OT: Why does the Right hate relativity?
Mike Schilling
their article on Relativity. They're against it. The article itself is
very reminiscent of the one on evolution, consisting of
* Ad hominem attacks (its proponents are athiests and leftists)
* Arguments that would embarass a bright 12-year-old, e.g. if particle
trajectories look the same backwards as forwards, how could entropy be
increasing?
* Furious hand-waving away of actual evidence: Sure, relativity explains
gravitational bending of light, but probably some other things could too.
* Misunderstanding of its provenance: if time and space weren't absolute,
then truth and morality wouldn't be either.
Mercifully, they don't feel the need to slander Einstein in the same way
they slander Darwin.
I suspect the last starred point is the main one: they've somehow got it
into their pointy little heads that "everything is relative" leads to decent
health care and gay marriage. But if anyone knows a more specific issue,
I'd be interested in hearing it.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Well, I hate relativity because it gets in the way of simultanaeity,
FTL drives, all that kind of thing. But why this would be the domain of
U.S. Current Usage-conservatives I don't know, not being one myself.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Spiros Bousbouras
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia,
"Idleness is the mother of all evil" ;-)
> and happened on
> their article on Relativity. They're against it. The article itself is
> very reminiscent of the one on evolution, consisting of
I think political terms such as "right" or "left" are so vague and used
to describe people with such a wide range of political beliefs that
they have become meaningless and are best avoided. In particular I'm
sure there are many people who would describe themselves as right wing
and who would be horrified to be associated in any way with
Conservapedia.
As to why people who contribute to Conservapedia don't like the theory
of relativity I have no idea. The article has a political section
http://www.conservapedia.com/Relativity#Political_aspects_of_relativity
and this may shed some light.
By the way I found the following quote from the article amusing:
"More generally, and also unlike most of physics, the theories of
relativity consist of complex mathematical equations relying on several
hypotheses".
[...]
--
Never attribute to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by
shared attitudes.
cryptoguy
wrote:
I think its more that authoritarians of every stripe hate relativity.
From Einstein and Soviet Ideology by Alexander Vucinich:
- start quote -
During the Stalin era (1929-1953), conflicting forces in Marxist
thinking were eliminated, and complete unity was established and
firmly guarded by the state. Marxist theorists declared war on
“idealistic” principles built into Einstein’s scientific work. State
harassment of leading physicists accused of idealistic digressions
persisted throughout the Stalinist era. Several leading proponents of
Einstein’s ideas perished in political prisons.
- end quote -
pt
Wayne Throop
: Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com>
: By the way I found the following quote from the article amusing: "More
: generally, and also unlike most of physics, the theories of relativity
: consist of complex mathematical equations relying on several
: hypotheses".
In that same paragraph, we find "the equations for special relativity
assume that it is forever impossible to attain a velocity faster than
the speed of light". Indeed, a quick scan indicates that it's rare that
a paragraph of the article avoids making one or more misrepresentations.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Spiros Bousbouras
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
> Well, I hate relativity because it gets in the way of simultanaeity,
> FTL drives, all that kind of thing.
I remember reading somewhere (possibly The Planetary Report) Freeman
Dyson saying that he likes the absolute speed limit the theory of
relativity places because it ensures privacy.
Joel Polowin
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Well, I hate relativity because it gets in the way of simultanaeity,
> FTL drives, all that kind of thing. But why this would be the domain of
> U.S. Current Usage-conservatives I don't know, not being one myself.
Hmm. If you can't have simultaneity, and there's a limit to the speed
at which information can be transmitted, I guess you can't have
omniscience.
If I had a Convervapedia account, I'd put in something about how
that's another disproof of relativity.
David DeLaney
>The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>their article on Relativity. They're against it.
Somehow I am not surprised. After all, ether was good enough for Jaysus, as
were angels pushing everything to where its natural place is, so by damn it
oughta be good enough for them physicist types!
>* Ad hominem attacks (its proponents are athiests and leftists)
^^^^^^^^
Oh TELL me that they spelled it like that! Please please?
>* Arguments that would embarass a bright 12-year-old, e.g. if particle
>trajectories look the same backwards as forwards, how could entropy be
>increasing?
Because of choice. So naturally they's agin it.
>* Furious hand-waving away of actual evidence: Sure, relativity explains
>gravitational bending of light, but probably some other things could too.
Heck, Aunt Martha probably could, but you can never follow her explanations
without falling off somewhere in the middle.
>* Misunderstanding of its provenance: if time and space weren't absolute,
>then truth and morality wouldn't be either.
No no, the particles are truth and _beauty_! Or top and bottom, okay, I see
why they're unhappy with that too.
>I suspect the last starred point is the main one: they've somehow got it
>into their pointy little heads that "everything is relative" leads to decent
>health care and gay marriage. But if anyone knows a more specific issue,
>I'd be interested in hearing it.
Dave "still really confused about what's so bad about everyone ELSE'S taxes
paying for YOUR health care, and why insurance companies suddenly have
kittens and puppies duct-taped all over them" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Spiros Bousbouras
Joel Polowin <jpol...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 29, 4:45=A0pm, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
> <seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> > Well, I hate relativity because it gets in the way of simultanaeity,
> > FTL drives, all that kind of thing. But why this would be the domain of
> > U.S. Current Usage-conservatives I don't know, not being one myself.
>
> Hmm. If you can't have simultaneity, and there's a limit to the speed
> at which information can be transmitted, I guess you can't have
> omniscience.
I don't see that as a problem , God is supposed to be above and beyond
natural laws.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:slrnhjl8s...@gatekeeper.vic.com:
> Dave "still really confused about what's so bad about everyone
> ELSE'S taxes
> paying for YOUR health care, and why insurance companies
> suddenly have kittens and puppies duct-taped all over them"
I believe the concern is everybody else's taxes (and yours) paying
for corporate profits, with no health care available to anyone. Hey,
those death panelists need a paycheck too, you know.
--
Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Jack Tingle
Well, there you go. Conservatives are against the right to privacy
ensconced in the "shadings and penumbras" of the US Constitution because
that led to legal birth control, and thence to Roe v. Wade. And they
think all illegal aliens need to carry US govt. issued ID cards so they
can't get health care, er, illegally. Except they're against legal
residents having to have a national ID card so true Americans can remain
private. And they're for their privacy, so no on can use eminent domain
on their land, unless it's a large corporation being favored for
development on land owned by unConservatives. So...
If you try to figure all of this out, on both sides, you'll go nuts.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
Jack Tingle
> On Dec 29, 4:42 pm, "Mike Schilling"<mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>> their article on Relativity. They're against it. The article itself is
>> very reminiscent of the one on evolution, consisting of
>> I suspect the last starred point is the main one: they've somehow got it
>> into their pointy little heads that "everything is relative" leads to decent
>> health care and gay marriage. But if anyone knows a more specific issue,
>> I'd be interested in hearing it.
>
> I think its more that authoritarians of every stripe hate relativity.
>
> From Einstein and Soviet Ideology by Alexander Vucinich:
> - start quote -
> During the Stalin era (1929-1953), conflicting forces in Marxist
> thinking were eliminated, and complete unity was established and
> firmly guarded by the state. Marxist theorists declared war on
> harassment of leading physicists accused of idealistic digressions
> persisted throughout the Stalinist era. Several leading proponents of
> - end quote -
GREAT! Everyone not Americans, disregard the last hundred years of
modern science. It's bad for you.
That way, we come out ahead. Oh, wait, half of our elected government
and populace are disregarding it too. Damn. It was such a beautiful plan.
Sadly,
Jack Tingle
JRStern
wrote:
>As to why people who contribute to Conservapedia don't like the theory
>of relativity I have no idea. The article has a political section
>http://www.conservapedia.com/Relativity#Political_aspects_of_relativity
>and this may shed some light.
>
>By the way I found the following quote from the article amusing:
>"More generally, and also unlike most of physics, the theories of
>relativity consist of complex mathematical equations relying on several
>hypotheses".
gibberish.
