Cyberspace Patron Saint
Julian Warner
>
> To continue the religion discussion, the Vatican might be
> naming a cyberspace saint. I find it bemusing that the
> name of the saint is Isidore :->
<snip>
...and any news of my old chums the Anglicans or Episcopalians
to some of you naming their own saint? Or the Baptists?
Or the Christadelphians? Or <ahem> a Jewish Saint of the
Internet?
oh dear.
julian.
--
Julian Warner, Brunswick, Victoria, Australia.
I'm sorry, your 30 seconds is up. I gotta go.
[Where was I?]
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey
> In article <3A806E33...@rust.net>,
> Chris Clayton <cla...@rust.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >Janice Gelb wrote:
> >>
> >> To continue the religion discussion, the Vatican might be
> >> naming a cyberspace saint. I find it bemusing that the
> >> name of the saint is Isidore :->
> >
> >When, as we all know, it should be Vidicon of Cathode.
>
> Well, Isidore of Seville wrote a long treatise on the history of
> the world which, I understand, his backers are pushing as the
> first relational database. I have not read it, so I don't know
> how far they're pushing it.
I passed Janice's news on to my sister Moira, and she replied:
> Now for the most important thing, what benefits will a patron saint
> bestow? Can St. Isidore protect my e-mails from snafu? (and what would
> THAT prayer look like??) Can a patron saint ensure that everything I get
> from my website brings good things? Should I pray to this saint while I
> am waiting for a slow transmission???
Which led me to write:
For delivery from all viruses,
St. Isidore, pray for us.
For freedom from the affliction of spammers,
St. Isidore, pray for us.
For patience in our times of meager bandwidth,
St. Isidore, pray for us.
For strength against the temptations of flaming,
St. Isidore, pray for us.
For a true and sincere restoration from our backups,
St. Isidore, pray for us.
For protection from Satan's minions in Redmond,
St. Isidore, pray for us.
O blessed Isidore, holy administrator of the database Ethymologiae, whose
devotion to scholarly virtue pleaseth the Lord, guard us as we surf, keep
watch on our wandering packets, and intercede for us at the hour of our
crash.
Amen.
(HHO0.5K)
--
"Me, I just want to destroy | Bill Higgins
all of the computers and start over." | Fermilab
--Kevin Nickerson (kevin.n...@gt.org) |
on compatibility and The Right Thing To Do | hig...@fnal.gov
Arwel Parry
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <hig...@fnal.gov> writes
>
>For delivery from all viruses,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For freedom from the affliction of spammers,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For patience in our times of meager bandwidth,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For strength against the temptations of flaming,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For a true and sincere restoration from our backups,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For protection from Satan's minions in Redmond,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>
>O blessed Isidore, holy administrator of the database Ethymologiae, whose
>devotion to scholarly virtue pleaseth the Lord, guard us as we surf, keep
>watch on our wandering packets, and intercede for us at the hour of our
>crash.
>
>Amen.
>
>(HHO0.5K)
RASSEFF Award with three Hail Mary's.
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
Dorothy J Heydt
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <hig...@fnal.gov> wrote:
>
>For delivery from all viruses,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For freedom from the affliction of spammers,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For patience in our times of meager bandwidth,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For strength against the temptations of flaming,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For a true and sincere restoration from our backups,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>For protection from Satan's minions in Redmond,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>
>O blessed Isidore, holy administrator of the database Ethymologiae, whose
>devotion to scholarly virtue pleaseth the Lord, guard us as we surf, keep
>watch on our wandering packets, and intercede for us at the hour of our
>crash.
>
>Amen.
AMEN!
I shall print it out on a little holy-picture-sized page.
Now to find a picture.
(Considering I have in my day made, as presents for Poul
Anderson, an icon of St. Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevski and a
purplewood St. Dismas hanging on a tau-cross, suitable for
bopping stray aliens over the head with....)
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
John Boston
news:95pg4k$ocp$2...@ebaynews1.EBay.Sun.COM...
> To continue the religion discussion, the Vatican might be
> naming a cyberspace saint. I find it bemusing that the
> name of the saint is Isidore :->
>
>
> Vatican could name cyberspace patron saint
> February 6, 2001
>
> VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -- Pope John Paul II is considering naming Saint
> Isidore of Seville the patron saint of Internet users and computer
> programmers, Vatican sources said on Tuesday.
>
> Saint Isidore was nominated two years ago but the Holy See has yet to
> make a final decision.
>
> Saint Isidore, who lived in the seventh century, was believed to have
> written the world's first encyclopedia, the Etymologies, which included
> entries on medicine, mathematics, history and theology.
>
[snip]
NonObNonSF: Isidore of Seville's encyclopedia was 35 pages
long--according to Philip K. Dick, anyway, who named the ignorant and
foolish protagonist of CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST Jack
Isidore of Seville, California.
