", for a start.
The word 'scenario' is much overworked. Herman Kahn took it out of the
theater and applied it to different strategies and outcomes in "On
Thermonuclear War". There it was a useful metaphor, because the
strategies could be (theoretically) chosen. Earth dosn't do scenarios.
Earth says, "You'll take it on the chin when I show you you'll take it
on the chin."
As in the movie "war Games", a pop application of Kahn's ideas, Joshua
said, "The only way to win is not to play the game."
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>> I understand that sixty is old for mathematicians and physicists. But
>> it's young for scholars in the humanities. It's about the time many a
>> humanities scholar starts outlining his or her magnum opus.
>>
> Yes, original thinking is then no longer needed.
Right. And therefore any original thinking is likely to be
free of the "young bull" stuff.
Anyway, the sixties is a time of life for some when the
utmost in resources needs to be marshaled. But I don't
suppose that argument will fly with your wife.
> However, I'm unusual
> in being unable to resist this odd kind of thought. I can formulate a
> testable theory in 5 minutes.
Anything holding you back?
> [snip]
>> Exactly. But it was my least favorite row. Couldn't hear much the
>> teacher said, much less see anything.
>>
>>
> You wimp, or maybe your mother was. My mother, a terrifying school
> nurse, would have brought an audiogram and the results of a vision test
> to the principal. Anyway, you didn't miss anything.
Hehe. Yep, I was a country bumpkin plunked down in the
middle of an inner city school (so I suppose it would be
called) trying to keep my nose out of trouble -- no easy
task. If I'd felt like I belonged, I might've worked up the
gumption to complain. But I didn't feel that way; and I was
schooled to stoicism, to boot.
>> Almost everything about Plato's life is disputed. Frankly I doubt the
>> story. Put it to your Liars' Club, if ever you have a chance.
>>
>>
> It would be a direct affront to his philosophy.
Am puzzled about how that's a response to what I said.
> Asides from terrible professors are often more true than is their
> curriculum.
There's more demand for professors than oftentimes seems
justified. For many topics, read a book or three instead. A
lot cheaper.
But asides would be one of the justifications.
>> I forgot to mention, that quotation is from the R. D. Hicks
>> translation (1925) in the Loeb Classical Library.
>>
> I don't go to the Hopkins Library (actually the Milton Eisenhower...)
> except for monographs I've developed a compelling need for -
I collect Loebs. I actually have a leather-bound volume
signed by Loeb himself.
> like is the
> Great Conveyor going to shut down in the next 10 years? After that, it
> takes only 10 years to bring on the next Ice Age: global warming can
> lead almost instantaneously to an ice age.
http://www.alternet.org/story/17711
> If I think the Great Conveyor
> is about to shut down, we're selling out and moving to Belize before
> everyone else.
I've been tempted to set up shop in Belize for years. But
not everyone in my family likes warm weather. And I doubt
that the tropics would do my library any good. Don't know
what effects an ice age would have on either Belize or my
library.
> I have enough at home that I haven't read, or having
> tried to read once long ago, but not understood, like Landau-Lifshitz's
> Quantum Mechanics (35 yrs ago) and the Qur'an (55 yrs ago).
>
> I'd also like to work through the 5th edition of my freshman 1st edition
> physics text at Harvard (got for $5 from ER Hamilton; who needs a 6th
> edition?), which is so vastly better than the 1st edition, mostly thanks
> to Jearl Walker: Halliday, Resnick, and Walker, Fundamentals of Physics,
> as I certainly could use some review, just in case I want to dodder into
> one of the 6 or so nearby colleges and scare the bejesus out of the
> students to ease the job pressure in the profession. One of the reasons
> that the first edition was so bad, besides the opaque pedagogy, was that
> 1/3 of the answers to problems were wrong, because they were left to a
> bunch of slope-headed grad students. 44 years later, they should be
> better.
For the curiosity and mental exercise?
> [snip]
>> Yes, Diotima was a woman. And one to whom Socrates (as represented by
>> Plato) deferred in matters of philosophy or, at least, the philosophy
>> of love, which was one of the major philosophical topics among the
>> ancient Greeks -- although you'd hardly know it, since most of the
>> treatises on love mentioned by Diogenes Laertius are lost.
>>
>
> Now we have Ruth Westheimer, a former sniper in the Haganah. Did she
> let herself be fondled while on duty; she says she never hit anyone. But
> of course there's no Greek idealism with her.
The ancient Greeks had their sexologists too. None, though,
of the ilk of Masters and Johnson, so far as I know.
>> I love Sappho's poems. I first read them through in the translation of
>> Mary Bernard. (And I correlated her numbering of fragments with that
>> in the LCL). Since then I've been slowly accumulating texts and
>> translations of Sappho. Someday I'd love to render her poems myself,
>> but that may be a pinnacle I can never reach to my own satisfaction.
>>
>>
> She had the brains of George Eliot. Her poetical skill in Lesbian Greek
> will forever be closed to me.
Care to elaborate upon your comparison of Sappho and George
Eliot?
> For me, a novel has no meaning without a moral point. I don't get far
> in them, then they go out with our paper recycling.
Well, if all you're doing is throwing away entertainment
fiction, I won't complain as loudly.
Otherwise I'd be tempted to pay for the postage to have you
send your discards to me, just so that they won't be thrown
away. But from the sound of things, that would probably
break my bank account.
I do a lot of yardsaling. I've noticed that if, in a given
yard sale, there's a Reader's Digest Condensed Book or a
book by Danielle Steele or Stephen King or Tom Clancy, the
chances are extremely poor that any books of quality by
others will be found there. That's not to "dis" Reader's
Digest or Steele or King or Clancy. It's just an observation
that seems to hold true and that makes me wonder.
> [snip] After all, what do I need with
> even an excellent Russion book on theoretical astrophysics 23 years old?
> I read it in '71 when it first came out and what I learned let me
> dominate the U of Wash astro dep't, and to get to Caltech.
It's just that sort of thing that I later regret letting go
-- a book that was once useful or potentially so when now my
mind has turned to the topic again. Early editions of some
of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Hebrew, for instance.
> I could keep
> it for sentimental reasons, like my First Edition of Il Vangelo Secundo
> Tomaso?
The Gospel according to Thomas -- cool! What editor? What year?
> [snip]
> We don't have to get a new 20" TV set every month or so from my shooting
> it up with my .50 Magnum pistol. Very satisfying. [actually, Doris
> says she will leave if I bring as much as a child's bow and arrow home.]
My mother's father was shot dead before she was born. An
accident. So she grew up with a thing about guns. Does Doris
have a similar reason for her attitude?
> [snip]
>> By the way, the Dictionary of Theories doesn't have that donkey
>> paradox you mentioned. I don't think you ever responded to my query
>> about that in the "Am I Stupid" thread.
>
> A donkey is pulling a cart. Yet Newton's 3rd Law says that the force
> that the donkey exerts on the cart is equal and opposite to the force
> that the cart exerts on the donkey. Therefore the forces add to zero.
> How can the cart move?
Thanks. Intriguing. Therefore all motion except eternal
motion is an illusion. :-)
> I can write the paradox in a million different forms, which confuses the
> students, who prefer to learn by rote. The answer is always the same.
Care to share? Different objects, different sets of forces,
the totaling of forces in Newton's Third Law being upon one
object only?
> [snip]
> [picky typo fun deleted; i is next to o, and besides, what are you
> talking about?]
sophos = wisdom.
siphöv = tube.
And as someone is trying to break the word down, they might
come across a certain Siphnian sexual practice.
> Isaiah Berlin is the best, as he had no ideology except quest,
Quest? You mean questing?
> and he
> was a lot smarter than the others. Kermode took money from the CIA. The
> Steiner essays I read in the New Yorker were good. Sontag is OK, if a
> bit airy. There are some good political essayists, but I suspect they
> do not interest you.
They might not, but that wouldn't be because of a lack of
interest in politics.
I keep wanting to whack Kerry's speech writers on the back
of the head and get them on the ball.
> Concocted dialogues do not suit my taste much, as you *have* to know you
> are being manipulated and set up - two things that enrage me.
Dialogues that I write are dialogues going on in my mind,
the dialogue being a fairly common genre in that terrain. I
have no interest in manipulating somebody or setting 'em up.
But occasionally I'll share.
Hmm, I ought to take another look at Iris Murdoch's
philosophical dialogues to see whether they're more the
flavor you describe or the flavor I describe.
> I wouldn't any more give anyone a copy of Plato than I would poison.
Such a moralist you are!
>> That was the judgment of a twelve-year old? Needs revisiting.
>>
> That was implied; and the form of the statement says it has been, as has
> practically everything I've written in our various hijacked threads.
At least no one can blame YOU for hijacking THIS thread.
> Read me as closely as you would Plato, or some other philosophical liar
> that you are addicted to, and you will learn more than from them. Are
> *we* not conducting a dialogue, thankfully not Socratic/Platonic, as
> ours contains knowledge, curiosity, and equality.
So it seems. :-)
> Perhaps it's time for
> another Celexa....
Losing it?
>> Ever read Rilke? or Anne Sexton? or Wallace Stevens? Or maybe
>> Swinburne would be more to your taste.
>>
>>
> Sexton and Stevens (long ago), I liked the description of how he walked
> to work while composing his poetry: his walk reflected the composition
> of the poem. Rainier Maria Rilke, never, and should I?
An astounding poet. I still remember the first moment I ran
into a poem of his. I've seen him ranked with Shakespeare.
My knowledge of world poetry is less than complete and I'm
leery of ranking poets anyway, but I'd venture to say he's
one of the world's best.
However, I have little clue as to how you'd react to him.
Well, you like Tagore. In mathematical terms, consider Rilke
Tagore to a higher power.
>> Was more trying to get a rise out of any who would otherwise be put
>> off by any subthread that mentions an ancient author.
>>
>>
> Do you seriously believe that anyone reads our posts?
Hehe. It's fun to check every once in a while (as though we
really can).
> Go to nytimes.com, click on columnists, scroll down to Kristof on 25
> August.
Nowhere near as simple as that, but done.
When I think of human genetic manipulation, I find one of my
reference points to be Frank Herbert's Dune.
What gives me the willies isn't human genetic mutation of
the adaptive sort, but (a) playing God when we're not ready
to and (b) the carrying forward of human prejudices and
other moral flaws into a "brave new world."
>> I think of being moral as a broad thing affecting many areas of life.
>>
>>
> Such as my moral step-father opening his wife's mail before she saw it,
> as that was done in Victorian England, the way he was reared? It
> affects many aspects of behavior, but often not the most important ones.
Sounds to me like you consider opening someone else's mail
immoral or, at least, a moral issue. Of course, nowadays in
some countries there's a presumption of privacy; and that's
a presumption that has not always existed. Nevertheless, to
my way of thinking, context counts in moral judgment.
> [snip]
>> Are you referring to:
>>
>> Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North
>> America, by Theodora Kroeber (1961)?
>
>
> No, the original by her father, A. L. Kroeber, 1911, probably out of
> print. What an industry that liar started! Kroeber broke the first
> rule of ethnography: never become friends with your subject.
Theodora's husband, wasn't he? She was his second wife.
Ursula K. Le Guin was a daughter of his.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Alfred_L._Kroeber
I'm not ready to declare I've proven a negative, but I've
checked several databases, with no hits, for a book by A. L.
Kroeber called Ishi published in 1911. He did write on Ishi
though, of course.
>>> nor was he of the tribe he said, Yahi, and he knew a bit more about
>>> the white man than he let on. He knew what Kroeber wanted to hear,
>>> and was only too happy to oblige him.
>>
>>
>>
>> Hmm, my reference books aren't backing you up. Got a source?
>>
>
> Google "Kroeber Ishi Yahi", and work from there.
I find the following article by Gretchen Kell:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/96legacy/releases.96/14310.html
Deductions about Ishi's family tree from arrowheads he made
are not exactly conclusive.
> I threw out my Cultural Anthro notes long ago. My wife gave away her
> copy of the original book, and I must have put mine in a dumpster, among
> 3 SW loads of books when we left LA for Baltimore in '88. Go talk to a
> *respected* cultural anthropologist, one who turned down a job offer
> from Harvard, if you can.
I'm not enamored of experts. Maybe I should be, but what I
go for is documentation or other forms of evidence.
>> Many ethnographers came to know the people they were describing and
>> were sympathetic to them.
>>
> That's true. Did you see the movie "Songcatcher" (2000), a rather
> idealized and romanticized view of musical ethnography. A sort of
> Ethnographer in Disneyland, but a fun movie, which Streisand's movie
> Yentl wasn't: I called it "Shtetl in Disneyland."
I've seen both movies. Would like to see "Songcatcher"
again. It is a beautiful movie. To say it's idealized may be
an overstatement.
>> Their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions
>> (1952), sounds like something I'd like to read.
>>
>
> Oh, oh, I haven't read it but it sounds like Laura Riding's disastrous
> last project. She thought she could write the ultimate dictionary with
> definitions that would inevitably lead the user to Truth, which she
> decided poetry could not do.
Sounds like a twist on Wittgenstein or Austin or one of
those guys. But what do I know?! I haven't received the
books I ordered yet.
One of the models in my head as I'm doing lexicography is
Hugh Farnham of Robert A. Heinlein's novel, Farnham's
Freehold (1964).
> Sometimes chanting can help, sometimes meditation, sometimes just
> stubbing your toe.
Which I did, painfully, several times on my long hike the
other day.
>> Intriguing. But I don't buy into linguistic determinism. For one
>> thing, I have consciously observed the workings of my own mind since
>> early childhood, and a lot of those operations, including many
>> thoughts, are language-free. I'm continually framing language,
>> sometimes even creating it, to give expression to such thoughts.
>
>
> I've seen nothing of the kind in your posts.
Hehe. Well of course not! I post in English.
Sometimes I image a thought as an amoeba that is reshaping
itself. Sometimes it pushes an arm out in one direction or
another, often feeling about a bit first. Sometimes the
whole critter will take a peculiar form.
But that's just to give you some idea.
> I think in English,
I commonly do too. But English is "real" flexible in my mind.
> which
> I supplement with imagery.
Likewise.
> For instance, when I was first taught
> numbers at the age of 4, I formed an image of them lying on a curved
> line that went up and off to infinity on the right. When I was taught
> my multiplication tables at 5, I put all the products on the curve for
> ready reference. I still do. I know exactly where 2.718.... sits on
> the curve. I had independently reinvented the real number line, in a
> slightly different form.
Cool! I don't recall ever doing that with numbers, but I did
do something like that with musical notes.
> Sounds interesting. It is commonly said that English has only one word
> for snow, while Eskimo languages have a dozen or more. This is false.
> The Eskimo languages are agglutinative; they just include the adjectives
> into the word. When you add our adjectives, we have as many or more
> words for snow.
Yeah, I've been around that block. The more I look, the more
I'm amazed at how many words English does have for snow.
I've gotta find me some serious Eskimo dictionaries. I seem
to keep needing 'em.
I once had the privilege of cataloging a 19th century
manuscript of an Inuit to Danish dictionary. I wish I'd made
a copy for myself.
>> So according to Kluckhohn (is it?), less ambiguity might not always be
>> such a good thing?
>>
> Yes, that seemed his conclusion to me. But I'm addicted to English.
I am too; sometimes it's intoxicating.
English is my (metaphorical) spouse. Greek is my mistress
next door. And then I have a lot of lovers I like to drop in
on more or less often.
Hmm, I suppose it's more natural to say that one's native
tongue is one's mother tongue. But for me it wasn't just then.
> [snip]
>> I saw on one of the PBS antique shows something new to me: a hooked
>> blade on a spear used to cut an opponent's bridle so that he would
>> lose control of his horse while in battle. I didn't hear what it's
>> called.
>>
>>
>
> I read about it somewhere, sometime, too, don't remember if it was given
> a name, but I'm sure the Parthians called it something different from
> the Hittites. Curved blades of all sorts have been used since the
> bronze age. We still have many uses for them. But if you go to cut a
> Parthian bridle, I'd first make sure your life insurance was paid up.
The show was Find! with the Keno brothers.
--
Norm
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
> [snip]
> There really were Red Indians. They lived on some island off the
> Maritimes, and commonly rubbed their faces with red ochre.
Newfoundland. The Beothuck nation, which became extinct in
1829, except for a few individuals integrated into the
Micmacs. The Beothucks may have been the fierce Skraelings
encountered by the Vikings.
"Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and Yellow, Black and White
They're all precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world."
From a Sunday School ditty. But Whites aren't white, Blacks
aren't black, Asians aren't yellow, and Indians aren't red.
Rather confusing for a child, who's being told that all
children are loved but that they are fitted into unnatural
color categories. A childhood resistance to language
categorization shows that language is not necessarily
deterministic. To this day I don't see a "Red Indian" as red.
> [snip]
>>> [snip] Almost all Indians in Alaska are Athapaskan.
>>
>>
>>
>> What about the Inuit?
>>
> They are in Nunavut. No Inuit in Alaska. Alaskan Eskimos - maybe 8-10
> different ethnic groups - also turned out to be genius, reliable
> mechanics in WW II in Alaska. You have to be clever in the North.
I don't know that I'll ever get the Eskimos straightened out
in my mind. Each source I have seems to contradict every other.
I was referring specifically to the Alaskan Inupiaq. As I
understand it, their language is one of the four principal
subdivisions of Inuit, the other three being:
- Western Canadian Inuktun;
- Eastern Canadian Inuktitut; and,
- Greenlandic Kalaallisut.
Inuit would be one of the three languages (or language
clusters) in the Eskaleut family, the other two being Aleut
and Yupik.
That, at least, is the scheme outlined by Louis-Jacques
Dorais in his book, Inuit Uqausiqatigiit = Inuit Languages
and Dialects (2nd, rev. ed. Iqaluit: Nunavut Arctic College,
2003).
As for "Inuit" not as a language but as a people, American
Heritage (1987) says: "An Eskimo of North America and
Greenland as distinguished from one of Asia and the Aleutian
Islands." And it says that the collective term is either
Inuits or Inuit.
However, I see at one of the Nunavut sites: "One person is
an Inuk (EE-nook), two are Inuuk (EE-nook), and three or
more are Inuit."
http://www.canadainfolink.ca/nunavut.htm
I have a book by Asen Balikci (1970) that places the
Netsilik Eskimos in the Nunavut region.
> The Eskimo were mostly peaceful. We just had to learn a few of their
> customs: wife sharing, and especially that the first teller of a story
> had copyright to it. No one else could tell it unless he bought the
> copyright from the original teller. See "Confessions of an Igloo
> Dweller" for many interesting insights.
>
> But: see the book and movie "White Dawn"; about shipwrecked whalers in
> an Inuit village. Not what you'd expect. Both book and movie are by
> James Houston, the author of "Confessions of an Igloo Dweller". Some
> find the movie boring; I didn't.
>
> The author woke up one morning having slept with his host's wife; not to
> do so would have been a grave insult. He implied that Inuit women
> certainly knew what to do in bed. Eskimo culture is disintegrating in
> Alaska, but not the Inuit, in large part because of the efforts of that
> author.
Atanarjuat = Fast Runner (2001) is a beautiful movie. Well
worth a watch, despite subtitles.
> [snip]
> In the dictionaries that rely on polling for their definitions, and cite
> as authorities Mickey Mantle, Casey Stengel, and Marilyn Monroe, you can
> find almost anything. Hold yourself to a higher standard, like
> Webster's Unabridged, 2nd Ed., the last good dictionary published in the
> US. We have the 1966 printing, inherited from my wife's father.
I have a 2nd edition Webster Unabridged, I believe a
Merriam-Webster. But I don't want to disturb my cat to get
to it.
> It
> uses 'complicated' only to describe the possible assemblage of the
> parts, not as a synonym. You should have one and sleep with it at
> night, as it is the dictionary of last resort, when you have thrown all
> the others against the wall.
>
> With Katya gone there is room for it in our bed. I'd do that but for
> the wear and tear, as it is in practically perfect condition, since her
> family was not exactly a reading family. "Webster's New Twentieth
> Century Dictionary Unabridged, Second Edition". Amazon could help you.
> They found some old books for me that I had given up on, like "Denison's
> Ice Road" which I stole from the Pasadena library to work on a film
> script, and finally returned anonymously almost 20 years later; Amazon
> found it on the discard list of a Colorato town library. Why anyone
> would toss that book out is beyond me. The barbarians are at the gates,
> or is that the young Alexander?
The Philistines.
Denison's Ice Road, by Edith Iglauer (1974). Sounds
interesting. The cheapest copy at Advanced Book Exchange is
$72.05, and that's soft cover.
> [snip]
>> Holding back ever resulting in blue balls?
>>
>>
> Never had those, as I am a New Man.
Then you can be thankful.
It was a bit of a stretch of the scope, I suppose, but I put
the terms "blue balls" and "lover's nut" into the Glossary
of Relationship Terms some time ago.
http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationshipsA.html
http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationshipsI.html
"New Man." Is that an allusion to something?
> [snip]
>>> ObPoly: Many different polygamous cultures rose from the descendants
>>> of those 4,000 ancestors.
>>
>>
>>
>> I've never read a scenario of how that happened that I've found
>> intellectually satisfactory.
>>
>>
> Recent DNA and geological research. Try Google with "caldera explosions
> human evolution", for a start.
I was talking about your ObPoly remark and the various
theories about the "evolution of sex," family development,
and all that.
> The word 'scenario' is much overworked. Herman Kahn took it out of the
> theater and applied it to different strategies and outcomes in "On
> Thermonuclear War". There it was a useful metaphor, because the
> strategies could be (theoretically) chosen. Earth dosn't do scenarios.
> Earth says, "You'll take it on the chin when I show you you'll take it
> on the chin."
>
> As in the movie "war Games", a pop application of Kahn's ideas, Joshua
> said, "The only way to win is not to play the game."
Hmm, I don't have a sense of the word "scenario" being
overworked. I must have missed sump'in'.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>>> I understand that sixty is old for mathematicians and physicists. But
>>> it's young for scholars in the humanities. It's about the time many a
>>> humanities scholar starts outlining his or her magnum opus.
>>>
>> Yes, original thinking is then no longer needed.
>
>
> Right. And therefore any original thinking is likely to be free of the
> "young bull" stuff.
>
That was one of my little traps. Perhaps your response is one of yours
- I'll find out below. To me, it's a time to summarize one's mistakes,
probably not for new monographs, and for writing out all your dark
thoughts about the status of one's profession's false rabbit trails,
that is, all the more or less accepted theories that are demonstrably
false - those within my reach, not Hawking's - which worked so well for
me as a grad student, and to drop in a few dozen new ideas - or old
unsolved ones - dripping in difficulty and one hopes opening up new
specialties that one can no longer pursue, perhaps leading to 100 PhD
thesis ideas, thus provoking rebellion against one's thesis advisors
anong the young bucks and does. In other words, to throw the fox in the
chicken coop.
When actually working hard on one's usual research, you don't have time
for more than one original idea at a time, but in writing one's magnum
opus, one can think of many at the same time. I'd like to leave behind
The Pothole from Hell, to quote the title of a NY Times Op-Ed piece from
years ago about a real pothole on a NJ to NY commuting route that would
bring out the locals to count the broken axles in the morning, than an
Emeril masterpiece.
> Anyway, the sixties is a time of life for some when the utmost in
> resources needs to be marshaled. But I don't suppose that argument will
> fly with your wife.
>
>
No, she is like the Master in Ecclesiastes: "To the making of books
there is no end..." and wants to do all the things we are still able to
do, like look for treasure in the Tora Bora Mountains, and perhaps make
a few first ascents there. She's given up on Aconcagua, But we could do
it, now that I have a new heart, have stopped drinking, and she will
still be running 1/2 marathons. She might like to try Citlaltepetl once
more (we and our guide were sick the last time, almost 20 years ago).
Going abroad, just to absorb other cultures like we used to dream about,
is looking less and less attractive, as neither of us wants to collect
life insurance prematurely or get some incapacitating, incurable
disease, like flesh-eating bacteria. The Tuscan sun and food, Nunavut,
and Great Britain are the only places I want to go to, besides Oswiecim,
Krakow (one can hire guides there who can speak any language, even
Brooklynese), and environs - the only place left in the world to get
real hand-kneaded bagels, which are good for eating as well as
self-defence. Bagels from kneading machines aren't the real bagels you
read about in literature. We just have to be careful not to throw out
our TMJs when eating them, as one doesn't get proper jaw exercise
anymore, since we don't have to eat raw baboon meat.
>> However, I'm unusual in being unable to resist this odd kind of
>> thought. I can formulate a testable theory in 5 minutes.
>
>
> Anything holding you back?
>
>
Marilyn Monroe's universal answer to everything: "What does it matter?"
And besides I have no institutional affiliation anymore, so no naive
students wandering in andout. Peter Goldreich was kinder than I: he
would only suggest problems that would not leave you chewing up the
family heirlooms. He knew my limits better than I did.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Exactly. But it was my least favorite row. Couldn't hear much the
>>> teacher said, much less see anything.
>>>
>>>
>> You wimp, or maybe your mother was. My mother, a terrifying school
>> nurse, would have brought an audiogram and the results of a vision
>> test to the principal. Anyway, you didn't miss anything.
>
>
> Hehe. Yep, I was a country bumpkin plunked down in the middle of an
> inner city school (so I suppose it would be called) trying to keep my
> nose out of trouble -- no easy task. If I'd felt like I belonged, I
> might've worked up the gumption to complain. But I didn't feel that way;
> and I was schooled to stoicism, to boot.
>
And Bacchanals?
>
>>> Almost everything about Plato's life is disputed. Frankly I doubt the
>>> story. Put it to your Liars' Club, if ever you have a chance.
>>>
>>>
>> It would be a direct affront to his philosophy.
>
>
> Am puzzled about how that's a response to what I said.
>
Perhaps something got deleted. My sentence referred to Plato's allowing
surveying at the Lyceum.
>
>> Asides from terrible professors are often more true than is their
>> curriculum.
>
>
> There's more demand for professors than oftentimes seems justified. For
> many topics, read a book or three instead. A lot cheaper.
>
Yes, but no credits. You *have* to graduate.
> But asides would be one of the justifications.
>
>
>>> I forgot to mention, that quotation is from the R. D. Hicks
>>> translation (1925) in the Loeb Classical Library.
>>>
>> I don't go to the Hopkins Library (actually the Milton Eisenhower...)
>> except for monographs I've developed a compelling need for -
>
>
> I collect Loebs. I actually have a leather-bound volume signed by Loeb
> himself.
>
*Richard* Loeb?
>
>> like is the Great Conveyor going to shut down in the next 10 years?
>> After that, it takes only 10 years to bring on the next Ice Age:
>> global warming can lead almost instantaneously to an ice age.
>
>
> http://www.alternet.org/story/17711
>
>
>> If I think the Great Conveyor is about to shut down, we're selling out
>> and moving to Belize before everyone else.
>
>
> I've been tempted to set up shop in Belize for years. But not everyone
> in my family likes warm weather. And I doubt that the tropics would do
> my library any good. Don't know what effects an ice age would have on
> either Belize or my library.
Belize would cool 5 deg Celsius and dry out a bit. See you there...
>
>
>> I have enough at home that I haven't read, or having tried to read
>> once long ago, but not understood, like Landau-Lifshitz's Quantum
>> Mechanics (35 yrs ago) and the Qur'an (55 yrs ago).
>>
>> I'd also like to work through the 5th edition of my freshman 1st
>> edition physics text at Harvard (got for $5 from ER Hamilton; who
>> needs a 6th edition?), which is so vastly better than the 1st edition,
>> mostly thanks to Jearl Walker: Halliday, Resnick, and Walker,
>> Fundamentals of Physics, as I certainly could use some review, just in
>> case I want to dodder into one of the 6 or so nearby colleges and
>> scare the bejesus out of the students to ease the job pressure in the
>> profession. One of the reasons that the first edition was so bad,
>> besides the opaque pedagogy, was that 1/3 of the answers to problems
>> were wrong, because they were left to a bunch of slope-headed grad
>> students. 44 years later, they should be better.
>
>
> For the curiosity and mental exercise?
>
>
The old physicist's way of "freshening up". I got a crossword puzzle
book (I never work on them) and a x-word dictionary to keep my mind
fresh, but Halliday, etc., would be better, as would "The Future of...".
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Yes, Diotima was a woman. And one to whom Socrates (as represented by
>>> Plato) deferred in matters of philosophy or, at least, the philosophy
>>> of love, which was one of the major philosophical topics among the
>>> ancient Greeks -- although you'd hardly know it, since most of the
>>> treatises on love mentioned by Diogenes Laertius are lost.
>>>
>>
>> Now we have Ruth Westheimer, a former sniper in the Haganah. Did she
>> let herself be fondled while on duty; she says she never hit anyone.
>> But of course there's no Greek idealism with her.
>
>
> The ancient Greeks had their sexologists too. None, though, of the ilk
> of Masters and Johnson, so far as I know.
>
>
Yes they approached from the POVs of Eros and agape, as science was not
invented until Aristotle.
>>> I love Sappho's poems. I first read them through in the translation
>>> of Mary Bernard. (And I correlated her numbering of fragments with
>>> that in the LCL). Since then I've been slowly accumulating texts and
>>> translations of Sappho. Someday I'd love to render her poems myself,
>>> but that may be a pinnacle I can never reach to my own satisfaction.
>>>
>>>
>> She had the brains of George Eliot. Her poetical skill in Lesbian
>> Greek will forever be closed to me.
>
>
> Care to elaborate upon your comparison of Sappho and George Eliot?
>
Sheer brains, baby.
>
>> For me, a novel has no meaning without a moral point. I don't get far
>> in them, then they go out with our paper recycling.
>
>
> Well, if all you're doing is throwing away entertainment fiction, I
> won't complain as loudly.
>
Haven't read much lately? Many highly praised novels go to great
lengths to be incomprehensible. The reviewers give them good reviews, I
suspect, because they want their upcoming garbage to get good reviews.
> Otherwise I'd be tempted to pay for the postage to have you send your
> discards to me, just so that they won't be thrown away. But from the
> sound of things, that would probably break my bank account.
>
Really, I wouldn't want to mess up your mind. I'm learning. Nothing by
T. Coragessan Boyle, Marvin Amis, and so forth. My wife and I once
walked out on a lecture at Caltech by Saul Bellow, as his ratio of
pomposity to understanding was one of the largest I've ever seen. Had I
known you back in 1973 I'd have sent you my Travis McGee novels and Bond
novels, rather than throwing them in the garbage when we moved to
Pasadena from Seattle.
> I do a lot of yardsaling. I've noticed that if, in a given yard sale,
> there's a Reader's Digest Condensed Book or a book by Danielle Steele or
> Stephen King or Tom Clancy, the chances are extremely poor that any
> books of quality by others will be found there. That's not to "dis"
> Reader's Digest or Steele or King or Clancy. It's just an observation
> that seems to hold true and that makes me wonder.
>
>
First Editions by Jane Austin are unusual at yard sales. If you came to
mine, you'd find the 1959 edition of "Mankind in the Making" - human
evolution, beautifully made and written - by William Howells, grandson
of William Dean Howells, but worthless now 45 years later, a 1994
Nautical Almanac, stacks of computer S/W manuals from the 80s, and so
forth.
I have an almost 1st edition of "Reliques of Ancient Poetry" by Bishop
Percy of Dromore - reprinted beautifully in Philly in 1870 from a 1744
1st Edition. It obviously passed through the hands of a scholar at some
time, as one can deduce from the pencilled notes. That one you wouldn't
find.
My experience is that Library Discard Days are much more productive -
it's amazing what people who call themselves librarians will throw out.
Just no more room for the new Danielle Steele novel....
I just heard on the radio that the US has one fourth of the world's
prisoners. They were driven around the bend by the lies teachers told them.
>> [snip] After all, what do I need with
>> even an excellent Russion book on theoretical astrophysics 23 years old?
>> I read it in '71 when it first came out and what I learned let me
>> dominate the U of Wash astro dep't, and to get to Caltech.
>
>
> It's just that sort of thing that I later regret letting go -- a book
> that was once useful or potentially so when now my mind has turned to
> the topic again. Early editions of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls in
> Hebrew, for instance.
>
>
I don't know how, but the 2nd volume of my ML Gibbon vanished, so you
might find Vols 1 & 3 at my yard sale. You wouldn't find my ML edition
of Bury's A History of Greece (1913), because it's so beautifully
written. Though much of it is likely wrong now, I intend to be cremated
with it.
The authors of Relativistic Astrophysics are both dead now - I met the
junior author at an IAU meeting in Balto - and as far as it goes almost
everything in it is still correct. Both authors worked with Sakharov on
the Soviet H-bomb. The senior author died before the demise of the
Soviet Union, and was never allowed to go abroad (he was so bright, he
didn't need to anyway, unless he wanted his feet kissed). Everything
still worthwhile I have in much newer books. But you may be right: I
just glanced through it, and the pedagogy is so great; you can't find
equal pedagogy in that subject anymore.
>> I could keep it for sentimental reasons, like my First Edition of Il
>> Vangelo Secundo Tomaso?
>
>
> The Gospel according to Thomas -- cool! What editor? What year?
>
>
Pope Pius XII, the 1944 Holocaust Edition. Edited by the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith. Only the title page survives now
generally; my uncle stole the last remaining copy from the depths of the
Vatican Library. Don't tell anyone. I wouldn't give it back until they
get a female Pope.
>> [snip]
>> We don't have to get a new 20" TV set every month or so from my
>> shooting it up with my .50 Magnum pistol. Very satisfying.