J.
JRStern
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>their article on Relativity. They're against it.
You mean, as in Einstein's theory?
That's nuts.
I mean, it's nuts that a Conservapedia would have such an entry.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Relativity
Sounds like some kind of semantic overrun, whoever wrote the thing was
taking a halfway reasonable position against moral or ethical
relativity, and improperly extending it to physics, an utterly
different domain.
Bu then, it's nuts that half the current Republican officeholders seem
to find value in doubting Darwinian evolution is a valid theory.
I'll note of course that at least half the Democratic officeholders
also doubt Darwinian evolution for the opposite reasons, they want to
believe everyone is an equal tabula rasa and doctrinally can't believe
in inherited characteristics, without which there sure isn't any
evolution, either.
Welcome to the New Dark Ages.
J.
David Johnston
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>their article on Relativity. They're against it.
The problem with Conservapedia is that half it is probably outright
hoaxers.
Jon Schild
I don't know about these points, but my mother was against the idea of
relativity because she thought the theory of relativity was the theory
that apes and humans are relatives, which was against the bible.
Konrad Gaertner
Looking at the Talk pages, it seems there are a lot of honest,
sincere, and even *sane* conservatives there trying desperately (but
completely unsuccessfully) to beat some sense into Andy Schlafly.
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - email: kgae...@tx.rr.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll
MajorOz
> David Johnston wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:42:04 -0800, "Mike Schilling"
> > <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
> > >their article on Relativity. They're against it.
>
> > The problem with Conservapedia is that half it is probably outright
> > hoaxers.
>
> Looking at the Talk pages, it seems there are a lot of honest,
> sincere, and even *sane* conservatives there trying desperately (but
> completely unsuccessfully) to beat some sense into Andy Schlafly.
>
> --
> "I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
> -- James Nicoll
Too often, too many make the fatal mistake of equating "Conservative"
with "religious wacko".
Whereas there is, regrettably, some overlap, they are distinct
concepts.
cheers, anyway
oz
Paul Ciszek
In article <hhdt3e$nkm$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>their article on Relativity. They're against it.
Odd, since they need general relativity to make the case for Geocentrism:
http://www.geocentricity.com/geocentricity/nieto.html
--
Please reply to: | "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is
pciszek at panix dot com | indistinguishable from malice."
Autoreply is disabled |
Paul Ciszek
In article <fd7f4903-01a8-4fce...@d32g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>,
cryptoguy <treif...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I think its more that authoritarians of every stripe hate relativity.
>
>From Einstein and Soviet Ideology by Alexander Vucinich:
>- start quote -
>During the Stalin era (1929-1953), conflicting forces in Marxist
>thinking were eliminated, and complete unity was established and
>firmly guarded by the state. Marxist theorists declared war on
>�idealistic� principles built into Einstein�s scientific work. State
>harassment of leading physicists accused of idealistic digressions
>persisted throughout the Stalinist era. Several leading proponents of
>Einstein�s ideas perished in political prisons.
This was after the USSR was already making and testing nuclear weapons,
right?
cryptoguy
> In article <fd7f4903-01a8-4fce-aea6-e633d4556...@d32g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>,
>
> cryptoguy <treifam...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I think its more that authoritarians of every stripe hate relativity.
>
> >From Einstein and Soviet Ideology by Alexander Vucinich:
> >- start quote -
> >During the Stalin era (1929-1953), conflicting forces in Marxist
> >thinking were eliminated, and complete unity was established and
> >firmly guarded by the state. Marxist theorists declared war on
> >“idealistic” principles built into Einstein’s scientific work. State
> >harassment of leading physicists accused of idealistic digressions
> >persisted throughout the Stalinist era. Several leading proponents of
> >Einstein’s ideas perished in political prisons.
>
> This was after the USSR was already making and testing nuclear weapons,
> right?
Mostly wrong. The USSR exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949, and
didn't start it own program until 1942, and it didn't really get under
way for a couple of years, with the aid of a lot of espionage against
the US.
Regardless of what Stalin may have thought of relativity in the 20s
and 30s, he wanted to get his hands on nukes. I suspect that the purge
on relativity was more a pre-war event.
pt
Mike Ash
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
I would hesitate to attribute to "the Right" any particular thing
written on Conservapedia.
Imagine a hypothetical "Libropedia". It would probably be filled with
stuff about how great homeopathy is, anti-vaccination rants,
explanations of how Big Oil has suppressed the 100MPH carburetor and the
electric car, etc. etc.
Extremists are idiots pretty much by definition, and only extremists
will feel so threatened by reality that they will feel the need to build
an encyclopedia centered around their political ideology.
--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Robert Carnegie
> I would hesitate to attribute to "the Right" any particular thing
> written on Conservapedia.
Well, inasmuch as I think it's substantially one nutty guy, and some
homeschool kids writing the articles.
Nutty... let's say paranoid. There is a long list of people who were
initially admitted as co-editors and then banned for subversion,
although, to be fair, a lot of people /did/ try to join Conservapedia
just to subvert it. But that mostly to make it more funny - well,
except that Landover Baptist for instance is less funny when you
decide that it's funny on purpose.
Ryan McCoskrie
> Mike Ash wrote:
>> I would hesitate to attribute to "the Right" any particular thing
>> written on Conservapedia.
>
> Well, inasmuch as I think it's substantially one nutty guy, and some
> homeschool kids writing the articles.
>
Hey! Careful what you say about home schooled kids! I was one once upon a
time.
--
Quote of the login:
If at first you don't succeed, you must be a programmer.
Juho Julkunen
(da...@block.net) says...
Damn. I see somebody fixed the article
http://www.conservapedia.com/Niilo_Paasivirta
Only took a year.
--
Juho Julkunen
Garrett Wollman
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>Mike Ash wrote:
>> I would hesitate to attribute to "the Right" any particular thing
>> written on Conservapedia.
>
>Well, inasmuch as I think it's substantially one nutty guy, and some
>homeschool kids writing the articles.
>
>Nutty... let's say paranoid.
I believe the canonical reference to this particular flavor of nutty
is Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". An
ostensibly more plausible Web site exhibiting the same style would be
foxnews.com.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Garrett Wollman
Ryan McCoskrie <ryan.mc...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>Hey! Careful what you say about home schooled kids! I was one once upon a
>time.
I know one home-schooled kid who grew up to become a MacArthur Fellow
(and an MIT faculty member before he was old enough to enter a bar).
But Marty is definitely not a nut, unlike the parents of many of
today's American "religious refugee" homeschoolers. (Also unlike the
(neopagan) parents of the only other home-schooled kid I know.)
ZnU
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
> their article on Relativity. They're against it. The article itself is
> very reminiscent of the one on evolution, consisting of
>
> * Ad hominem attacks (its proponents are athiests and leftists)
> * Arguments that would embarass a bright 12-year-old, e.g. if particle
> trajectories look the same backwards as forwards, how could entropy be
> increasing?
> * Furious hand-waving away of actual evidence: Sure, relativity explains
> gravitational bending of light, but probably some other things could too.
> * Misunderstanding of its provenance: if time and space weren't absolute,
> then truth and morality wouldn't be either.
>
> Mercifully, they don't feel the need to slander Einstein in the same way
> they slander Darwin.
>
> I suspect the last starred point is the main one: they've somehow got it
> into their pointy little heads that "everything is relative" leads to decent
> health care and gay marriage. But if anyone knows a more specific issue,
> I'd be interested in hearing it.
There's also a sort of general anti-intellectual trend in some branches
of modern conservatism, that leads to a rejection of any explanation of
the world -- whether you're talking about a natural phenomenon or a
political situation -- that is too complex to be explained to someone
with an IQ of 90 in a 15 second soundbite. Thus, the terrorists want to
kill us because they hate our freedom (any more complex explanation
makes you a terrorist sympathizer), and Relativity is obviously some
sort of leftist plot (even if nobody can presently think of a coherent
explanation of how).