John Boston
Irina Rempt
> For delivery from all viruses,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
> For freedom from the affliction of spammers,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
> For patience in our times of meager bandwidth,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
> For strength against the temptations of flaming,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
> For a true and sincere restoration from our backups,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
> For protection from Satan's minions in Redmond,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
>
> O blessed Isidore, holy administrator of the database Ethymologiae,
> whose devotion to scholarly virtue pleaseth the Lord, guard us as we
> surf, keep watch on our wandering packets, and intercede for us at
> the hour of our crash.
>
> Amen.
>
> (HHO0.5K)
Seeing that you got two RASSEFF awards for this already, I'm sending
you a dozen virtual candles.
Irina
--
ir...@valdyas.org
http://www.valdyas.org/irina/index.html (English)
http://www.valdyas.org/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)
Cally Soukup
[content entirely snipped]
> Bill Higgins
> Fermi
> Nati ___ onal
> Acce ___ lera
> torL ___ abor
> atory _____ Beams
> Divis _______ ionRa
> diati _________ onSaf
> etyDep _________ artment
> Internet: hig...@fnal.gov
Nice Wilson building. (For those of you who've never been to the Fermi
National Accelorator Laboritory, the main administration building is
quite striking, and shaped like his .sig.)
--
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend
to the death your right to say it." -- Beatrice Hall
Cally Soukup sou...@pobox.com
Del Cotter
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <hig...@fnal.gov> wrote:
>O blessed Isidore, holy administrator of the database Ethymologiae, whose
>devotion to scholarly virtue pleaseth the Lord, guard us as we surf, keep
>watch on our wandering packets, and intercede for us at the hour of our
>crash.
>
>Amen.
RASFF award!
--
. . . . Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk . . . .
JustRead:rnelleTheBurningCity:StevenBrustJhereg:HomerHHickhamRocketBoys
:GKChestertonTheNapoleonofNottingHill:RudyardKiplingCaptainsCourageous:
ToRead:NealStephensonCryptonomicon:CSLewisTheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe
T Nielsen Hayden
You want an icon of St. Isidore, patron of Cyberspace? One exists. It's
really bad. It's on an artist's personal website that's chock-a-block with
his bad, weird, heartfelt religious art. Take a long look at his St. Michael
Archangel while you're there. If you find it hauntingly familiar, think
"Frazetta". Here's the URL:
http://www.net1plus.com/users/artcatholic/
If you want a conventional image, competently rendered, try this:
http://scborromeo.org/saints/isidores.htm
I was recently quite bowled over when I received a beautiful framed antique
image of St. John of the Cross, given to me by a friend in the industry
who'd gotten to hear my rant about why St. John of the Cross should be the
patron saint of writers. (Along with St. Teresa of Avila, of course.)
-t.
T Nielsen Hayden
Julian Warner <jul...@cannizaro.com.au> wrote:
>Janice Gelb wrote:
>>
>> To continue the religion discussion, the Vatican might be
>> naming a cyberspace saint. I find it bemusing that the
>> name of the saint is Isidore :->
>
><snip>
>
>...and any news of my old chums the Anglicans or Episcopalians
>to some of you naming their own saint? Or the Baptists?
>Or the Christadelphians? Or <ahem> a Jewish Saint of the
>Internet?
>
>oh dear.
Isidore of Seville antedates almost all of those splits, and therefore can
be claimed by all of them except the Jews.
-t.
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
John Boston <john....@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:rCng6.1369$R45.1...@typhoon2.ba-dsg.net...
> NonObNonSF: Isidore of Seville's encyclopedia was 35 pages
> long--according to Philip K. Dick, anyway, who named the ignorant and
> foolish protagonist of CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST Jack
> Isidore of Seville, California.
Isidore was apparently the guy who systemized the business about which
peoples were descended from which of sons of Noah. As serendipity would
have it, I came across some stuff about this on the web yesterday;
" The Irish did not get the idea of being descended from Japhet son of Noah
from Orosius : he does not know about this. It was Isidore who made the
great equation Japhet = Europe = christendom, and set it on its triumphant
way as an explanation of the races. He made the Galli descend with the
Galates from Gomer son of Japhet, the Goths with the Scythians from
Magog---two modernisations of ideas that had been around for a long time.
`For Isidore, the division of humanity into races and languages is a matter
of nature and history; it is part of being human; it is ordained and ordered
by God; but it has no religious significance and none in the
hereafter'(Borst, *Turmbau von Babel*)"
<http://www.ucc.ie/ucc/chronicon/ocorrfra.htm>, in case anyone's interested;
it's a paper about Irish mediaevel genealogists.