>> [actually, Doris says she will leave if I bring as much as a child's
>> bow and arrow home.]
>
>
> My mother's father was shot dead before she was born. An accident. So
> she grew up with a thing about guns. Does Doris have a similar reason
> for her attitude?
>
>
A violently schizophrenic older brother, when off his meds.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> By the way, the Dictionary of Theories doesn't have that donkey
>>> paradox you mentioned. I don't think you ever responded to my query
>>> about that in the "Am I Stupid" thread.
>>
>>
>> A donkey is pulling a cart. Yet Newton's 3rd Law says that the force
>> that the donkey exerts on the cart is equal and opposite to the force
>> that the cart exerts on the donkey. Therefore the forces add to zero.
>> How can the cart move?
>
>
> Thanks. Intriguing. Therefore all motion except eternal motion is an
> illusion. :-)
If you were Zeno. You might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment.
>
>
>> I can write the paradox in a million different forms, which confuses
>> the students, who prefer to learn by rote. The answer is always the
>> same.
>
>
> Care to share? Different objects, different sets of forces, the totaling
> of forces in Newton's Third Law being upon one object only?
>
>
Getting warm....
>> [snip]
>> [picky typo fun deleted; i is next to o, and besides, what are you
>> talking about?]
>
>
> sophos = wisdom.
> siphöv = tube.
In Russian the polite colloquial word for penis is 'hose'.
>
> And as someone is trying to break the word down, they might come across
> a certain Siphnian sexual practice.
>
>
Still looking for one of those vases from Delphi. But none of them seem
to equal Smilla's in the book (*not* the movie!) "Smilla's Sense of
Snow". The book ends more than a litle crazily, but sex in Copenhagen
was interesting. I never heard of, nor even imagined, that one. No
woman I ever dated had exactly the right equipment. Smilla was half Inuit.
>> Isaiah Berlin is the best, as he had no ideology except quest,
>
>
> Quest? You mean questing?
>
Hah! My Cassell (1998) says that quest can be used as an intransitive
verb, and I've read it so outside of my notebooks written in a secret code.
>
>> and he was a lot smarter than the others. Kermode took money from the
>> CIA. The Steiner essays I read in the New Yorker were good. Sontag is
>> OK, if a bit airy. There are some good political essayists, but I
>> suspect they do not interest you.
>
>
> They might not, but that wouldn't be because of a lack of interest in
> politics.
>
> I keep wanting to whack Kerry's speech writers on the back of the head
> and get them on the ball.
>
>
It's too late for that. Their language centers are hopelessly damaged.
He should hire Aaron Sorkin, and fire the rest with extreme prejudice.
>> Concocted dialogues do not suit my taste much, as you *have* to know
>> you are being manipulated and set up - two things that enrage me.
>
>
> Dialogues that I write are dialogues going on in my mind, the dialogue
> being a fairly common genre in that terrain. I have no interest in
> manipulating somebody or setting 'em up. But occasionally I'll share.
I never decide on the conclusion before checking with my wife, who
usually says "Go to jail, do not pass Go." Then I start again.
>
> Hmm, I ought to take another look at Iris Murdoch's philosophical
> dialogues to see whether they're more the flavor you describe or the
> flavor I describe.
>
>
Yeesss. I don't recall reading anything written by her, a serious gap
in my education. Bayley in "Elegy to Iris" said she was stil a virgin
when he married her when she was 29. But she had had divers female
lovers among the dons or whatnot; I have a picture of her in my mind
biking around campus from one assignation to another. Terrible how she
died. Bayley seems to have taken good care of her.
>> I wouldn't any more give anyone a copy of Plato than I would poison.
>
>
> Such a moralist you are!
>
I wasted so much of my life, why should I waste anyone else's?
>
>>> That was the judgment of a twelve-year old? Needs revisiting.
>>>
>> That was implied; and the form of the statement says it has been, as
>> has practically everything I've written in our various hijacked threads.
>
>
> At least no one can blame YOU for hijacking THIS thread.
I think the guy who posted about using spammers as laboratory
experimental animals,, because of their advantages over rats. I was
hoping someone knew to what I was referring - the gymnastic judges and
Socrates, but I overestimated the audience.
>
>
>> Read me as closely as you would Plato, or some other philosophical
>> liar that you are addicted to, and you will learn more than from
>> them. Are *we* not conducting a dialogue, thankfully not
>> Socratic/Platonic, as ours contains knowledge, curiosity, and equality.
>
>
Ever read George Eliot's translation of Feuerbach? A friend dug it out
of the library of the religios college to which she was going. Hard to
find. Google "George Eliot Feuerbach" - some good essays there.
> So it seems. :-)
>
>
>> Perhaps it's time for another Celexa....
>
>
> Losing it?
>
Got a little irritated, but my wife would never miss a check for $1000
for a Remington .50 Magnum pistol. And we'd probably get thrown out of
our townhouse Association.
>
>>> Ever read Rilke? or Anne Sexton? or Wallace Stevens? Or maybe
>>> Swinburne would be more to your taste.
>>>
>>>
>> Sexton and Stevens (long ago), I liked the description of how he
>> walked to work while composing his poetry: his walk reflected the
>> composition of the poem. Rainier Maria Rilke, never, and should I?
>
>
> An astounding poet. I still remember the first moment I ran into a poem
> of his. I've seen him ranked with Shakespeare. My knowledge of world
> poetry is less than complete and I'm leery of ranking poets anyway, but
> I'd venture to say he's one of the world's best.
>
I thought so at one time, back when I was determined to marry the
completely right woman, so long ago... Pushkin's Byronic "Gavriliada"
(1822) is brilliant. Go see a Russian prof who keeps a locked drawer for
works still banned. Googling "Pushkin Gavriliada" give responses that
it can be found now, but I didn't go hunting, as I have serious doubts
of my own about the Annunciation.
Jim Roberts
Jim Roberts wrote:
> The inclusion levels are fucked up because I sent an unfinished copy to
> the ng, as I was getting sleepy and hit the wrong button. So I'm
> 'replying' to the copy in the 'sent' folder.
>
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>> I understand that sixty is old for mathematicians and physicists.
>>>>> But it's young for scholars in the humanities. It's about the time
>>>>> many a humanities scholar starts outlining his or her magnum opus.
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, original thinking is then no longer needed.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Right. And therefore any original thinking is likely to be free of
>>> the "young bull" stuff.
>>>
>> That was one of my little traps. Perhaps your response is one of
>> yours - I'll find out below. To me, it's a time to summarize one's
>> mistakes, probably not for new monographs, and for writing out all
>> your dark thoughts about the status of one's profession's false rabbit
>> trails, that is, all the more or less accepted theories that are
>> demonstrably false - those within my reach, not Hawking's - which
>> worked so well for me as a grad student, and to drop in a few dozen
>> new ideas - or old unsolved ones - dripping in difficulty and one
>> hopes opening up new specialties that one can no longer pursue,
>> perhaps leading to 100 PhD thesis ideas, thus provoking rebellion
>> against one's thesis advisors anong the young bucks and does. In
>> other words, to throw the fox in the chicken coop.
>>
>> When actually working hard on one's usual research, you don't have
>> time for more than one original idea at a time, but in writing one's
>> magnum opus, one can think of many at the same time. I'd like to
>> leave behind The Pothole from Hell, to quote the title of a NY Times
>> Op-Ed piece from years ago about a real pothole on a NJ to NY
>> commuting route that would bring out the locals to count the broken
>> axles in the morning, than an Emeril masterpiece.
>>
>>
>>> Anyway, the sixties is a time of life for some when the utmost in
>>> resources needs to be marshaled. But I don't suppose that argument
>>> will fly with your wife.
>>>
>>>
>> No, she is like the Master in Ecclesiastes: "To the making of books
>> there is no end..." and wants to do all the things we are still able
>> to do, like look for treasure in the Tora Bora Mountains, and perhaps
>> make a few first ascents there. She's given up on Aconcagua, But we
>> could do it, now that I have a new heart, have stopped drinking, and
>> she will still be running 1/2 marathons. She might like to try
>> Citlaltepetl once more (we and our guide were sick the last time,
>> almost 20 years ago).
>>
>> Going abroad, just to absorb other cultures like we used to dream
>> about, is looking less and less attractive, as neither of us wants to
>> collect life insurance prematurely or get some incapacitating,
>> incurable disease, like flesh-eating bacteria. The Tuscan sun and
>> food, Nunavut, and Great Britain are the only places I want to go to,
>> besides Oswiecim, Krakow (one can hire guides there who can speak any
>> language, even Brooklynese), and environs - the only place left in the
>> world to get real hand-kneaded bagels, which are good for eating as
>> well as self-defence. Bagels from kneading machines aren't the real
>> bagels you read about in literature. We just have to be careful not
>> to throw out our TMJs when eating them, as one doesn't get proper jaw
>> exercise anymore, since we don't have to eat raw baboon meat.
>>
>>>> However, I'm unusual in being unable to resist this odd kind of
>>>> thought. I can formulate a testable theory in 5 minutes.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Anything holding you back?
>>>
>>>
>> Marilyn Monroe's universal answer to everything: "What does it
>> matter?" And besides I have no institutional affiliation anymore, so
>> no naive students wandering in andout. Peter Goldreich was kinder
>> than I: he would only suggest problems that would not leave you
>> chewing up the family heirlooms. He knew my limits better than I did.
>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> Exactly. But it was my least favorite row. Couldn't hear much the
>>>>> teacher said, much less see anything.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> You wimp, or maybe your mother was. My mother, a terrifying school
>>>> nurse, would have brought an audiogram and the results of a vision
>>>> test to the principal. Anyway, you didn't miss anything.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hehe. Yep, I was a country bumpkin plunked down in the middle of an
>>> inner city school (so I suppose it would be called) trying to keep my
>>> nose out of trouble -- no easy task. If I'd felt like I belonged, I
>>> might've worked up the gumption to complain. But I didn't feel that
>>> way; and I was schooled to stoicism, to boot.
>>>
>> And Bacchanals?
>>
>>>
>>>>> Almost everything about Plato's life is disputed. Frankly I doubt
>>>>> the story. Put it to your Liars' Club, if ever you have a chance.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> It would be a direct affront to his philosophy.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Am puzzled about how that's a response to what I said.
>>>
>> Perhaps something got deleted. My sentence referred to Plato's
>> allowing surveying at the Lyceum.
>>
>>>
>>>> Asides from terrible professors are often more true than is their
>>>> curriculum.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There's more demand for professors than oftentimes seems justified.
>>> For many topics, read a book or three instead. A lot cheaper.
>>>
>> Yes, but no credits. You *have* to graduate.
>>
>>> But asides would be one of the justifications.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> I forgot to mention, that quotation is from the R. D. Hicks
>>>>> translation (1925) in the Loeb Classical Library.
>>>>>
>>>> I don't go to the Hopkins Library (actually the Milton
>>>> Eisenhower...) except for monographs I've developed a compelling
>>>> need for -
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I collect Loebs. I actually have a leather-bound volume signed by
>>> Loeb himself.
>>>
>> *Richard* Loeb?
>>
>>>
>>>> like is the Great Conveyor going to shut down in the next 10 years?
>>>> After that, it takes only 10 years to bring on the next Ice Age:
>>>> global warming can lead almost instantaneously to an ice age.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.alternet.org/story/17711
>>>
>>>
>>>> If I think the Great Conveyor is about to shut down, we're selling
>>>> out and moving to Belize before everyone else.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I've been tempted to set up shop in Belize for years. But not
>>> everyone in my family likes warm weather. And I doubt that the
>>> tropics would do my library any good. Don't know what effects an ice
>>> age would have on either Belize or my library.
>>
>>
>>
>> Belize would cool 5 deg Celsius and dry out a bit. See you there...
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> I have enough at home that I haven't read, or having tried to read
>>>> once long ago, but not understood, like Landau-Lifshitz's Quantum
>>>> Mechanics (35 yrs ago) and the Qur'an (55 yrs ago).
>>>>
>>>> I'd also like to work through the 5th edition of my freshman 1st
>>>> edition physics text at Harvard (got for $5 from ER Hamilton; who
>>>> needs a 6th edition?), which is so vastly better than the 1st
>>>> edition, mostly thanks to Jearl Walker: Halliday, Resnick, and
>>>> Walker, Fundamentals of Physics, as I certainly could use some
>>>> review, just in case I want to dodder into one of the 6 or so nearby
>>>> colleges and scare the bejesus out of the students to ease the job
>>>> pressure in the profession. One of the reasons that the first
>>>> edition was so bad, besides the opaque pedagogy, was that 1/3 of the
>>>> answers to problems were wrong, because they were left to a bunch of
>>>> slope-headed grad students. 44 years later, they should be better.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> For the curiosity and mental exercise?
>>>
>>>
>> The old physicist's way of "freshening up". I got a crossword puzzle
>> book (I never work on them) and a x-word dictionary to keep my mind
>> fresh, but Halliday, etc., would be better, as would "The Future of...".
>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> Yes, Diotima was a woman. And one to whom Socrates (as represented
>>>>> by Plato) deferred in matters of philosophy or, at least, the
>>>>> philosophy of love, which was one of the major philosophical topics
>>>>> among the ancient Greeks -- although you'd hardly know it, since
>>>>> most of the treatises on love mentioned by Diogenes Laertius are lost.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Now we have Ruth Westheimer, a former sniper in the Haganah. Did
>>>> she let herself be fondled while on duty; she says she never hit
>>>> anyone. But of course there's no Greek idealism with her.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The ancient Greeks had their sexologists too. None, though, of the
>>> ilk of Masters and Johnson, so far as I know.
>>>
>>>
>> Yes they approached from the POVs of Eros and agape, as science was
>> not invented until Aristotle.
>>
>>>>> I love Sappho's poems. I first read them through in the translation
>>>>> of Mary Bernard. (And I correlated her numbering of fragments with
>>>>> that in the LCL). Since then I've been slowly accumulating texts
>>>>> and translations of Sappho. Someday I'd love to render her poems
>>>>> myself, but that may be a pinnacle I can never reach to my own
>>>>> satisfaction.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> She had the brains of George Eliot. Her poetical skill in Lesbian
>>>> Greek will forever be closed to me.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Care to elaborate upon your comparison of Sappho and George Eliot?
>>>
>> Sheer brains, baby.
>>
>>>
>>>> For me, a novel has no meaning without a moral point. I don't get
>>>> far in them, then they go out with our paper recycling.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, if all you're doing is throwing away entertainment fiction, I
>>> won't complain as loudly.
>>>
>> Haven't read much lately? Many highly praised novels go to great
>> lengths to be incomprehensible. The reviewers give them good reviews,
>> I suspect because they want their upcoming garbage to get good reviews.
>>
>>> Otherwise I'd be tempted to pay for the postage to have you send your
>>> discards to me, just so that they won't be thrown away. But from the
>>> sound of things, that would probably break my bank account.
>>>
>> Really, I wouldn't want to mess up your mind. I'm learning. Nothing
>> by T. Coraghessan Boyle, Martin Amis, and so forth. My wife and I
>> once walked out on a lecture at Caltech by Saul Bellow, as his ratio
>> of pomposity to understanding was one of the largest I've ever seen.
>> Had I known you back in 1973 I'd have sent you my Travis McGee novels
>> and Bond novels, rather than throwing them in the garbage when we
>> moved to Pasadena from Seattle.
>>
>>> I do a lot of yardsaling. I've noticed that if, in a given yard sale,
>>> there's a Reader's Digest Condensed Book or a book by Danielle Steele
>>> or Stephen King or Tom Clancy, the chances are extremely poor that
>>> any books of quality by others will be found there. That's not to
>>> "dis" Reader's Digest or Steele or King or Clancy. It's just an
>>> observation that seems to hold true and that makes me wonder.
>>>
>>>
>> First Editions by Jane Austin are unusual at yard sales. If you came
>> to mine, you'd find the 1959 edition of "Mankind in the Making" -
>> human evolution, beautifully made and written - by William Howells,
>> grandson of William Dean Howells, but worthless now 45 years later, a
>> 1994 Nautical Almanac, stacks of computer S/W manuals from the 80s,
>> and so forth.
>>
>> I have an almost 1st edition of "Reliques of Ancient Poetry" by Bishop
>> Percy of Dromore - reprinted beautifully in Philly in 1870 from a 1744
>> 1st Edition. It obviously passed through the hands of a scholar at
>> some time, as one can deduce from the pencilled notes. That one you
>> wouldn't find.
>>
>> My experience is that Library Discard Days are much more productive -
>> it's amazing what people who call themselves librarians will throw
>> out. Just no more room for the new Danielle Steele novel....
>>
>> I just heard on the radio that the US has one fourth of the world's
>> prisoners. They were driven around the bend by the lies teachers told
>> them.
>>
>>>> [snip] After all, what do I need with
>>>> even an excellent Russion book on theoretical astrophysics 23 years
>>>> old?
>>>> I read it in '71 when it first came out and what I learned let me
>>>> dominate the U of Wash astro dep't, and to get to Caltech.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It's just that sort of thing that I later regret letting go -- a book
>>> that was once useful or potentially so when now my mind has turned to
>>> the topic again. Early editions of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls in
>>> Hebrew, for instance.
>>>
>>>
>> I don't know how, but the 2nd volume of my ML Gibbon vanished, so you
>> might find Vols 1 & 3 at my yard sale. You wouldn't find my ML
>> edition of Bury's A History of Greece (1913), because it's so
>> beautifully written. Though much of it is likely wrong now, I intend
>> to be cremated with it.
>>
>> The authors of Relativistic Astrophysics are both dead now - I met the
>> junior author at an IAU meeting in Balto - and as far as it goes
>> almost everything in it is still correct. Both authors worked with
>> Sakharov on the Soviet H-bomb. The senior author died before the
>> demise of the Soviet Union, and was never allowed to go abroad (he was
>> so bright, he didn't need to anyway, unless he wanted his feet
>> kissed). Everything still worthwhile I have in much newer books. But
>> you may be right: I just glanced through it, and the pedagogy is so
>> great; you can't find equal pedagogy in that subject anymore.
>>
>>>> I could keep it for sentimental reasons, like my First Edition of Il
>>>> Vangelo Secundo Tomaso?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The Gospel according to Thomas -- cool! What editor? What year?
>>>
>>>
>> Pope Pius XII, the 1944 Holocaust Edition, as he felt that his Italian
>
> was getting rusty through disuse. Edited by the Congregation
>
>> for the Doctrine of the Faith. Only the title page survives now
>> generally; my uncle stole the last remaining copy from the depths of
>> the Vatican Library. Don't tell anyone. I wouldn't give it back
>> until they get a female Pope.
>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>> We don't have to get a new 20" TV set every month or so from my
>>>> shooting it up with my .50 Magnum pistol. Very satisfying.
>>>> [actually, Doris says she will leave if I bring as much as a child's
>>>> bow and arrow home.]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> My mother's father was shot dead before she was born. An accident. So
>>> she grew up with a thing about guns. Does Doris have a similar reason
>>> for her attitude?
>>>
>>>
>> A violently schizophrenic older brother, when off his meds.
>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> By the way, the Dictionary of Theories doesn't have that donkey
>>>>> paradox you mentioned. I don't think you ever responded to my query
>>>>> about that in the "Am I Stupid" thread.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A donkey is pulling a cart. Yet Newton's 3rd Law says that the
>>>> force that the donkey exerts on the cart is equal and opposite to
>>>> the force that the cart exerts on the donkey. Therefore the forces
>>>> add to zero. How can the cart move?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks. Intriguing. Therefore all motion except eternal motion is an
>>> illusion. :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> If you were Zeno. You might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> I can write the paradox in a million different forms, which confuses
>>>> the students, who prefer to learn by rote. The answer is always the
>>>> same.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Care to share? Different objects, different sets of forces, the
>>> totaling of forces in Newton's Third Law being upon one object only?
>>>
>>>
>> Getting warm.... "A bee lands on a flower, etc."
>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>> [picky typo fun deleted; i is next to o, and besides, what are you
>>>> talking about?]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> sophos = wisdom.
>>> siphöv = tube.
>>
>>
>>
>> In Russian the polite colloquial word for penis is 'hose'.
>>
>>>
>>> And as someone is trying to break the word down, they might come
>>> across a certain Siphnian sexual practice.
>>>
>>>
>> Still looking for one of those vases from Delphi. But none of them
>> seem to equal Smilla's in the book (*not* the movie!) "Smilla's Sense
>> of Snow". The book ends more than a litle crazily, but sex in
>> Copenhagen was interesting. I never heard of, nor even imagined, that
>> one. No woman I ever dated had exactly the right equipment. Smilla
>> was half Inuit.
>>
>>>> Isaiah Berlin is the best, as he had no ideology except quest,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Quest? You mean questing?
>>>
>> Hah! My Cassell (1998) says that quest can be used as an intransitive
>> verb, and I've read it so outside of my notebooks written in a secret
>> code.
>>
>>>
>>>> and he was a lot smarter than the others. Kermode took money from
>>>> the CIA. The Steiner essays I read in the New Yorker were good.
>>>> Sontag is OK, if a bit airy. There are some good political
>>>> essayists, but I suspect they do not interest you.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> They might not, but that wouldn't be because of a lack of interest in
>>> politics.
>>>
>>> I keep wanting to whack Kerry's speech writers on the back of the
>>> head and get them on the ball.
>>>
>>>
>> It's too late for that. Their language centers are hopelessly
>> damaged. He should hire Aaron Sorkin, and fire the rest with extreme
>> prejudice.
>>
>>>> Concocted dialogues do not suit my taste much, as you *have* to know
>>>> you are being manipulated and set up - two things that enrage me.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dialogues that I write are dialogues going on in my mind, the
>>> dialogue being a fairly common genre in that terrain. I have no
>>> interest in manipulating somebody or setting 'em up. But occasionally
>>> I'll share.
>>
>>
>>
>> I never decide on the conclusion before checking with my wife, who
>> usually says "Go to jail, do not pass Go." Then I start again.
>>
>>>
>>> Hmm, I ought to take another look at Iris Murdoch's philosophical
>>> dialogues to see whether they're more the flavor you describe or the
>>> flavor I describe.
>>>
>>>
>> Yeesss. I don't recall reading anything written by her, a serious gap
>> in my education. Bayley in "Elegy to Iris" said she was stil a virgin
>> when he married her when she was 29. But she had had divers female
>> lovers among the dons or whatnot; I have a picture of her in my mind
>> biking around campus from one assignation to another. Terrible how
>> she died. Bayley seems to have taken good care of her.
>>
>>>> I wouldn't any more give anyone a copy of Plato than I would poison.
>>>
>>>
>>> Such a moralist you are!
>>>
>> I wasted so much of my life, why should I waste anyone else's?
>>
>>>
>>>>> That was the judgment of a twelve-year old? Needs revisiting.
>>>>>
>>>> That was implied; and the form of the statement says it has been, as
>>>> has practically everything I've written in our various hijacked
>>>> threads.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> At least no one can blame YOU for hijacking THIS thread.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think the guy who posted about using spammers as laboratory
>> experimental animals played "Tootle", because of their advantages over
>> rats. I was hoping someone knew to what I was referring - the
>> gymnastic judges and Socrates, but I overestimated the audience.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Read me as closely as you would Plato, or some other philosophical
>>>> liar that you are addicted to, and you will learn more than from
>>>> them. Are *we* not conducting a dialogue, thankfully not
>>>> Socratic/Platonic, as ours contains knowledge, curiosity, and
>>>> equality.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Ever read George Eliot's translation of Feuerbach? A friend dug it
>> out of the library of the religious college to which she was going.
>> Hard to find. Google "George Eliot Feuerbach" - some good essays there.
>>
>>> So it seems. :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>> Perhaps it's time for another Celexa....
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Losing it?
>>>
>> Got a little irritated, but my wife would never overlook a check for
>> $1000 for a Remington .50 Magnum pistol. And we'd probably get thrown
>> out of our townhouse Association.
>>
>>>
>>>>> Ever read Rilke? or Anne Sexton? or Wallace Stevens? Or maybe
>>>>> Swinburne would be more to your taste.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Sexton and Stevens (long ago), I liked the description of how he
>>>> walked to work while composing his poetry: his walk reflected the
>>>> composition of the poem. Rainier Maria Rilke, never, and should I?
>>>
>>>
>>> An astounding poet. I still remember the first moment I ran into a
>>> poem of his. I've seen him ranked with Shakespeare. My knowledge of
>>> world poetry is less than complete and I'm leery of ranking poets
>>> anyway, but I'd venture to say he's one of the world's best.
>>>
>> I thought so at one time, back when I was determined to marry the
>> completely right woman, so long ago... Pushkin's Byronic "Gavriliada"
>> (1822) is brilliant. Go see a Russian prof who keeps a locked drawer
>> for works still banned. Googling "Pushkin Gavriliada" give responses
>> that it can be found now, but I didn't go hunting, as I have serious
>> doubts of my own about the Annunciation. Gavril = Gabriel.
>>
>>> However, I have little clue as to how you'd react to him. Well, you
>>> like Tagore. In mathematical terms, consider Rilke Tagore to a higher
>>> power.
>>>
>>>
> Now *you* need a whack on the head.
>
>>>>> Was more trying to get a rise out of any who would otherwise be put
>>>>> off by any subthread that mentions an ancient author.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Do you seriously believe that anyone reads our posts?
>>>
>>>
>>> Hehe. It's fun to check every once in a while (as though we really can).
>>>
>>>
>>>> Go to nytimes.com, click on columnists, scroll down to Kristof on 25
>>>> August.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nowhere near as simple as that, but done.
>>>
>>> When I think of human genetic manipulation, I find one of my
>>> reference points to be Frank Herbert's Dune.
>>>
>>> What gives me the willies isn't human genetic mutation of the
>>> adaptive sort, but (a) playing God when we're not ready to and (b)
>>> the carrying forward of human prejudices and other moral flaws into a
>>> "brave new world."
>>>
>>>
> Calm down. God had nothing to do with it as they don't exist.
>
>>>>> I think of being moral as a broad thing affecting many areas of life.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Such as my moral step-father opening his wife's mail before she saw
>>>> it, as that was done in Victorian England, the way he was reared?
>>>> It affects many aspects of behavior, but often not the most
>>>> important ones.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sounds to me like you consider opening someone else's mail immoral
>>> or, at least, a moral issue. Of course, nowadays in some countries
>>> there's a presumption of privacy; and that's a presumption that has
>>> not always existed. Nevertheless, to my way of thinking, context
>>> counts in moral judgment.
>>>
>>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> Are you referring to:
>>>>>
>>>>> Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North
>>>>> America, by Theodora Kroeber (1961)?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> No, the original by her father, A. L. Kroeber, 1911, probably out of
>>>> print. What an industry that liar started! Kroeber broke the first
>>>> rule of ethnography: never become friends with your subject.
>>>
>>>
>>> Theodora's husband, wasn't he? She was his second wife. Ursula K. Le
>>> Guin was a daughter of his.
>
>
> Don't know. If so, he robbed the cradle.
>
>>>
>>> http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Alfred_L._Kroeber
>>>
>>> I'm not ready to declare I've proven a negative, but I've checked
>>> several databases, with no hits, for a book by A. L. Kroeber called
>>> Ishi published in 1911. He did write on Ishi though, of course.
>>>
>>>
> I've seen a reference to it. It exists somewhere. Since our copies are
> gone, I can't check in them.
>
>>>>>> nor was he of the tribe he said, Yahi, and he knew a bit more
>>>>>> about the white man than he let on. He knew what Kroeber wanted
>>>>>> to hear, and was only too happy to oblige him.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm, my reference books aren't backing you up. Got a source?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Google "Kroeber Ishi Yahi", and work from there.
>>>
>>>
>>> I find the following article by Gretchen Kell:
>>>
>>> http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/96legacy/releases.96/14310.html
>>>
>>>
>>> Deductions about Ishi's family tree from arrowheads he made are not
>>> exactly conclusive.
>>>
>>>
>>>> I threw out my Cultural Anthro notes long ago. My wife gave away
>>>> her copy of the original book, and I must have put mine in a
>>>> dumpster, among 3 SW loads of books when we left LA for Baltimore in
>>>> '88. Go talk to a *respected* cultural anthropologist, one who
>>>> turned down a job offer from Harvard, if you can.
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm not enamored of experts. Maybe I should be, but what I go for is
>>> documentation or other forms of evidence.
>>>
>>>
> You must mean self-appointed experts. Real experts are admired by their
> peers.
>
>>>>> Many ethnographers came to know the people they were describing and
>>>>> were sympathetic to them.
>>>>>
>>>> That's true. Did you see the movie "Songcatcher" (2000), a rather
>>>> idealized and romanticized view of musical ethnography. A sort of
>>>> Ethnographer in Disneyland, but a fun movie, which Streisand's movie
>>>> Yentl wasn't: I called it "Shtetl in Disneyland."
>>>
>>>
>>> I've seen both movies. Would like to see "Songcatcher" again. It is a
>>> beautiful movie. To say it's idealized may be an overstatement.
>>>
>>>
>>>>> Their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions
>>>>> (1952), sounds like something I'd like to read.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Oh, oh, I haven't read it but it sounds like Laura Riding's
>>>> disastrous last project. She thought she could write the ultimate
>>>> dictionary with definitions that would inevitably lead the user to
>>>> Truth, which she decided poetry could not do.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sounds like a twist on Wittgenstein or Austin or one of those guys.
>>> But what do I know?! I haven't received the books I ordered yet.
>>>
>
> It's a wonder that Wittgenstein didn't fuck up Iris Murdoch's mind. What
> a mess his work is!
>
>>> One of the models in my head as I'm doing lexicography is Hugh
>>> Farnham of Robert A. Heinlein's novel, Farnham's Freehold (1964).
>>>
>>>
>>>> Sometimes chanting can help, sometimes meditation, sometimes just
>>>> stubbing your toe.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Which I did, painfully, several times on my long hike the other day.
>>>
> Too bad! Time for new boots from REI. The last time I took my Merrills
> to my Ukrainian cobbler, he said he never wanted to see them again. Soon
> they fell apart catastrophically. I got Montrails from REI, which have
> great toe protection. They ought to help, unless you have 12 toes.
>
>>>
>>>>> Intriguing. But I don't buy into linguistic determinism. For one
>>>>> thing, I have consciously observed the workings of my own mind
>>>>> since early childhood, and a lot of those operations, including
>>>>> many thoughts, are language-free. I'm continually framing language,
>>>>> sometimes even creating it, to give expression to such thoughts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
> Kluckhohn never said 'deterministic', but just influential.
> And French. In mountaineering we have "nieve penitentes". After
> crossing a field of those with a full mountaineering pack, you'd rather
> have been on Calvary with Jesus; at least there you'd only suffocate.
>
>>> I've gotta find me some serious Eskimo dictionaries. I seem to keep
>>> needing 'em.
>>>
>>> I once had the privilege of cataloging a 19th century manuscript of
>>> an Inuit to Danish dictionary. I wish I'd made a copy for myself.
>>>
>>>
> Probably written by Smilla.
>
>>>>> So according to Kluckhohn (is it?), less ambiguity might not always
>>>>> be such a good thing?
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, that seemed his conclusion to me. But I'm addicted to English.
>>>
>>>
>>> I am too; sometimes it's intoxicating.
>
>
> "blood, toil, tears, and sweat"
>
>>>
>>> English is my (metaphorical) spouse. Greek is my mistress next door.
>>> And then I have a lot of lovers I like to drop in on more or less often.
>>>
>>> Hmm, I suppose it's more natural to say that one's native tongue is
>>> one's mother tongue. But for me it wasn't just then.
>>>
>>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> I saw on one of the PBS antique shows something new to me: a hooked
>>>>> blade on a spear used to cut an opponent's bridle so that he would
>>>>> lose control of his horse while in battle. I didn't hear what it's
>>>>> called.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I read about it somewhere, sometime, too, don't remember if it was
>>>> given a name, but I'm sure the Parthians called it something
>>>> different from the Hittites. Curved blades of all sorts have been
>>>> used since the bronze age. We still have many uses for them. But
>>>> if you go to cut a Parthian bridle, I'd first make sure your life
>>>> insurance was paid up.
>>>
>>>
>>> The show was Find! with the Keno brothers.
>>>
>>
>
> jimbat
>
>
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>> [snip]
>> There really were Red Indians. They lived on some island off the
>> Maritimes, and commonly rubbed their faces with red ochre.
>
>
> Newfoundland. The Beothuck nation, which became extinct in 1829, except
> for a few individuals integrated into the Micmacs. The Beothucks may
> have been the fierce Skraelings encountered by the Vikings.
Wow! Where'd you find *that*?
>
> "Jesus loves the little children
> All the children of the world
> Red and Yellow, Black and White
> They're all precious in His sight
> Jesus loves the little children of the world."
>
> From a Sunday School ditty. But Whites aren't white, Blacks aren't
> black, Asians aren't yellow, and Indians aren't red. Rather confusing
> for a child, who's being told that all children are loved but that they
> are fitted into unnatural color categories. A childhood resistance to
> language categorization shows that language is not necessarily
> deterministic. To this day I don't see a "Red Indian" as red.
>
>
All silly stuff, eh?
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> [snip] Almost all Indians in Alaska are Athapaskan.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> What about the Inuit?
Inuit are not Indians; they came over no more than 4000 years ago.
Alutiks about 8,000.
>>>
>> They are in Nunavut. No Inuit in Alaska. Alaskan Eskimos - maybe
>> 8-10 different ethnic groups - also turned out to be genius, reliable
>> mechanics in WW II in Alaska. You have to be clever in the North.