--
"The game of professional investment is intolerably boring and over-exacting to
anyone who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst he who has it
must pay to this propensity the appropriate toll." -- John Maynard Keynes
William December Starr
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> said:
> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and
> happened on their article on Relativity. They're against it. The
> article itself is very reminiscent of the one on evolution,
> consisting of
>
> * Ad hominem attacks (its proponents are athiests and leftists)
> * Arguments that would embarass a bright 12-year-old, e.g. if
> particle trajectories look the same backwards as forwards, how could
> entropy be increasing?
> * Furious hand-waving away of actual evidence: Sure, relativity
> explains gravitational bending of light, but probably some other
> things could too.
> * Misunderstanding of its provenance: if time and space weren't
> absolute, then truth and morality wouldn't be either.
Just as the photon and the antiphoton are the same entity, so are
Conservapedia and spoofs of Conservapedia...
-- wds
Szymon Sokół
> Well, I hate relativity because it gets in the way of simultanaeity,
> FTL drives, all that kind of thing. But why this would be the domain of
> U.S. Current Usage-conservatives I don't know, not being one myself.
I'd say they hate what they don't understand, and that means all science.
Another theory is they hate *modern* science (hey, they are are
conservatives, they hate everything modern), and to them modern science is
everything newer than sir Isaac's Laws of Dynamics.
Of course, that's still better than the New Age, as newageists (is there
such a word?) hate everything that is modern science *including* Newton -
their old good science is what was believed by medieval astrologers and
alchemists, like influence of Zodiac signs over our lives, and medicine as
known by Paracelsus.
--
Szymon Sokół (SS316-RIPE) -- Network Manager B
Computer Center, AGH - University of Science and Technology, Cracow, Poland O
http://home.agh.edu.pl/szymon/ PGP key id: RSA: 0x2ABE016B, DSS: 0xF9289982 F
Free speech includes the right not to listen, if not interested -- Heinlein H
Quadibloc
> There's also a sort of general anti-intellectual trend in some branches
> of modern conservatism, that leads to a rejection of any explanation of
> the world -- whether you're talking about a natural phenomenon or a
> political situation -- that is too complex to be explained to someone
> with an IQ of 90 in a 15 second soundbite.
This describes the guy in sci.astro.amateur who denounces Newton and
Flamsteed as hoaxers, because their "empiricism" tries to explain the
movement of the Earth around the Sun in terms of earthly mechanics.
True heliocentric astronomers follow Copernicus, Galileo (!) and
Kepler in using, instead, "structural astronomy", explaining the
planets by analogies with each other, and with intuition instead of
mathematics.
Thus, errors like the "sidereal day" hoax, and the "analemma hoax" are
avoided... we stop trying to explain the seasons in terms of a
"variable tilt", when the "orbital specific" of the Earth is what we
need - and stop having the fantasy that we can control global
temperatures with carbon dioxide!!
Now that last one would appeal to political conservatives, I suppose.
John Savard
D.F. Manno
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
> their article on Relativity. They're against it.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
--
D.F. Manno | dfm...@mail.com
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would
have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His
existence. (Bertrand Russell)
David DeLaney
>On Dec 29, 4:45�pm, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
><seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>> Well, I hate relativity because it gets in the way of simultanaeity,
>> FTL drives, all that kind of thing. But why this would be the domain of
>> U.S. Current Usage-conservatives I don't know, not being one myself.
>
>at which information can be transmitted, I guess you can't have
>omniscience.
No - you still can. But it has to be there ab initio. Which raises other
issues...
Dave
David DeLaney
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>> their article on Relativity. They're against it.
>
>IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
RELATIVITY IS ABSOLUTISM.
Dave "tensor, said the tensor" DeLaney
Louann Miller
3250f3...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com:
> Too often, too many make the fatal mistake of equating "Conservative"
> with "religious wacko".
Then it's up to non-wacko Conservatives to re-claim their terminology and
their political movement. As a non-conservative, and for that matter non-
religious, this is not something I can help with.
We're waiting.
James Nicoll
(This is often true for wikipedia, too):
http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:Theory_of_relativity
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
James Nicoll
ZnU <z...@fake.invalid> wrote:
>
>There's also a sort of general anti-intellectual trend in some branches
>of modern conservatism,
See for example the talk page for their entry on Obama, in particular this
bit:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:Barack_Hussein_Obama#Pakistani_pronounciation
"Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan" rather
than the common American one." I don't see this as relevant evidence
of anything, you gonna call World War II veterans french because they
correctly pronounce Bastogne?
Typical of liberal deflection, moral equivalence. Open your mind.
It will indeed set you free.
That it, even rudimentary knowledge of such matters as how people who live
outside the US pronounce their own nation's name is considered suspiciously
un-American.
Mike Schilling
> Too often, too many make the fatal mistake of equating
> "Conservative"
> with "religious wacko".
It's true that some conservative politicians only pretend to be
religious wackos in order to get the wacko vote.
Mike Schilling
> In article <znu-324C36.0...@Port80.Individual.NET>,
> ZnU <z...@fake.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> There's also a sort of general anti-intellectual trend in some
>> branches of modern conservatism,
>
> See for example the talk page for their entry on Obama, in
> particular
> this bit:
>
>
> http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:Barack_Hussein_Obama#Pakistani_pronounciation
>
> "Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan"
> rather than the common American one." I don't see this as
> relevant
> evidence of anything, you gonna call World War II veterans french
> because they correctly pronounce Bastogne?
>
> Typical of liberal deflection, moral equivalence. Open your
> mind. It will indeed set you free.
>
>
> That it, even rudimentary knowledge of such matters as how people
> who
> live outside the US pronounce their own nation's name is considered
> suspiciously un-American.
This is nothing new; back when the media began to modernize its
spelling of Chinese place names, the conservative establishment
considered using "Beijing" rather than "Peking" to be giving in to the
Commies.
James Nicoll
known as the Know Nothing Party. Misleading, though, because the Know
Nothings were less about determined patriotic ignorance and more about
the Irish-and-to-a-lesser-extent-German-bashing. Tragically they failed:
not only do I see that the Americans have embraced Irish pagan* rites
like St. Patrick's Day but I have heard Americans conversing in the very
same language the Irish use back in Irishland!
* I use a somewhat stricter and therefore more correct definition of the
Nicean Creed and it's pretty clear to me there has not been a church
in the West that properly followed the Creed since 1014. Since
one can't be properly said to be Christian if one does not follow the
Nicean Creed, it follows that Europe and its colonies are merely vast
pagan hordes.
Quadibloc
wrote:
> This is nothing new; back when the media began to modernize its
> spelling of Chinese place names, the conservative establishment
> considered using "Beijing" rather than "Peking" to be giving in to the
> Commies.
That, at least, was actually legitimate, because the Republic of China
hadn't chosen Pinyin over Wade-Giles as its official transliteration
of Chinese - so why be concerned over what decision was made by the
People's Republic of China?
John Savard
Quadibloc
> See for example the talk page for their entry on Obama, in particular this
> bit:
>
> http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:Barack_Hussein_Obama#Pakistani_pron...
>
> "Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan" rather
> than the common American one." I don't see this as relevant evidence
> of anything, you gonna call World War II veterans french because they
> correctly pronounce Bastogne?
>
> Typical of liberal deflection, moral equivalence. Open your mind.
> It will indeed set you free.
>
> That it, even rudimentary knowledge of such matters as how people who live
> outside the US pronounce their own nation's name is considered suspiciously
> un-American.
I have to agree, that is insanely shocking. I suppose they heartily
approved of George Bush's ignorance of what the term "Paki" means in
the United Kingdom...
John Savard
Konrad Gaertner
>
> Thus, the terrorists want to
> kill us because they hate our freedom (any more complex explanation
> makes you a terrorist sympathizer), and Relativity is obviously some
> sort of leftist plot (even if nobody can presently think of a coherent
> explanation of how).