>
Whoops. I guess I was wrong about none in Alaska, as I verified on the net.
>
> I don't know that I'll ever get the Eskimos straightened out in my mind.
> Each source I have seems to contradict every other.
Well, don't listen to Floyd Davidson of Barrow.
One of the hardest things to learn in academics is: know your sources.
Recycle the bad ones, or give them to those who won't remember what they
read anyway.
>
> I was referring specifically to the Alaskan Inupiaq. As I understand it,
> their language is one of the four principal subdivisions of Inuit, the
> other three being:
>
> - Western Canadian Inuktun;
> - Eastern Canadian Inuktitut; and,
> - Greenlandic Kalaallisut.
>
My understanding is that Inupiaq/t run from troubled Kotzebue along the
sea to somewhere near the Canadian border.
> Inuit would be one of the three languages (or language clusters) in the
> Eskaleut family, the other two being Aleut and Yupik.
The Aleut call themselves Alutik now. Their language is quite different
from that of the later Eskimo arrivals. A little look-up seems to
support your understanding.
>
> That, at least, is the scheme outlined by Louis-Jacques Dorais in his
> book, Inuit Uqausiqatigiit = Inuit Languages and Dialects (2nd, rev. ed.
> Iqaluit: Nunavut Arctic College, 2003).
>
> As for "Inuit" not as a language but as a people, American Heritage
> (1987) says: "An Eskimo of North America and Greenland as distinguished
> from one of Asia and the Aleutian Islands." And it says that the
> collective term is either Inuits or Inuit.
>
> However, I see at one of the Nunavut sites: "One person is an Inuk
> (EE-nook), two are Inuuk (EE-nook), and three or more are Inuit."
>
Did you buy the rights to that story? It sounds right to me. Thanks.
When I go to Nunavut to buy some big carvings for less than the fortune
they charge in Montreal, I'll ask for three sisters for the night.
> http://www.canadainfolink.ca/nunavut.htm
>
> I have a book by Asen Balikci (1970) that places the Netsilik Eskimos in
> the Nunavut region.
>
>
It sounds like you have plenty to defend yourself from Davidson's
assaults. I have no references, but have enough friends in Alaska to
call when necessary. He even claimed I had never eaten muktuk, even
though that's exactly what it was called by the Eskimos who gave it to
me. That's a bit like telling me I don't wear shoes since I live in
Baltimore. Since I was only 8, I never developed a taste for it.
>> The Eskimo were mostly peaceful. We just had to learn a few of their
>> customs: wife sharing, and especially that the first teller of a story
>> had copyright to it. No one else could tell it unless he bought the
>> copyright from the original teller. See "Confessions of an Igloo
>> Dweller" for many interesting insights.
>>
>> But: see the book and movie "White Dawn"; about shipwrecked whalers in
>> an Inuit village. Not what you'd expect. Both book and movie are by
>> James Houston, the author of "Confessions of an Igloo Dweller". Some
>> find the movie boring; I didn't.
>>
>> The author woke up one morning having slept with his host's wife; not
>> to do so would have been a grave insult. He implied that Inuit women
>> certainly knew what to do in bed. Eskimo culture is disintegrating in
>> Alaska, but not the Inuit, in large part because of the efforts of
>> that author.
>
>
> Atanarjuat = Fast Runner (2001) is a beautiful movie. Well worth a
> watch, despite subtitles.
>
>
Thanks.
Sometimes the technicians do a really lousy job with subtitles, making
them almost invisible, but I vastly prefer them to dubbing, as is done
in Europe. Il Vangelo Secundo Mateo first came out with subtitles and
was wonderful. Then that version was replaced by a dubbed version,
which ruined the whole feel of the movie.
>> [snip]
>> In the dictionaries that rely on polling for their definitions, and
>> cite as authorities Mickey Mantle, Casey Stengel, and Marilyn Monroe,
>> you can find almost anything. Hold yourself to a higher standard,
>> like Webster's Unabridged, 2nd Ed., the last good dictionary published
>> in the US. We have the 1966 printing, inherited from my wife's father.
>
>
> I have a 2nd edition Webster Unabridged, I believe a Merriam-Webster.
> But I don't want to disturb my cat to get to it.
>
Ours is just Webster's, no Mirriam in sight.
>
>> It
>> uses 'complicated' only to describe the possible assemblage of the
>> parts, not as a synonym. You should have one and sleep with it at
>> night, as it is the dictionary of last resort, when you have thrown
>> all the others against the wall.
>>
>> With Katya gone there is room for it in our bed. I'd do that but for
>> the wear and tear, as it is in practically perfect condition, since
>> her family was not exactly a reading family.
My wife uses a big pillow to replace Katya. "Webster's New Twentieth
>> Century Dictionary Unabridged, Second Edition". Amazon could help
>> you. They found some old books for me that I had given up on, like
>> "Denison's Ice Road" which I stole from the Pasadena library to work
>> on a film script, and finally returned anonymously almost 20 years
>> later; Amazon found it on the discard list of a Colorato town
>> library. Why anyone would toss that book out is beyond me. The
>> barbarians are at the gates, or is that the young Alexander?
>
>
> The Philistines.
Oh, I hooooope not. (Hmm. Where does that come from??)
>
> Denison's Ice Road, by Edith Iglauer (1974). Sounds interesting. The
> cheapest copy at Advanced Book Exchange is $72.05, and that's soft cover.
>
Mine's a nice hard cover, with all the library protections; it was less
than $10. Is that US$ or Mex$ you got? Mine is stamped on top
"Property of Pikes <illegible> District, Colorado Springs, CO". Maybe
Amazon can get it for you cheaper. A very rich book.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Holding back ever resulting in blue balls?
>>>
>>>
>> Never had those, as I am a New Man.
>
>
Besides no woman who let me get that far ever tried to stop me. I carry
a 5 lb rubber mallet just in case...
> Then you can be thankful.
>
> It was a bit of a stretch of the scope, I suppose, but I put the terms
> "blue balls" and "lover's nut" into the Glossary of Relationship Terms
> some time ago.
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationshipsA.html
> http://home.comcast.net/~walkswithastick/relationshipsI.html
>
> "New Man." Is that an allusion to something?
>
No. Just that you know by now that I'm a New Man.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> ObPoly: Many different polygamous cultures rose from the descendants
>>>> of those 4,000 ancestors.
>>>
>>>
>>> I've never read a scenario of how that happened that I've found
>>> intellectually satisfactory.
>>>
>>>
>> Recent DNA and geological research. Try Google with "caldera
>> explosions human evolution", for a start.
>
>
> I was talking about your ObPoly remark and the various theories about
> the "evolution of sex," family development, and all that.
>
>
Oh. My mistake.
Explanation: necessity, or the ability of one man in the tribe to amass
enough wealth to buy the wives. There were some places in Tibet I was
told in Cultural Anthro, and probably other hostile places (besides
Cultural Anthro - some of those Cliffies could easily have handled four
Harvard men, and I'm sure some did), where it took 3-4 men to support a
wife and family, hence polyandry.
>> The word 'scenario' is much overworked. Herman Kahn took it out of
>> the theater and applied it to different strategies and outcomes in "On
>> Thermonuclear War". There it was a useful metaphor, because the
>> strategies could be (theoretically) chosen. Earth dosn't do
>> scenarios. Earth says, "You'll take it on the chin when I show you
>> you'll take it on the chin."
>>
>> As in the movie "war Games", a pop application of Kahn's ideas, Joshua
>> said, "The only way to win is not to play the game."
>
>
> Hmm, I don't have a sense of the word "scenario" being overworked. I
> must have missed sump'in'.
>
Yup. Remember it's a theatrical term. Cassell: "Scenario should never
be used as though it meant simply a scene or situation."
>
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>> The inclusion levels are fucked up because I sent an unfinished copy
>> to the ng, as I was getting sleepy and hit the wrong button. So I'm
>> 'replying' to the copy in the 'sent' folder.
>>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>>> I understand that sixty is old for mathematicians and physicists.
>>>>>> But it's young for scholars in the humanities. It's about the time
>>>>>> many a humanities scholar starts outlining his or her magnum opus.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, original thinking is then no longer needed.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Right. And therefore any original thinking is likely to be free of
>>>> the "young bull" stuff.
>>>>
>>> That was one of my little traps.
Traps? Is this conversation booby trapped??
>>> Perhaps your response is one of
>>> yours - I'll find out below. To me, it's a time to summarize one's
>>> mistakes, probably not for new monographs, and for writing out all
>>> your dark thoughts about the status of one's profession's false
>>> rabbit trails, that is, all the more or less accepted theories that
>>> are demonstrably false - those within my reach, not Hawking's - which
>>> worked so well for me as a grad student, and to drop in a few dozen
>>> new ideas - or old unsolved ones - dripping in difficulty and one
>>> hopes opening up new specialties that one can no longer pursue,
>>> perhaps leading to 100 PhD thesis ideas, thus provoking rebellion
>>> against one's thesis advisors anong the young bucks and does. In
>>> other words, to throw the fox in the chicken coop.
Sounds like fun.
>>> When actually working hard on one's usual research, you don't have
>>> time for more than one original idea at a time,
That's a definite frustration.
>>> but in writing one's
>>> magnum opus, one can think of many at the same time. I'd like to
>>> leave behind The Pothole from Hell, to quote the title of a NY Times
>>> Op-Ed piece from years ago about a real pothole on a NJ to NY
>>> commuting route that would bring out the locals to count the broken
>>> axles in the morning, than an Emeril masterpiece.
Sounds like fun too.
>>>> Anyway, the sixties is a time of life for some when the utmost in
>>>> resources needs to be marshaled. But I don't suppose that argument
>>>> will fly with your wife.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> No, she is like the Master in Ecclesiastes: "To the making of books
>>> there is no end..." and wants to do all the things we are still able
>>> to do, like look for treasure in the Tora Bora Mountains, and perhaps
>>> make a few first ascents there. She's given up on Aconcagua, But we
>>> could do it, now that I have a new heart, have stopped drinking, and
>>> she will still be running 1/2 marathons. She might like to try
>>> Citlaltepetl once more (we and our guide were sick the last time,
>>> almost 20 years ago).
>>>
>>> Going abroad, just to absorb other cultures like we used to dream
>>> about, is looking less and less attractive, as neither of us wants to
>>> collect life insurance prematurely or get some incapacitating,
>>> incurable disease, like flesh-eating bacteria.
We have flesh-eating bacteria right here in MA.
>>> The Tuscan sun and
>>> food, Nunavut, and Great Britain are the only places I want to go to,
>>> besides Oswiecim, Krakow (one can hire guides there who can speak any
>>> language, even Brooklynese), and environs - the only place left in
>>> the world to get real hand-kneaded bagels, which are good for eating
>>> as well as self-defence. Bagels from kneading machines aren't the
>>> real bagels you read about in literature. We just have to be careful
>>> not to throw out our TMJs when eating them, as one doesn't get proper
>>> jaw exercise anymore, since we don't have to eat raw baboon meat.
Nanavut purportedly has the highest mountain in eastern
North America, Mount Barbeau.
>>>> Anything holding you back?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Marilyn Monroe's universal answer to everything: "What does it
>>> matter?" And besides I have no institutional affiliation anymore, so
>>> no naive students wandering in andout.
That makes you an independent scholar, or independent
scientist, if you prefer. Institutional affiliation has its
advantages, but being an independent scholar has other
advantages.
When I was the head of an academic library, I used to do all
I could to encourage independent scholars and to remove
disadvantages that were due to their lack of institutional
affiliation. I still keep in fairly frequent contact with
one of them.
>>> [snip]
>>>> There's more demand for professors than oftentimes seems justified.
>>>> For many topics, read a book or three instead. A lot cheaper.
>>>>
>>> Yes, but no credits. You *have* to graduate.
Yup. Form and substance are two different things, and
American society is set up to prefer form. Higher ed not
only plays into that tendency but has a lot of
responsibility for it.
>>>> I collect Loebs. I actually have a leather-bound volume signed by
>>>> Loeb himself.
>>>>
>>> *Richard* Loeb?
James Loeb (1867-1933). He founded the Loeb Classical
Library in 1911.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/loeb/founder.html
The volume is a copy of Cicero, The Speeches: Pro Lege
Manilia [etc.] (1927).
The inscription is dated, "July 17th 1931, Hochried."
>>> [snip]
>>>> The ancient Greeks had their sexologists too. None, though, of the
>>>> ilk of Masters and Johnson, so far as I know.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Yes they approached from the POVs of Eros and agape, as science was
>>> not invented until Aristotle.
Oh, I think science predated Aristotle. But, yeah, the
ancient Greeks were producing pop sex manuals, not, so far
as I know, scientific studies.
>>>> Care to elaborate upon your comparison of Sappho and George Eliot?
>>>>
>>> Sheer brains, baby.
I'd comment, but at this time of night, 10:17 (after
completing most of the rest of this), am too fatigued.
>>>> Well, if all you're doing is throwing away entertainment fiction, I
>>>> won't complain as loudly.
>>>>
>>> Haven't read much lately?
I'm weak on current fiction.
>>> Many highly praised novels go to great
>>> lengths to be incomprehensible. The reviewers give them good
>>> reviews, I suspect because they want their upcoming garbage to get
>>> good reviews.
>>>
>>> Really, I wouldn't want to mess up your mind.
You mean clutter it up?
>>> I'm learning. Nothing
>>> by T. Coraghessan Boyle, Martin Amis, and so forth.
I've never read them.
>>> My wife and I
>>> once walked out on a lecture at Caltech by Saul Bellow, as his ratio
>>> of pomposity to understanding was one of the largest I've ever seen.
>>> Had I known you back in 1973 I'd have sent you my Travis McGee novels
>>> and Bond novels, rather than throwing them in the garbage when we
>>> moved to Pasadena from Seattle.
Hmm, I think I had read just one Bond novel by then. I
haven't read any since.
>>> First Editions by Jane Austin are unusual at yard sales. If you came
>>> to mine, you'd find the 1959 edition of "Mankind in the Making" -
>>> human evolution, beautifully made and written - by William Howells,
>>> grandson of William Dean Howells, but worthless now 45 years later, a
>>> 1994 Nautical Almanac, stacks of computer S/W manuals from the 80s,
>>> and so forth.
>>>
>>> I have an almost 1st edition of "Reliques of Ancient Poetry" by
>>> Bishop Percy of Dromore - reprinted beautifully in Philly in 1870
>>> from a 1744 1st Edition. It obviously passed through the hands of a
>>> scholar at some time, as one can deduce from the pencilled notes.
>>> That one you wouldn't find.
>>>
>>> My experience is that Library Discard Days are much more productive -
>>> it's amazing what people who call themselves librarians will throw
>>> out. Just no more room for the new Danielle Steele novel....
Can be a false impression. As a librarian, I let go a lot of
wonderful books in library book sales. Virtually all were
dups, out of scope, or poor copies for the library collection.
But then I do wish public libraries would hang on to the
good stuff given to them, which they often don't. Most
people conceive of the mission of the public library as much
smaller than it ought to be (and that's not always the
librarian's fault).
Still, library sales are a great way to have a massive
dissemination of culture in a locality; and I do much prefer
them to yard sales; although I have found some wonderful
books at yard sales.
>>> I just heard on the radio that the US has one fourth of the world's
>>> prisoners. They were driven around the bend by the lies teachers
>>> told them.
I've heard much the same. I don't exactly know what that
signifies -- that US cops are better at their jobs than cops
in other nations? that the U.S. generates a higher
percentage of criminals in the population? that the U.S.
cherishes freedom less than it lets on?
I've often thought there needs to be a wider range of
punishments and remedies for judges to choose from. Putting
so many eggs in the imprisonment basket is nonsense.
>>> I don't know how, but the 2nd volume of my ML Gibbon vanished, so you
>>> might find Vols 1 & 3 at my yard sale.
My volume two is from after the Modern Library changed
format, and so it doesn't match the other two volumes.
I get a kick out of those fancy editions with the
progressive crumbling of Rome splayed across the spines.
>>> You wouldn't find my ML
>>> edition of Bury's A History of Greece (1913), because it's so
>>> beautifully written. Though much of it is likely wrong now, I intend
>>> to be cremated with it.
Got that written down somewhere as an official instruction?
>>> The authors of Relativistic Astrophysics are both dead now - I met
>>> the junior author at an IAU meeting in Balto - and as far as it goes
>>> almost everything in it is still correct. Both authors worked with
>>> Sakharov on the Soviet H-bomb. The senior author died before the
>>> demise of the Soviet Union, and was never allowed to go abroad (he
>>> was so bright, he didn't need to anyway, unless he wanted his feet
>>> kissed). Everything still worthwhile I have in much newer books.
>>> But you may be right: I just glanced through it, and the pedagogy is
>>> so great; you can't find equal pedagogy in that subject anymore.
That counts.
>>>>> I could keep it for sentimental reasons, like my First Edition of
>>>>> Il Vangelo Secundo Tomaso?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The Gospel according to Thomas -- cool! What editor? What year?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Pope Pius XII, the 1944 Holocaust Edition, as he felt that his Italian
>>
>>
>> was getting rusty through disuse. Edited by the Congregation
>>
>>> for the Doctrine of the Faith. Only the title page survives now
>>> generally; my uncle stole the last remaining copy from the depths of
>>> the Vatican Library. Don't tell anyone. I wouldn't give it back
>>> until they get a female Pope.
Only the t.p. survives?
>>> [snip]
>>>>> A donkey is pulling a cart. Yet Newton's 3rd Law says that the
>>>>> force that the donkey exerts on the cart is equal and opposite to
>>>>> the force that the cart exerts on the donkey. Therefore the forces
>>>>> add to zero. How can the cart move?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks. Intriguing. Therefore all motion except eternal motion is an
>>>> illusion. :-)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If you were Zeno. You might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment.
:-)
>>>>> I can write the paradox in a million different forms, which
>>>>> confuses the students, who prefer to learn by rote. The answer is
>>>>> always the same.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Care to share? Different objects, different sets of forces, the
>>>> totaling of forces in Newton's Third Law being upon one object only?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Getting warm.... "A bee lands on a flower, etc."
Too tired to think. But my thought is that the paradox as
stated is misstated.
>>> [snip]
>>> Still looking for one of those vases from Delphi. But none of them
>>> seem to equal Smilla's in the book (*not* the movie!) "Smilla's Sense
>>> of Snow". The book ends more than a litle crazily, but sex in
>>> Copenhagen was interesting. I never heard of, nor even imagined,
>>> that one. No woman I ever dated had exactly the right equipment.
>>> Smilla was half Inuit.
I saw "Smilla's Sense of Snow" (1997). Julia Ormond may be
even harder to resist than her look-alike, Juliette Binoche.
However, the movie disappointed me. IIRC, it turned into a
UFO genre piece without warning.
You make the book sound more interesting.
>>>>> Isaiah Berlin is the best, as he had no ideology except quest,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Quest? You mean questing?
>>>>
>>> Hah! My Cassell (1998) says that quest can be used as an
>>> intransitive verb, and I've read it so outside of my notebooks
>>> written in a secret code.
But you used "quest" as a noun, no?
>>>> I keep wanting to whack Kerry's speech writers on the back of the
>>>> head and get them on the ball.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> It's too late for that. Their language centers are hopelessly
>>> damaged. He should hire Aaron Sorkin, and fire the rest with extreme
>>> prejudice.
Agreed. Except for the "too late" part. Almost too late.
>>> [snip]
>>>> Hmm, I ought to take another look at Iris Murdoch's philosophical
>>>> dialogues to see whether they're more the flavor you describe or the
>>>> flavor I describe.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Yeesss. I don't recall reading anything written by her, a serious
>>> gap in my education. Bayley in "Elegy to Iris" said she was stil a
>>> virgin when he married her when she was 29. But she had had divers
>>> female lovers among the dons or whatnot; I have a picture of her in
>>> my mind biking around campus from one assignation to another.
>>> Terrible how she died. Bayley seems to have taken good care of her.
I've read Elegy to Iris. Even quoted from it in the Glossary
under "telegamy."
Acastos (1986) -- the dialogues I mentioned.
I've not yet broken into her fiction, though I have a lot of
it. Trying to do so feels to me like banging my head against
a thick oaken door. But her fiction has its fans.
>>>>> I wouldn't any more give anyone a copy of Plato than I would poison.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Such a moralist you are!
>>>>
>>> I wasted so much of my life, why should I waste anyone else's?
Oh, you're making my comebacks harder and harder. :-)
>>>> At least no one can blame YOU for hijacking THIS thread.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think the guy who posted about using spammers as laboratory
>>> experimental animals played "Tootle", because of their advantages
>>> over rats. I was hoping someone knew to what I was referring - the
>>> gymnastic judges and Socrates, but I overestimated the audience.
I think you're overestimating me here, since the first
sentence of that paragraph isn't computing, I guess because
of the "Tootle."
>>> Ever read George Eliot's translation of Feuerbach? A friend dug it
>>> out of the library of the religious college to which she was going.
>>> Hard to find. Google "George Eliot Feuerbach" - some good essays there.
Yes, I've read part of it. I go back to it now and then.
I just have the Harper Torchbook edition in paperback
(1957). Although I also have a couple of German editions,
the earlier one being the 4th edition (Leipzig, 1883).
>>> [snip]
>>>> [Re Rilke]
>>>> An astounding poet. I still remember the first moment I ran into a
>>>> poem of his. I've seen him ranked with Shakespeare. My knowledge of
>>>> world poetry is less than complete and I'm leery of ranking poets
>>>> anyway, but I'd venture to say he's one of the world's best.
>>>>
>>> I thought so at one time, back when I was determined to marry the
>>> completely right woman, so long ago...
About Rilke? Even though you haven't read him?
>>> Pushkin's Byronic "Gavriliada"
>>> (1822) is brilliant. Go see a Russian prof who keeps a locked drawer
>>> for works still banned. Googling "Pushkin Gavriliada" give responses
>>> that it can be found now, but I didn't go hunting, as I have serious
>>> doubts of my own about the Annunciation. Gavril = Gabriel.
At amazon.com, I find a couple of intriguing snippets about
Gavriliada:
"In Pushkin's version, God chooses Mary because she's
smoking hot and under-serviced by her husband."
-- Jack Murnighan
"MS copies of his poem Gavriliada (1821), pleasantly
depicting in the irreligious and elegantly lewd style of his
French models an intrigue between the Archangel and ..."
-- Vladimir Nabokov (I guess)
>>>> However, I have little clue as to how you'd react to him. Well, you
>>>> like Tagore. In mathematical terms, consider Rilke Tagore to a
>>>> higher power.
>>>>
>>>>
>> Now *you* need a whack on the head.
Hehe. Perhaps so. But go ahead and read Rilke. You'll like
him better now that you've knocked down the expectation level.
>>>> What gives me the willies isn't human genetic mutation of the
>>>> adaptive sort, but (a) playing God when we're not ready to and (b)
>>>> the carrying forward of human prejudices and other moral flaws into
>>>> a "brave new world."
>>>>
>>>>
>> Calm down. God had nothing to do with it as they don't exist.
God doesn't have to exist for us to play God -- that is,
unless our very existence ...
>>>> [Re A. L. Kroeber]
>>>> Theodora's husband, wasn't he? She was his second wife. Ursula K. Le
>>>> Guin was a daughter of his.
>>
>>
>>
>> Don't know. If so, he robbed the cradle.
Now there's a term I don't yet have in my Glossary!
>> [snip]
>>>> I'm not enamored of experts. Maybe I should be, but what I go for is
>>>> documentation or other forms of evidence.
>>>>
>>>>
>> You must mean self-appointed experts. Real experts are admired by
>> their peers.
Oh, I admire true experts. I'm just not enamored of them.
>> It's a wonder that Wittgenstein didn't fuck up Iris Murdoch's mind.
>> What a mess his work is!
I suppose his work could be summed up as trying to do away
with messes.
>> Too bad! Time for new boots from REI. The last time I took my
>> Merrills to my Ukrainian cobbler, he said he never wanted to see them
>> again. Soon they fell apart catastrophically. I got Montrails from
>> REI, which have great toe protection. They ought to help, unless you
>> have 12 toes.
Now that's where I have a problem. I can't usually buy
footwear that fits me properly. Never have been able to. I
walk into a shoe store and, when I state my size, often I'm
just turned away.
Footwear is made for the mass market, not for the
individual. I might as well be an alien from Mars with three
feet and 22 toes. I've been trying unsuccessfully to buy a
new pair of boots for over a year. I'm green with envy of
those who can just walk into a shoe store and walk away with
a desirable pair that fits. So I have to take my chances and
order from special catalogs, or travel long distances.
I'm tempted to learn the trade. If I can bind books, why not
make my own footwear? And if I go that far, why not
revolutionize the trade and reorient it to individuals?
End of rant.
>> Kluckhohn never said 'deterministic', but just influential.
Okay.
>> And French. In mountaineering we have "nieve penitentes". After
>> crossing a field of those with a full mountaineering pack, you'd
>> rather have been on Calvary with Jesus; at least there you'd only
>> suffocate.
Perhaps, but what a beautiful phrase to focus upon! Would
that be "neige penitente"?
No, I see from a Google search that I'm wrong. "Nieve
penitentes" is correct. Ah, but it's Spanish.
>>>> I've gotta find me some serious Eskimo dictionaries. I seem to keep
>>>> needing 'em.
>>>>
>>>> I once had the privilege of cataloging a 19th century manuscript of
>>>> an Inuit to Danish dictionary. I wish I'd made a copy for myself.
>>>>
>>>>
>> Probably written by Smilla.
I never discovered the author. However, the 148 page
manuscript contained the bookplate of Alphonse Louis Pinart
(1852-1911).
>>>>> [snip] But I'm addicted to English.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I am too; sometimes it's intoxicating.
>>
>>
>>
>> "blood, toil, tears, and sweat"
Ah, a touch of Churchill!
BTW, I just received a pleasant note from my local
librarian, who says, "Thank you for your fun and interesting
[interlibrary loan] requests, they make my day interesting
as a result."
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> The inclusion levels are fucked up because I sent an unfinished copy
>>> to the ng, as I was getting sleepy and hit the wrong button. So I'm
>>> 'replying' to the copy in the 'sent' folder.
>>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
[attributions deleted, as who wrote what should be obvious to any
masochists reading these threads, and the inclusion levels are fucked]
Norm:
>>>>>>> I understand that sixty is old for mathematicians and physicists.
>>>>>>> But it's young for scholars in the humanities. It's about the
>>>>>>> time many a humanities scholar starts outlining his or her magnum
>>>>>>> opus.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, original thinking is then no longer needed.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Right. And therefore any original thinking is likely to be free of
>>>>> the "young bull" stuff.
>>>>>
>>>> That was one of my little traps.
>
>
> Traps? Is this conversation booby trapped??
>
>
I just want to keep you from falling asleep when posting.
>>>> Perhaps your response is one of yours - I'll find out below. To me,
>>>> it's a time to summarize one's mistakes, probably not for new
>>>> monographs, and for writing out all your dark thoughts about the
>>>> status of one's profession's false rabbit trails, that is, all the
>>>> more or less accepted theories that are demonstrably false - those
>>>> within my reach, not Hawking's - which worked so well for me as a
>>>> grad student, and to drop in a few dozen new ideas - or old unsolved
>>>> ones - dripping in difficulty and one hopes opening up new
>>>> specialties that one can no longer pursue, perhaps leading to 100
>>>> PhD thesis ideas, thus provoking rebellion against one's thesis
>>>> advisors among the young bucks and does. In other words, to throw
>>>> the fox in the chicken coop.
>
>
> Sounds like fun.
>
>
>>>> When actually working hard on one's usual research, you don't have
>>>> time for more than one original idea at a time,
>
>
> That's a definite frustration.
>
>
>>>> but in writing one's magnum opus, one can think of many at the same
>>>> time. I'd like to leave behind The Pothole from Hell, to quote the
>>>> title of a NY Times Op-Ed piece from years ago about a real pothole
>>>> on a NJ to NY commuting route that would bring out the locals to
>>>> count the broken axles in the morning, than an Emeril masterpiece.
>
>
> Sounds like fun too.
>
>
>>>>> Anyway, the sixties is a time of life for some when the utmost in
>>>>> resources needs to be marshaled. But I don't suppose that argument
>>>>> will fly with your wife.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> No, she is like the Master in Ecclesiastes: "To the making of books
>>>> there is no end..." and wants to do all the things we are still able
>>>> to do, like look for treasure in the Tora Bora Mountains, and
>>>> perhaps make a few first ascents there. She's given up on
>>>> Aconcagua, but we could do it, now that I have a new heart, have
>>>> stopped drinking, and she will still be running 1/2 marathons. She
>>>> might like to try Citlaltepetl once more (we and our guide were sick
>>>> the last time, almost 20 years ago).
>>>>
>>>> Going abroad, just to absorb other cultures like we used to dream
>>>> about, is looking less and less attractive, as neither of us wants
>>>> to collect life insurance prematurely or get some incapacitating,
>>>> incurable disease, like flesh-eating bacteria.
>
>
> We have flesh-eating bacteria right here in MA.
>
>
>>>> The Tuscan sun and food, Nunavut, and Great Britain are the only
>>>> places I want to go to, besides Oswiecim, Krakow (one can hire
>>>> guides there who can speak any language, even Brooklynese), and
>>>> environs - the only place left in the world to get real hand-kneaded
>>>> bagels, which are good for eating as well as self-defence. Bagels
>>>> from kneading machines aren't the real bagels you read about in
>>>> literature. We just have to be careful not to throw out our TMJs
>>>> when eating them, as one doesn't get proper jaw exercise anymore,
>>>> since we don't have to eat raw baboon meat.
>
>
> Nanavut purportedly has the highest mountain in eastern North America,
> Mount Barbeau.
I don't climb mountains north of the 49th parallel. Ben Nevis would
give me more than enough trouble.
>
>
>>>>> Anything holding you back?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Marilyn Monroe's universal answer to everything: "What does it
>>>> matter?" And besides I have no institutional affiliation anymore,
>>>> so no naive students wandering in and out.
>
>
Speaking of holding back, Katya - what was she thinking? - asked by
e-mail from Bonn for us to get the proper equipment to tie her up in bed
and to two ceiling hooks, to enable her to have indecent things done to
her without personal responsibility. So we went down to REI to get
enough Velcro and nice straps with clip-together snaps. The woman
behind the mountaineering counter was *extremely* interested in what it
was all for. I just winked at her, and she understood immediately. She
began to have trouble completing the transaction. I think we could have
taken her home right there.
Anyway, it was all for naught, as Katya panicked the first time she was
tied up, and never wanted to try it a 2nd time. For an academic woman
of 26, she knew herself less than anyone else I've ever met. Her
birthday is Jan 30, the anniversary of Hitler's becoming Chancellor in
1933, of which she does not like to be reminded. In fact, she didn't
know it before I pointed it out - Hitler is virtually erased from German
school books.
> That makes you an independent scholar, or independent scientist, if you
> prefer. Institutional affiliation has its advantages, but being an
> independent scholar has other advantages.
>
> When I was the head of an academic library, I used to do all I could to
> encourage independent scholars and to remove disadvantages that were due
> to their lack of institutional affiliation. I still keep in fairly
> frequent contact with one of them.
>
>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> There's more demand for professors than oftentimes seems justified.
>>>>> For many topics, read a book or three instead. A lot cheaper.
>>>>>
>>>> Yes, but no credits. You *have* to graduate.
>
>
> Yup. Form and substance are two different things, and American society
> is set up to prefer form. Higher ed not only plays into that tendency
> but has a lot of responsibility for it.
>
>
>>>>> I collect Loebs. I actually have a leather-bound volume signed by
>>>>> Loeb himself.
>>>>>
>>>> *Richard* Loeb?
>
>
> James Loeb (1867-1933). He founded the Loeb Classical Library in 1911.
>
> http://www.hup.harvard.edu/loeb/founder.html
>
You never looked up Richard Loeb, did you?
> The volume is a copy of Cicero, The Speeches: Pro Lege Manilia [etc.]
> (1927).
Sounds like a yeast infection. I have a home cure for that, too.
>
> The inscription is dated, "July 17th 1931, Hochried."
>
>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> The ancient Greeks had their sexologists too. None, though, of the
>>>>> ilk of Masters and Johnson, so far as I know.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Yes they approached from the POVs of Eros and agape, as science was
>>>> not invented until Aristotle.
>
>
> Oh, I think science predated Aristotle. But, yeah, the ancient Greeks
> were producing pop sex manuals, not, so far as I know, scientific studies.
>
>
For fucking the hetaira?
>>>>> Care to elaborate upon your comparison of Sappho and George Eliot?
>>>>>
>>>> Sheer brains, baby.
>
>
> I'd comment, but at this time of night, 10:17 (after completing most of
> the rest of this), am too fatigued.
>
Ever feel so sleepy that it seemed that your flesh was starting to drip
from your bones? I did after 5 years of taking 5 mg of Valium a day.
>
>>>>> Well, if all you're doing is throwing away entertainment fiction, I
>>>>> won't complain as loudly.
>>>>>
>>>> Haven't read much lately?
>
>
> I'm weak on current fiction.
>
>
>>>> Many highly praised novels go to great lengths to be
>>>> incomprehensible. The reviewers give them good reviews, I suspect
>>>> because they want their upcoming garbage to get good reviews.
>>>>
>>>> Really, I wouldn't want to mess up your mind.
>
>
> You mean clutter it up?
>
>
>>>> I'm learning. Nothing by T. Coraghessan Boyle, Martin Amis, and so
>>>> forth.
>
>
> I've never read them.
>
You lucky boy.