"The nearly 100% correlation between relativity and avoiding the Bible
is striking and cannot be attributed to coincidence."
Oh wait, you asked for "coherent". Nevermind.
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - email: kgae...@tx.rr.com
Juho Julkunen
(jdni...@panix.com) says...
> In article <znu-324C36.0...@Port80.Individual.NET>,
> ZnU <z...@fake.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >There's also a sort of general anti-intellectual trend in some branches
> >of modern conservatism,
>
> See for example the talk page for their entry on Obama, in particular this
> bit:
>
>
> http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:Barack_Hussein_Obama#Pakistani_pronounciation
>
> "Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan" rather
> than the common American one." I don't see this as relevant evidence
> of anything, you gonna call World War II veterans french because they
> correctly pronounce Bastogne?
>
> Typical of liberal deflection, moral equivalence. Open your mind.
> It will indeed set you free.
>
>
> That it, even rudimentary knowledge of such matters as how people who live
> outside the US pronounce their own nation's name is considered suspiciously
> un-American.
Reading Conservapedia articles about Obama and McCain side by side
during the campaining was... an experience. Obama article isn't quite
as hilarious anymore, but I see it is still funny. See, for example,
the first footnote.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project is my new
favourite entry.
--
Juho Julkunen
Wayne Throop
: http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project is my new
: favourite entry.
Heh! "A Colbert Report interview featured this project."
And they seem to think that's a *good* thing.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Ryan McCoskrie
> In article <hheppg$u08$1...@news.albasani.net>,
> Ryan McCoskrie <ryan.mc...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>>Hey! Careful what you say about home schooled kids! I was one once upon a
>>time.
>
> I know one home-schooled kid who grew up to become a MacArthur Fellow
> (and an MIT faculty member before he was old enough to enter a bar).
>
> But Marty is definitely not a nut, unlike the parents of many of
> today's American "religious refugee" homeschoolers. (Also unlike the
> (neopagan) parents of the only other home-schooled kid I know.)
>
Right, American home schooling, that would explain it.
The reason I was home schooled was because I have a mental disability that
was completely unheard of in New Zealand at the time[1]. The most common
reason to be home schooled in NZ though, is because the parents are working
on a massive sheep station[2] out in the high country.
[1] I think almost purely in very literal, technical language. Only one of
my teachers in High School could see the difference between that and actual
intelligence.
[2] Kind of like an American ranch except that the Kiwi equivalents of
cowboys still dress purely for practicality.
--
Quote of the login:
A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.
David DeLaney
>The most common
>reason to be home schooled in NZ though, is because the parents are working
>on a massive sheep station[2] out in the high country.
>
>cowboys still dress purely for practicality.
ObSF: The Wee Free Men / A Hat Full of Sky / Wintersmith.
Dave "sturm und drang" DeLaney
Mike Schilling
The same reason you'd consult the Fifth Republic rather than the
current Bourbon pretender.
Paul Ciszek
In article <d7fca01e-2348-4b41...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
MajorOz <Maj...@centurytel.net> wrote:
>
>Too often, too many make the fatal mistake of equating "Conservative"
>with "religious wacko".
>concepts.
Says you. Barry Goldwater has been dead a long time, the classic New
England intellectual Republican is no longer welcome in the party, and
if there is anyone remaining on the right who is not a religious wacko,
Sarah and the teabaggers will take care of them soon enough.
--
Please reply to: | "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is
pciszek at panix dot com | indistinguishable from malice."
Autoreply is disabled |
Paul Ciszek
In article <dfmanno-F9B3C5...@news.albasani.net>,
D.F. Manno <dfm...@mail.com> wrote:
>In article <hhdt3e$nkm$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>> their article on Relativity. They're against it.
>
>IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
TIME IS SPACE
MASS IS ENERGY
PARTICLES ARE WAVES
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Because relativity prevents it from spreading through the Slow Zone...
Oh, sorry, the RIGHT. I thought you said Blight...
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Quadibloc
wrote:
> The same reason you'd consult the Fifth Republic rather than the
> current Bourbon pretender.
Unlike China, France is not in desperate need of regime change.
John Savard
Mike Ash
wrote:
> : Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com>
> : http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project is my new
> : favourite entry.
>
> Heh! "A Colbert Report interview featured this project."
> And they seem to think that's a *good* thing.
I read an article recently that claimed a large percentage (I forget how
they determined this) of American conservatives don't think that Colbert
is satire. They think he's all very funny, but somehow miss that the
central part of his humor is Colbert himself being a *fake* conservative.
--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Mike Ash
<535f3eaa-58cf-4ecc...@k23g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
How about, because if the average English-speaking non-Chinese-speaking
person sees both and pronounces them "the way they sound", the sound
he'll produce when he sees "Beijing" is *far* closer to the correct
pronunciation than "Peking" gets?
The naive pronunciation of "Beijing" is almost exactly right, it's just
missing the tones, and the "j" is a sound that's not actually found in
English.
What's really hilarious is when sophisticated Americans give it this
weird drawn-out sloppy "foreign-sounding" j sound, like "Beizhhhing".
The obvious way of saying it like the second half of the word is the
start of "jingle" is actually much closer to the proper pronunciation
than that silliness is.
Kurt Busiek
> In article
> <535f3eaa-58cf-4ecc...@k23g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
> Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
>> On Dec 30, 8:34 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> This is nothing new; back when the media began to modernize its
>>> spelling of Chinese place names, the conservative establishment
>>> considered using "Beijing" rather than "Peking" to be giving in to the
>>> Commies.
>>
>> That, at least, was actually legitimate, because the Republic of China
>> hadn't chosen Pinyin over Wade-Giles as its official transliteration
>> of Chinese - so why be concerned over what decision was made by the
>> People's Republic of China?
>
> How about, because if the average English-speaking non-Chinese-speaking
> person sees both and pronounces them "the way they sound", the sound
> he'll produce when he sees "Beijing" is *far* closer to the correct
> pronunciation than "Peking" gets?
As you may have noticed, Quaddy was falling in line with the
conservative establishment by supporting a decision based on political
reasons rather than linguistic ones. A government he doesn't like
supporting the spellingchange, so it doesn't matter if it's more
accurate or not, we should do it the other way because to do otherwise
is capitulation to the bad guys.
In other words, nonsense. But Quaddy's got no trouble letting
reactionary politics rule his choices.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!
Wayne Throop
: I read an article recently that claimed a large percentage (I forget how
: is satire. They think he's all very funny, but somehow miss that the
: central part of his humor is Colbert himself being a *fake* conservative.
Well that's just... sad, really. Or perhaps depressing is
a better word. It'd be funny if the percentage were small,
but large is depressing.
Sort of like publishing that parody deconstructionist paper.
Only different.
Jack Tingle
> : Mike Ash<mi...@mikeash.com>
> : I read an article recently that claimed a large percentage (I forget how
> : they determined this) of American conservatives don't think that Colbert
> : is satire. They think he's all very funny, but somehow miss that the
> : central part of his humor is Colbert himself being a *fake* conservative.
>
> Well that's just... sad, really. Or perhaps depressing is
> a better word. It'd be funny if the percentage were small,
> but large is depressing.
Or a tribute to Colbert's skill as an actor?
Regards,
Jack Tingle
Jack Tingle
> In article<d7fca01e-2348-4b41...@b2g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
> MajorOz<Maj...@centurytel.net> wrote:
>>
>> Too often, too many make the fatal mistake of equating "Conservative"
>> with "religious wacko".
>> Whereas there is, regrettably, some overlap, they are distinct
>> concepts.
>
> Says you. Barry Goldwater has been dead a long time, the classic New
> England intellectual Republican is no longer welcome in the party, and
> if there is anyone remaining on the right who is not a religious wacko,
> Sarah and the teabaggers will take care of them soon enough.