>
>>>> My wife and I once walked out on a lecture at Caltech by Saul
>>>> Bellow, as his ratio of pomposity to understanding was one of the
>>>> largest I've ever seen. Had I known you back in 1973 I'd have sent
>>>> you my Travis McGee novels and Bond novels, rather than throwing
>>>> them in the garbage when we moved to Pasadena from Seattle.
>
>
> Hmm, I think I had read just one Bond novel by then. I haven't read any
> since.
>
>
>>>> First Editions by Jane Austin are unusual at yard sales. If you
>>>> came to mine, you'd find the 1959 edition of "Mankind in the Making"
>>>> - on human evolution, beautifully made and written - by William
>>>> Howells, grandson of William Dean Howells, but worthless now 45
>>>> years later, a 1994 Nautical Almanac, stacks of computer S/W manuals
>>>> from the 80s, and so forth.
>>>>
>>>> I have an almost 1st edition of "Reliques of Ancient Poetry" by
>>>> Bishop Percy of Dromore - reprinted beautifully in Philly in 1870
>>>> from a 1744 1st Edition. It obviously passed through the hands of a
>>>> scholar at some time, as one can deduce from the pencilled notes.
>>>> That one you wouldn't find at the sale.
Anyway our Association allows only amalgamated, scheduled, yard sales,
maybe once a year.
>>>>
>>>> My experience is that Library Discard Days are much more productive
>>>> - it's amazing what people who call themselves librarians will throw
>>>> out. Just no more room for the new Danielle Steele novel....
>
>
> Can be a false impression. As a librarian, I let go a lot of wonderful
> books in library book sales. Virtually all were dups, out of scope, or
> poor copies for the library collection.
>
> But then I do wish public libraries would hang on to the good stuff
> given to them, which they often don't. Most people conceive of the
> mission of the public library as much smaller than it ought to be (and
> that's not always the librarian's fault).
>
> Still, library sales are a great way to have a massive dissemination of
> culture in a locality; and I do much prefer them to yard sales; although
> I have found some wonderful books at yard sales.
>
>
>>>> I just heard on the radio that the US has one fourth of the world's
>>>> prisoners. They were driven around the bend by the lies teachers
>>>> told them.
>
>
> I've heard much the same. I don't exactly know what that signifies --
> that US cops are better at their jobs than cops in other nations? that
> the U.S. generates a higher percentage of criminals in the population?
> that the U.S. cherishes freedom less than it lets on?
>
Blame it on testilying police, overzealous prosecutors, defense
attorneys who sleep in court, but most of all on robotically credulous
juries.
> I've often thought there needs to be a wider range of punishments and
> remedies for judges to choose from. Putting so many eggs in the
> imprisonment basket is nonsense.
>
>
Speak to the people. Their representatives passed these absurd laws.
The "people" are almost always wrong. There have been a number of polls
asking average folks if they'd like a particular list of laws to be
enacted, without telling them that they are the Bill of Rights. Only
1/4 to 1/3, at most, favor it. Thank you, Rhode Island. They would
never pass now.
>>>> I don't know how, but the 2nd volume of my ML Gibbon vanished, so
>>>> you might find Vols 1 & 3 at my yard sale.
>
>
> My volume two is from after the Modern Library changed format, and so it
> doesn't match the other two volumes.
>
> I get a kick out of those fancy editions with the progressive crumbling
> of Rome splayed across the spines.
>
I never thought of it that way, but yes, there is a wry humor there.
>
>>>> You wouldn't find my ML edition of Bury's A History of Greece
>>>> (1913), because it's so beautifully written. Though much of it is
>>>> likely wrong now, I intend to be cremated with it.
>
>
> Got that written down somewhere as an official instruction?
>
My wife and I are getting close to writing our wills. She knows about
it. But there has been no urgency as I'm a member of the Illuminati,
and so immortal.
>
>>>> The authors of Relativistic Astrophysics are both dead now - I met
>>>> the junior author at an IAU meeting in Balto - and as far as it goes
>>>> almost everything in it is still correct. Both authors worked with
>>>> Sakharov on the Soviet H-bomb. The senior author died before the
>>>> demise of the Soviet Union, and was never allowed to go abroad (he
>>>> was so bright, he didn't need to anyway, unless he wanted his feet
>>>> kissed). Everything still worthwhile I have in much newer books.
>>>> But you may be right: I just glanced through it, and the pedagogy is
>>>> so great; you can't find equal pedagogy in that subject anymore.
>
>
> That counts.
>
>
>>>>>> I could keep it for sentimental reasons, like my First Edition of
>>>>>> Il Vangelo Secundo Tomaso?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The Gospel according to Thomas -- cool! What editor? What year?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Pope Pius XII, the 1944 Holocaust Edition, as he felt that his Italian
>>> was getting rusty through disuse. Edited by the Congregation
>>>> for the Doctrine of the Faith. Only the title page survives now
>>>> generally; my uncle stole the last remaining copy from the depths of
>>>> the Vatican Library. Don't tell anyone. I wouldn't give it back
>>>> until they get a female Pope.
>
>
> Only the t.p. survives?
>
>
My complete copy is in a vault.
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>>> A donkey is pulling a cart. Yet Newton's 3rd Law says that the
>>>>>> force that the donkey exerts on the cart is equal and opposite to
>>>>>> the force that the cart exerts on the donkey. Therefore the
>>>>>> forces add to zero. How can the cart move?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks. Intriguing. Therefore all motion except eternal motion is
>>>>> an illusion. :-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If you were Zeno. You might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment.
>
>
> :-)
>
>
>>>>>> I can write the paradox in a million different forms, which
>>>>>> confuses the students, who prefer to learn by rote. The answer is
>>>>>> always the same.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Care to share? Different objects, different sets of forces, the
>>>>> totaling of forces in Newton's Third Law being upon one object only?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Getting warm.... "A bee lands on a flower, etc."
>
>
> Too tired to think. But my thought is that the paradox as stated is
> misstated.
>
That's the orinal puzzle, which long predates me. But it is entirely
based on a misdirection that even most physics profs can't see through.
>
>>>> [snip]
>>>> Still looking for one of those vases from Delphi. But none of them
>>>> seem to equal Smilla's in the book (*not* the movie!) "Smilla's
>>>> Sense of Snow". The book ends more than a litle crazily, but sex in
>>>> Copenhagen was interesting. I never heard of, nor even imagined,
>>>> that one. No woman I ever dated had exactly the right equipment.
>>>> Smilla was half Inuit.
>
>
> I saw "Smilla's Sense of Snow" (1997). Julia Ormond may be even harder
> to resist than her look-alike, Juliette Binoche. However, the movie
> disappointed me. IIRC, it turned into a UFO genre piece without warning.
>
> You make the book sound more interesting.
>
It is. I, too, would like to give Julia - her eyes! - and Juliette a
good time together some evening, morning, noon, or night.
>
>>>>>> Isaiah Berlin is the best, as he had no ideology except quest,
>>>>>
>>>>> Quest? You mean questing?
>>>>>
>>>> Hah! My Cassell (1998) says that quest can be used as an
>>>> intransitive verb, and I've read it so outside of my notebooks
>>>> written in a secret code.
>
>
> But you used "quest" as a noun, no?
No, v. i. I guess the sentence fails the parallelism test.
>
>
>>>>> I keep wanting to whack Kerry's speech writers on the back of the
>>>>> head and get them on the ball.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> It's too late for that. Their language centers are hopelessly
>>>> damaged. He should hire Aaron Sorkin, and fire the rest with
>>>> extreme prejudice.
>
>
> Agreed. Except for the "too late" part. Almost too late.
>
>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> Hmm, I ought to take another look at Iris Murdoch's philosophical
>>>>> dialogues to see whether they're more the flavor you describe or
>>>>> the flavor I describe.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Yeesss. I don't recall reading anything written by her, a serious
>>>> gap in my education. Bayley in "Elegy to Iris" said she was still a
>>>> virgin when he married her when she was 29. But she had had divers
>>>> female lovers among the dons or whatnot; I have a picture of her in
>>>> my mind biking around campus from one assignation to another.
>>>> Terrible how she died. Bayley seems to have taken good care of her.
>
>
> I've read Elegy to Iris. Even quoted from it in the Glossary under
> "telegamy."
>
> Acastos (1986) -- the dialogues I mentioned.
>
> I've not yet broken into her fiction, though I have a lot of it. Trying
> to do so feels to me like banging my head against a thick oaken door.
> But her fiction has its fans.
>
>
>>>>>> I wouldn't any more give anyone a copy of Plato than I would poison.
>>>>>
>>>>> Such a moralist you are!
Yes, and I don't diddle young boys.
>>>>>
>>>> I wasted so much of my life, why should I waste anyone else's?
>
>
> Oh, you're making my comebacks harder and harder. :-)
>
>
>>>>> At least no one can blame YOU for hijacking THIS thread.
>>>>
>>>> I think the guy who posted about using spammers as laboratory
>>>> experimental animals played "Tootle", because of their advantages
>>>> over rats. I was hoping someone knew to what I was referring - the
>>>> gymnastic judges and Socrates, but I overestimated the audience.
>
>
> I think you're overestimating me here, since the first sentence of that
> paragraph isn't computing, I guess because of the "Tootle."
>
Yeah, I couldn't get that in neatly. Tootle (1945) is a wartime kid's
book about a little engine that jumped the tracks on his job of hauling
coal and went around the fields smelling buttercups, making wreaths of
them to wear. It was a moralistic tale meant to tell little boys and
girls to do their jobs and ignore the buttercups (i.e., beauty), and
stay on the tracks at all times. My original copy got left in Iowa; my
mother thought that its 1.5 oz would overload the DC-3. Weird chick. I
got another copy a few years ago, and understood its hidden message for
the first time, as I had felt sorry for Tootle when I was 4. Why write
a story like that for little kids when the war was almost over?
Anyway, it's a classic. Amazon lists "134 new and used from $0.01"!
Put it on your shopping list after getting the rattiest one you can, as
then it will look like your own copy. Mine sure doesn't, and I wouldn't
sic it on any poor kid.
>
>
>>>> Ever read George Eliot's translation of Feuerbach? A friend dug it
>>>> out of the library of the religious college to which she was going.
>>>> Hard to find. Google "George Eliot Feuerbach" - some good essays
>>>> there.
>
>
> Yes, I've read part of it. I go back to it now and then.
>
> I just have the Harper Torchbook edition in paperback (1957). Although I
> also have a couple of German editions, the earlier one being the 4th
> edition (Leipzig, 1883).
>
>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>> [Re Rilke]
>>>>> An astounding poet. I still remember the first moment I ran into a
>>>>> poem of his. I've seen him ranked with Shakespeare. My knowledge of
>>>>> world poetry is less than complete and I'm leery of ranking poets
>>>>> anyway, but I'd venture to say he's one of the world's best.
>>>>>
>>>> I thought so at one time, back when I was determined to marry the
>>>> completely right woman, so long ago...
>
>
> About Rilke? Even though you haven't read him?
>
I was confused about whom you were referring to. When I was young I
thought it funny that a man would have that middle name, and even
thought he was a woman for a while. I have little German and less Uralic.
>
>>>> Pushkin's Byronic "Gavriliada" (1822) is brilliant. Go see a Russian
>>>> prof who keeps a locked drawer for works still banned. Googling
>>>> "Pushkin Gavriliada" give responses that it can be found now, but I
>>>> didn't go hunting, as I have serious doubts of my own about the
>>>> Annunciation. Gavril = Gabriel.
>
>
> At amazon.com, I find a couple of intriguing snippets about Gavriliada:
>
> "In Pushkin's version, God chooses Mary because she's smoking hot and
> under-serviced by her husband."
> -- Jack Murnighan
>
> "MS copies of his poem Gavriliada (1821), pleasantly depicting in the
> irreligious and elegantly lewd style of his French models an intrigue
> between the Archangel and ..."
> -- Vladimir Nabokov (I guess)
>
>
First Joseph lay with Mary, then Gabriel lay with Mary, and finally a
very tardy God lay with Mary. So we don't really know who is the father
of Jesus. Very sacreligious, but I hear that our once-horny pope keeps
a copy under his pillow.
>>>>> However, I have little clue as to how you'd react to him. Well, you
>>>>> like Tagore. In mathematical terms, consider Rilke Tagore to a
>>>>> higher power.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> Now *you* need a whack on the head.
>
>
> Hehe. Perhaps so. But go ahead and read Rilke. You'll like him better
> now that you've knocked down the expectation level.
>
>
>>>>> What gives me the willies isn't human genetic mutation of the
>>>>> adaptive sort, but (a) playing God when we're not ready to and (b)
>>>>> the carrying forward of human prejudices and other moral flaws into
>>>>> a "brave new world."
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> Calm down. God had nothing to do with it as they don't exist.
>
>
> God doesn't have to exist for us to play God -- that is, unless our very
> existence ...
>
As if I played a Borg?
>
>>>>> [Re A. L. Kroeber]
>>>>> Theodora's husband, wasn't he? She was his second wife. Ursula K.
>>>>> Le Guin was a daughter of his.
>>>
Yes. I don't like her novels.
>>>
>>> Don't know. If so, he robbed the cradle.
>
> Now there's a term I don't yet have in my Glossary!
>
>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>>>> I'm not enamored of experts. Maybe I should be, but what I go for
>>>>> is documentation or other forms of evidence.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> You must mean self-appointed experts. Real experts are admired by
>>> their peers.
>
>
> Oh, I admire true experts. I'm just not enamored of them.
>
>
I know a few you might be...
>>> It's a wonder that Wittgenstein didn't fuck up Iris Murdoch's mind.
>>> What a mess his work is!
>
>
> I suppose his work could be summed up as trying to do away with messes.
>
>
>>> Too bad! Time for new boots from REI. The last time I took my
>>> Merrills to my Ukrainian cobbler, he said he never wanted to see them
>>> again. Soon they fell apart catastrophically. I got Montrails from
>>> REI, which have great toe protection. They ought to help, unless you
>>> have 12 toes.
>
>
> Now that's where I have a problem. I can't usually buy footwear that
> fits me properly. Never have been able to. I walk into a shoe store and,
> when I state my size, often I'm just turned away.
>
15-1/2?
> Footwear is made for the mass market, not for the individual. I might as
> well be an alien from Mars with three feet and 22 toes. I've been trying
> unsuccessfully to buy a new pair of boots for over a year. I'm green
> with envy of those who can just walk into a shoe store and walk away
> with a desirable pair that fits. So I have to take my chances and order
> from special catalogs, or travel long distances.
21 toes?
My feet are small enough that I bought kids' Stride Right, until a date
told me they were not cool, even if they *were* half the price of
similar grown-up shoes. My wife's feet, on the other hand are so big,
though she's only 5'7" - my tired joke is that she doesn't need
snowshoes in the winter - that she buys men's running shoes. She draws
the line at brogues for work.
>
> I'm tempted to learn the trade. If I can bind books, why not make my own
> footwear? And if I go that far, why not revolutionize the trade and
> reorient it to individuals?
>
> End of rant.
>
You can get a last made for your own feet, and get shoes and boots that
will be perfect fits. Do you have an inheritance coming up? My new
hiking boots and my 1977 Alpenspitz mountaineering boots are more
comfortable than any shoe I have ever owned. Try the Montrails.
A bookbinder, eh? I have my stepfather's preaching bibles "Holy Bible,
Two Version Edition, Oxford, 1899 Version" on India paper, revised
readings in the inner and outer margins, and cross references down a
middle column, plus maps, a proper names' dictionary and a concordance.
You don't find Bibles like this anymore. There is also a simple
motivational shirt-pocket New Testament meant for preacher-men to carry
with them every day, and from its appearance and feel he seems to have
for quite some time. These books are unusable, as they are just falling
apart. I've been told that it would cost untold hundreds to get them
properly reboud and stil retain something of their original character.
But now we have some money. Are you up for the biggest bookbinding
challenge of your life? I've been through The Bible Store in San
Marcos, TX, and there is simply nothing resembling either Bible. So
they have historical value, I suppose.
Since I gave my thin-paper zippered Bible to my rotten unlettered
daughter, now 32, my wife found me at The Bible Store a super-compact
thin-paper, yet legible, complete but bare-bones, zippered Bible, but it
sticks 2" above the top of a shirt pocket, which look ridiculous, and
puts some strain on the seams. It's the one I look up your references
in, as it has *no* reference material in it. It fits easily into an
inside jacket pocket, so if my wife throws me out, I can take it to 5th
Ave in downtown LA and lecture the winos, always keeping my ice axe in
my belt.
My step-father also had a zippered onion-skin Bible, which is what he
was using by the time he married my mother, but no one seems to know
what happened to it, or won't admit it.
>
>>> Kluckhohn never said 'deterministic', but just influential.
>
>
> Okay.
>
>
>>> And French. In mountaineering we have "nieve penitentes". After
>>> crossing a field of those with a full mountaineering pack, you'd
>>> rather have been on Calvary with Jesus; at least there you'd only
>>> suffocate.
>
>
> Perhaps, but what a beautiful phrase to focus upon! Would that be "neige
> penitente"?
>
> No, I see from a Google search that I'm wrong. "Nieve penitentes" is
> correct. Ah, but it's Spanish.
>
Yes, that came to me after I had posted.
>
>>>>> I've gotta find me some serious Eskimo dictionaries. I seem to keep
>>>>> needing 'em.
>>>>>
>>>>> I once had the privilege of cataloging a 19th century manuscript of
>>>>> an Inuit to Danish dictionary. I wish I'd made a copy for myself.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> Probably written by Smilla.
>
> I never discovered the author. However, the 148 page manuscript
> contained the bookplate of Alphonse Louis Pinart (1852-1911).
> >
>
What draws you to the Inuit, Johhny Inukpuk's old love, the hare-lipped
woman in his sculptures? We have one, and a pretty penny it cost, too.
18 cm high, it cost Can$575 in Montreal in 1995 or so. I practically
had a panic attack deciding whether to buy it. Doris said "OK". I let
her handle all the big money deals, just discussing the idea and helping
to set the parameters beforehand.
>>>>>> [snip] But I'm addicted to English.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I am too; sometimes it's intoxicating.
>>>
>>>
The Chinese in Hunan have a pissed off, horny female chimpanzee,
smoking, hissing, and spitting. Apparently she's very particular or,
since she was initially raised by humans, she may want Aanold, not
another chimp.
>>>
>>>
>>> "blood, toil, tears, and sweat"
>
>
> Ah, a touch of Churchill!
Say *that* in Latin to stir the soul.
>
> BTW, I just received a pleasant note from my local librarian, who says,
> "Thank you for your fun and interesting [interlibrary loan] requests,
> they make my day interesting as a result."
>
>
Ask her to your place to see your books. Get some ouzo in honor of the
Olympic games.
jimbat
Norm
> In alt.polyamory, Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> (Norm) wrote in
> <41335DA8...@comcast.net>::
>> [snip]
>>
>> "Jesus loves the little children
>> All the children of the world
>> Red and Yellow, Black and White
>> They're all precious in His sight
>> Jesus loves the little children of the world."
>>
>>From a Sunday School ditty. But Whites aren't white, Blacks
>>aren't black, Asians aren't yellow, and Indians aren't red.
>>Rather confusing for a child, who's being told that all
>>children are loved but that they are fitted into unnatural
>>color categories. A childhood resistance to language
>>categorization shows that language is not necessarily
>>deterministic. To this day I don't see a "Red Indian" as red.
>
>
> I've pointed out before (in here, I think) that basically *all* people are
> some variation on brown, apart from the rare albinos. If we consciously
> remembered this, it would be harder to see people with a different skin
> colour as in some way "opposite"- the black/white thing is a false
> dichotomy.
I agree.
Despite my criticism of the ditty, there was this about it:
It conveyed a message that disliking someone because of
their skin tone wasn't okay. Furthermore, in whatever church
it was song, it placed that church squarely on the side
against racism. I suspect that without it, a lot more
children would have been infected by racism of the blatant sort.
--
Norm
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> [snip]
>>> There really were Red Indians. They lived on some island off the
>>> Maritimes, and commonly rubbed their faces with red ochre.
>>
>>
>>
>> Newfoundland. The Beothuck nation, which became extinct in 1829,
>> except for a few individuals integrated into the Micmacs. The
>> Beothucks may have been the fierce Skraelings encountered by the Vikings.
>
>
> Wow! Where'd you find *that*?
A bunch of places, both online and in my home library. An
online example:
http://www.native-languages.org/beothuk.htm
The Encyclopedia of North American Indians (1996) gives this
spelling: Beotuck.
Shanawdithit was the Beothuck equivalent of Ishi.
>> "Jesus loves the little children
>> All the children of the world
>> Red and Yellow, Black and White
>> They're all precious in His sight
>> Jesus loves the little children of the world."
>>
>> From a Sunday School ditty. But Whites aren't white, Blacks aren't
>> black, Asians aren't yellow, and Indians aren't red. Rather confusing
>> for a child, who's being told that all children are loved but that
>> they are fitted into unnatural color categories. A childhood
>> resistance to language categorization shows that language is not
>> necessarily deterministic. To this day I don't see a "Red Indian" as red.
>>
>>
> All silly stuff, eh?
I could die happy if I could know that my net impact on the
world has turned out to be as beneficial as that ditty has
been. Despite its unnatural categorizing of people, it has
served as a potent force against racism.
>>>>> [snip] Almost all Indians in Alaska are Athapaskan.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What about the Inuit?
>
>
> Inuit are not Indians; they came over no more than 4000 years ago.
> Alutiks about 8,000.
American Heritage (1987) gives for definition 2 of "Indian":
"A member of any of the aboriginal peoples of North America,
South America, or the West Indies."
I've seen Eskimos classed as Indians and not classed as
Indians. If Indians are the indigenous peoples that were
present on the American continents when Columbus stumbled
onto the West Indies, and their descendants, then Eskimos
are Indians. If the term "Indians" is coterminous with
"Native Americans" or "First Nations" or "aboriginals," then
Eskimos are Indians. Of course, none of those terms is
native, so we're talking Western semantics.
If there's some sort of racial classification whereby
Eskimos are regarded as distinct from Indians, there are
huge assumptions going on about the "Amerindian race." I've
long been of the opinion, and nowadays some mainstream
archaeologists are coming around to this point of view, that
the Americas were peopled in pre-Columbian times not by
just a couple of groups coming from one direction but by
many groups from multiple directions. The oceans were
barriers to some, but highways to others. And the ice sheet
didn't connect just Asia to Alaska, but also Europe to North
America.
Try doing a word search under "are Eskimos Indians" at this
site:
http://outlines.law.uvic.ca/courses/indianlandsandgovt/ILGOUT.DOC.
The official answer there is "yes."
Incidentally, I use the term "native" as pertaining to
aboriginals with a bit of a wince, since I'm native to
nowhere else but North America. The song of my soul is a
song of North America.
> [snip]
> One of the hardest things to learn in academics is: know your sources.
> Recycle the bad ones, or give them to those who won't remember what they
> read anyway.
Bring a critical mindset to all sources.
>> I was referring specifically to the Alaskan Inupiaq. As I understand
>> it, their language is one of the four principal subdivisions of Inuit,
>> the other three being:
>>
>> - Western Canadian Inuktun;
>> - Eastern Canadian Inuktitut; and,
>> - Greenlandic Kalaallisut.
>>
> My understanding is that Inupiaq/t run from troubled Kotzebue along the
> sea to somewhere near the Canadian border.
The Eskimo of North Alaska, by Norman A. Chance (1966) seems
to confirm that, although it's another one of those
infuriating books that leaves out the key details that make
all the difference in trying to establish a fix.
I was wondering if Inupiat is the people (as in Chance, "the
genuine people") and Inupiaq the language (as in Dorais).
But I'm not finding any consistency on that (as in the
Encyclopedia of North American Indians and the following link).
http://nnlm.gov/pnr/ethnomed/inupiaq.html
>> Inuit would be one of the three languages (or language clusters) in
>> the Eskaleut family, the other two being Aleut and Yupik.
>
>
> The Aleut call themselves Alutik now. Their language is quite different
> from that of the later Eskimo arrivals. A little look-up seems to
> support your understanding.
I read:
"The Yupik language includes five distinct sublanguages or
dialects, of which three are represented in Alaska: Siberian
Yupik, on St. Lawrence Island and the Siberian coast;
Central Yupik, in southwestern Alaska; and Alutiiq, in the
northern Pacific area (Kodiak Island and Prince William
Sound). Together with their Aleut neighbors to the west, the
Alutiiq people inhabit a warmer, wetter, and largely
ice-free maritime zone significantly different from that of
the northern Eskimos."
--> Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v.
"Eskimo."
I would take that to mean that Aleuts speak Aleut and
Alutiks Yupik.
> [snip]
>> Atanarjuat = Fast Runner (2001) is a beautiful movie. Well worth a
>> watch, despite subtitles.
>>
>>
> Thanks.
>
> Sometimes the technicians do a really lousy job with subtitles, making
> them almost invisible, but I vastly prefer them to dubbing, as is done
> in Europe. Il Vangelo Secundo Mateo first came out with subtitles and
> was wonderful. Then that version was replaced by a dubbed version,
> which ruined the whole feel of the movie.
IIRC, the subtitles in Atanarjuat are big, yellow, and easy
to read. Besides that, the dialogue is fairly sparse.
> [snip]
>>> Century Dictionary Unabridged, Second Edition". Amazon could help
>>> you. They found some old books for me that I had given up on, like
>>> "Denison's Ice Road" which I stole from the Pasadena library to work
>>> on a film script, and finally returned anonymously almost 20 years
>>> later; Amazon found it on the discard list of a Colorato town
>>> library. Why anyone would toss that book out is beyond me. The
>>> barbarians are at the gates, or is that the young Alexander?
>>
>>
>>
>> The Philistines.
>
>
> Oh, I hooooope not. (Hmm. Where does that come from??)
The sense I just used for the term "Philistine" goes back at
least to Thomas Carlyle in 1827, per the Oxford English
Dictionary.
> [snip]
>> "New Man." Is that an allusion to something?
>>
> No. Just that you know by now that I'm a New Man.
Careful! That's theological language.
>> I was talking about your ObPoly remark and the various theories about
>> the "evolution of sex," family development, and all that.
>>
>>
> Oh. My mistake.
>
> Explanation: necessity, or the ability of one man in the tribe to amass
> enough wealth to buy the wives. There were some places in Tibet I was
> told in Cultural Anthro, and probably other hostile places (besides
> Cultural Anthro - some of those Cliffies could easily have handled four
> Harvard men, and I'm sure some did), where it took 3-4 men to support a
> wife and family, hence polyandry.
My most recent reading on the subject was Part 3, "Domestic
Institutions," in The Principles of Sociology, by Herbert
Spencer (I have the 1896 edition at hand).
>> Hmm, I don't have a sense of the word "scenario" being overworked. I
>> must have missed sump'in'.
>>
> Yup. Remember it's a theatrical term. Cassell: "Scenario should never
> be used as though it meant simply a scene or situation."
American Heritage (1987) has definition 3: "An outline of an
imagined chain of events; a possible state of affairs or
course of action." That was my sense. The comment from
Cassell doesn't contradict it.
--
Norm
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>> Nanavut purportedly has the highest mountain in eastern North America,
>> Mount Barbeau.
>
>
> I don't climb mountains north of the 49th parallel. Ben Nevis would
> give me more than enough trouble.
I see there's a Webcam:
http://www.lochaberinternet.co.uk/webcams/bennevis.asp
Once I get onto steep insecure slopes above the tree line, I
start having physical reactions. Knees grow rubbery, my body
rebels. Got any tips on how to combat that?
> [snip]
>>>>>> I collect Loebs. I actually have a leather-bound volume signed by
>>>>>> Loeb himself.
>>>>>>
>>>>> *Richard* Loeb?
>>
>>
>>
>> James Loeb (1867-1933). He founded the Loeb Classical Library in 1911.
>>
>> http://www.hup.harvard.edu/loeb/founder.html
>>
> You never looked up Richard Loeb, did you?
"Richard Loeb [1905-1936], despite his erudition, today
ended his sentence with a proposition."
--> Chicago Daily News
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/LEO_LOEB.HTM
That Richard Loeb?
(Thanks for reminding me.)
> [snip]
>> I'd comment, but at this time of night, 10:17 (after completing most
>> of the rest of this), am too fatigued.
>>
> Ever feel so sleepy that it seemed that your flesh was starting to drip
> from your bones? I did after 5 years of taking 5 mg of Valium a day.
Yes, but not from drugs.
>>>>> I'm learning. Nothing by T. Coraghessan Boyle, Martin Amis, and so
>>>>> forth.
>>
>>
>>
>> I've never read them.
>>
> You lucky boy.
Whew! Something less to read, for once.
> [snip]
>>>>> I just heard on the radio that the US has one fourth of the world's
>>>>> prisoners. They were driven around the bend by the lies teachers
>>>>> told them.
>>
>>
>>
>> I've heard much the same. I don't exactly know what that signifies --
>> that US cops are better at their jobs than cops in other nations? that
>> the U.S. generates a higher percentage of criminals in the population?
>> that the U.S. cherishes freedom less than it lets on?
>>
> Blame it on testilying police, overzealous prosecutors, defense
> attorneys who sleep in court, but most of all on robotically credulous
> juries.
The juries I've been on haven't been terribly credulous. But
they have been annoyingly eager to exit.
The last jury I was on went through each of the major
witnesses in turn, assessing the credibility of each. Was
that ever an effective and fast way to dispatch a
complicated case!
>> I've often thought there needs to be a wider range of punishments and
>> remedies for judges to choose from. Putting so many eggs in the
>> imprisonment basket is nonsense.
>>
>>
> Speak to the people. Their representatives passed these absurd laws.
> The "people" are almost always wrong.
I have more faith in "the people" than that. Over the long
haul, they're generally right. In the short-term, they're
sometimes dead wrong.
> There have been a number of polls
> asking average folks if they'd like a particular list of laws to be
> enacted, without telling them that they are the Bill of Rights. Only
> 1/4 to 1/3, at most, favor it. Thank you, Rhode Island. They would
> never pass now.
I fear you're correct. I run into tons of flak when all I'm
doing is defending either the Bill of Rights or the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
> [snip]
>> Got that written down somewhere as an official instruction?
>>
> My wife and I are getting close to writing our wills. She knows about
> it. But there has been no urgency as I'm a member of the Illuminati,
> and so immortal.
Hmm, I see that the John Birch Society, which used to target
the Illuminati, is still around.
>>>>>>> I could keep it for sentimental reasons, like my First Edition of
>>>>>>> Il Vangelo Secundo Tomaso?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The Gospel according to Thomas -- cool! What editor? What year?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Pope Pius XII, the 1944 Holocaust Edition, as he felt that his Italian
>>>>
>>>> was getting rusty through disuse. Edited by the Congregation
>>>>
>>>>> for the Doctrine of the Faith. Only the title page survives now
>>>>> generally; my uncle stole the last remaining copy from the depths
>>>>> of the Vatican Library. Don't tell anyone. I wouldn't give it
>>>>> back until they get a female Pope.
>>
>>
>>
>> Only the t.p. survives?
>>
>>
> My complete copy is in a vault.
Hmm, I wonder what you're talking about. The Nag Hammadi
texts, which included the first complete Gospel of Thomas
found, weren't unearthed until 1945.
> [snip]
>>>>>> [re solution to the donkey/cart paradox]
>>>>>> Care to share? Different objects, different sets of forces, the
>>>>>> totaling of forces in Newton's Third Law being upon one object only?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Getting warm.... "A bee lands on a flower, etc."
>>
>>
>>
>> Too tired to think. But my thought is that the paradox as stated is
>> misstated.
>>
> That's the orinal puzzle, which long predates me. But it is entirely
> based on a misdirection that even most physics profs can't see through.
You mean I lit on the answer?!
> [snip]
>> But you used "quest" as a noun, no?
>
>
> No, v. i. I guess the sentence fails the parallelism test.
I've outlined a book on questing, but have not yet gotten
around to writing it.
> [snip]
>>>>>> At least no one can blame YOU for hijacking THIS thread.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think the guy who posted about using spammers as laboratory
>>>>> experimental animals played "Tootle", because of their advantages
>>>>> over rats. I was hoping someone knew to what I was referring - the
>>>>> gymnastic judges and Socrates, but I overestimated the audience.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think you're overestimating me here, since the first sentence of
>> that paragraph isn't computing, I guess because of the "Tootle."
>>
> Yeah, I couldn't get that in neatly. Tootle (1945) is a wartime kid's
> book about a little engine that jumped the tracks on his job of hauling
> coal and went around the fields smelling buttercups, making wreaths of
> them to wear. It was a moralistic tale meant to tell little boys and
> girls to do their jobs and ignore the buttercups (i.e., beauty), and
> stay on the tracks at all times. My original copy got left in Iowa; my
> mother thought that its 1.5 oz would overload the DC-3. Weird chick. I
> got another copy a few years ago, and understood its hidden message for
> the first time, as I had felt sorry for Tootle when I was 4. Why write
> a story like that for little kids when the war was almost over?
>
> Anyway, it's a classic. Amazon lists "134 new and used from $0.01"! Put
> it on your shopping list after getting the rattiest one you can, as then
> it will look like your own copy. Mine sure doesn't, and I wouldn't sic
> it on any poor kid.
Oh yeah! You've mentioned Tootle before. Thanks for jogging
my memory. But the sentence still doesn't compute.
> [snip]
>> God doesn't have to exist for us to play God -- that is, unless our
>> very existence ...
>>
> As if I played a Borg?
Sure. But make it Bjorn.
>>>>>> [Re A. L. Kroeber]
>>>>>> Theodora's husband, wasn't he? She was his second wife. Ursula K.
>>>>>> Le Guin was a daughter of his.
>>>>
>>>>
>
> Yes. I don't like her novels.
Because of the ansible?
I've liked most of the ones I've read, although some are a
bit overly epigrammatic. But I don't blame Ursula Le Guin
for that. I like to be epigrammatic too. And, frankly, I
like her epigrams.
The Left Hand of Darkness has had a social impact.
> [snip]
>> Now that's where I have a problem. I can't usually buy footwear that
>> fits me properly. Never have been able to. I walk into a shoe store
>> and, when I state my size, often I'm just turned away.
>>
> 15-1/2?
No. The problem is width.
>> Footwear is made for the mass market, not for the individual. I might
>> as well be an alien from Mars with three feet and 22 toes. I've been
>> trying unsuccessfully to buy a new pair of boots for over a year. I'm
>> green with envy of those who can just walk into a shoe store and walk
>> away with a desirable pair that fits. So I have to take my chances and
>> order from special catalogs, or travel long distances.
>
>
> 21 toes?
Twenty-two. We Martians are not tri-symmetrical. And we
inhabit the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, or rather
it inhabits us. Or rather both. You've heard of coinherence,
haven't you?
As for that third foot, well, you already have too much
information. But here's a clue: Reproduction requires at
least three sentient beings.
> [snip]
> You can get a last made for your own feet, and get shoes and boots that
> will be perfect fits. Do you have an inheritance coming up? My new
> hiking boots and my 1977 Alpenspitz mountaineering boots are more
> comfortable than any shoe I have ever owned. Try the Montrails.
Back in the '70s Danner had my size. I drew them an outline
and they sent me EEEEE. (EEE can be livable.) The most
comfortable footwear I've ever owned, except for being a bit
too open at the top and consequently picking up debris. By
the time I contacted Danner for a new pair, they'd
discontinued my size.
> A bookbinder, eh?
Actually I haven't rebound any books in several years. I
have a big back up of books needing it in my home library.
> I have my stepfather's preaching bibles "Holy Bible,
> Two Version Edition, Oxford, 1899 Version" on India paper, revised
> readings in the inner and outer margins, and cross references down a
> middle column, plus maps, a proper names' dictionary and a concordance.
> You don't find Bibles like this anymore.
I expect it's actually fairly common. The value is chiefly
sentimental. There's also the information value for you.
I'm guessing that the versions are the KJV and the Revised,
that right?
> There is also a simple
> motivational shirt-pocket New Testament meant for preacher-men to carry
> with them every day, and from its appearance and feel he seems to have
> for quite some time. These books are unusable, as they are just falling
> apart. I've been told that it would cost untold hundreds to get them
> properly reboud and stil retain something of their original character.
Yeah, probably so -- $150, $250, $350, maybe more depending;
$90 would be cheap. That's each.
However, since they almost certainly don't have artifactual
value, you could go for a different type of binding, which I
did with my father's somewhat similar Bible. A hard binding
with a linen or other thickly woven cloth covering would
probably work well, the result being sturdy, functional, and
aesthetic.
The problem (or one problem) would be the loose pages,
especially if they're frayed. They can be trimmed and tipped
in; but when I rebound my own childhood Bible, some pages
were in such bad shape that there wasn't much to hang on to,
so the Bible remains fragile.
Another problem might be the preservation of handwritten
notes. If you find a binder willing to take on the project
(and many refuse personal Bibles), make sure to tell 'em not
to guillotine the book. It's difficult enough to preserve
marginalia without lopping off the edges or spine.
> But now we have some money. Are you up for the biggest bookbinding
> challenge of your life?
Hehe. You heard the state of things.
> I've been through The Bible Store in San
> Marcos, TX, and there is simply nothing resembling either Bible. So
> they have historical value, I suppose.
You'd have to check used bookstores. Some specialize in old
Bibles.
> Since I gave my thin-paper zippered Bible to my rotten unlettered
> daughter, now 32, my wife found me at The Bible Store a super-compact
> thin-paper, yet legible, complete but bare-bones, zippered Bible, but it
> sticks 2" above the top of a shirt pocket, which look ridiculous, and
> puts some strain on the seams. It's the one I look up your references
> in, as it has *no* reference material in it. It fits easily into an
> inside jacket pocket, so if my wife throws me out, I can take it to 5th
> Ave in downtown LA and lecture the winos, always keeping my ice axe in
> my belt.
As a general rule, shirt pockets should be bigger.
> My step-father also had a zippered onion-skin Bible, which is what he
> was using by the time he married my mother, but no one seems to know
> what happened to it, or won't admit it.
>
> [snip]
> What draws you to the Inuit, Johhny Inukpuk's old love, the hare-lipped
> woman in his sculptures?
No, I've never run into Johnny Inukput, until now.
At the moment, relationship terms. But also, Eskimos
intersect with several of my long term interests --
languages, North American Indians, Vikings, pre-Columbian
settlement of North America, and so forth.
> We have one, and a pretty penny it cost, too.
> 18 cm high, it cost Can$575 in Montreal in 1995 or so. I practically
> had a panic attack deciding whether to buy it. Doris said "OK". I let
> her handle all the big money deals, just discussing the idea and helping
> to set the parameters beforehand.
What are the sculptor's dates?
> [snip]
> Ask her to your place to see your books. Get some ouzo in honor of the
> Olympic games.
There's another four-letter word I didn't know. I do like
licorice. Hmm, ouzo interest piqued.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>> There really were Red Indians. They lived on some island off the
>>>> Maritimes, and commonly rubbed their faces with red ochre.
>>>
>>>
>>> Newfoundland. The Beothuck nation, which became extinct in 1829,
>>> except for a few individuals integrated into the Micmacs. The
>>> Beothucks may have been the fierce Skraelings encountered by the
>>> Vikings.
>>
>>
>> Wow! Where'd you find *that*?
>
It was years ago, maybe 30, I first read about it.
>
> A bunch of places, both online and in my home library. An online example:
>
> http://www.native-languages.org/beothuk.htm
>
> The Encyclopedia of North American Indians (1996) gives this
> spelling: Beotuck.
>
> Shanawdithit was the Beothuck equivalent of Ishi.
>
Was he so crooked that when he died he had to be screwed into the ground
in my grandmother's colorful phrase.
>
>>> "Jesus loves the little children
>>> All the children of the world
>>> Red and Yellow, Black and White
>>> They're all precious in His sight
>>> Jesus loves the little children of the world."
>>>
>>> From a Sunday School ditty. But Whites aren't white, Blacks aren't
>>> black, Asians aren't yellow, and Indians aren't red. Rather confusing
>>> for a child, who's being told that all children are loved but that
>>> they are fitted into unnatural color categories. A childhood
>>> resistance to language categorization shows that language is not
>>> necessarily deterministic. To this day I don't see a "Red Indian" as
>>> red.
>>>
>>>
>> All silly stuff, eh?
>
>
> I could die happy if I could know that my net impact on the
> world has turned out to be as beneficial as that ditty has
> been. Despite its unnatural categorizing of people, it has
> served as a potent force against racism.
>
>
It wasn't taught in Fairbanks.
>>>>>> [snip] Almost all Indians in Alaska are Athapaskan.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> What about the Inuit?
>>
>>
>> Inuit are not Indians; they came over no more than 4000 years ago.
>> Alutiks about 8,000.
>
>
> American Heritage (1987) gives for definition 2 of "Indian":
> "A member of any of the aboriginal peoples of North America,
> South America, or the West Indies."
>
> I've seen Eskimos classed as Indians and not classed as
> Indians. If Indians are the indigenous peoples that were
> present on the American continents when Columbus stumbled
> onto the West Indies, and their descendants, then Eskimos
> are Indians. If the term "Indians" is coterminous with
> "Native Americans" or "First Nations" or "aboriginals," then
> Eskimos are Indians. Of course, none of those terms is
> native, so we're talking Western semantics.
>
In the North there is a strict demarcation between them, and they are
indeed utterly unlike, with completely different psychological makeups
and mental abilities. There is a huge gap in time between their
arrivals, and they are physically quite different, with the Indians
being much more like us. Would I include descendents of the Ainu in
America among the Indians? I'm not sure. The Ainu are closely related
to Polynesians, but still not well understood.
Any physical anthropologist can immediately tell the difference between
and Eskimo skeleton and an Indian's. That's enough for me, since I was
once a physical anthro major.
There are Eskimos (Samoyeds, a pejorative term) across the way in
Siberia, but no Indians anywhere in Asia. Toss out that worthless
dictionary and purge your mind. Know your sources.
> If there's some sort of racial classification whereby
> Eskimos are regarded as distinct from Indians, there are
> huge assumptions going on about the "Amerindian race." I've
> long been of the opinion, and nowadays some mainstream
> archaeologists are coming around to this point of view, that
> the Americas were peopled in pre-Columbian times not by
> just a couple of groups coming from one direction but by
> many groups from multiple directions. The oceans were
> barriers to some, but highways to others. And the ice sheet
> didn't connect just Asia to Alaska, but also Europe to North
> America.
>
> Try doing a word search under "are Eskimos Indians" at this site:
>
> http://outlines.law.uvic.ca/courses/indianlandsandgovt/ILGOUT.DOC.
>
> The official answer there is "yes."
You can find anyone to say anything, if you look hard enough. There are
sites that prove that Shakespeare cannot have written his plays and sonnets
The important criterion for me is that American Indians did *not*
consider Ekimos to be one of them. Eskimo is a pejorative word in
Athapaskan, i believe. I say, let the Indians decide, not the
Palefaces, or White Eyes (Apache).
>
> Incidentally, I use the term "native" as pertaining to aboriginals with
> a bit of a wince, since I'm native to nowhere else but North America.
> The song of my soul is a song of North America.
>
>
Yes, we can be looked at as just another migration.
>> [snip]
>> One of the hardest things to learn in academics is: know your sources.
>> Recycle the bad ones, or give them to those who won't remember what
>> they read anyway.
>
>
> Bring a critical mindset to all sources.
>
>
>>> I was referring specifically to the Alaskan Inupiaq. As I understand
>>> it, their language is one of the four principal subdivisions of
>>> Inuit, the other three being:
>>>
>>> - Western Canadian Inuktun;
>>> - Eastern Canadian Inuktitut; and,
>>> - Greenlandic Kalaallisut.
>>>
>> My understanding is that Inupiaq/t run from troubled Kotzebue along
>> the sea to somewhere near the Canadian border.
>
>
But their dialect is very different from those in Nunavut, NW Terr., and
Greenland.
> The Eskimo of North Alaska, by Norman A. Chance (1966) seems to confirm
> that, although it's another one of those infuriating books that leaves
> out the key details that make all the difference in trying to establish
> a fix.
Recycle time...
>
> I was wondering if Inupiat is the people (as in Chance, "the genuine
> people") and Inupiaq the language (as in Dorais). But I'm not finding
> any consistency on that (as in the Encyclopedia of North American
> Indians and the following link).
>
> http://nnlm.gov/pnr/ethnomed/inupiaq.html
>
>
I think they are just alternate spellings. I can't pronounce the final
consonant, if that is what it is.
>>> Inuit would be one of the three languages (or language clusters) in
>>> the Eskaleut family, the other two being Aleut and Yupik.
>>
>> The Aleut call themselves Alutik now. Their language is quite
>> different from that of the later Eskimo arrivals. A little look-up
>> seems to support your understanding.
>
>
> I read:
>
> "The Yupik language includes five distinct sublanguages or
> dialects, of which three are represented in Alaska: Siberian
> Yupik, on St. Lawrence Island and the Siberian coast;
> Central Yupik, in southwestern Alaska; and Alutiiq, in the
> northern Pacific area (Kodiak Island and Prince William
> Sound). Together with their Aleut neighbors to the west, the
> Alutiiq people inhabit a warmer, wetter, and largely
> ice-free maritime zone significantly different from that of
> the northern Eskimos."
> --> Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v.
> "Eskimo."
>
> I would take that to mean that Aleuts speak Aleut and Alutiks Yupik.
>
I don't think there is a distinction. My best departed friend was part
Aleut from Kodiak, as it was called then, but I saw a TV historical
program on Russian massacres by a Kodiak Harvard grad student who called
all Alutiks.
>
"To the making of books there is no end, and much study is a weariness
to the soul." Here's a nice spiritual Athapaskan word for you:
'nasdijj', meaning 'to become again'. Don't ask me how to pronounce it,
as Athapaskan, like Dutch, is a throat disease.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Atanarjuat = Fast Runner (2001) is a beautiful movie. Well worth a
>>> watch, despite subtitles.
>>>
>>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Sometimes the technicians do a really lousy job with subtitles, making
>> them almost invisible, but I vastly prefer them to dubbing, as is done
>> in Europe. Il Vangelo Secundo Mateo first came out with subtitles and
>> was wonderful. Then that version was replaced by a dubbed version,
>> which ruined the whole feel of the movie.
>
>
> IIRC, the subtitles in Atanarjuat are big, yellow, and easy
> to read. Besides that, the dialogue is fairly sparse.
>
>
Many scenes of rubdowns with walrus blubber?
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> Century Dictionary Unabridged, Second Edition". Amazon could help
>>>> you. They found some old books for me that I had given up on, like
>>>> "Denison's Ice Road" which I stole from the Pasadena library to work
>>>> on a film script, and finally returned anonymously almost 20 years
>>>> later; Amazon found it on the discard list of a Colorato town
>>>> library. Why anyone would toss that book out is beyond me. The
>>>> barbarians are at the gates, or is that the young Alexander?
>>>
>>>
>>> The Philistines.
>>
>>
Who got a bad rap.
>>
>> Oh, I hooooope not. (Hmm. Where does that come from??)
>
>
> The sense I just used for the term "Philistine" goes back at
> least to Thomas Carlyle in 1827, per the Oxford English Dictionary.
>
>
"Hamlet" is coming up later this month. I wouldn't go, except that we
have season tickets. Kelly McGillis is Lady Macbeth, but she never ends
a performance without having chewed all the scenery; perhaps she pays
for new scenery out of her Top Gun nest egg. The Philistine playing
Macbeth had to be told, according to the official play booklet, that
Shakespeare alternates passages of ordinary language with passages of
elevated, symbolically rich language. Maybe I'll have another chance to
see the orange-faced Bob Novak during the intermission, and hiss at him
again...
>> [snip]
>>
>>> "New Man." Is that an allusion to something?
>>>
>> No. Just that you know by now that I'm a New Man.
>
>
> Careful! That's theological language.
>
>
I'm theological, with the emphasis on the logical. He, he, I love
splitting words in ways that do great violence to their etymology.
>>> I was talking about your ObPoly remark and the various theories about
>>> the "evolution of sex," family development, and all that.
>>>
>>>
>> Oh. My mistake.
>>
>> Explanation: necessity, or the ability of one man in the tribe to
>> amass enough wealth to buy the wives. There were some places in Tibet
>> I was told in Cultural Anthro, and probably other hostile places
>> (besides Cultural Anthro,
>> which had only a one semester reading list 40 books long -
>> some of those Cliffies could easily have
>> handled four Harvard men, and I'm sure some did), where it took 3-4
>> men to support a wife and family, hence polyandry.
>
>
> My most recent reading on the subject was Part 3, "Domestic
> Institutions," in The Principles of Sociology, by Herbert
> Spencer (I have the 1896 edition at hand).
>
An odd duck. He proposed marriage to George Eliot, but she considered
his thinking to be too inferior.
>
>>> Hmm, I don't have a sense of the word "scenario" being overworked. I
>>> must have missed sump'in'.
>>>
>> Yup. Remember it's a theatrical term. Cassell: "Scenario should
>> never be used as though it meant simply a scene or situation."
>
>
> American Heritage (1987) has definition 3: "An outline of an
> imagined chain of events; a possible state of affairs or
> course of action." That was my sense. The comment from
> Cassell doesn't contradict it.
>
Still, give that dictionary to a Philistine. I use Cassell mostly for
spellings and various usages, as I'm no longer in my old spelling-bee form.
>
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>> Nanavut purportedly has the highest mountain in eastern North
>>> America, Mount Barbeau.
>>
>>
>>
>> I don't climb mountains north of the 49th parallel. Ben Nevis would
>> give me more than enough trouble.
>
>
> I see there's a Webcam:
>
> http://www.lochaberinternet.co.uk/webcams/bennevis.asp
>
> Once I get onto steep insecure slopes above the tree line, I start
> having physical reactions. Knees grow rubbery, my body rebels. Got any
> tips on how to combat that?
Go back down, carefully and immediately, after making sure your crampons
are secure. That's what I would do. Plant that ice axe and remember
Chouinard's dictum: "Do not fall."
But then it seems probable you don't have mountaineering boots, which
are the only boots to which you can strap crampons. Stay out of
danger!!! My knees would quake, too, without crampons up there, but
then I'd never go there without crampons.
Twenty years ago I backed off a peak on a Sierra Club trip I was not
leading, though I was a certified leader at that level, because I had a
moment of doubt at 13,000' (I could almost touch the peak) about tying a
bowline for a rappel down a ledge: "rabbit comes out of the hole, goes
around the tree, and goes back down the hole, and goes into a knot". I
sensed I was suffering from altitude, odd at that level. Perhaps I was
a bit short of oxygen from my advancing heart disease, of which I was
unaware. I finished tying the bowline on my own, so the leader said
"Let's go, Jim." I said, "No, I'll be a danger to the group." No one I
ever saw in the Sierra Peaks Section (q.v.)*ever* backed off a peak as
long as they could *approximately* put one foot in front of the other.
That's why they were called "peak baggers".
I got kicked out of the SPS after raising hell about their safety
"practices" and poor training. I wrote a critique of at least 20 pages,
as I had seen some appalling things on trips. On the 'Extreme' (highest
level of certification) navigation test, the instructor got lost, so I
had to lead the whole group back to camp. All he had to do was look at
his watch and the sun to get straightened out, but no, he was stuck with
his compass and topo map, which he read about 3rd grade level.
Soon afterwards, two people were killed on their trips, and the SC lost
its insurance for that kind of trip. It took 15 years of wheedling for
them to get part of it back. When I met on the street a fellow member
of the SPS board, I told her, "I told you so, didn't I?" She refused to
respond.
Follow it up by going to the best ride park, riding the wildest rides
there, pretend you're in an Me-109 shooting up F-117s or whatever saves
your sanity. When I was at Harvard that would be Revere Beach, but Six
Flags must have something going now up there. I mostly overcame my
serious fear of heights by riding rides.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>>>> I collect Loebs. I actually have a leather-bound volume signed by
>>>>>>> Loeb himself.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> *Richard* Loeb?
>>>
>>> James Loeb (1867-1933). He founded the Loeb Classical Library in 1911.
>>>
>>> http://www.hup.harvard.edu/loeb/founder.html
>>>
>> You never looked up Richard Loeb, did you?
>
>
> "Richard Loeb [1905-1936], despite his erudition, today ended his
> sentence with a proposition."
> --> Chicago Daily News
>
> http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/LEO_LOEB.HTM
>
> That Richard Loeb?
Yes.
*That* must have been what OJ's jury did. He's still in Florida looking
for Nicole's killer....
>>> I've often thought there needs to be a wider range of punishments and
>>> remedies for judges to choose from. Putting so many eggs in the
>>> imprisonment basket is nonsense.
>>>
>>>
At the Space telescope I recommended ten lashes during lunch time for
certain managers, and persons who had Jack Daniels in their desks, of
which there were more than a few. Since the ST Science Institute
(STScI, hence stsci.edu) is on a hill, heads would roll nicely down the
road.
>> Speak to the people. Their representatives passed these absurd laws.
>> The "people" are almost always wrong.
>
>
> I have more faith in "the people" than that. Over the long haul, they're
> generally right. In the short-term, they're sometimes dead wrong.
>
>
>> There have been a number of polls asking average folks if they'd like
>> a particular list of laws to be enacted, without telling them that
>> they are the Bill of Rights. Only 1/4 to 1/3, at most, favor it.
>> Thank you, Rhode Island. They would never pass now.
>
>
> I fear you're correct. I run into tons of flak when all I'm doing is
> defending either the Bill of Rights or the Universal Declaration of
> Human Rights.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Got that written down somewhere as an official instruction?
>>>
>> My wife and I are getting close to writing our wills. She knows about
>> it. But there has been no urgency as I'm a member of the Illuminati,
>> and so immortal.
>
>
> Hmm, I see that the John Birch Society, which used to target the
> Illuminati, is still around.
>
>
The Illuminati were a bunch of Medieval gangsters with Masonic-type
rituals. The detox joint, Ashley, probably as good as Betty Ford, I
stayed in for a month had as its only doctor one who'd rather tell you
he was a member of the Illuminati than listen to anything *you* had to
say. A complete fruitcake. I challenge Betty to hire him. I met a
number of stars there, some from my youth, some now departed, from SNL,
but of course I can't mention them. The treatment for one woman seems
to have taken, as I see her on TV in commercials from time to time. My
daughter recognized her immediately. I spent a month afterwards in
total zombitude, then started to drink again so that I could feel
*something*.
>>>>>>>> I could keep it for sentimental reasons, like my First Edition
>>>>>>>> of Il Vangelo Secundo Tomaso?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The Gospel according to Thomas -- cool! What editor? What year?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Pope Pius XII, the 1944 Holocaust Edition, as he felt that his
>>>>>> Italian
>>>>> was getting rusty through disuse. Edited by the Congregation
>>>>>> for the Doctrine of the Faith. Only the title page survives now
>>>>>> generally; my uncle stole the last remaining copy from the depths
>>>>>> of the Vatican Library. Don't tell anyone. I wouldn't give it
>>>>>> back until they get a female Pope.
>>>
>>>
>>> Only the t.p. survives?
>>>
>>>
>> My complete copy is in a vault.
>
>
> Hmm, I wonder what you're talking about. The Nag Hammadi texts, which
> included the first complete Gospel of Thomas found, weren't unearthed
> until 1945.
>
>
Oh, oh. Caught again. Well, I got my digs in.
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>>>> [re solution to the donkey/cart paradox]
>>>>>>> Care to share? Different objects, different sets of forces, the
>>>>>>> totaling of forces in Newton's Third Law being upon one object only?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Getting warm.... "A bee lands on a flower, etc."
>>>
>>>
>>> Too tired to think. But my thought is that the paradox as stated is
>>> misstated.
>>>
>> That's the orinal puzzle, which long predates me. But it is entirely
>> based on a misdirection that even most physics profs can't see through.
>
You might be interested in "The Chicken from Minsk", a collection of
mostly non-mathematical Russian puzzles. The book "Yiddishe Kop"
(roughly 'Jewish brains') is a guide to puzzle solving. It might put
you in the right frame of mind. I will not give up the answer easily.
>
> You mean I lit on the answer?!
>
Noooooo. But a journey of 1000 li begins with a single step, so long as
it is in the right direction. I just told you that your first step is
in the right direction. There is a definitive answer in terms of
Newton's Laws.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> But you used "quest" as a noun, no?
>>
>> No, v. i. I guess the sentence fails the parallelism test.
>
>
> I've outlined a book on questing, but have not yet gotten around to
> writing it.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>>>> At least no one can blame YOU for hijacking THIS thread.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think the guy who posted about using spammers as laboratory
>>>>>> experimental animals played "Tootle", because of their advantages
>>>>>> over rats. I was hoping someone knew to what I was referring -
>>>>>> the gymnastic judges and Socrates, but I overestimated the audience.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think you're overestimating me here, since the first sentence of
>>> that paragraph isn't computing, I guess because of the "Tootle."
>>>
>> Yeah, I couldn't get that in neatly. Tootle (1945) is a wartime kid's
>> book about a little engine that jumped the tracks on his job of
>> hauling coal and went around the fields smelling buttercups, making
>> wreaths of them to wear. It was a moralistic tale meant to tell
>> little boys and girls to do their jobs and ignore the buttercups
>> (i.e., beauty), and stay on the tracks at all times. My original copy
>> got left in Iowa; my mother thought that its 1.5 oz would overload the
>> DC-3. Weird chick. I got another copy a few years ago, and understood
>> its hidden message for the first time, as I had felt sorry for Tootle
>> when I was 4. Why write a story like that for little kids when the
>> war was almost over?
>>
Contemplation last night led to the realization they my mother's forcing
me to leave Tootle behind was an invented memory, as I now remember my
cubby hole in Fairbanks with all my Golden Books from Iowa. My mother
and I have many issues that cannot be laid to rest, as she denies
everything. And here I go inventing another one!
>> Anyway, it's a classic. Amazon lists "134 new and used from $0.01"!
>> Put it on your shopping list after getting the rattiest one you can,
>> as then it will look like your own copy. Mine sure doesn't, and I
>> wouldn't sic it on any poor kid.
>
>
> Oh yeah! You've mentioned Tootle before. Thanks for jogging my memory.
> But the sentence still doesn't compute.
>
OK, a comma after 'guy', and another after 'animals'; not good, but
perhaps better. I've veered from over-puntuation to the point of
unintelligibility, to under-punctuation to the same end.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> God doesn't have to exist for us to play God -- that is, unless our
>>> very existence ...
>>>
>> As if I played a Borg?
>
>
> Sure. But make it Bjorn.
>
>
He went bankrupt, then tried to come back using wooden raquets, and got
his butt whipped. Not Bjorn (bear), please. Perhaps Patrick Stewart as
a Borg. I saw him once here in Baltimore at our teller machine, but
gave him his privacy. He'd left his Borg suit at the studio.
>>>>>>> [Re A. L. Kroeber]
>>>>>>> Theodora's husband, wasn't he? She was his second wife. Ursula K.
>>>>>>> Le Guin was a daughter of his.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>
>> Yes. I don't like her novels.
>
>
> Because of the ansible?
Just the English style.
>
> I've liked most of the ones I've read, although some are a bit overly
> epigrammatic. But I don't blame Ursula Le Guin for that. I like to be
> epigrammatic too. And, frankly, I like her epigrams.
>
> The Left Hand of Darkness has had a social impact.
>
>
As with Hurricane Carter, my left hand *is* Darkness.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Now that's where I have a problem. I can't usually buy footwear that
>>> fits me properly. Never have been able to. I walk into a shoe store
>>> and, when I state my size, often I'm just turned away.
>>>
>> 15-1/2?
>
>
> No. The problem is width.
>
>
>>> Footwear is made for the mass market, not for the individual. I might
>>> as well be an alien from Mars with three feet and 22 toes. I've been
>>> trying unsuccessfully to buy a new pair of boots for over a year. I'm
>>> green with envy of those who can just walk into a shoe store and walk
>>> away with a desirable pair that fits. So I have to take my chances
>>> and order from special catalogs, or travel long distances.
>>
Ask Disney World Animal Kingdom if they have a baby elephant who can
help you break them in. Do you have hair all over your feet and are
very short?
I presume you have tried the following:
www.shoemall.com
www.dealtime.com
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos
www.worldclassgear.com/montrail_torre_gtx_hiking_boots
>>
>>
>> 21 toes?
>
>
> Twenty-two. We Martians are not tri-symmetrical. And we inhabit the
> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, or rather it inhabits us. Or
> rather both. You've heard of coinherence, haven't you?
Of course, where would Satan be without me, or I without him?
>
> As for that third foot, well, you
> already have too much information. But
> here's a clue: Reproduction requires at least three sentient beings.
>
Not so much a foot as a shortarm is it, buddy? I'm in favor of the
three sentiant beings, especially if their names are Misty and Kerri, or
Julia and Juliette, and don't mind getting chocolate licked off them.
>
>> [snip]
>> You can get a last made for your own feet, and get shoes and boots
>> that will be perfect fits. Do you have an inheritance coming up? My
>> new hiking boots and my 1977 Alpenspitz mountaineering boots are more
>> comfortable than any shoe I have ever owned. Try the Montrails.
>
>
> Back in the '70s Danner had my size. I drew them an outline and they
> sent me EEEEE. (EEE can be livable.) The most comfortable footwear I've
> ever owned, except for being a bit too open at the top and consequently
> picking up debris. By the time I contacted Danner for a new pair, they'd
> discontinued my size.
>
>
>> A bookbinder, eh?
>
>
> Actually I haven't rebound any books in several years. I have a big back
> up of books needing it in my home library.
>
>
>> I have my stepfather's preaching bibles "Holy Bible, Two Version
>> Edition, Oxford, 1899 Version" on India paper, revised readings in the
>> inner and outer margins, and cross references down a middle column,
>> plus maps, a proper names' dictionary and a concordance. You don't
>> find Bibles like this anymore.
>
>
> I expect it's actually fairly common. The value is chiefly sentimental.
> There's also the information value for you.
>
Information??? St. John's relativistic astrophysics?
> I'm guessing that the versions are the KJV and the Revised, that right?
Yes, the Rev KJV, nothing by the United Bible Societies. And yes
they're of sentimental value. I have no interest in a modern printing,
even if it were identical. But I went through the whole Bible Store in
San Marcos with the help of their expert on their stock, and he was
pretty sure I'd not find another one. Just think of the souls he saved
while the young ladies were pining over him: he was handsome, strong as
an ox, worked like a demon for his room and board while travelling, and
could sing beautifully - even had a record in the 30s.
>
>
My mother more or less blackmailed him into marrying her.
>> There is also a simple motivational shirt-pocket New Testament meant
>> for preacher-men
>>(actually "Fishers of Men") to carry with them every day, and from
its appearance
>> and feel he seems to have for quite some time. These books are
>> unusable, as they are just falling apart. I've been told that it
>> would cost untold hundreds to get them properly rebound and stil retain
>> something of their original character.
>
>
> Yeah, probably so -- $150, $250, $350, maybe more depending; $90 would
> be cheap. That's each.
>
> However, since they almost certainly don't have artifactual value, you
> could go for a different type of binding, which I did with my father's
> somewhat similar Bible. A hard binding with a linen or other thickly
> woven cloth covering would probably work well, the result being sturdy,
> functional, and aesthetic.
>
> The problem (or one problem) would be the loose pages, especially if
> they're frayed. They can be trimmed and tipped in; but when I rebound my
> own childhood Bible, some pages were in such bad shape that there wasn't
> much to hang on to, so the Bible remains fragile.
>
> Another problem might be the preservation of handwritten notes. If you
> find a binder willing to take on the project (and many refuse personal
> Bibles), make sure to tell 'em not to guillotine the book. It's
> difficult enough to preserve marginalia without lopping off the edges or
> spine.
>
>
Well, I could try the Document Preservation Department of our local
Walters Art Gallery for expert persons willing to take on a side project.
>> But now we have some money. Are you up for the biggest bookbinding
>> challenge of your life?
>
>
> Hehe. You heard the state of things.
>
OK, Bigfoot. I had a roommate at Harvard with EEEE shoes. I teased him
that either Ringling Bros or Harvard Medical School would eventually get
him. He was good humored about it, as he wanted to lure me into
physical anthro, and did.
>
>
> You'd have to check used bookstores. Some specialize in old Bibles.
>
>
No interest in others. These are permeated with the lust of young women.
>> Since I gave my thin-paper zippered Bible to my rotten unlettered
>> daughter, now 32, my wife found me at The Bible Store a super-compact
>> thin-paper, yet legible, complete but bare-bones, zippered Bible, but
>> it sticks 2" above the top of a shirt pocket, which look ridiculous,
>> and puts some strain on the seams. It's the one I look up your
>> references in, as it has *no* reference material in it. It fits
>> easily into an inside jacket pocket, so if my wife throws me out, I
>> can take it to 5th Ave in downtown LA and lecture the winos, always
>> keeping my ice axe in my belt.
>
>
> As a general rule, shirt pockets should be bigger.
>
>
>> My step-father also had a zippered onion-skin Bible, which is what he
>> was using by the time he married my mother, but no one seems to know
>> what happened to it, or won't admit it.
>>
The Bible Store told me that onion skin paper isn't made anymore.
>> [snip]
>> What draws you to the Inuit, Johhny Inukpuk's old love, the
>> hare-lipped woman in his sculptures?
>
>
> No, I've never run into Johnny Inukput, until now.
Inukpuk, according to the Certificate of Authenticity. The gallery in
Montreal said that this was one of his last carvings, as he had *far*
outlived his four-score and ten. His carvings are not rare, but no two
are nuch alike. You'll get plenty of him with Google.
>
> At the moment, relationship terms. But also, Eskimos intersect with
> several of my long term interests -- languages, North American Indians,
> Vikings, pre-Columbian settlement of North America, and so forth.
>
>
>> We have an Inukpuk, and a pretty penny it cost, too. 18 cm high, it cost
>> Can$575 in Montreal in 1995 or so. I practically had a panic attack
>> deciding whether to buy it. Doris said "OK". I let her handle all
>> the big money deals, just discussing the idea and helping to set the
>> parameters beforehand.
>
>
> What are the sculptor's dates?
>
>
Don't know. Can't find it. There are a lot of Inukpuks. Perhaps the
gallery was lying to us, and laughed up their sleeves after we walked
out Can$575 lighter. A Johnny Inukpuk, Jr., died in 1984 at 54.
>> [snip]
>> Ask her to your place to see your books. Get some ouzo in honor of
>> the Olympic games.
>
>
> There's another four-letter word I didn't know. I do like licorice. Hmm,
> ouzo interest piqued.
>
>
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>> Shanawdithit was the Beothuck equivalent of Ishi.
>>
> Was he so crooked that when he died he had to be screwed into the ground
> in my grandmother's colorful phrase.