>
into the 'now cleaner than ever Charles' fully dressed from the end of a
pier (and a credible dive it was) I thought he might just be the hope of
the Republican party. His DEQE aides were just hoping he didn't catch
anything and die, since the Charles was 'cleaner than ever', not 'clean'. :)
Alas, the rest of the Republican party wasn't interested in creating a
moderate Republican Ambassador to Mexico who spoke Spanish and might
just be able to whip a Democrat in the next Presidential cycle. Silly
Republicans. At least Argeo Paul C. got an consolation Ambassadorship.
Bill went to NY and made some more money. We are all poorer.
Sadly,
Jack "That's a fine looking yaller dawg you got there, son" Tingle
Robert Carnegie
I'm not sure if this is relevant, but some Americans were hoping for
the return to power of the government-in-exile in Taiwan for way later
than seemed reasonable.
Having said that, I don't know if they speak any differently in
Taiwan. I know the Chinese language used to come in many flavours...
Robert Carnegie
> Robert Carnegie wrote:
>
> > Mike Ash wrote:
> >> I would hesitate to attribute to "the Right" any particular thing
> >> written on Conservapedia.
> >
> > Well, inasmuch as I think it's substantially one nutty guy, and some
> > homeschool kids writing the articles.
>
> Hey! Careful what you say about home schooled kids! I was one once upon a
> time.
My main concern is about the quality of the teaching. And of any
encyclopaedias that you wrote during that time. And I may be mistaken
about Conservapedia, which I encourage you not to look at because it
only encourages them, but I'm not kidding: I think that's where it
came and comes from: kids who were removed from the intellectualist-
biased public school system.
David DeLaney
>The same reason you'd consult the Fifth Republic rather than the
>current Bourbon pretender.
And what of lost Burgundy?
Dave "wait, this was about glyphs, not fifths? Never Mind!" DeLaney
David DeLaney
>D.F. Manno <dfm...@mail.com> wrote:
>> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>>> their article on Relativity. They're against it.
>>
>>IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
>
>TIME IS SPACE
>MASS IS ENERGY
>PARTICLES ARE WAVES
LOGIC MUST BE REORBITED
TO CREATE A BORN-AGAIN WIKIPEDIA
Dave "log SANITY" DeLaney
Mike Schilling
You want to give a nucelar-armed nation of a billion people the sort
of progress and stability recently brought to Iraq?
Mike Schilling
> Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> The same reason you'd consult the Fifth Republic rather than the
>> current Bourbon pretender.
>
> And what of lost Burgundy?
I found it behind the Chardonnay.
DouhetSukd
Hmmm, not sure about that. Maybe not _desperate_, but my prognosis is
that the country will trundle along ineffectively for a while yet due
to all its entrenched special interest groups, 1968 yahoos, and
government employees.
FWIW, most French people I meet nowadays do not really think the
country is doing well. They'd never tell _that_ to an American, so
y'all would be kept in the dark ;-) The only great success they've
had has been to keep well clear of USS Bush, but that ship has now
berthed.
P.S. An oldie but goodie: google "french military victories"
Mike Schilling
More recent than any German ones, the last of which was in 1870.
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<fd61043e-e815-492b...@m25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> writes
>I'm not sure if this is relevant, but some Americans were hoping for
>the return to power of the government-in-exile in Taiwan for way later
>than seemed reasonable.
>
>Having said that, I don't know if they speak any differently in Taiwan.
>I know the Chinese language used to come in many flavours...
Yes and no. Apart from the about 350,000 Austronesian speakers, several
Chinese languages are spoken in Taiwan. According to Ethnologue the most
spoken (15,000,000) in Min Nan, which is also spoken on the opposite
coast of the Formosa Straits. Mandarin is spoken by somewhat over
4,000,000, and Hakka by approached 2,500,000. If I understand correctly
Mandarin is mostly spoken by the descendants of post-1948 refugees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Nan
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
Mike Ash
<2dabec1e-7e7a-4064...@m25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
DouhetSukd <douhe...@gmail.com> wrote:
My impression (from living there for three years, but not really talking
about this particular subject much) is that they don't think it's doing
particularly great, but nor particularly poorly. And in particular, when
the country is not doing well, it's taken much less personally than it
might be in the US.
As an example, I had a friend who was out of work for a year. He was
annoyed, sometimes unhappy, but not really upset. Certainly he came
nowhere near the level of craziness that you'd expect an American with a
wife and kids who hadn't been able to find work for a year to achieve.
This is because the country's social support system kept him going
pretty well while he worked. Of course nobody is particularly happy
about high unemployment and the difficulty of finding work, but it
affects the individual less.
And to address Savard's other point, the idea that China is in desperate
need of regime change is completely silly. China is doing extremely well
these days, particularly if you compare it to the China of decades past.
Certainly it was a difficult and often bloody path to get there, and I
wouldn't say that the end justifies the means in this case, but throwing
out the Communists of 2009 (2010 in another 6 hours) won't do anything
to stop the crazies of the 50s and 60s.
Plus of course the practical matters already mentioned by another
poster. Getting a billion people angry at you because you tried to
"help" them by destroying their government is a policy that even the
nuttiest Conservapedia contributor can see is a bad idea.
Quadibloc
{$new...@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> According to Ethnologue the most
> spoken (15,000,000) in Min Nan, which is also spoken on the opposite
> coast of the Formosa Straits. Mandarin is spoken by somewhat over
> 4,000,000, and Hakka by approached 2,500,000. If I understand correctly
> Mandarin is mostly spoken by the descendants of post-1948 refugees.
Yes; the last election in Taiwan returned the Nationalist party to
power, mainly supported by Mandarin speakers, the previous party being
mainly spoken by speakers of Southern Min (Amoy dialect). The Mandarin
speakers from the mainland dominate the country, discriminating
against the Southern Min language, and when they arrived, they stole
the businesses of many of the existing Taiwanese people, it is
claimed.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> In other words, nonsense. But Quaddy's got no trouble letting
> reactionary politics rule his choices.
What's reactionary about opposing the evil regime responsible for the
horrors of the Cultural Revolution?
China went to Tibet, and imposed brutal and repressive rule there. So
why shouldn't this have bad consequences for China, just like Germany
imposing brutal and repressive rule on Poland, Belgium, France, and
other countries had bad consequences for it, when it was pushed out of
those foreign countries by force?
Tibetan is, after all, not the same language as Mandarin. Although it
belongs to the Sino-Tibetan group, it is even written with an alphabet
- more correctly, an abugida - derived from Devanagari.
China also threatens Taiwan, where today the people are relatively
free, having unfettered access to foreign news media, and elections
where an opposition party once took power.
China is a brutal dictatorship, which hinders religious freedom, with
black prisons run by corrupt local officials, and so on. What makes
you think it represents progress, which would be the claim required to
make you think that opposition to its regime is "reactionary"?
John Savard
Quadibloc
> In article <dfmanno-F9B3C5.07524830122...@news.albasani.net>,
> D.F. Manno <dfma...@mail.com> wrote:
> >In article <hhdt3e$nk...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> > "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
> >> their article on Relativity. They're against it.
>
> >IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
>
> TIME IS SPACE
> MASS IS ENERGY
> PARTICLES ARE WAVES
Those aren't lies. Actually, though, time is very distinct from space,
despite the existence of the Lorentz transformation: unlike a
rotation, the speed-of-light limit still safeguards causality. So
relativity does not claim that time is like space in the way that
matters.
If you want lies, how about:
LESS IS MORE
PROPERTY IS THEFT
ZIONISM IS RACISM
John Savard
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Paul Ciszek <nos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>> D.F. Manno <dfm...@mail.com> wrote:
>>> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>>>> their article on Relativity. They're against it.
>>> IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
>> TIME IS SPACE
>> MASS IS ENERGY
>> PARTICLES ARE WAVES
>
> LOGIC MUST BE REORBITED
> TO CREATE A BORN-AGAIN WIKIPEDIA
>
> Dave "log SANITY" DeLaney
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION
YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE
MAKE YOUR TIME
David DeLaney
>David DeLaney wrote:
>> Paul Ciszek <nos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>>> D.F. Manno <dfm...@mail.com> wrote:
>>>> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> The other day, I was bored enough to browse Conservapedia, and happened on
>>>>> their article on Relativity. They're against it.