I assume you mean Ishi. Shanawdithit was a woman. Have you
seen her drawings?
http://www.mun.ca/rels/native/beothuk/beo2gifs/texts/shana2.html
> [snip]
>>> Inuit are not Indians; they came over no more than 4000 years ago.
>>> Alutiks about 8,000.
>>
>>
>>
>> American Heritage (1987) gives for definition 2 of "Indian":
>> "A member of any of the aboriginal peoples of North America,
>> South America, or the West Indies."
>>
>> I've seen Eskimos classed as Indians and not classed as
>> Indians. If Indians are the indigenous peoples that were
>> present on the American continents when Columbus stumbled
>> onto the West Indies, and their descendants, then Eskimos
>> are Indians. If the term "Indians" is coterminous with
>> "Native Americans" or "First Nations" or "aboriginals," then
>> Eskimos are Indians. Of course, none of those terms is
>> native, so we're talking Western semantics.
>>
> In the North there is a strict demarcation between them, and they are
> indeed utterly unlike, with completely different psychological makeups
> and mental abilities. There is a huge gap in time between their
> arrivals, and they are physically quite different, with the Indians
> being much more like us. Would I include descendents of the Ainu in
> America among the Indians? I'm not sure. The Ainu are closely related
> to Polynesians, but still not well understood.
Are you thinking of "Kennewick man"?
> Any physical anthropologist can immediately tell the difference between
> and Eskimo skeleton and an Indian's. That's enough for me, since I was
> once a physical anthro major.
I'm not disputing general distinctives in physical traits.
> There are Eskimos (Samoyeds, a pejorative term) across the way in
> Siberia, but no Indians anywhere in Asia. Toss out that worthless
> dictionary and purge your mind. Know your sources.
Actually I like my American Heritage Illustrated
Encyclopedic Dictionary (1987). All dictionaries are uneven
in quality, but it's more on target and more useful than
most. I picked up the 3rd edition of The American Heritage
Dictionary (1992) from a teacher at a yard sale in Ipswich,
but I still prefer the earlier one. Of course, now there's a
4th edition.
>> If there's some sort of racial classification whereby
>> Eskimos are regarded as distinct from Indians, there are
>> huge assumptions going on about the "Amerindian race." I've
>> long been of the opinion, and nowadays some mainstream
>> archaeologists are coming around to this point of view, that
>> the Americas were peopled in pre-Columbian times not by
>> just a couple of groups coming from one direction but by
>> many groups from multiple directions. The oceans were
>> barriers to some, but highways to others. And the ice sheet
>> didn't connect just Asia to Alaska, but also Europe to North
>> America.
>>
>> Try doing a word search under "are Eskimos Indians" at this site:
>>
>> http://outlines.law.uvic.ca/courses/indianlandsandgovt/ILGOUT.DOC.
>>
>> The official answer there is "yes."
>
>
> You can find anyone to say anything, if you look hard enough. There are
> sites that prove that Shakespeare cannot have written his plays and sonnets
If I read the document correctly (and it's not easy to),
that was a 1938 ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court.
> The important criterion for me is that American Indians did *not*
> consider Ekimos to be one of them. Eskimo is a pejorative word in
> Athapaskan, i believe. I say, let the Indians decide, not the
> Palefaces, or White Eyes (Apache).
I'm not sure how permeating this attitude is, but Blackfeet
don't consider Crow to be "one of them"; and vice versa.
The pan-Indian idea didn't come along until Pontiac (ca.
1720-1769), and that was in response to the "English," as he
defined them.
My general attitude is: Use the broad-sweeping non-native
terms sweepingly. When wanting to be specific, use native
terms or their non-native equivalents. And beware racial
categorization, especially when it takes control of
language, because race is chiefly a matter of social
categorization.
> [snip]
>> I was wondering if Inupiat is the people (as in Chance, "the genuine
>> people") and Inupiaq the language (as in Dorais). But I'm not finding
>> any consistency on that (as in the Encyclopedia of North American
>> Indians and the following link).
>>
>> http://nnlm.gov/pnr/ethnomed/inupiaq.html
>>
>>
> I think they are just alternate spellings. I can't pronounce the final
> consonant, if that is what it is.
Ah, here we go (maybe, if the source can be trusted):
Per the Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v.
"Aleut," "Inupiat" is plural and "Inupiaq" singular.
>>> The Aleut call themselves Alutik now. Their language is quite
>>> different from that of the later Eskimo arrivals. A little look-up
>>> seems to support your understanding.
>>
>>
>>
>> I read:
>>
>> "The Yupik language includes five distinct sublanguages or
>> dialects, of which three are represented in Alaska: Siberian
>> Yupik, on St. Lawrence Island and the Siberian coast;
>> Central Yupik, in southwestern Alaska; and Alutiiq, in the
>> northern Pacific area (Kodiak Island and Prince William
>> Sound). Together with their Aleut neighbors to the west, the
>> Alutiiq people inhabit a warmer, wetter, and largely
>> ice-free maritime zone significantly different from that of
>> the northern Eskimos."
>> --> Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v.
>> "Eskimo."
>>
>> I would take that to mean that Aleuts speak Aleut and Alutiks Yupik.
>>
> I don't think there is a distinction. My best departed friend was part
> Aleut from Kodiak, as it was called then, but I saw a TV historical
> program on Russian massacres by a Kodiak Harvard grad student who called
> all Alutiks.
Well, as I say, my sources contradict each other; and, in
this case, two articles within the same encyclopedia
contradict each other.
Apparently, like "Indian" and "Eskimo," "Aleut" is not a
native word, and "Alutiiq" is simply a rendering of "Aleut"
into one of the native languages. But the picture becomes
much more complicated. See the Encyclopedia of North
American Indians (c1996): s.v. "Aleut."
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_001300_aleut.htm
I notice that this particular article also supports your
distinction between Indian and Eskimo. As I say, I've seen
Eskimos both classed as Indians and not classed as Indians.
> "To the making of books there is no end, and much study is a weariness
> to the soul." Here's a nice spiritual Athapaskan word for you:
> 'nasdijj', meaning 'to become again'. Don't ask me how to pronounce it,
> as Athapaskan, like Dutch, is a throat disease.
And Nasdijj is the name of a Navajo author. I wonder what
the spiritual significance of the word is.
>> IIRC, the subtitles in Atanarjuat are big, yellow, and easy
>> to read. Besides that, the dialogue is fairly sparse.
>>
>>
> Many scenes of rubdowns with walrus blubber?
Spoiler! :-)
> [snip]
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>>> Shanawdithit was the Beothuck equivalent of Ishi.
>>>
>> Was he so crooked that when he died he had to be screwed into the
>> ground in my grandmother's colorful phrase.
>
>
Used in particular about Richard Nixon. Note that his actual interment
was not shown.
> I assume you mean Ishi. Shanawdithit was a woman. Have you seen her
> drawings?
>
> http://www.mun.ca/rels/native/beothuk/beo2gifs/texts/shana2.html
Well, you said <name> was the analog of Ishi, who was.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> Inuit are not Indians; they came over no more than 4000 years ago.
>>>> Alutiks about 8,000.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> American Heritage (1987) gives for definition 2 of "Indian":
>>> "A member of any of the aboriginal peoples of North America,
>>> South America, or the West Indies."
>>>
>>> I've seen Eskimos classed as Indians and not classed as
>>> Indians. If Indians are the indigenous peoples that were
>>> present on the American continents when Columbus stumbled
>>> onto the West Indies, and their descendants, then Eskimos
>>> are Indians. If the term "Indians" is coterminous with
>>> "Native Americans" or "First Nations" or "aboriginals," then
>>> Eskimos are Indians. Of course, none of those terms is
>>> native, so we're talking Western semantics.
>>>
>> In the North there is a strict demarcation between them, and they are
>> indeed utterly unlike, with completely different psychological makeups
>> and mental abilities. There is a huge gap in time between their
>> arrivals, and they are physically quite different, with the Indians
>> being much more like us. Would I include descendents of the Ainu in
>> America among the Indians? I'm not sure. The Ainu are closely
>> related to Polynesians, but still not well understood.
>
>
> Are you thinking of "Kennewick man"?
Yes. But where there is one, there are many more.
>
>
>> Any physical anthropologist can immediately tell the difference
>> between an Eskimo skeleton and an Indian's. That's enough for me,
>> since I was once a physical anthro major.
>
>
> I'm not disputing general distinctives in physical traits.
>
>
>> There are Eskimos (Samoyeds, a pejorative term) across the way in
>> Siberia, but no Indians anywhere in Asia. Toss out that worthless
>> dictionary and purge your mind. Know your sources.
>
>
> Actually I like my American Heritage Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
> (1987). All dictionaries are uneven in quality, but it's more on target
> and more useful than most. I picked up the 3rd edition of The American
> Heritage Dictionary (1992) from a teacher at a yard sale in Ipswich, but
> I still prefer the earlier one. Of course, now there's a 4th edition.
>
>
I was annoyed that my remaindered Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged
Dictionary did not have 'kongoni' in it, as I had just got a letter (5
years ago) from a very sweet Sara studying near the Great Rift Valley,
which said that she would miss the kongoni most of all. Not an English
name. Googling back then didn't get me anything as there were fewer
sites and Google didn't work as well. It took me a while to figure out
that it was a hartebeest. Even my "Walker's Mammals of the World" was
useless, even though I knew it had to be some sort of antelope. I
learned more than I wanted to know about antelope.
>>> If there's some sort of racial classification whereby
>>> Eskimos are regarded as distinct from Indians, there are
>>> huge assumptions going on about the "Amerindian race." I've
>>> long been of the opinion, and nowadays some mainstream
>>> archaeologists are coming around to this point of view, that
>>> the Americas were peopled in pre-Columbian times not by
>>> just a couple of groups coming from one direction but by
>>> many groups from multiple directions. The oceans were
>>> barriers to some, but highways to others. And the ice sheet
>>> didn't connect just Asia to Alaska, but also Europe to North
>>> America.
>>>
>>> Try doing a word search under "are Eskimos Indians" at this site:
>>>
>>> http://outlines.law.uvic.ca/courses/indianlandsandgovt/ILGOUT.DOC.
>>>
>>> The official answer there is "yes."
>>
>>
>> You can find anyone to say anything, if you look hard enough. There
>> are sites that prove that Shakespeare cannot have written his plays
>> and sonnets
>
>
> If I read the document correctly (and it's not easy to), that was a 1938
> ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court.
>
>
So what are they going to do about gay divorce, since they allowed those
two lesbians to marry, presumably to test the divorce law. I presume
the Canadian Supreme Court has no more idea of the consequences of their
decisions than ours does.
>> The important criterion for me is that American Indians did *not*
>> consider Eskimos to be one of them. Eskimo is a pejorative word in
>> Athapaskan, i believe. I say, let the Indians decide, not the
>> Palefaces, or White Eyes (Apache).
>
>
> I'm not sure how permeating this attitude is, but Blackfeet don't
> consider Crow to be "one of them"; and vice versa.
>
Well, no, of course not. You wouldn't raid your own people for horses
would you? BTW, The Apache name for themselves is Indeh 'the people',
while the Navaho name is Dineh, meaning the same. Apache means 'enemy'
in one or more of the Pueblo dialects. When Illinois tribes were asked
the name of the tribes on the other side of the Mississippi, they were
told 'Iowa', which meant 'stranger'. Plato would infer that all Iowans
are strangers, which is simpler than "All Cretans are liars, I am a Cretan."
> The pan-Indian idea didn't come along until Pontiac (ca. 1720-1769), and
> that was in response to the "English," as he defined them.
>
My '56 Pontiac SW did not work so well by 1970, perhaps because my soul
was not yet sufficiently catholic.
> My general attitude is: Use the broad-sweeping non-native terms
> sweepingly. When wanting to be specific, use native terms or their
> non-native equivalents. And beware racial categorization, especially
> when it takes control of language, because race is chiefly a matter of
> social categorization.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I was wondering if Inupiat is the people (as in Chance, "the genuine
>>> people") and Inupiaq the language (as in Dorais). But I'm not finding
>>> any consistency on that (as in the Encyclopedia of North American
>>> Indians and the following link).
>>>
>>> http://nnlm.gov/pnr/ethnomed/inupiaq.html
>>>
>>>
>> I think they are just alternate spellings. I can't pronounce the
>> final consonant, if that is what it is.
>
>
> Ah, here we go (maybe, if the source can be trusted):
>
> Per the Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v. "Aleut,"
> "Inupiat" is plural and "Inupiaq" singular.
>
Aah.
>
>>>> The Aleut call themselves Alutik now. Their language is quite
>>>> different from that of the later Eskimo arrivals. A little look-up
>>>> seems to support your understanding.
>>>
>>>
>>> I read:
>>>
>>> "The Yupik language includes five distinct sublanguages or
>>> dialects, of which three are represented in Alaska: Siberian
>>> Yupik, on St. Lawrence Island and the Siberian coast;
>>> Central Yupik, in southwestern Alaska; and Alutiiq, in the
>>> northern Pacific area (Kodiak Island and Prince William
>>> Sound). Together with their Aleut neighbors to the west, the
>>> Alutiiq people inhabit a warmer, wetter, and largely
>>> ice-free maritime zone significantly different from that of
>>> the northern Eskimos."
>>> --> Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v.
>>> "Eskimo."
>>>
>>> I would take that to mean that Aleuts speak Aleut and Alutiks Yupik.
>>>
>> I don't think there is a distinction. My best departed friend was
>> part Aleut from Kodiak, as it was called then, but I saw a TV
>> historical program on Russian massacres by a Kodiak Harvard grad
>> student who called all Alutiks.
>
>
> Well, as I say, my sources contradict each other; and, in this case, two
> articles within the same encyclopedia contradict each other.
>
Love those editors! I wrote the NY Times's ombudsman asking whether
they had outsourced their copy-editing, as I had noted an increasing use
of 'wind' for 'wend' by most reporters, and just to give the
copy-editors a heads-up. My response: you must cite specific cases.
Thus he doesn't give a fuck either.
> Apparently, like "Indian" and "Eskimo," "Aleut" is not a native word,
> and "Alutiiq" is simply a rendering of "Aleut" into one of the native
> languages. But the picture becomes much more complicated. See the
> Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v. "Aleut."
>
> http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_001300_aleut.htm
>
> I notice that this particular article also supports your distinction
> between Indian and Eskimo. As I say, I've seen Eskimos both classed as
> Indians and not classed as Indians.
>
>
I put it in my Amazon shopping cart, since I'm partial to books and
Presidential advisors who agree with me.
>> "To the making of books there is no end, and much study is a weariness
>> to the soul." Here's a nice spiritual Athapaskan word for you:
>> 'nasdijj', meaning 'to become again'. Don't ask me how to pronounce
>> it, as Athapaskan, like Dutch, is a throat disease.
>
>
> And Nasdijj is the name of a Navajo author. I wonder what the spiritual
> significance of the word is.
I just told you, like to be reborn. I think it's a pseudonym; I can't
imagine a Navaho naming a kid that, but the last 24 hours seem to be my
period to be tied to a stake in a Japanese prison camp for not doing
'tenko' properly. I have one of his books, the one about how his blood
flows.
>
>
>>> IIRC, the subtitles in Atanarjuat are big, yellow, and easy
>>> to read. Besides that, the dialogue is fairly sparse.
>>>
>>>
>> Many scenes of rubdowns with walrus blubber?
>
>
> Spoiler! :-)
>
>
The spoiler keeps my Subaru Forester on the road when I go over 120 mph.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
Too much....
I think I need a library stand for my father-in-law's dictionary, since
you are forcing me to use it more, and I don't like lugging it around.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>> Once I get onto steep insecure slopes above the tree line, I start
>> having physical reactions. Knees grow rubbery, my body rebels. Got any
>> tips on how to combat that?
I wonder if the reaction is genetic. My father had it. I
have it. My son has it. Nevertheless, we've all fought it.
> Go back down, carefully and immediately, after making sure your crampons
> are secure. That's what I would do. Plant that ice axe and remember
> Chouinard's dictum: "Do not fall."
Oh, that was Chouinard's dictum, was it? :-)
Yvon, I'm guessing.
> But then it seems probable you don't have mountaineering boots, which
> are the only boots to which you can strap crampons. Stay out of
> danger!!! My knees would quake, too, without crampons up there, but
> then I'd never go there without crampons.
Crampons are for ice.
> [snip]
> Follow it up by going to the best ride park, riding the wildest rides
> there, pretend you're in an Me-109 shooting up F-117s or whatever saves
> your sanity. When I was at Harvard that would be Revere Beach, but Six
> Flags must have something going now up there. I mostly overcame my
> serious fear of heights by riding rides.
You're making me motion sick. :-)
> [snip]
>> The last jury I was on went through each of the major witnesses in
>> turn, assessing the credibility of each. Was that ever an effective
>> and fast way to dispatch a complicated case!
>>
>>
> *That* must have been what OJ's jury did. He's still in Florida looking
> for Nicole's killer....
The latter jury I mentioned was a civil case. Different
burden of proof.
> [snip]
>>> [snip] But there has been no urgency as I'm a member of the
>>> Illuminati, and so immortal.
I assume you were spoofing about being a member of the
Illuminati.
>> Hmm, I see that the John Birch Society, which used to target the
>> Illuminati, is still around.
>>
>>
> The Illuminati were a bunch of Medieval gangsters with Masonic-type
> rituals. The detox joint, Ashley, probably as good as Betty Ford, I
> stayed in for a month had as its only doctor one who'd rather tell you
> he was a member of the Illuminati than listen to anything *you* had to
> say. A complete fruitcake. I challenge Betty to hire him. I met a
> number of stars there, some from my youth, some now departed, from SNL,
> but of course I can't mention them. The treatment for one woman seems
> to have taken, as I see her on TV in commercials from time to time. My
> daughter recognized her immediately. I spent a month afterwards in
> total zombitude, then started to drink again so that I could feel
> *something*.
I thought alcohol dulls the senses.
What year was all that?
> [snip]
>>>> [re solution to the donkey/cart paradox]
>>>> Too tired to think. But my thought is that the paradox as stated is
>>>> misstated.
>>>>
>>> That's the orinal puzzle, which long predates me. But it is entirely
>>> based on a misdirection that even most physics profs can't see through.
>>
>>
> You might be interested in "The Chicken from Minsk", a collection of
> mostly non-mathematical Russian puzzles. The book "Yiddishe Kop"
> (roughly 'Jewish brains') is a guide to puzzle solving. It might put
> you in the right frame of mind. I will not give up the answer easily.
My brain-teaser books sit around mostly unused. My mind's
too engaged elsewhere.
>> You mean I lit on the answer?!
>>
> Noooooo. But a journey of 1000 li begins with a single step, so long as
> it is in the right direction. I just told you that your first step is
> in the right direction. There is a definitive answer in terms of
> Newton's Laws.
At this moment, I'm wanting to use a Homer Simpson
expression. What is it? Oh: "Doh!"
> Contemplation last night led to the realization they my mother's forcing
> me to leave Tootle behind was an invented memory, as I now remember my
> cubby hole in Fairbanks with all my Golden Books from Iowa. My mother
> and I have many issues that cannot be laid to rest, as she denies
> everything. And here I go inventing another one!
Dangerous things, invented memories, especially in legal
settings. There have been a lot of supposed sex offenders in
prison because of invented memories.
>> Oh yeah! You've mentioned Tootle before. Thanks for jogging my memory.
>> But the sentence still doesn't compute.
>>
> OK, a comma after 'guy', and another after 'animals'; not good, but
> perhaps better. I've veered from over-puntuation to the point of
> unintelligibility, to under-punctuation to the same end.
Nope. The editor in me utterly rejects that sentence, which
read -- I quote here for the sake of memory and in order to
get rid of some of the hierarchy of attribution: "I think
the guy who posted about using spammers as laboratory
experimental animals played 'Tootle', because of their
advantages over rats."
> [snip]
>>>> [snip] I'm green with envy of those who can just walk into a shoe
>>>> store and walk away with a desirable pair that fits. So I have to
>>>> take my chances and order from special catalogs, or travel long
>>>> distances.
>>>
>>>
> Ask Disney World Animal Kingdom if they have a baby elephant who can
> help you break them in.
Grrr! My brother said something like that in the shoe
department of a sports store, and I could've kicked him.
> Do you have hair all over your feet and are
> very short?
Like a Hobbit? Nope.
> I presume you have tried the following:
>
> www.shoemall.com
> www.dealtime.com
> www.amazon.com/exec/obidos
> www.worldclassgear.com/montrail_torre_gtx_hiking_boots
Not all of 'em, yet.
>> Twenty-two. We Martians are not tri-symmetrical. And we inhabit the
>> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, or rather it inhabits us. Or
>> rather both. You've heard of coinherence, haven't you?
>
>
> Of course, where would Satan be without me, or I without him?
"Coinherence" was one of the pet terms of Charles Williams,
the theologian of romantic love (who loved two). But the
term was by no means exclusive to him.
>> As for that third foot, well, you already have too much information.
>> But here's a clue: Reproduction requires at least three sentient beings.
>>
> Not so much a foot as a shortarm is it, buddy? I'm in favor of the
> three sentiant beings, especially if their names are Misty and Kerri, or
> Julia and Juliette, and don't mind getting chocolate licked off them.
The movie Chocolat was okay, but the charm of it didn't work
on me as much as it apparently did on many others.
Hmm, I suppose I shouldn't skip the ObPoly opportunity here:
Does alien sexuality have any legitimate bearing on the
conceptualization of human sexuality in ethical discourse?
That seems to be part of the import of alien sexuality in
much science fiction. Have already mentioned The Left hand
of Darkness.
>> I expect it's actually fairly common. The value is chiefly
>> sentimental. There's also the information value for you.
>>
> Information??? St. John's relativistic astrophysics?
Among librarians, "information" is an especially promiscuous
term.
>> I'm guessing that the versions are the KJV and the Revised, that right?
>
>
> Yes, the Rev KJV, nothing by the United Bible Societies.
Most of the UBS books I have are in other languages.
> And yes
> they're of sentimental value. I have no interest in a modern printing,
> even if it were identical. But I went through the whole Bible Store in
> San Marcos with the help of their expert on their stock, and he was
> pretty sure I'd not find another one. Just think of the souls he saved
Another antecedent double-take. :-)
Your stepfather, I presume.
I used to have a friend who'd habitually start off with a
pronoun and never get around to the antecedent. Drove me up
a wall. But I never told him so.
> while the young ladies were pining over him: he was handsome, strong as
> an ox, worked like a demon for his room and board while travelling, and
> could sing beautifully - even had a record in the 30s.
>
>>
>>
> My mother more or less blackmailed him into marrying her.
You hear of women blackmailing men into marriage, pregnancy
being the usual pretext, but vice versa?
Hmm, there must be a more apt word than "pretext" there, but
none is coming to mind. I think researching Inupiaq has
dulled my brain.
>> [snip] If you
>> find a binder willing to take on the project (and many refuse personal
>> Bibles), make sure to tell 'em not to guillotine the book. It's
>> difficult enough to preserve marginalia without lopping off the edges
>> or spine.
>>
>>
> Well, I could try the Document Preservation Department of our local
> Walters Art Gallery for expert persons willing to take on a side project.
Oh, that's right! You have the Walters Art Gallery there. Cool!
> OK, Bigfoot.
Sasquatch to you. :-)
But it's only a matter of *relative* width.
> I had a roommate at Harvard with EEEE shoes. I teased him
> that either Ringling Bros or Harvard Medical School would eventually get
> him. He was good humored about it, as he wanted to lure me into
> physical anthro, and did.
>
>> You'd have to check used bookstores. Some specialize in old Bibles.
>>
>>
> No interest in others. These are permeated with the lust of young women.
Association: eroticism and Bible. Contrary to the usual
motif. That is, motifs external to the Bible.
> The Bible Store told me that onion skin paper isn't made anymore.
And you bought that bald-faced lie?!
>> No, I've never run into Johnny Inukput, until now.
>
>
> Inukpuk, according to the Certificate of Authenticity.
Oh, right.
> The gallery in
> Montreal said that this was one of his last carvings, as he had *far*
> outlived his four-score and ten. His carvings are not rare, but no two
> are nuch alike. You'll get plenty of him with Google.
>
>>
>> At the moment, relationship terms. But also, Eskimos intersect with
>> several of my long term interests -- languages, North American
>> Indians, Vikings, pre-Columbian settlement of North America, and so
>> forth.
>>
>>
>>> We have an Inukpuk, and a pretty penny it cost, too. 18 cm high, it
>>> cost Can$575 in Montreal in 1995 or so. I practically had a panic
>>> attack deciding whether to buy it. Doris said "OK". I let her
>>> handle all the big money deals, just discussing the idea and helping
>>> to set the parameters beforehand.
>>
>>
>>
>> What are the sculptor's dates?
>>
>>
> Don't know. Can't find it. There are a lot of Inukpuks. Perhaps the
> gallery was lying to us, and laughed up their sleeves after we walked
> out Can$575 lighter. A Johnny Inukpuk, Jr., died in 1984 at 54.
That's why I was asking. Junior's dates: 1930-1984.
If your guy was (or is) as old as the hills, he may have
been the Inukpuk born in 1911.
--
Norm
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
> [snip]
>> Actually I like my American Heritage Illustrated Encyclopedic
>> Dictionary (1987). All dictionaries are uneven in quality, but it's
>> more on target and more useful than most. I picked up the 3rd edition
>> of The American Heritage Dictionary (1992) from a teacher at a yard
>> sale in Ipswich, but I still prefer the earlier one. Of course, now
>> there's a 4th edition.
>>
>>
> I was annoyed that my remaindered Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged
> Dictionary did not have 'kongoni' in it, as I had just got a letter (5
> years ago) from a very sweet Sara studying near the Great Rift Valley,
> which said that she would miss the kongoni most of all. Not an English
> name. Googling back then didn't get me anything as there were fewer
> sites and Google didn't work as well. It took me a while to figure out
> that it was a hartebeest. Even my "Walker's Mammals of the World" was
> useless, even though I knew it had to be some sort of antelope. I
> learned more than I wanted to know about antelope.
The American Heritage Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
(1987) has a color picture of a kongoni.
>> If I read the document correctly (and it's not easy to), that was a
>> 1938 ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court.
>>
>>
> So what are they going to do about gay divorce, since they allowed those
> two lesbians to marry, presumably to test the divorce law. I presume
> the Canadian Supreme Court has no more idea of the consequences of their
> decisions than ours does.
Note this story:
"August 25, 2004 -- GLAD today expressed disappointment in a
decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in a
case involving two lesbians who were in a relationship and
mutually decided to conceive and raise a child together by
the insemination of one of the women. In the case T.F. v.
B.L. (SJC No. 09104), the SJC ruled that after the couple’s
breakup, the non-biological partner did not have an
obligation to support the child, even though the Court
acknowledged that she intentionally and purposefully acted
to bring the child into the world. GLAD represented the
biological mother, T.F."
>> I'm not sure how permeating this attitude is, but Blackfeet don't
>> consider Crow to be "one of them"; and vice versa.
>>
> Well, no, of course not. You wouldn't raid your own people for horses
> would you? BTW, The Apache name for themselves is Indeh 'the people',
> while the Navaho name is Dineh, meaning the same. Apache means 'enemy'
> in one or more of the Pueblo dialects. When Illinois tribes were asked
> the name of the tribes on the other side of the Mississippi, they were
> told 'Iowa', which meant 'stranger'. Plato would infer that all Iowans
> are strangers, which is simpler than "All Cretans are liars, I am a
> Cretan."
According to Callimachus, the Cretan lie was that Zeus, the
high god of the Greeks, was dead and buried on Crete.
> [snip]
>>>> --> Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v.
>>>> "Eskimo."
> [snip]
> I put it in my Amazon shopping cart, since I'm partial to books and
> Presidential advisors who agree with me.
I have an extra copy looking for a good home.
>> And Nasdijj is the name of a Navajo author. I wonder what the
>> spiritual significance of the word is.
>
>
> I just told you, like to be reborn. I think it's a pseudonym; I can't
> imagine a Navaho naming a kid that, but the last 24 hours seem to be my
> period to be tied to a stake in a Japanese prison camp for not doing
> 'tenko' properly. I have one of his books, the one about how his blood
> flows.
"Tenko" = "roll call," involving a correct bow to the
masters, right?
> [snip]
--
Norm
Norm
LOL
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>
>
>
>>> Once I get onto steep insecure slopes above the tree line, I start
>>> having physical reactions. Knees grow rubbery, my body rebels. Got
>>> any tips on how to combat that?
>
>
> I wonder if the reaction is genetic. My father had it. I have it. My son
> has it. Nevertheless, we've all fought it.
>
>
>> Go back down, carefully and immediately, after making sure your
>> crampons are secure. That's what I would do. Plant that ice axe and
>> remember Chouinard's dictum: "Do not fall."
>
>
> Oh, that was Chouinard's dictum, was it? :-)
>
> Yvon, I'm guessing.
Yes. We took his last snow and ice climbing course, in the Tetons,
amidst all the green body bags - the first thing we saw when registering
at the Ranger Station.
>
>
>> But then it seems probable you don't have mountaineering boots, which
>> are the only boots to which you can strap crampons. Stay out of
>> danger!!! My knees would quake, too, without crampons up there, but
>> then I'd never go there without crampons.
>
>
> Crampons are for ice.
>
>
Oh, yeah, not the Sierra. Well just *how* steep? Good handholds?
Whats the state of the tread on your boots? What would happen if you
fell: bump off a couple of rocks and come to rest? No harm done. What
are the actual *dangers*, or is this really an irrational fear?
>> [snip]
>> Follow it up by going to the best ride park, riding the wildest rides
>> there, pretend you're in an Me-109 shooting up F-117s or whatever
>> saves your sanity. When I was at Harvard that would be Revere Beach,
>> but Six Flags must have something going now up there. I mostly
>> overcame my serious fear of heights by riding rides.
>
>
> You're making me motion sick. :-)
>
>
That's how I survived the rides.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> The last jury I was on went through each of the major witnesses in
>>> turn, assessing the credibility of each. Was that ever an effective
>>> and fast way to dispatch a complicated case!
>>>
>>>
>> *That* must have been what OJ's jury did. He's still in Florida
>> looking for Nicole's killer....
>
>
> The latter jury I mentioned was a civil case. Different burden of proof.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>> [snip] But there has been no urgency as I'm a member of the
>>>> Illuminati, and so immortal.
>
>
> I assume you were spoofing about being a member of the Illuminati.
>
Of course, as well as being immortal, though once I almost believed it.
But a triple bypass when I hadn't known anything was wrong with my
heart made me more modest. I was sooo close to a fatal heart attack.
But I do know how to keep myself alive until the paramedics get there.
Cough hard twice a second, as the thoracic pressure will pump blood to
the brain. It's appalling that doctors do not tell their elderly
patients this trick.
>
>>> Hmm, I see that the John Birch Society, which used to target the
>>> Illuminati, is still around.
>>>
>>>
>> The Illuminati were a bunch of Medieval gangsters with Masonic-type
>> rituals. The detox joint, Ashley, probably as good as Betty Ford, I
>> stayed in for a month had as its only doctor one who'd rather tell you
>> he was a member of the Illuminati than listen to anything *you* had to
>> say. A complete fruitcake. I challenge Betty to hire him. I met a
>> number of stars there, some from my youth, some now departed, from
>> SNL, but of course I can't mention them. The treatment for one woman
>> seems to have taken, as I see her on TV in commercials from time to
>> time. My daughter recognized her immediately. I spent a month
>> afterwards in total zombitude, then started to drink again so that I
>> could feel *something*.
>
>
> I thought alcohol dulls the senses.
>
Not mine, but it does dull the memories.
> What year was all that?
1998.
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>> [re solution to the donkey/cart paradox]
>>>>> Too tired to think. But my thought is that the paradox as stated is
>>>>> misstated.
>>>>>
>>>> That's the orinal puzzle, which long predates me. But it is
>>>> entirely based on a misdirection that even most physics profs can't
>>>> see through.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> You might be interested in "The Chicken from Minsk", a collection of
>> mostly non-mathematical Russian puzzles. The book "Yiddishe Kop"
>> (roughly 'Jewish brains') is a guide to puzzle solving. It might put
>> you in the right frame of mind. I will not give up the answer easily.
>
>
> My brain-teaser books sit around mostly unused. My mind's too engaged
> elsewhere.
>
>
>>> You mean I lit on the answer?!
>>>
>> Noooooo. But a journey of 1000 li begins with a single step, so long
>> as it is in the right direction. I just told you that your first step
>> is in the right direction. There is a definitive answer in terms of
>> Newton's Laws.
>
>
> At this moment, I'm wanting to use a Homer Simpson expression. What is
> it? Oh: "Doh!"
>
>
The idea behind my asking that question ad nauseam is that you do not
truly understand Newton's laws unless you can answer it right off the
bat. Goldreich did, and a couple of others, but most so-called
physicists can't, as they went to grad school with their pabulum
problems handed to them on a plate.
>> Contemplation last night led to the realization that my mother's
>> forcing me to leave Tootle behind was an invented memory, as I now
>> remember my cubby hole in Fairbanks with all my Golden Books from
>> Iowa. My mother and I have many issues that cannot be laid to rest,
>> as she denies everything. And here I go inventing another one!
>
>
> Dangerous things, invented memories, especially in legal settings. There
> have been a lot of supposed sex offenders in prison because of invented
> memories.
>
Still are. That's why I'm against sex-offender community notification.
>
>>> Oh yeah! You've mentioned Tootle before. Thanks for jogging my
>>> memory. But the sentence still doesn't compute.
>>>
>> OK, a comma after 'guy', and another after 'animals'; not good, but
>> perhaps better. I've veered from over-puntuation to the point of
>> unintelligibility, to under-punctuation to the same end.
>
>
> Nope. The editor in me utterly rejects that sentence, which read -- I
> quote here for the sake of memory and in order to get rid of some of the
> hierarchy of attribution: "I think the guy who posted about using
> spammers as laboratory experimental animals played 'Tootle', because of
> their advantages over rats."
>
And I tried soooo hard, but you didn't fall for it. The only solution
is to break it into two sentences.
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>> [snip] I'm green with envy of those who can just walk into a shoe
>>>>> store and walk away with a desirable pair that fits. So I have to
>>>>> take my chances and order from special catalogs, or travel long
>>>>> distances.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>> Ask Disney World Animal Kingdom if they have a baby elephant who can
>> help you break them in.
>
>
> Grrr! My brother said something like that in the shoe department of a
> sports store, and I could've kicked him.
>
>
>> Do you have hair all over your feet and are very short?
>
>
> Like a Hobbit? Nope.
>
>
>> I presume you have tried the following:
>>
>> www.shoemall.com
>> www.dealtime.com
>> www.amazon.com/exec/obidos
>> www.worldclassgear.com/montrail_torre_gtx_hiking_boots
>
>
> Not all of 'em, yet.
>
>
>>> Twenty-two. We Martians are not tri-symmetrical. And we inhabit the
>>> undifferentiated aesthetic continuum, or rather it inhabits us. Or
>>> rather both. You've heard of coinherence, haven't you?
>>
>>
>>
>> Of course, where would Satan be without me, or I without him?
>
>
> "Coinherence" was one of the pet terms of Charles Williams, the
> theologian of romantic love (who loved two). But the term was by no
> means exclusive to him.
>
>
Seen the book "Three in Love", a selective history?
>>> As for that third foot, well, you already have too much information.
>>> But here's a clue: Reproduction requires at least three sentient beings.
>>>
>> Not so much a foot as a shortarm is it, buddy? I'm in favor of the
>> three sentient beings, especially if their names are Misty and Kerri,
>> or Julia and Juliette, and don't mind getting chocolate licked off them.
>
>
> The movie Chocolat was okay, but the charm of it didn't work on me as
> much as it apparently did on many others.
The old Soviet Hungarian airlines used to raffle off chocolate-covered
airline stewardesses to Party bigwigs.
>
> Hmm, I suppose I shouldn't skip the ObPoly opportunity here: Does alien
> sexuality have any legitimate bearing on the conceptualization of human
> sexuality in ethical discourse? That seems to be part of the import of
> alien sexuality in much science fiction. Have already mentioned The Left
> hand of Darkness.
>
Who *was* that chick on Deep Space Nine? Ah, Nana Visitor. I wouldn't
have cared about her alien customs.
>
Take a look at the old book "Fiasco" by Stanislaw Lem (Polish) about our
first encounter with other sentient life. It's now quaint, but clever.
The other beings were smarter than we, but a fungus, and so had rather
different methods of reproduction. They had not read Maimonides nor the
Geneva Conventions. It was prescient: though it was not well known at
that time (1986), fungal genetics is rather similar to ours.
>>> I expect it's actually fairly common. The value is chiefly
>>> sentimental. There's also the information value for you.
>>>
>> Information??? St. John's relativistic astrophysics?
>
>
> Among librarians, "information" is an especially promiscuous term.
>
>
I see... Well Misty and Kerri, or Julia and Juliette, would be
informational. I wonder if any of them have Smilla's particular talent;
gynecologists usually take it upon themselve without even consulting the
parents to make sure baby girls do not have the right equipment.
>>> I'm guessing that the versions are the KJV and the Revised, that right?
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, the Rev KJV, nothing by the United Bible Societies.
>
>
> Most of the UBS books I have are in other languages.
>
>
>> And yes they're of sentimental value. I have no interest in a modern
>> printing, even if it were identical. But I went through the whole
>> Bible Store in San Marcos with the help of their expert on their
>> stock, and he was pretty sure I'd not find another one. Just think of
>> the souls he saved
>
>
> Another antecedent double-take. :-)
>
> Your stepfather, I presume.
Yes.
>
> I used to have a friend who'd habitually start off with a pronoun and
> never get around to the antecedent. Drove me up a wall. But I never told
> him so.
>
>
The postcedent?
>> while the young ladies were pining over him: he was handsome, strong
>> as an ox, worked like a demon for his room and board while travelling,
>> and could sing beautifully - even had a record in the 30s.
>>
>>>
>>>
>> My mother more or less blackmailed him into marrying her.
>
>
> You hear of women blackmailing men into marriage, pregnancy being the
> usual pretext, but vice versa?
>
You read it backwards, and no that was not her ploy, as they were
fundamentalist Christians.
> Hmm, there must be a more apt word than "pretext" there, but none is
> coming to mind. I think researching Inupiaq has dulled my brain.
>
>
>>> [snip] If you find a binder willing to take on the project (and many
>>> refuse personal Bibles), make sure to tell 'em not to guillotine the
>>> book. It's difficult enough to preserve marginalia without lopping
>>> off the edges or spine.
>>>
>>>
>> Well, I could try the Document Preservation Department of our local
>> Walters Art Gallery for expert persons willing to take on a side project.
>
>
> Oh, that's right! You have the Walters Art Gallery there. Cool!
>
>
>> OK, Bigfoot.
>
>
> Sasquatch to you. :-)
>
> But it's only a matter of *relative* width.
>
>
>> I had a roommate at Harvard with EEEE shoes. I teased him that either
>> Ringling Bros or Harvard Medical School would eventually get him. He
>> was good humored about it, as he wanted to lure me into physical
>> anthro, and did.
>>
>>> You'd have to check used bookstores. Some specialize in old Bibles.
>>>
>>>
>> No interest in others. These are permeated with the lust of young women.
>
>
> Association: eroticism and Bible. Contrary to the usual motif. That is,
> motifs external to the Bible.
>
I can feel that Bible and feel the wet pussies in the congregation.
>
>> The Bible Store told me that onion skin paper isn't made anymore.
>
>
> And you bought that bald-faced lie?!
Well, he was so sure, and what do I know? I'll never go back there again.
>
>
>>> No, I've never run into Johnny Inukput, until now.
>>
>>
>>
>> Inukpuk, according to the Certificate of Authenticity.
>
>
> Oh, right.
>
>
>> The gallery in Montreal said that this was one of his last carvings,
>> as he had *far* outlived his four-score and ten. His carvings are not
>> rare, but no two are much alike. You'll get plenty of him with Google.
>>
>>>
>>> At the moment, relationship terms. But also, Eskimos intersect with
>>> several of my long term interests -- languages, North American
>>> Indians, Vikings, pre-Columbian settlement of North America, and so
>>> forth.
>>>
>>>
>>>> We have an Inukpuk, and a pretty penny it cost, too. 18 cm high, it
>>>> cost Can$575 in Montreal in 1995 or so. I practically had a panic
>>>> attack deciding whether to buy it. Doris said "OK". I let her
>>>> handle all the big money deals, just discussing the idea and helping
>>>> to set the parameters beforehand.
>>>
>>>
>>> What are the sculptor's dates?
>>>
>>>
>> Don't know. Can't find it. There are a lot of Inukpuks. Perhaps the
>> gallery was lying to us, and laughed up their sleeves after we walked
>> out Can$575 lighter. A Johnny Inukpuk, Jr., died in 1984 at 54.
>
>
> That's why I was asking. Junior's dates: 1930-1984.
>
> If your guy was (or is) as old as the hills, he may have been the
> Inukpuk born in 1911.
>
Sounds more like it.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
> [snip]
> Oh, yeah, not the Sierra.
Well, actually sometimes there is snow. But on my climbs,
more usually rock at top.
Well just *how* steep?
Almost enough to throw me if I don't hang on -- that's where
it starts, or when I'm on the lip of a big drop.
> Good handholds?
Not always.
> Whats
> the state of the tread on your boots?
Non-existent. And that exacerbated the problem when I
climbed Cadillac Mountain a few months ago, which otherwise
wasn't too bad.
> What would happen if you fell:
> bump off a couple of rocks and come to rest?
Usually the consequences would be bigger than that. But
occasionally I have the experience when I'm just bouldering
(which I don't do much of anymore).
> No harm done. What are the
> actual *dangers*, or is this really an irrational fear?
It's irrational regardless of the danger, but triggered by
dangerous positions. And the fear is distinct from the
physical reactions. In fact, what's developed is a fear of
the physical reactions.
I suspect it's an upper brain versus lower brain thing.
Animal instinct is shutting me down despite my conscious
mind's instructions.
Keyword: acrophobia.
> [snip]
>> I assume you were spoofing about being a member of the Illuminati.
>>
> Of course, as well as being immortal, though once I almost believed it.
> But a triple bypass when I hadn't known anything was wrong with my
> heart made me more modest. I was sooo close to a fatal heart attack.
> But I do know how to keep myself alive until the paramedics get there.
> Cough hard twice a second, as the thoracic pressure will pump blood to
> the brain. It's appalling that doctors do not tell their elderly
> patients this trick.
Ugh! Hyperventilation and headache! That's fast coughing.
> [snip]
>> Dangerous things, invented memories, especially in legal settings.
>> There have been a lot of supposed sex offenders in prison because of
>> invented memories.
>>
> Still are. That's why I'm against sex-offender community notification.
I am too, but because it creates a tier of third-class
citizens. Tough call, though, in some cases. I don't know
that liberal political philosophy is up to addressing such
cases adequately. I mean "liberal" in the classic sense.
There has to be a way to prevent there being further victims.
Treatment of sex offenders is reinforced by a mythology of
the impossibility of rehabilitation. Also by the mythology
of the okayness of there being throw-away people.
> [snip]
>> "Coinherence" was one of the pet terms of Charles Williams, the
>> theologian of romantic love (who loved two). But the term was by no
>> means exclusive to him.
>>
>>
> Seen the book "Three in Love", a selective history?
Of course.
> [snip]
>> Does
>> alien sexuality have any legitimate bearing on the conceptualization
>> of human sexuality in ethical discourse? That seems to be part of the
>> import of alien sexuality in much science fiction. Have already
>> mentioned The Left hand of Darkness.
>>
> Who *was* that chick on Deep Space Nine? Ah, Nana Visitor. I wouldn't
> have cared about her alien customs.
For me, "that chick" was Terry Farrell.
> Take a look at the old book "Fiasco" by Stanislaw Lem (Polish) about our
> first encounter with other sentient life. It's now quaint, but clever.
> The other beings were smarter than we, but a fungus, and so had rather
> different methods of reproduction. They had not read Maimonides nor the
> Geneva Conventions. It was prescient: though it was not well known at
> that time (1986), fungal genetics is rather similar to ours.
I read The Cyberiad, which I loved. Haven't read Fiasco yet.
>> I used to have a friend who'd habitually start off with a pronoun and
>> never get around to the antecedent. Drove me up a wall. But I never
>> told him so.
>>
>>
> The postcedent?
Consequent, descendant, subsequent, or your "postcedent"
would have made sense to me in 9th grade English. But no, an
antecedent's an antecedent even if it's after. Language is
less logical than I wanted it to be.
Or maybe there's some antonym of "antecedent" I've missed.
>>> My mother more or less blackmailed him into marrying her.
>>
>>
>>
>> You hear of women blackmailing men into marriage, pregnancy being the
>> usual pretext, but vice versa?
>>
> You read it backwards, and no that was not her ploy, as they were
> fundamentalist Christians.
Oops! You can chalk it up to sore red eyes and a touch of
fatigue. But, really, I was careless.
> [Snip]
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Robbers wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> Actually I like my American Heritage Illustrated Encyclopedic
>>> Dictionary (1987). All dictionaries are uneven in quality, but it's
>>> more on target and more useful than most. I picked up the 3rd edition
>>> of The American Heritage Dictionary (1992) from a teacher at a yard
>>> sale in Ipswich, but I still prefer the earlier one. Of course, now
>>> there's a 4th edition.
>>>
>>>
>> I was annoyed that my cheap remaindered Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged
>> Dictionary did not have 'kongoni' in it, as I had just got a letter (5
>> years ago) from a very sweet Sara studying near the Great Rift Valley,
>> which said that she would miss the kongoni most of all. Not an
>> English name. Googling back then didn't get me anything as there were
>> fewer sites and Google didn't work as well. It took me a while to
>> figure out that it was a hartebeest. Even my "Walker's Mammals of the
>> World" was useless, even though I knew it had to be some sort of
>> antelope. I learned more than I wanted to know about antelope.
>
>
> The American Heritage Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary (1987) has a
> color picture of a kongoni.
Very nice. They aren't very big.
>
>
>>> If I read the document correctly (and it's not easy to), that was a
>>> 1938 ruling of the Canadian Supreme Court.
>>>
>>>
>> So what are they going to do about gay divorce, since they allowed
>> those two lesbians to marry, presumably to test the divorce law. I
>> presume the Canadian Supreme Court has no more idea of the
>> consequences of their decisions than ours does.
>
>
> Note this story:
>
> "August 25, 2004 -- GLAD today expressed disappointment in a decision of
> the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in a case involving two
> lesbians who were in a relationship and mutually decided to conceive and
> raise a child together by the insemination of one of the women. In the
> case T.F. v. B.L. (SJC No. 09104), the SJC ruled that after the couple’s
> breakup, the non-biological partner did not have an obligation to
> support the child, even though the Court acknowledged that she
> intentionally and purposefully acted to bring the child into the world.
> GLAD represented the biological mother, T.F."
>
> http://www.glad.org/
>
>
Gooood thinking...
>>> I'm not sure how permeating this attitude is, but Blackfeet don't
>>> consider Crow to be "one of them"; and vice versa.
>>>
>> Well, no, of course not. You wouldn't raid your own people for horses
>> would you? BTW, The Apache name for themselves is Indeh 'the people',
>> while the Navaho name is Dineh, meaning the same. Apache means
>> 'enemy' in one or more of the Pueblo dialects. When Illinois tribes
>> were asked the name of the tribes on the other side of the
>> Mississippi, they were told 'Iowa', which meant 'stranger'. Plato
>> would infer that all Iowans are strangers, which is simpler than "All
>> Cretans are liars, I am a Cretan."
>
>
> According to Callimachus, the Cretan lie was that Zeus, the high god of
> the Greeks, was dead and buried on Crete.
>
Was he cremated?
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>>>> --> Encyclopedia of North American Indians (c1996): s.v.
>>>>> "Eskimo."
>>
>> [snip]
>> I put it in my Amazon shopping cart, since I'm partial to books and
>> Presidential advisors who agree with me.
>
>
> I have an extra copy looking for a good home.
>
>
Box 16329
Baltimore, MD 21210.
Will pay a reasonable price.
>>> And Nasdijj is the name of a Navajo author. I wonder what the
>>> spiritual significance of the word is.
>>
>> I just told you, like to be reborn. I think it's a pseudonym; I can't
>> imagine a Navaho naming a kid that, but the last 24 hours seem to be
>> my period to be tied to a stake in a Japanese prison camp for not
>> doing 'tenko' properly. I have one of his books, the one about how
>> his blood flows.
>
>
> "Tenko" = "roll call," involving a correct bow to the masters, right?
>
Yes. Back in the 80s I taped a 30-episode British production of that
name about a gradually changing community of English and Dutch female
prisoners of the Japanese, from the peaceful Raffles to the repatriation
of the women. Colonel Jefferson, who spent the war in Britain, while
his wife became the leader of the prisoners discovered that he wasn't
getting his meek housewife back again: "Bloody Hell!"
*Some* people had to die, hence the turnover. The only inauthentic part
for me was that the prisoners did not look like concentration camp
victims, but I'm sure that being starved nearly to death was not in the
actors' contracts. "You women work hard!! Much punish!!"
I haven't seen hide nor hair of it since. My wife couldn't watch it
initially, as it was too intense, but she got addicted. There was also
a revelation toward the resentment of the European colonial masters, the
oppression of the Chinese in Singapore, etc., that came out in a sequel
movie, that was a shock to me, though not as good as the TV series. Col.
Jefferson and his wife split.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
Sounds like rational acrophobia to me. Stay away from those places
until your equipment is up to snuff. I would. I was in Boston &
Cambridge a few days after that April blizzard several years ago, and
went slipsliding all over the place in the goo, even though I had some
tread. The day I got back to Balto, I had my Ukranian cobbler put some
bodacious new soles (souls, too) on them.
Can't you do that to your boots?
>
>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I assume you were spoofing about being a member of the Illuminati.
>>>
>> Of course, as well as being immortal, though once I almost believed
>> it. But a triple bypass when I hadn't known anything was wrong with
>> my heart made me more modest. I was sooo close to a fatal heart
>> attack. But I do know how to keep myself alive until the paramedics
>> get there. Cough hard twice a second, as the thoracic pressure will
>> pump blood to the brain. It's appalling that doctors do not tell
>> their elderly patients this trick.
>
>
> Ugh! Hyperventilation and headache! That's fast coughing.
>
>
Of course, death is very peaceful, especially if your will is written to
exclude family members you dispise.
Thats OK, Norm. Take two aspirin and go to bed.
jimbat
Norm
> [snip] The day I got back to Balto, I had my Ukranian cobbler put some
> bodacious new soles (souls, too) on them.
>
> Can't you do that to your boots?
Too far gone. And, if my impression is correct, boot repair
places around here haven't survived.
--
Norm
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Robbers wrote:
>>
>>> [snip]Plato
>>> would infer that all Iowans are strangers, which is simpler than "All
>>> Cretans are liars, I am a Cretan."
>>
>>
>>
>> According to Callimachus, the Cretan lie was that Zeus, the high god
>> of the Greeks, was dead and buried on Crete.
>>
> Was he cremated?
Hehe. I suppose that would have been convenient. All
Callimachus said was that Zeus had a tomb built by Cretans;
and he took exception in his Hymn to Zeus, saying, "But You
did not die, for You are forever" (Hymns 1.8-9; LCL,
modernized a bit by me).
The note in the Loeb Classical Library at that spot gives a
couple of other explanations for the proverb: (a) Idomeneus,
King of Crete, when asked to judge, decided that Thetis was
more beautiful than Medea, "whereon Medea said, 'Cretans are
always liars' and cursed them that they should never speak
the truth"; (b) Idomeneus divided the spoils of Troy
unfairly, per a scholiast on Callimachus.
Paul the Apostle referred to the proverb in Titus 1:12, and
what he meant by using it is rather opaque, but I suspect it
had something to do with the Jovian explanation. I don't
think he was perpetrating bigotry.
Of course, gods were supposed to be immortal. But
distressing little tidbits kept leaking out about Olympian
deities. For instance, Plutarch recounts an announcement at
sea, "Great Pan is Dead" (De Defectu Oraculorum = The
Obsolescence of Oracles 17 = 419C).
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
I do hope you noticed my point was that the Cretan syllogism has no
valid inference.
jimbat
Norm
*Scrunching face*
There is no explicitly stated syllogism, hence no inference
from a stated syllogism. But if you mean "a tomb to Zeus,
hence a dead god" or "a god's tomb, hence deity," then yeah.
The Cretan Liar paradox is a fun one. However, it pretty
much dissolves as a paradox when examined historically.
That's my simple point.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Robbers wrote:
>>>>>
>>>
>>>>>> [snip]Plato
>>>>>> would infer that all Iowans are strangers, which is simpler than
>>>>>> "All Cretans are liars, I am a Cretan."
>>>>>
[...]
>
>> I do hope you noticed my point was that the Cretan syllogism has no
>> valid inference.
>
>
> *Scrunching face*
>
> There is no explicitly stated syllogism, hence no inference from a
> stated syllogism. But if you mean "a tomb to Zeus, hence a dead god" or
> "a god's tomb, hence deity," then yeah.
Of course it's a syllogism, just add the start of a conclusion:
"Therefore..."
>
> The Cretan Liar paradox is a fun one. However, it pretty much dissolves
> as a paradox when examined historically. That's my simple point.
>
The paradox is logical, not historical.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Jim Robbers wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>> [snip]Plato
>>>>>>> would infer that all Iowans are strangers, which is simpler than
>>>>>>> "All Cretans are liars, I am a Cretan."
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
> [...]
>
>>
>>> I do hope you noticed my point was that the Cretan syllogism has no
>>> valid inference.
>>
>>
>>
>> *Scrunching face*
>>
>> There is no explicitly stated syllogism, hence no inference from a
>> stated syllogism. But if you mean "a tomb to Zeus, hence a dead god"
>> or "a god's tomb, hence deity," then yeah.
>
>
> Of course it's a syllogism, just add the start of a conclusion:
> "Therefore..."
Oh, antecedents again. Right. "All Cretans are liars. I am a
Cretan. Ergo, I am a liar."
>> The Cretan Liar paradox is a fun one. However, it pretty much
>> dissolves as a paradox when examined historically. That's my simple
>> point.
>>
> The paradox is logical, not historical.
Of course it's a logical paradox. But you don't show that
you see my point.
IIRC, Lewis Carroll put a lot of effort into solving the
Liar Paradox.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Norm wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Jim Robbers wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> [snip]Plato
>>>>>>>> would infer that all Iowans are strangers, which is simpler than
>>>>>>>> "All Cretans are liars, I am a Cretan."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>
>>>> I do hope you noticed my point was that the Cretan syllogism has no
>>>> valid inference.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *Scrunching face*
>>>
>>> There is no explicitly stated syllogism, hence no inference from a
>>> stated syllogism. But if you mean "a tomb to Zeus, hence a dead god"
>>> or "a god's tomb, hence deity," then yeah.
>>
>>
>>
>> Of course it's a syllogism, just add the start of a conclusion:
>> "Therefore..."
>
>
> Oh, antecedents again. Right. "All Cretans are liars. I am a Cretan.
> Ergo, I am a liar."
>
An invalid conclusion. I also might not be a Cretan.
>
>>> The Cretan Liar paradox is a fun one. However, it pretty much
>>> dissolves as a paradox when examined historically. That's my simple
>>> point.
>>>
>> The paradox is logical, not historical.
>
>
> Of course it's a logical paradox. But you don't show that you see my point.
>
> IIRC, Lewis Carroll put a lot of effort into solving the Liar Paradox.
>
I see your 'point', I just don't agree that it is a point.
jimbat
Norm
> I see your 'point', I just don't agree that it is a point.
Hmm, the hegemony of the synchronic, so to speak, over the
diachronic -- a common fallacy. But I wouldn't want to fall
into the opposite fallacy either, historicism I suppose that
would be. The Liar Paradox is fun to contemplate on its own
without history.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
It's good for HS geometry students; they get to Goedel's Paradox in a
hurry. The common fallacy is to be talking about two different things at
once and to confuse them.
jimbat
Norm
Hence the "so to speak."
As I was walking the trails today, I thought: The past
defines the present, and those in the present return the
favor. The latter is the tyranny of the synchronic, or a big
chunk of it.
I told you that I have a penchant for the epigrammatic, and
that Ursula Le Guin is better at it. Nietzsche was too. :-)
Are you referring to Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem
(1931)? I read that he "was guided by the liar paradox in
his construction of a proof of the incompleteness of
arithmetic."
--> A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the
Labyrinths of the Mind, [by] Roy Sorensen (Oxford; New York:
Oxford University Press, 2003): p. 90.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I see your 'point', I just don't agree that it is a point.
>>>
>>>
>>> Hmm, the hegemony of the synchronic, so to speak, over the diachronic
>>> -- a common fallacy. But I wouldn't want to fall into the opposite
>>> fallacy either, historicism I suppose that would be. The Liar Paradox
>>> is fun to contemplate on its own without history.
>>>
>>
>> It's good for HS geometry students; they get to Goedel's Paradox in a
>> hurry. The common fallacy is to be talking about two different things
>> at once and to confuse them.
>
>
> Hence the "so to speak."
>
> As I was walking the trails today, I thought: The past defines the
> present, and those in the present return the favor. The latter is the
> tyranny of the synchronic, or a big chunk of it.
>
Except that we seem to understand neither process. Hence it should
probably be more accurately renamed synchronidiotic.
> I told you that I have a penchant for the epigrammatic, and that Ursula
> Le Guin is better at it. Nietzsche was too. :-)
>
Roberts's Epigram (1965): No system can ever fully understand itself.
For instance, our dog knows the Pauli Exclusion Principle, but doesn't
know that he does.
> Are you referring to Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem (1931)? I read
> that he "was guided by the liar paradox in his construction of a proof
> of the incompleteness of arithmetic."
> --> A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the
> Mind, [by] Roy Sorensen (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press,
> 2003): p. 90.
>
Yes. He upset a number of people, including Einstein. I think Oppie
said, "Of course!"
The TOE probably also will be incurably incomplete. Marilyn Monroe had
the answer to that, "What does it matter?" You can always get an answer
that satisfies the teacher or can be published, and that's all that
counts, isn't it?
In Friday's Times I read that the New England cottontail may be
endangered (they are trying to find out). It's because of these
infernal brush-clearing machines you see on TV, the answer to all your
problems. Doris and I agreed that if we ever got any property, we'd
never use one. And neither would we tempt the deer ticks, having had
one experience with them on the Eastern Shore. My mathematics friend
there kept calling from the bathroom, "Will someone please shoot me!?"
as his wife was picking them out of his ass and balls, and whatnot.
jimbat
umarc
>In Friday's Times I read that the New England cottontail may be
>endangered (they are trying to find out). It's because of these
>infernal brush-clearing machines you see on TV, the answer to all your
>problems.
That's partly true, but there are several other factors.
For one thing, until a couple of years ago the New England cottontail
was thought to occur in the Appalachians as far south as Alabama,
but the Appalachian cottontail has recently been found to be a new
species (Sylvilagus obscurus; NEC is S. transitionalis).
The NEC was always rare and secretive; it hides in thick brush, and
apparently needs acres and acres of the stuff. It is rarely seen.
Early in the last century people looking for rabbits to hunt imported
several thousand eastern cottontails (S. floridanus) from the midwest
and turned them loose. They are everywhere in Massachusetts. It's
unclear what part, if any, the eastern cottontail plays in the decline
of the NEC.
Cape Cod used to be a stronghold of the NEC. But in the past few years
coyotes have spread to the Cape. They are killing rabbits of both
species, but the NEC may be suffering more than the eastern.
My father says you can tell the NEC by the presence of a black patch
between its ears. But some folks are now saying recent DNA tests show
the patch occurs in only about 90% of NEC's, and also in 10% of
easterns. If so, then only the animal in hand can be identified, and most
specimens studied have come from hunters or roadkill. The NEC is shyer
than the eastern and may be more likely to elude both hunter and SUV,
and so seem rarer than it realy is.
The bottom line: no one really knows.
umar
--
Bookmarks: Q 3:100; T I/490
What man hath joined together let no god put asunder.
rm -rf /luser/bush 58 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes
Jim Roberts
umarc wrote:
That's the impression I got from the article, though it did not give
*nearly* as much useful info. Thanks! It's good to hear about coyotes
on Cape Cod; that'll encourage folks to keep their pets in at night,
unless they are hyenas, of course.
jimbat
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
> [snip]
> Roberts's Epigram (1965): No system can ever fully understand itself.
For some reason that makes me think of Cornelius Van Til's
idea that there can be no philosophy without at least one
unprovable presupposition. I have yet to be convinced
otherwise, and for that reason (and two others) I sometimes
call myself a fideist. But to some people that's a nasty
term and they usually have other meanings for it, so that
label doesn't work well.
> For instance, our dog knows the Pauli Exclusion Principle, but doesn't
> know that he does.
How do you know that he does?
>> Are you referring to Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem (1931)? I
>> read that he "was guided by the liar paradox in his construction of a
>> proof of the incompleteness of arithmetic."
>> --> A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of
>> the Mind, [by] Roy Sorensen (Oxford; New York: Oxford University
>> Press, 2003): p. 90.
>>
>
> Yes. He upset a number of people, including Einstein. I think Oppie
> said, "Of course!"
>
> The TOE probably also will be incurably incomplete.
I assume you are referring to the Theory of Everything.
Rant: This morning I'm feeling annoyance at abbreviations.
I've broken hundreds of thousands over the years and am
saying, "Enough already!" Of abbreviations and acronyms, 99%
are gratuitous and produce a net loss of time. And that's
when they communicate, which frequently they don't -- all
the more so because now we are operating in a globalized,
interdisciplinary medium, the Net. Often they don't even
save space, and space doesn't have to be saved anymore
anyway. Pass the word: It's time for 99% of all
abbreviations to fade into history.
According to predictions back in the '90s, we were supposed
to have the "TOE" by now.
> Marilyn Monroe had
> the answer to that, "What does it matter?"
She must've said it sometime. Who hasn't?
"So?" is shorter.
> You can always get an answer
> that satisfies the teacher or can be published, and that's all that
> counts, isn't it?
>
> In Friday's Times I read that the New England cottontail may be
> endangered (they are trying to find out). It's because of these
> infernal brush-clearing machines you see on TV, the answer to all your
> problems. Doris and I agreed that if we ever got any property, we'd
> never use one. And neither would we tempt the deer ticks, having had
> one experience with them on the Eastern Shore. My mathematics friend
> there kept calling from the bathroom, "Will someone please shoot me!?"
> as his wife was picking them out of his ass and balls, and whatnot.
New England has plenty of brush and lots of rabbits, and
room for many more. I have a family living under the Pax
Normana in my own yard. The Pax doesn't keep the hawks away,
though. Or the coons out of my corn (if they're the
culprits, as I assume).
I don't have a rabbit in view at the moment to see whether
it's an eastern cottontail or a New England cottontail. I
think the latter.
BTW, in reference to earlier conversation, I notice misuse
of the word "scenario" in the article "Terror Bull," by
Steve Mirsky, in: Scientific American; v. 291, no. 3
(September 2004): p. 121.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>
>
>
>> [snip]
>> Roberts's Epigram (1965): No system can ever fully understand itself.
>
>
> For some reason that makes me think of Cornelius Van Til's idea that
> there can be no philosophy without at least one unprovable
> presupposition. I have yet to be convinced otherwise, and for that
> reason (and two others) I sometimes call myself a fideist. But to some
> people that's a nasty term and they usually have other meanings for it,
> so that label doesn't work well.
>
Reason: it relies purely on logic, and so is nonsense.
>
>> For instance, our dog knows the Pauli Exclusion Principle, but doesn't
>> know that he does.
>
>
> How do you know that he does?
>
>
He knows better than to run right through trees, or anything else that
won't give way.
>>> Are you referring to Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem (1931)? I
>>> read that he "was guided by the liar paradox in his construction of a
>>> proof of the incompleteness of arithmetic."
>>> --> A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of
>>> the Mind, [by] Roy Sorensen (Oxford; New York: Oxford University
>>> Press, 2003): p. 90.
>>>
>>
>> Yes. He upset a number of people, including Einstein. I think Oppie
>> said, "Of course!"
>>
>> The TOE probably also will be incurably incomplete.
>
>
> I assume you are referring to the Theory of Everything.
>
> Rant: This morning I'm feeling annoyance at abbreviations. I've broken
> hundreds of thousands over the years and am saying, "Enough already!" Of
> abbreviations and acronyms, 99% are gratuitous and produce a net loss of
> time. And that's when they communicate, which frequently they don't --
> all the more so because now we are operating in a globalized,
> interdisciplinary medium, the Net. Often they don't even save space, and
> space doesn't have to be saved anymore anyway. Pass the word: It's time
> for 99% of all abbreviations to fade into history.
Take a Celexa. Anyway, it's an acronym, not an abbreviation;
dictionaries use abbreviations. The document I worked the hardest on at
the Space Telescope was the Transformation Scripting Guide, which
translated properly prepared proposals into telescope commands.
Naturally, since you will never see it, feel free to call it the TSG.
I'll recognize it.
I agree for NASA and other arcane acronyms, but everything I read calls
it TOE, even the NY Times. But then you don't need to know NASA
acronyms like WFPC-II, VAB, or SIRTF mean - hoi polloi just look at the
pretty pictures and the tiles getting replaced.
I've never seen a discussion of what the incompleteness of the TOE would
mean, exactly. What would we really know then about the origin of the
universe?
Oddly, 35% of females in the US reporting accidents in which they were
at fault are named Natasha. Were they recently taxi drivers in Moscow?
(Complicating details removed.)
>
> According to predictions back in the '90s, we were supposed to have the
> "TOE" by now.
>
Oh, I knew a guy at Caltech named Demetrios Christodoulou (q.v.) who
claimed he already had it with "twistor theory" in 1976.
>
>> Marilyn Monroe had the answer to that, "What does it matter?"
>
>
> She must've said it sometime. Who hasn't?
>
She explicitly maintained that it was the ATE (Answer to Everything).
> "So?" is shorter.
>
>
>> You can always get an answer that satisfies the teacher or can be
>> published, and that's all that counts, isn't it?
>>
>> In Friday's Times I read that the New England cottontail may be
>> endangered (they are trying to find out). It's because of these
>> infernal brush-clearing machines you see on TV, the answer to all your
>> problems. Doris and I agreed that if we ever got any property, we'd
>> never use one. And neither would we tempt the deer ticks, having had
>> one experience with them on the Eastern Shore. My mathematics friend
>> there kept calling from the bathroom, "Will someone please shoot me!?"
>> as his wife was picking them out of his ass and balls, and whatnot.
>
>
> New England has plenty of brush and lots of rabbits, and room for many
> more. I have a family living under the Pax Normana in my own yard. The
> Pax doesn't keep the hawks away, though. Or the coons out of my corn (if
> they're the culprits, as I assume).