>>>> IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
>>> TIME IS SPACE
>>> MASS IS ENERGY
>>> PARTICLES ARE WAVES
>>
>> LOGIC MUST BE REORBITED
>> TO CREATE A BORN-AGAIN WIKIPEDIA
>>
>> Dave "log SANITY" DeLaney
>
> ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
> YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION
> YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE
> MAKE YOUR TIME
PARODY EVERY ZIG
Dave "and what of Naomi's space potatoe?" DeLaney
Paul Ciszek
In article <mike-0EC03F.1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>
>Plus of course the practical matters already mentioned by another
>poster. Getting a billion people angry at you because you tried to
>"help" them by destroying their government is a policy that even the
>nuttiest Conservapedia contributor can see is a bad idea.
Plus, they might stop loaning our government money.
James Nicoll
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Quadibloc wrote:
>> On Dec 30, 4:37 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The same reason you'd consult the Fifth Republic rather than the
>>> current Bourbon pretender.
>>
>> Unlike China, France is not in desperate need of regime change.
Anyway, if France did need regime change they don't need outsiders
to deliver it. Regime change is a national sport in France (they're
about due to declare either a Third Empire or Sixth Republic, unless
helping create the EU was how they indulged this hobby this generation).
>You want to give a nucelar-armed nation of a billion people the sort
>of progress and stability recently brought to Iraq?
>
Haven't we gone over this? It'll only up with vat-girsl again if we
discuss it again.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
David Cowie
>>You want to give a nucelar-armed nation of a billion people the sort of
>>progress and stability recently brought to Iraq?
>>
> Haven't we gone over this? It'll only up with vat-girsl again if we
> discuss it again.
vat-girsl in rot-13 is ing-tvefy. Come again?
--
David Cowie http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidcowie/
Containment Failure + 53736:00
James Nicoll
David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:18:42 +0000, James Nicoll wrote:
>
>>>You want to give a nucelar-armed nation of a billion people the sort of
>>>progress and stability recently brought to Iraq?
>>>
>> Haven't we gone over this? It'll only up with vat-girsl again if we
>> discuss it again.
>
>vat-girsl in rot-13 is ing-tvefy.
Sorry, vat-girls.
> Come again?
That's what the vat-girls are for.
Mike Ash
<3f91b85b-3717-418a...@c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Dec 30, 6:37�pm, Kurt Busiek <k...@busiek.com> wrote:
>
> > In other words, nonsense. �But Quaddy's got no trouble letting
> > reactionary politics rule his choices.
>
> What's reactionary about opposing the evil regime responsible for the
> horrors of the Cultural Revolution?
Oh, nothing. Would have been a fine idea in the 60s, ignoring the
impossibility of doing so and the poor outcome of trying it.
Of course, claiming that the Chinese government of 2010 (44 minutes and
counting!) is "the evil regime responsible for the horrors of the
Cultural Revolution" is pretty much like claiming that the US government
is the evil regime responsible for the horrors of African slavery.
cryptoguy
wrote:
> Quadibloc wrote:
> > On Dec 30, 8:34 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> >> This is nothing new; back when the media began to modernize its
> >> spelling of Chinese place names, the conservative establishment
> >> considered using "Beijing" rather than "Peking" to be giving in to
> >> the Commies.
>
> > That, at least, was actually legitimate, because the Republic of
> > China
> > hadn't chosen Pinyin over Wade-Giles as its official transliteration
> > of Chinese - so why be concerned over what decision was made by the
> > People's Republic of China?
>
> current Bourbon pretender.
I never quite understood the drive to use the native's local names for
places; it seems to be a particularly silly example of 'Politically
Correct' speech. Why should Chinese care if Anglophones call the city
'Peking', and the French 'Pekin', etc? No one seems to be upset that
Europeans call each other's countries and cities by different names;
'Germany' or 'Allemagne' not 'Deutschland', 'Paris, not 'Paree', etc.
pt
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>The naive pronunciation of "Beijing" is almost exactly right, it's just
>missing the tones, and the "j" is a sound that's not actually found in
>English.
Is it? I couldn't hear a difference.
(And incidentally (I suppose I could look it up), what are the tones?
Second and first?)
>What's really hilarious is when sophisticated Americans give it this
>weird drawn-out sloppy "foreign-sounding" j sound, like "Beizhhhing".
>The obvious way of saying it like the second half of the word is the
>start of "jingle" is actually much closer to the proper pronunciation
>than that silliness is.
MUCH closer. The only people I heard pronounce it "Bei-ZHing" when I
was in China were Americans.
There was maybe some slight variation according to the speaker's
native dialect, but if it wasn't just a J sound the distinction was
too subtle for me, and I usually have a pretty good ear for this
stuff.
Now, the ZH in "Suzhou" -- THAT'S a sound that doesn't exist in
English, somewhere between the Z in "azure" and the J in "jungle."
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm selling my comic collection -- see http://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight0.html
Thomas Womack
Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:25:51 +0800, Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>
>>The naive pronunciation of "Beijing" is almost exactly right, it's just
>>missing the tones, and the "j" is a sound that's not actually found in
>>English.
>
>Is it? I couldn't hear a difference.
To me it's a bit more abrupt than the j of 'jingle', but that may just
be the high tone.
>(And incidentally (I suppose I could look it up), what are the tones?
>Second and first?)
bei3 jing1
Tom
Mike Schilling
> On Dec 30, 6:37 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Quadibloc wrote:
>>> On Dec 30, 8:34 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>
>>>> This is nothing new; back when the media began to modernize its
>>>> spelling of Chinese place names, the conservative establishment
>>>> considered using "Beijing" rather than "Peking" to be giving in
>>>> to
>>>> the Commies.
>>
>>> That, at least, was actually legitimate, because the Republic of
>>> China
>>> hadn't chosen Pinyin over Wade-Giles as its official
>>> transliteration
>>> of Chinese - so why be concerned over what decision was made by
>>> the
>>> People's Republic of China?
>>
>> The same reason you'd consult the Fifth Republic rather than the
>> current Bourbon pretender.
>
> I never quite understood the drive to use the native's local names
> for
> places; it seems to be a particularly silly example of 'Politically
> Correct' speech.
Yeah, being accurate is so weenie.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
"Used to"?
"Chinese" is a written representation of about a dozen related
languages. The largest is Mandarin, which is spoken in most of
northern China and in Taiwan, though there are several dialects within
Mandarin. It's the official language of the People's Republic of
China.
Cantonese is spoken in large parts of southern China and was the
official language of the Republic of China under the Nationalists --
basically, if Nanjing was the national capital, Cantonese was the
national language; if Beijing was the capital, it was Mandarin.
Cantonese is in decline now.
Wu is the other really major language in China; it's spoken in the
central region. (The boundaries aren't as neat as I'm implying.)
Shanghainese is a dialect of Wu. Mandarin and Wu are ALMOST mutually
intelligible, but not quite. (Another language, Mei, is mutually
intelligible to both.) Most people in Shanghai these days know
Mandarin as well as Wu, as all official business is conducted in
Mandarin and foreigners may speak Mandarin but never know any Wu.
There are other Chinese languages, such as Mei (mentioned above) and
Jin (which some linguists consider a dialect of Mandarin, rather than
a separate language).
Written Chinese can usually be read by anyone who knows any of the
Chinese languages, though there are some idioms and usages that differ
from one to the other -- there are common Cantonese phrases that are
nonsensical in spoken Mandarin, but more or less acceptable in
writing. This interchangeability means that you'll sometimes see
Chinese people who speak different dialects drawing characters on
their hands to convey something the other person doesn't understand,
as the characters are the same even when the spoken words aren't.
There are two forms of written Chinese -- traditional and simplified.
Some of the traditional characters are unnecessarily complex and hard
to distinguish quickly, so the Communist government introduced the
simplified form back in the 1950s. Most characters didn't change,
only very complicated ones. The simplified version is used in China;
traditional characters are still used almost everywhere else,
including Taiwan.
There are two major languages in Taiwan -- the Taiwan dialect of
Mandarin, which is the dominant and official language, and Taiwanese,
which is what the original inhabitants spoke before the mainlanders
came swarming in and took over. Taiwanese Mandarin isn't very
different from the official mainland dialect -- probably closer than
New York English is to London English -- but there are differences.
Incidentally, the official dialect is sometimes called the Beijing
dialect, but in fact it's only spoken by the upper classes in Beijing;
the working class folks native to Beijing speak a highly-tonal dialect
with a very strong R glide and slurred consonants that even most other
Mandarin speakers have trouble with. Think of it as the Chinese
equivalent of a Cockney accent.
(Tones are absolutely necessary for understanding or speaking Mandarin
or Cantonese; in Wu they're much less important. Cantonese has far
too many tones, if you ask me; Mandarin is much more manageable.)
Kurt Busiek
> Plus of course the practical matters already mentioned by another
> poster. Getting a billion people angry at you because you tried to
> "help" them by destroying their government is a policy that even the
> nuttiest Conservapedia contributor can see is a bad idea.
It really isn't.
Not that it isn't a bad idea. But there are definitely people who
can't see that it's a bad idea. It's merely a larger version of the
"nuke the Muslim world, force the survivors to adopt our ways at
gunpoint and the survivors whose families you've killed will be
grateful" argument that John Savard trots out here a few times a year.
Then immediately backtracks and says he doesn't want it to happen, he
only fears it'll benecessary, and may prove to be what it'll take to do
the job. Which carries within it the faith that it'll do the job.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!
Kurt Busiek
> In article <7q4283...@mid.individual.net>,
> David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:18:42 +0000, James Nicoll wrote:
>>
>>>> You want to give a nucelar-armed nation of a billion people the sort of
>>>> progress and stability recently brought to Iraq?
>>>>
>>> Haven't we gone over this? It'll only up with vat-girsl again if we
>>> discuss it again.
>>
>> vat-girsl in rot-13 is ing-tvefy.
>
> Sorry, vat-girls.
>
>> Come again?
>
> That's what the vat-girls are for.
And vat-girls, more all the moronity behind them, are at least more
entertaining than arguments about UTF-8, or who's attacking who in said
arguments.
Vat-girls can be genetically-engineered to sing and dance. The trick
is to engineer them so that they agree with their master (oops,
protector) on when the Dune series went off the rails.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<two...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>In article <3vlpj5tb3qnhde1ul...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net> wrote:
>>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:25:51 +0800, Mike Ash <mi...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>>
>>>The naive pronunciation of "Beijing" is almost exactly right, it's just
>>>missing the tones, and the "j" is a sound that's not actually found in
>>>English.
>>
>>Is it? I couldn't hear a difference.
>
>To me it's a bit more abrupt than the j of 'jingle', but that may just
>be the high tone.
Thanks. That may be a difference in our dialects of English, rather
than a difference between English and Mandarin.
>>(And incidentally (I suppose I could look it up), what are the tones?
>>Second and first?)
>
>bei3 jing1
I got one of them, anyway; thanks.
David Cowie
> In article <7q4283...@mid.individual.net>, David Cowie
> <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:18:42 +0000, James Nicoll wrote:
>>
>>>>You want to give a nucelar-armed nation of a billion people the sort
>>>>of progress and stability recently brought to Iraq?
>>>>
>>> Haven't we gone over this? It'll only up with vat-girsl again if we
>>> discuss it again.
>>
>>vat-girsl in rot-13 is ing-tvefy.
>
> Sorry, vat-girls.
>
>> Come again?
>
> That's what the vat-girls are for.
Let me guess: excitable young men get to have sex of questionable
consensuality with the vat-grown girls instead of running around blowing
shit up?
--
David Cowie http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidcowie/
Containment Failure + 53738:38
Kurt Busiek
> On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:41:08 +0000, James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> In article <7q4283...@mid.individual.net>, David Cowie
>> <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:18:42 +0000, James Nicoll wrote:
>>>
>>>>> You want to give a nucelar-armed nation of a billion people the sort
>>>>> of progress and stability recently brought to Iraq?
>>>>>
>>>> Haven't we gone over this? It'll only up with vat-girsl again if we
>>>> discuss it again.
>>>
>>> vat-girsl in rot-13 is ing-tvefy.
>>
>> Sorry, vat-girls.
>>
>>> Come again?
>>
>> That's what the vat-girls are for.
>
> Let me guess: excitable young men get to have sex of questionable
> consensuality with the vat-grown girls instead of running around blowing
> shit up?
It's the only way to preserve freedom and liberty, because those young
men who embody our greatest and most idealistic principles will commit
genocide if they don't get their ashes hauled regularly.
James Nicoll
David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:41:08 +0000, James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> In article <7q4283...@mid.individual.net>, David Cowie
>> <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>>>On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:18:42 +0000, James Nicoll wrote:
>>>
>>>>>You want to give a nucelar-armed nation of a billion people the sort
>>>>>of progress and stability recently brought to Iraq?
>>>>>
>>>> Haven't we gone over this? It'll only up with vat-girsl again if we
>>>> discuss it again.
>>>
>>>vat-girsl in rot-13 is ing-tvefy.
>>
>> Sorry, vat-girls.
>>
>>> Come again?
>>
>> That's what the vat-girls are for.
>
>Let me guess: excitable young men get to have sex of questionable
>consensuality with the vat-grown girls instead of running around blowing
>shit up?
Pretty much, except I think it's just the excitable young white men; the
other sort will have tragically died in colonial wars that are for their
own good.
ObSF: If Piper could re-use the Indian Rebellion of 1857, how is it
nobody has thought to re-use the Great Hedge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hedge_of_India
Ah, the British Empire: Not as Loathsome as the Belgian Congo But Still
Pretty Dickish.
One of the odd things I came across while reading about the Hedge is
the Indian governments' view on accurate maps for civilians, which is
that such maps pose a security risk since they could fall into the
hands of rascals who will then use them to commit acts of terror.
David Cowie
> One of the odd things I came across while reading about the Hedge is the
> Indian governments' view on accurate maps for civilians, which is that
> such maps pose a security risk since they could fall into the hands of
> rascals who will then use them to commit acts of terror.
Is that the Indian government before or after 1947? Or both?
[goes and checks resolution of Google Maps' satellite view of Mumbai]
--
David Cowie http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidcowie/
Containment Failure + 53739:12
Juho Julkunen
says...
The correct answer, obviously, is "Children of Dune, but regained track
with God Emperor". The last two needed an editor badly, but I suppose
the publisher figured that was an unnecessary expense on a book with
"Dune" and "Frank Herbert Author of Dune" on the cover.
Alas, there hasn't been a good vat-girl discussion here for ages. At
least they're on topic, sort of.
"Census, the latest census
There'll be more girls who live in town though not enough to go round"
--Sparks
--
Juho Julkunen
Kurt Busiek
> In article <hhio2v$prb$1...@solani.org>, Kurt Busiek (ku...@busiek.com)
> says...
>> On 2009-12-31 08:41:08 -0800, jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) said:
>>
>>> That's what the vat-girls are for.
>>
>> And vat-girls, more all the moronity behind them, are at least more
>> entertaining than arguments about UTF-8, or who's attacking who in said
>> arguments.
>>
>> Vat-girls can be genetically-engineered to sing and dance. The trick
>> is to engineer them so that they agree with their master (oops,
>> protector) on when the Dune series went off the rails.
>
> The correct answer, obviously, is "Children of Dune, but regained track
> with God Emperor". The last two needed an editor badly, but I suppose
> the publisher figured that was an unnecessary expense on a book with
> "Dune" and "Frank Herbert Author of Dune" on the cover.