>
> I don't have a rabbit in view at the moment to see whether it's an
> eastern cottontail or a New England cottontail. I think the latter.
>
> BTW, in reference to earlier conversation, I notice misuse of the word
> "scenario" in the article "Terror Bull," by Steve Mirsky, in: Scientific
> American; v. 291, no. 3 (September 2004): p. 121.
>
Tsk, tsk. I can't find that issue. Is he the one who collects Ford
Mustangs? Write him a letter of correction.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
ChickPea wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> (Norm) wrote in
> <4139FFA8...@comcast.net>::
>
>
>>According to predictions back in the '90s, we were supposed
>>to have the "TOE" by now.
>
>
> And cheap fusion power, hydrogen cars and more leisure time.
There are natural laws against these things, and others besides.
1. Fusion power will *never* be possible or practical. Sandia,
Livermore, and Princeton are lying to you and to Congress. Pulsed
fusion power (Sandia) is just a lab toy, as it has no cooling mechanism.
Steady fusion power runs up against undampable magnetohydrodynamic
plasma instabilities, which thwart any attempts to contain it. Just as
bad, or worse, hydrogen fusion emits slow neutrons, easily captured by
the metals in the containment vessel, no matter how well cooled with
liquid lithium or shielded. These neutrons are easily captured and
transmute the containment metal atoms into other radioactive atoms,
disrupting the domain structure to the extent that it will just fall
apart if allowed to go to the end, as I did with my first VW beetle engine.
Then you are facing a long down time and a huge amount of radioactive
waste, probably more than with the fission reactors we have now. There
is no way of avoiding this catastrophe, no way of damping the
instabilities. Fusion belongs inside of stars and nowhere else.
Naturally these truths are swept under the rug when they are begging for
their next "revolutionary" toy.
My VW engine? In 1964 I was driving back to college pedal to the metal
as always, near Lynchburg, when the engine just quit with no warning. I
went back to look at it, and it had broken in half, front to back
parallel to the seal between the halves. I could look inside. After it
cooled off, I could reach inside and break off cookie-sized chunks from
the Al-Mg engine case with my bare hands. The domain structure had
broken down from just the heat. That's what would happen to any fusion
containment vessel, except that to touch it would be to die quickly.
2. Hydrogen - too costly and probably polluting to manufacture on the
scale needed.
3. There was a recent sociological study of this matter. It seems that
the more labor-saving devices the husband pays for, the more perfection
he expects at home. This is one of those "can't win" situations, no
matter what new devices come out in the future. Remember when the sales
mantra for computers in the office was (a) that the 'secretary' or
whomever could completely revise it before printing it out, and (b) you
could even migrate to a paperless office? A study was done in the
mid-80s with the following two conclusions: (a) since the Boss knew that
the draft was in the computer he refused to stop fucking with it, so
more drafts than ever, and (b) computers and printers actually generated
a lot more paper than was possible before.
With all the networking and document sharing at the Space Telescope,
which has a lot of intelligent people who want to cut down on paper use,
take a look at the huge bins of wasted paper on every floor, you know
that all hope is lost. And now we know that the secretaries were fired
by higher management, and everyone is left to hunt and peck their own
documents and memos. Of course, hunting and pecking gives more time for
thought, or thinking about that berliner for lunch.
And what about the autogyro we were promised on every suburban lawn in
the '50s by the '80s, where we would all be living soon, each nuclear
monogamous family with their own lawn, friendly Rover, and infernal
gasoline mower?
What would a fender-bender between autogyros be like? I liked what one
Olympian woman said when being complimented on her beauty, "And my legs
are long enough to reach the ground." I'm becoming more and more
suspicious of any locomotion that does not involve walking or driving.
As I told my brother before 9/11, the world is spinning out of control,
unforseeable disasters are waiting to throw themselves upon us, and
there is not a damned thing we can do about it. He didn't like that at
all, but his pessimism is building. He wants to try desperate measures.
I did that when I was young, but now shall just gradually withdraw
from the world, only sending money to poverty-stricken NGOs doing vital
work.
Maybe it's time for a visit to Six Flags.
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>> [snip]
>>> Roberts's Epigram (1965): No system can ever fully understand itself.
>>
>>
>>
>> For some reason that makes me think of Cornelius Van Til's idea that
>> there can be no philosophy without at least one unprovable
>> presupposition. I have yet to be convinced otherwise, and for that
>> reason (and two others) I sometimes call myself a fideist. But to some
>> people that's a nasty term and they usually have other meanings for
>> it, so that label doesn't work well.
>>
>
> Reason: it relies purely on logic, and so is nonsense.
Antecedent?
>>> For instance, our dog knows the Pauli Exclusion Principle, but
>>> doesn't know that he does.
>>
>>
>>
>> How do you know that he does?
>>
>>
> He knows better than to run right through trees, or anything else that
> won't give way.
When you put it that way, you make it sound like particles
are susceptible to common sense.
>>> The TOE probably also will be incurably incomplete.
>>
>>
>>
>> I assume you are referring to the Theory of Everything.
>>
>> Rant: This morning I'm feeling annoyance at abbreviations. I've broken
>> hundreds of thousands over the years and am saying, "Enough already!"
>> Of abbreviations and acronyms, 99% are gratuitous and produce a net
>> loss of time. And that's when they communicate, which frequently they
>> don't -- all the more so because now we are operating in a globalized,
>> interdisciplinary medium, the Net. Often they don't even save space,
>> and space doesn't have to be saved anymore anyway. Pass the word: It's
>> time for 99% of all abbreviations to fade into history.
>
>
> Take a Celexa. Anyway, it's an acronym, not an abbreviation;
Right you are.
> dictionaries use abbreviations. The document I worked the hardest on at
> the Space Telescope was the Transformation Scripting Guide, which
> translated properly prepared proposals into telescope commands.
> Naturally, since you will never see it, feel free to call it the TSG.
> I'll recognize it.
Try Googling TSG. My favorite, from the first few screens,
is Technical Speleological Group (which is there misspelled
"Goup")
> I agree for NASA and other arcane acronyms, but everything I read calls
> it TOE, even the NY Times. But then you don't need to know NASA
> acronyms like WFPC-II, VAB, or SIRTF mean - hoi polloi just look at the
> pretty pictures and the tiles getting replaced.
Acronyms add nothing to the depth of a subject. We the
people (hoi polloi), some of us, have enough interest so as
not to want to be running into another obstacle every two
seconds.
But my rant was over.
> I've never seen a discussion of what the incompleteness of the TOE would
> mean, exactly. What would we really know then about the origin of the
> universe?
Two excellent questions. I can't improve on them.
> Oddly, 35% of females in the US reporting accidents in which they were
> at fault are named Natasha. Were they recently taxi drivers in Moscow?
> (Complicating details removed.)
And one dumb question. Where did that statistic come from?
>> According to predictions back in the '90s, we were supposed to have
>> the "TOE" by now.
>>
> Oh, I knew a guy at Caltech named Demetrios Christodoulou (q.v.) who
> claimed he already had it with "twistor theory" in 1976.
Apparently he wasn't convincing enough.
>>> Marilyn Monroe had the answer to that, "What does it matter?"
>>
>>
>>
>> She must've said it sometime. Who hasn't?
>>
> She explicitly maintained that it was the ATE (Answer to Everything).
Among the online candidates I've found for the "answer to
everything": God, Jesus, guys, money, sex, education,
communication, algebra, hedgehogs, abstinence.
>> BTW, in reference to earlier conversation, I notice misuse of the word
>> "scenario" in the article "Terror Bull," by Steve Mirsky, in:
>> Scientific American; v. 291, no. 3 (September 2004): p. 121.
>>
> Tsk, tsk. I can't find that issue.
Try the public library. My answer to everything. :-)
> Is he the one who collects Ford
> Mustangs?
No idea. Michael Shermer discusses his '66 Mustang in the
same issue (p. 38).
> Write him a letter of correction.
I'll leave that to you. Mention that his misuse has been
noticed in a public forum.
--
Norm
Norm
> In alt.polyamory, Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> (Norm) wrote in
> <4139FFA8...@comcast.net>::
>
>
>>According to predictions back in the '90s, we were supposed
>>to have the "TOE" by now.
>
>
> And cheap fusion power, hydrogen cars and more leisure time.
'xactly.
--
Norm
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Norm wrote:
>>
>>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>
>
>>>> [snip]
>>>> Roberts's Epigram (1965): No system can ever fully understand itself.
>>>
>>>
>>> For some reason that makes me think of Cornelius Van Til's idea that
>>> there can be no philosophy without at least one unprovable
>>> presupposition. I have yet to be convinced otherwise, and for that
>>> reason (and two others) I sometimes call myself a fideist. But to
>>> some people that's a nasty term and they usually have other meanings
>>> for it, so that label doesn't work well.
>>>
>>
>> Reason: it relies purely on logic, and so is nonsense.
>
>
> Antecedent?
>
'idea' - you're getting a bit rusty.
>
>>>> For instance, our dog knows the Pauli Exclusion Principle, but
>>>> doesn't know that he does.
>>>
>>>
>>> How do you know that he does?
>>>
>>>
>> He knows better than to run right through trees, or anything else that
>> won't give way.
>
>
> When you put it that way, you make it sound like particles are
> susceptible to common sense.
>
>
He knows how they behave; *that* is common sense.
>>>> The TOE probably also will be incurably incomplete.
>>>
>>> I assume you are referring to the Theory of Everything.
>>>
>>> Rant: This morning I'm feeling annoyance at abbreviations. I've
>>> broken hundreds of thousands over the years and am saying, "Enough
>>> already!" Of abbreviations and acronyms, 99% are gratuitous and
>>> produce a net loss of time. And that's when they communicate, which
>>> frequently they don't -- all the more so because now we are operating
>>> in a globalized, interdisciplinary medium, the Net. Often they don't
>>> even save space, and space doesn't have to be saved anymore anyway.
>>> Pass the word: It's time for 99% of all abbreviations to fade into
>>> history.
>>
>>
>>
>> Take a Celexa. Anyway, it's an acronym, not an abbreviation;
>
>
> Right you are.
>
>
>> dictionaries use abbreviations. The document I worked the hardest on
>> at the Space Telescope was the Transformation Scripting Guide, which
>> translated properly prepared proposals into telescope commands.
>> Naturally, since you will never see it, feel free to call it the TSG.
>> I'll recognize it.
>
>
> Try Googling TSG. My favorite, from the first few screens, is Technical
> Speleological Group (which is there misspelled "Goup")
>
>
If you have gone caving, you will understand the occasion for the
misspelling.
>> I agree for NASA and other arcane acronyms, but everything I read
>> calls it TOE, even the NY Times. But then you don't need to know NASA
>> acronyms like WFPC-II, VAB, or SIRTF mean - hoi polloi just look at
>> the pretty pictures and the tiles getting replaced.
>
>
> Acronyms add nothing to the depth of a subject. We the people (hoi
> polloi), some of us, have enough interest so as not to want to be
> running into another obstacle every two seconds.
>
The alternative is "that thing".
> But my rant was over.
>
>
>> I've never seen a discussion of what the incompleteness of the TOE
>> would mean, exactly. What would we really know then about the origin
>> of the universe?
>
>
> Two excellent questions. I can't improve on them.
>
>
>> Oddly, 35% of females in the US reporting accidents in which they were
>> at fault are named Natasha. Were they recently taxi drivers in
>> Moscow? (Complicating details removed.)
>
>
> And one dumb question. Where did that statistic come from?
>
NPR, Click and Clack.
>
>>> According to predictions back in the '90s, we were supposed to have
>>> the "TOE" by now.
>>>
>> Oh, I knew a guy at Caltech named Demetrios Christodoulou (q.v.) who
>> claimed he already had it with "twistor theory" in 1976.
>
>
> Apparently he wasn't convincing enough.
>
>
I haven't heard of twistor theory since. A dead end; a mathematical
construction having nothing to do with the universe. He *was* a bright
fellow and managed to intimidate a few grad students. I thought he was
nuts.
>>>> Marilyn Monroe had the answer to that, "What does it matter?"
>>>
>>>
>>> She must've said it sometime. Who hasn't?
>>>
>> She explicitly maintained that it was the ATE (Answer to Everything).
>
>
> Among the online candidates I've found for the "answer to everything":
> God, Jesus, guys, money, sex, education, communication, algebra,
> hedgehogs, abstinence.
>
Also absinthe and Everclear. The hedgehog knows one big thing.... It's
also Achilles's favorite toy.
>
>>> BTW, in reference to earlier conversation, I notice misuse of the
>>> word "scenario" in the article "Terror Bull," by Steve Mirsky, in:
>>> Scientific American; v. 291, no. 3 (September 2004): p. 121.
>>>
>> Tsk, tsk. I can't find that issue.
>
>
> Try the public library. My answer to everything. :-)
The issue is in the house somewhere, or in our box. I'll just have to
ask the family archivist, my wife, at some tactful time after she gets
back home from Texas tomorrow.
>
The nearest public library is for kiddies, two mi away, and the City is
trying to close it. The next nearest is the Milty Library at Hopkins,
but it doesn't maintain copies of specialized journals, which are
scattered in little libraries all over campus that do not like to let
you in. A vastly over-rated University.
>
>> Is he the one who collects Ford Mustangs?
>
>
> No idea. Michael Shermer discusses his '66 Mustang in the same issue (p.
> 38).
>
>
>> Write him a letter of correction.
>
>
> I'll leave that to you. Mention that his misuse has been noticed in a
> public forum.
>
Do you keep a toga?
jimbat
Norm
>
>
> ChickPea wrote:
>
>> In alt.polyamory, Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> (Norm) wrote in
>> <4139FFA8...@comcast.net>::
>>
>>
> 2. Hydrogen - too costly and probably polluting to manufacture on the
> scale needed.
Alan Alda was driving around a prototype. So what's the hold-up?
> 3. There was a recent sociological study of this matter. It seems that
> the more labor-saving devices the husband pays for, the more perfection
> he expects at home. This is one of those "can't win" situations, no
> matter what new devices come out in the future. Remember when the sales
> mantra for computers in the office was (a) that the 'secretary' or
> whomever could completely revise it before printing it out, and (b) you
> could even migrate to a paperless office? A study was done in the
> mid-80s with the following two conclusions: (a) since the Boss knew that
> the draft was in the computer he refused to stop fucking with it, so
> more drafts than ever, and (b) computers and printers actually generated
> a lot more paper than was possible before.
>
> With all the networking and document sharing at the Space Telescope,
> which has a lot of intelligent people who want to cut down on paper use,
> take a look at the huge bins of wasted paper on every floor, you know
> that all hope is lost. And now we know that the secretaries were fired
> by higher management, and everyone is left to hunt and peck their own
> documents and memos. Of course, hunting and pecking gives more time for
> thought, or thinking about that berliner for lunch.
Computers have cut done my generation of paper considerably.
In fact, I haven't bothered to fix my printer in months.
But I've observed the phenomenon of which you speak up close.
> And what about the autogyro we were promised on every suburban lawn in
> the '50s by the '80s, where we would all be living soon, each nuclear
> monogamous family with their own lawn, friendly Rover, and infernal
> gasoline mower?
They're out there. Just not many people using 'em.
> What would a fender-bender between autogyros be like?
A new meaning for air bags.
> I liked what one
> Olympian woman said when being complimented on her beauty, "And my legs
> are long enough to reach the ground." I'm becoming more and more
> suspicious of any locomotion that does not involve walking or driving.
>
> As I told my brother before 9/11, the world is spinning out of control,
> unforseeable disasters are waiting to throw themselves upon us, and
> there is not a damned thing we can do about it. He didn't like that at
> all, but his pessimism is building. He wants to try desperate measures.
> I did that when I was young, but now shall just gradually withdraw from
> the world, only sending money to poverty-stricken NGOs doing vital work.
>
> Maybe it's time for a visit to Six Flags.
Yeah, you sound so fundy in all but doctrine, morals, and
politics. :-)
--
Norm
Norm
>
>
> Norm wrote:
>
>> Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Norm wrote:
>>>> For some reason that makes me think of Cornelius Van Til's idea that
>>>> there can be no philosophy without at least one unprovable
>>>> presupposition. I have yet to be convinced otherwise, and for that
>>>> reason (and two others) I sometimes call myself a fideist. But to
>>>> some people that's a nasty term and they usually have other meanings
>>>> for it, so that label doesn't work well.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Reason: it relies purely on logic, and so is nonsense.
>>
>>
>>
>> Antecedent?
>>
>
> 'idea' - you're getting a bit rusty.
No. At the moment I'm approximately as bemused as I was when
we began these conversations.
> [snip]
>> Try Googling TSG. My favorite, from the first few screens, is
>> Technical Speleological Group (which is there misspelled "Goup")
>>
>>
> If you have gone caving, you will understand the occasion for the
> misspelling.
LOL
>> Acronyms add nothing to the depth of a subject. We the people (hoi
>> polloi), some of us, have enough interest so as not to want to be
>> running into another obstacle every two seconds.
>>
>
> The alternative is "that thing".
Good point. But even "that thing" usually has its antecedent
spelled out once per communication.
> [snip]
>>> Oh, I knew a guy at Caltech named Demetrios Christodoulou (q.v.) who
>>> claimed he already had it [TOE] with "twistor theory" in 1976.
>>
>>
>>
>> Apparently he wasn't convincing enough.
>>
>>
> I haven't heard of twistor theory since. A dead end; a mathematical
> construction having nothing to do with the universe. He *was* a bright
> fellow and managed to intimidate a few grad students. I thought he was
> nuts.
Looks like Roger Penrose is keeping twistor theory alive.
http://www.turing.org.uk/twistordiagrams/intro1.html
> [snip]
>> I'll leave that to you. Mention that his misuse has been noticed in a
>> public forum.
>>
>
> Do you keep a toga?
Only when I'm posing for Raphael in the Academy.
--
Norm
umarc
>Rant: This morning I'm feeling annoyance at abbreviations.
>I've broken hundreds of thousands over the years and am
>saying, "Enough already!" Of abbreviations and acronyms, 99%
>are gratuitous and produce a net loss of time. And that's
>when they communicate, which frequently they don't -- all
>the more so because now we are operating in a globalized,
>interdisciplinary medium, the Net. Often they don't even
>save space, and space doesn't have to be saved anymore
>anyway. Pass the word: It's time for 99% of all
>abbreviations to fade into history.
Learn classical Arabic. There aren't any abbreviations, except
sl`m for "May God bless him and grant him peace" (a ritual formula
pronounced after Muhammad's name) and `m for "upon him be peace"
(pronounced after the names of other prophets, e.g. Jesus Christ,
Moses, Abraham, Dhu al-Qarnayn[1], Adam, etc.).
[1] "Owner of two horns" -- none other than al-Iskandar (Alexander
the Great).
umar
--
Bookmarks: Q 3:100; T I/490
What man hath joined together let no god put asunder.
rm -rf /luser/bush 58 days, 11 hours, 5 minutes
umarc
>1. Fusion power will *never* be possible or practical.
I'm certainly not counting on it.
>2. Hydrogen - too costly and probably polluting to manufacture on the
>scale needed.
Yup. Advanced battery technology on the other hand offers some promise,
if only the cost of oil would go up a bit more.
>3. There was a recent sociological study of this matter. It seems that
>the more labor-saving devices the husband pays for, the more perfection
>he expects at home.
I don't know this husband. The ones I've met don't seem to care one way
or the other what state of cleanliness their homes are in.
>This is one of those "can't win" situations, no
>matter what new devices come out in the future. Remember when the sales
>mantra for computers in the office was (a) that the 'secretary' or
>whomever could completely revise it before printing it out, and (b) you
>could even migrate to a paperless office? A study was done in the
>mid-80s with the following two conclusions: (a) since the Boss knew that
>the draft was in the computer he refused to stop fucking with it, so
>more drafts than ever, and (b) computers and printers actually generated
>a lot more paper than was possible before.
I think it varies from one organization to another. The squirrel-free
town of New Shoreham, Rhode Island (year-round population ca. 900)
wouldn't have a classical radio station if not for the computers that
allow us to run it without warm bodies.
But I'm sure there are companies where the cost of information technology
is greater than the money it saves. M****soft software iin particular
seems designed more to provide work and sustenance for MIS people than to
solve practical business problems.
>As I told my brother before 9/11, the world is spinning out of control,
>unforseeable disasters are waiting to throw themselves upon us, and
>there is not a damned thing we can do about it.
All disasters are unforeseen, else they would be prevented.
>Maybe it's time for a visit to Six Flags.
Why is it called Six Flags? There were never more than three flags that
ever flew over the land where their nearest amusement park stands: the
flag of the British empire that was, that of the American empire that is,
and the flag of our beloved Commonwealth, long may it wave!
umar
--
Bookmarks: Q 3:100; T I/490
What man hath joined together let no god put asunder.
rm -rf /luser/bush 58 days, 10 hours, 31 minutes
umarc
(re: hydrogen cars)
>Alan Alda was driving around a prototype. So what's the hold-up?
It will always take more energy to extract hydrogen then will be obtained
from it.
Of course, one can always cheat and get it from something like gasoline,
but that seems rather pointless to me.
umar
--
Bookmarks: Q 3:100; T I/490
What man hath joined together let no god put asunder.
rm -rf /luser/bush 58 days, 10 hours, 21 minutes
Brooks Moses
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
> (re: hydrogen cars)
> >Alan Alda was driving around a prototype. So what's the hold-up?
>
> It will always take more energy to extract hydrogen then will be obtained
> from it.
Given your comment in a previous message about battery technology, this
isn't necessarily a show-stopper -- it's just an observation that
hydrogen needs to be considered an energy carrier, rather than an energy
source. And, as an energy carrier, it does have a fair bit to recommend
it.
In any case, to answer Norm's question, the major current hold-up is
that gasoline is really cheap. Even in massive volume production, it's
unlikely that hydrogen can be produced and delivered for less than about
four dollars per gallon-of-gasoline equivalent. (The projections vary
all over the map, depending on how one expects to produce it, but I
haven't seen many I'd believe that are much less than that.)
The other notable holdups are that the car itself would be rather more
expensive and have a substantially shorter range between fillups than
"ordinary" cars, and that currently there are a total of maybe a dozen
hydrogen-car refueling stations in the world. These would almost
certainly become much smaller issues were the cost-of-fuel issue to
change significantly, however -- but even there it takes a fairly long
time for new technologies to become adopted, if they rely on having a
large support infrastructure.
> Of course, one can always cheat and get it from something like gasoline,
> but that seems rather pointless to me.
Natural gas is what you want, actually; it's what the vast majority of
current production is from. It's not _completely_ pointless to do it
that way, but the main reasons put forth for developing hydrogen
vehicles do indeed involve the presumption that most of the hydrogen
will (at least in the long term) be produced from some non-fossil-fuel
energy source.
- Brooks
--
The "bmoses-nospam" address is valid; no unmunging needed.
Fat Naked Dangerous
>Why is it called Six Flags? There were never more than three flags that
>ever flew over the land where their nearest amusement park stands: the
>flag of the British empire that was, that of the American empire that is,
>and the flag of our beloved Commonwealth, long may it wave!
Because it started in Texas.
(Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, Confederate States of
America, United States of America.)
--
Piglet, pig...@piglet.org http://unitedforpeace.org/
End the Occupation of Iraq
1321 days down Ann B. for President!
139 to go. Burlingham/Burlingham in 2004!
umarc
(re: why Six Flags?)
>Because it started in Texas.
>(Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, Confederate States of
>America, United States of America.)
Ah. That makes sense.
umar
--
Bookmarks: Q 3:100; T I/490
What man hath joined together let no god put asunder.
rm -rf /luser/bush 58 days, 9 hours, 0 minutes
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> ChickPea wrote:
>
To put this "thread" back where it started, the IOC is getting tough
with the Olympics gymnastic judges. They will no longer be allowed to
read personal e-mail while events are in progress.
Is Athens going to have to *import* liquid hemlock for them? They have
scattered by now, but can be brought back with the technique bounty
hunters, and some cops, use: promise them a party with special awards,
such as getting their official Olympic portraits with their special
awards, and then it's the cup of hemlock, baby. Hmm, perhaps something
wrong with the catered banquet?
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
> Jim Roberts wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> ChickPea wrote:
>>
>>> In alt.polyamory, Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> (Norm) wrote in
>>> <4139FFA8...@comcast.net>::
>>>
>>>
>
>> 2. Hydrogen - too costly and probably polluting to manufacture on the
>> scale needed.
>
>
> Alan Alda was driving around a prototype. So what's the hold-up?
BG&E trucks are switching to hydrogen. They don't say where this
wonderful hydrogen will come from. Electrolysis, of course, but where
does the juice for the electrolysis come from? That's right: foreign
oil!! And a lot it takes too.
Or a use for Superman.
>> I liked what one Olympian woman said when being complimented on her
>> beauty, "And my legs are long enough to reach the ground." I'm
>> becoming more and more suspicious of any locomotion that does not
>> involve walking or driving.
>>
>> As I told my brother before 9/11, the world is spinning out of
>> control, unforseeable disasters are waiting to throw themselves upon
>> us, and there is not a damned thing we can do about it. He didn't
>> like that at all, but his pessimism is building. He wants to try
>> desperate measures. I did that when I was young, but now shall just
>> gradually withdraw from the world, only sending money to
>> poverty-stricken NGOs doing vital work.
>>
>> Maybe it's time for a visit to Six Flags.
>
>
> Yeah, you sound so fundy in all but doctrine, morals, and politics. :-)
>
Eh? Six Flags is fun, and the skirts are unbelievably short right now.
My tides are high, especially at Cedar Point. I, my wife, and Katya
once saw Fran Drescher with all her bodyguards, publicists, agents, and
so forth at the big diamond exhibit at the AMNH (get that acronym?) in
New York, and she needed to powder four cheeks instead of two.
Appalling and annoying.
My doctrine, morals, and politics can't be beat.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Norm wrote:
But who reads Roger Penrose anymore? His only real contribution came in
the 60s, when he collaborated with Hawking on the Cosmic Censorship Proof.
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I'll leave that to you. Mention that his misuse has been noticed in a
>>> public forum.
>>>
>>
>> Do you keep a toga?
>
>
> Only when I'm posing for Raphael in the Academy.
>
Why not Gabriel? Then you might get a crack at Mary with Joseph's
approval. Is this the meaning of the Pax Normana?
jimbat
Jim Roberts
umarc wrote:
Where did you get this nutty idea? Other people are irredeemably
dangerous, the Earth often destructive of all life, and the universe is
beautiful but deadly. It's time for Superman, I suppose? But can even
He restart the Great Conveyor?
>
>
>>Maybe it's time for a visit to Six Flags.
>
>
> Why is it called Six Flags? There were never more than three flags that
> ever flew over the land where their nearest amusement park stands: the
> flag of the British empire that was, that of the American empire that is,
> and the flag of our beloved Commonwealth, long may it wave!
>
Texas had six flags: Spanish, French, Mexican, Republican Texas,
Confederate, and US, unless I left out the Romulan. The Republican
national flag is now the state flag. I was born in Texas, and spent my
first summer of babyhood in a dresser drawer in a 4th floor (top floor)
non-airconditioned apartment in San Antonio, which accounts for the
astonishing early growth of my frontal lobes - as I have convinced my
mother, who feels guilty about the whole thing. I even dated the first
PhD to come out of Geronimo, Texas; go ahead, try to find it.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
umarc wrote:
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
> (re: hydrogen cars)
>
>
>>Alan Alda was driving around a prototype. So what's the hold-up?
>
>
> It will always take more energy to extract hydrogen than will be obtained
> from it.
>
> Of course, one can always cheat and get it from something like gasoline,
> but that seems rather pointless to me.
>
>
> umar
Or Jupiter, which seems expensive, except to space nuts, who are only
too happy to spend *your* money on projects as silly as a hatful of
worms eating ramp roots. Plus we'll get more helium for all those mylar
baloons, they say, that kill so much sea life.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
Brooks Moses wrote:
Such as all those bones that are going to waste in the ground.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
ChickPea wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> (Norm) wrote in
> <413A3830...@comcast.net>::
>
>
>>Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Norm wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Jim Roberts wrote:
>>
>>>>>Roberts's Epigram (1965): No system can ever fully understand itself.
>>>>
>>>>For some reason that makes me think of Cornelius Van Til's idea that
>>>>there can be no philosophy without at least one unprovable
>>>>presupposition. I have yet to be convinced otherwise, and for that
>>>>reason (and two others) I sometimes call myself a fideist. But to some
>>>>people that's a nasty term and they usually have other meanings for
>>>>it, so that label doesn't work well.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Reason: it relies purely on logic, and so is nonsense.
>>
>>Antecedent?
>>
>>
>>>>>For instance, our dog knows the Pauli Exclusion Principle, but
>>>>>doesn't know that he does.
>>>>
>>>>How do you know that he does?
>>>>
>>>
>>>He knows better than to run right through trees, or anything else that
>>>won't give way.
>>
>>When you put it that way, you make it sound like particles
>>are susceptible to common sense.
>
>
> Well, it makes as much sense as most descriptions of their behaviour. :)
I see that Marc is ready for Landau-Lifshitz "Quantum Mechanics:
Non-Relativistic Theory." Always a good place to start in order to
understand those Gypsy electrons. You *really* don't want to go on to
"Relativistic Quantum Theory, Vols 1 & 2" by Berestetskii, Lifshitz, and
Pitaevskii. AS I have mentioned before here, Landau - the leader of the
pack of Soviet physicists - got into a car accident, lived for ten more
years and finally learned to count again.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
ChickPea wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, umarc <um...@hippogryph.com> (umarc) wrote in
> <2pv921F...@uni-berlin.de>::
>
>
>>Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>>
>>(re: hydrogen cars)
>>
>>
>>>Alan Alda was driving around a prototype. So what's the hold-up?
>>
>>It will always take more energy to extract hydrogen then will be obtained
>
>>from it.
>
>>Of course, one can always cheat and get it from something like gasoline,
>>but that seems rather pointless to me.
>
>
> You can replace "hydrogen" with $FUEL in that sentence and it's still true.
> So what? The laws of thermodynamics tell us that we can't achieve perfect
> efficiency. The issue here is not fuel efficiency but combustion products.
>
> The ideal scenario would be to have everything electric using solar power-
> hydrogen fuelled vehicles would be a step in the right direction.
> Hydrogen-fuelled buses are going into service in several locations (the
> downsides are easier to manage in a larger vehicle, as the size of the
> tanks etc is less of a burden). Perhaps hydrogen trucks could be next?
I mentioned before, they are already being made for fleets, such as BG&E's.
jimbat
Jim Roberts
ChickPea wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, umarc <um...@hippogryph.com> (umarc) wrote in
> <2pv8fmF...@uni-berlin.de>::
>
>
>>Jim Roberts <jim...@bellatlantic.net> writes:
>>
>
>
>>>3. There was a recent sociological study of this matter. It seems that
>>>the more labor-saving devices the husband pays for, the more perfection
>>>he expects at home.
>>
>>I don't know this husband. The ones I've met don't seem to care one way
>>or the other what state of cleanliness their homes are in.
>
>
> I suspect jimbat is either being ironic, or having a 50s flashback. Or
> both.
Nope. The study was published in the NY Times recently. There really
are husbands just like that, just not in your circle.
jimbat
Norm
> Norm <walkswi...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>>Rant: This morning I'm feeling annoyance at abbreviations.
>>I've broken hundreds of thousands over the years and am
>>saying, "Enough already!" Of abbreviations and acronyms, 99%
>>are gratuitous and produce a net loss of time. And that's
>>when they communicate, which frequently they don't -- all
>>the more so because now we are operating in a globalized,
>>interdisciplinary medium, the Net. Often they don't even
>>save space, and space doesn't have to be saved anymore
>>anyway. Pass the word: It's time for 99% of all
>>abbreviations to fade into history.
>
>
> Learn classical Arabic. There aren't any abbreviations, except
> sl`m for "May God bless him and grant him peace" (a ritual formula
> pronounced after Muhammad's name) and `m for "upon him be peace"
> (pronounced after the names of other prophets, e.g. Jesus Christ,
> Moses, Abraham, Dhu al-Qarnayn[1], Adam, etc.).
Sounds like Paradise.
Both Greek and Latin manuscripts of the Bible abbreviated
extensively. In Greek typically an abbreviation was
designated as such by a line over the letters.
> [1] "Owner of two horns" -- none other than al-Iskandar (Alexander
> the Great).
Possibly the horns are a reference to Daniel 8:1-8. But
coins were actually struck showing Alexander with the horns
of a ram.
Alexander is considered a prophet? So it seems in the Koran,
Surah 18:89-98. Although there one wonders about the
description fitting the historical figure.
In the English of the 17th century (and not that century
alone) two horns would typically represent a cuckold.
--
Norm
Norm
> [snip]
> The ideal scenario would be to have everything electric using solar power-
> hydrogen fuelled vehicles would be a step in the right direction.
I hear, and don't know whether it's true, that electric
vehicles would bring about greater pollution from electric
plants than gasoline-powered cars now produce. Besides that,
the system of centralized energy would remain in the
driver's seat, so to speak.
> Hydrogen-fuelled buses are going into service in several locations (the
> downsides are easier to manage in a larger vehicle, as the size of the
> tanks etc is less of a burden). Perhaps hydrogen trucks could be next?
Strategically, it may be better to start by changing over a
few niches. For instance, all-terrain vehicles and
snowmobiles would be much better for a variety of purposes
as hydrogen-powered. And hikers wouldn't have to gag on
their exhaust. However, there's the size issue you mention.
--
Norm