In my case, the answer is, "Was it ever on the rails?" I didn't like
the first one -- it felt to me like a mish-mosh of a Dorsai novel and
the Bible, and I'd rather stick with Dorsai.
[And yeah, I know DUNE predated the Dorsai novels; I'm not claiming
cause and effect. That was just my reaction after finishing the book.
And I no longer remember it well enough to say why.]
But then, I wouldn't qualify for Federal Vat-Girl Assistance anyway,
being happily married and in no danger of a genocidal rampage.
> Alas, there hasn't been a good vat-girl discussion here for ages. At
> least they're on topic, sort of.
>
> "Census, the latest census
> There'll be more girls who live in town though not enough to go round"
> --Sparks
Vat-girls -- can you order them up with, say, freckles, a slight
overbite and an interest in winter sports, or do you just take what the
government hands out, in the name of freedom, justice and
libertarianism?
Quadibloc
> Of course, claiming that the Chinese government of 2010 (44 minutes and
> counting!) is "the evil regime responsible for the horrors of the
> Cultural Revolution" is pretty much like claiming that the US government
> is the evil regime responsible for the horrors of African slavery.
Not really, because the current regime, despite the trial of the "Gang
of Four", still suppresses open discussion of the Cultural Revolution,
and still obstructs the one thing that could prevent it from happening
again - a multi-party democracy with genuine elections and a free
press.
Of course, if this was prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1964, you
might have had a point, but not in the way you intended.
John Savard
ZnU
<7c0bf160-f78e-4f83...@a15g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
cryptoguy <treif...@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think it's a PC thing, necessarily. 'Peking' was, if I'm not
mistaken, an attempt to call the city by its local name, undermined by
poor transliteration. When better transliteration systems were adopted,
it made sense to apply them to everything, including place names.
In contrast, 'Germany' is not a badly transliterated version of
'Deutschland', nor is 'Paris' a badly transliterated version of the
local name, which is, of course, spelled the same and merely pronounced
differently.
There also seems to be a stronger tendency to use local names for cities
than for countries, perhaps because there are so many of them that
having a couple of dozen (or more) names for each one would be
ludicrously inconvenient. And most of them don't rise to the importance
of being regular topics of conversation for foreigners anyway.
--
"The game of professional investment is intolerably boring and over-exacting to
anyone who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst he who has it
must pay to this propensity the appropriate toll." -- John Maynard Keynes
Wayne Throop
: In contrast, 'Germany' is not a badly transliterated version of
: local name, which is, of course, spelled the same and merely pronounced
: differently.
Arguably, that *is* a bad transliteration. If the notion is to
write nearly the same phonemes in english-language orthography, I mean.
Much like merely interpreting utf-8 encodings as if they were iso-mumble-1,
without swapping the encoding.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Juho Julkunen
says...
> On 2009-12-31 12:03:24 -0800, Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com> said:
> >> protector) on when the Dune series went off the rails.
> In my case, the answer is, "Was it ever on the rails?" I didn't like
> the first one -- it felt to me like a mish-mosh of a Dorsai novel and
> the Bible, and I'd rather stick with Dorsai.
That's strange. Are you sure you read the right book? There's a
Messiah, I suppose, though he's really just a very naughty boy.
> > Alas, there hasn't been a good vat-girl discussion here for ages. At
> > least they're on topic, sort of.
> Vat-girls -- can you order them up with, say, freckles, a slight
> overbite and an interest in winter sports, or do you just take what the
> government hands out, in the name of freedom, justice and
> libertarianism?
I suspect options are extra. Government issue would probably be pretty
plain, entry-level commercial units plain pretty.
--
Juho Julkunen
Kurt Busiek
> In article <hhj0j1$6s7$2...@solani.org>, Kurt Busiek (ku...@busiek.com)
> says...
>> On 2009-12-31 12:03:24 -0800, Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com> said:
>>>> protector) on when the Dune series went off the rails.
>
>> In my case, the answer is, "Was it ever on the rails?" I didn't like
>> the first one -- it felt to me like a mish-mosh of a Dorsai novel and
>> the Bible, and I'd rather stick with Dorsai.
>
> That's strange. Are you sure you read the right book? There's a
> Messiah, I suppose, though he's really just a very naughty boy.
Oh, it wasn't that there was a Messiah plot, but that it felt like
Biblical style stories of great houses and such translated to a harsh
planet. Like there could have been a lot of "begats" in it.
I think. It was a long time ago.
>>> Alas, there hasn't been a good vat-girl discussion here for ages. At
>>> least they're on topic, sort of.
>
>> Vat-girls -- can you order them up with, say, freckles, a slight
>> overbite and an interest in winter sports, or do you just take what the
>> government hands out, in the name of freedom, justice and
>> libertarianism?
>
> I suspect options are extra. Government issue would probably be pretty
> plain, entry-level commercial units plain pretty.
Privatize vat-girls? Shades of Lila!
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_-O09H-brOLY/Sh7ghE87vHI/AAAAAAAAAwg/zqx73hLBvQE/omac0100.jpg
I'm
not sure you'd be allowed to privatize vat-girls. As with the idea of
tyrannical government control in the name of liberty, I think the
Vat-Girl Hypothesis requires tight government control on the supply in
the name of preserving our capitalist ideals; after all, if the
vat-girl ratio gets out of hand, the whole things doesn't work any more.
Juho Julkunen
says...
> On 2009-12-31 17:42:26 -0800, Juho Julkunen <giao...@hotmail.com> said:
> Oh, it wasn't that there was a Messiah plot, but that it felt like
> Biblical style stories of great houses and such translated to a harsh
> planet. Like there could have been a lot of "begats" in it.
>
> I think. It was a long time ago.
And in another country; and besides, the vat-girl is dead?
>
> >>> Alas, there hasn't been a good vat-girl discussion here for ages. At
> >>> least they're on topic, sort of.
> >
> >> Vat-girls -- can you order them up with, say, freckles, a slight
> >> overbite and an interest in winter sports, or do you just take what the
> >> government hands out, in the name of freedom, justice and
> >> libertarianism?
> >
> > I suspect options are extra. Government issue would probably be pretty
> > plain, entry-level commercial units plain pretty.
> not sure you'd be allowed to privatize vat-girls. As with the idea of
> tyrannical government control in the name of liberty, I think the
> Vat-Girl Hypothesis requires tight government control on the supply in
> the name of preserving our capitalist ideals; after all, if the
> vat-girl ratio gets out of hand, the whole things doesn't work any more.
But surely the market would allocate vat-girls more efficiently than
even our benevolent overlords? (Who I, for one, welcome. If my nation
as one time allies of the Nazis is still around to welcome them, that
is.)
--
Juho Julkunen
Kurt Busiek
> In article <hhjkdv$b4m$1...@solani.org>, Kurt Busiek (ku...@busiek.com)
> says...
>> not sure you'd be allowed to privatize vat-girls. As with the idea of
>> tyrannical government control in the name of liberty, I think the
>> Vat-Girl Hypothesis requires tight government control on the supply in
>> the name of preserving our capitalist ideals; after all, if the
>> vat-girl ratio gets out of hand, the whole things doesn't work any more.
>
> But surely the market would allocate vat-girls more efficiently than
> even our benevolent overlords?
No, no, principles must be abandoned in favor of pragmatism; it's the
only way to make sure our ideals survive and flourish.
> (Who I, for one, welcome. If my nation as one time allies of the Nazis
> is still around to welcome them, that is.)
We're willing to overlook our own trespasses, so we can probably
overlook yours.
It's only the governments that didn't get a good kicking over our
disagreements whose past problems can never be forgiven.
Butch Malahide
wrote:
> cryptoguy wrote:
> > I never quite understood the drive to use the native's local names
> > for
> > places; it seems to be a particularly silly example of 'Politically
> > Correct' speech.
>
> Yeah, being accurate is so weenie.
I wonder how many people in this group use the "accurate" (i.e. the
native) pronunciation of Budapest, the capital of Magyarland?