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
P Nielsen Hayden
Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
>Isidore was apparently the guy who systemized the business about which
>peoples were descended from which of sons of Noah. As serendipity would
>have it, I came across some stuff about this on the web yesterday;
>
>" The Irish did not get the idea of being descended from Japhet son of Noah
>from Orosius : he does not know about this. It was Isidore who made the
>great equation Japhet = Europe = christendom, and set it on its triumphant
>way as an explanation of the races. He made the Galli descend with the
>Galates from Gomer son of Japhet, the Goths with the Scythians from
>Magog---two modernisations of ideas that had been around for a long time.
In other words, he made up a bunch of crank nonsense based on other
crank nonsense.
This makes him an even more appropriate patron saint for the Internet,
I'm afraid...
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:slrn98813...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net...
> > ... Isidore ... made the Galli descend with the
> >Galates from Gomer son of Japhet, the Goths with the Scythians from
> >Magog---two modernisations of ideas that had been around for a long time.
>
>
> In other words, he made up a bunch of crank nonsense based on other
> crank nonsense.
>
> This makes him an even more appropriate patron saint for the Internet,
> I'm afraid...
Amazingly persistent and pernicious nonsense, too. I'm sure racist
materials still waffle on about sons of Ham (or Shem, or whoever it was
supposed to be).
I had always vaguely wondered about the legend of Partholan in the _Lebor
Gabala_, which goes into all this detail about the arrival of him and his
followers and what I remember as a, um, Heinleinian family life, and then
declares that they all died in the Flood - how were we supposed to know,
then? Ogham diaries? Obviously it was retconned to fit in with the
Isidorean schema.
I quite like that the name is used as the Irish "for" Bartholomew, the
actual Christian name of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, so he gets called
Parthalan O hEachthairn on the news in Irish.
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Marty Helgesen
<SNIP>
> NonObNonSF: Isidore of Seville's encyclopedia was 35 pages
>long--according to Philip K. Dick, anyway, who named the ignorant and
>foolish protagonist of CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST Jack
>Isidore of Seville, California.
>
> John Boston
etymologiae. It is 328 pages long plus 16 pages of appendices. (I gave
them separately because I don't read Latin so I'm not sure that St. Isidore
wrote them. It is conceivable that they were written by the men who
completed it after he died.
-------
Marty Helgesen
Bitnet: mnhcc@cunyvm Internet: mn...@cunyvm.cuny.edu
"They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three."
--James Russell Lowell
Help outlaw spam. For further information see http://www.cauce.org/
Jo Walton
eime...@eircom.net "Eimear Ni Mhealoid" writes:
> I had always vaguely wondered about the legend of Partholan in the _Lebor
> Gabala_, which goes into all this detail about the arrival of him and his
> followers and what I remember as a, um, Heinleinian family life, and then
> declares that they all died in the Flood - how were we supposed to know,
> then? Ogham diaries? Obviously it was retconned to fit in with the
> Isidorean schema.
You weren't concentrating. Tuan got turned into a salmon and hence
survived the flood and then got caught and eaten and consequently
reborn with all his memories, which he then mentioned to people and
they are thus remembered.
Incidentally, the _Book of Invasions_ version of Irish history needs
updating. The Irish Times accepted Patrick O'Brian as being Irish, even
though he wasn't originally. This is the first new acceptance of anyone
as Irish since the sons of Mil. I think it ought to get its own chapter.
> I quite like that the name is used as the Irish "for" Bartholomew, the
> actual Christian name of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, so he gets called
> Parthalan O hEachthairn on the news in Irish.
That's very cool. I was somewhat croggled to see Charles Haughy written
down as Carolan O Eochaidh, (I think) it looked so much better than he
deserved.
(Have I mentioned recently that you ought to reform your spelling
system already?)
--
Jo J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
I kissed a kif at Kefk
Locus Recommended First Novel: *THE KING'S PEACE* out now from Tor.
Sample Chapters, Map, Poems, & stuff at http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk
Hal O'Brien
say...
> For protection from Satan's minions in Redmond,
> St. Isidore, pray for us.
Sorry, no combining disparate religions... Talk to the Linux
taliban, and submit it for inclusion in *their* liturgy... {toss}
Otherwise, quite fine.
-- Hal
David Burns
Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote in message
news:gEUg6.59$s4....@news.indigo.ie...
>
> P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:slrn98813...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net...
> > On Fri, 9 Feb 2001 14:35:40 -0000,
> > Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >
>
> > > ... Isidore ... made the Galli descend with the
> > >Galates from Gomer son of Japhet, the Goths with the Scythians from
> > >Magog---two modernisations of ideas that had been around for a long
time.
> >
> >
> > In other words, he made up a bunch of crank nonsense based on other
> > crank nonsense.
> >
> > This makes him an even more appropriate patron saint for the Internet,
> > I'm afraid...
>
> Amazingly persistent and pernicious nonsense, too. I'm sure racist
> materials still waffle on about sons of Ham (or Shem, or whoever it was
> supposed to be).
Shemp. Also Larry, Moe, and Curly
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
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Kip Williams
>
> Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote in message
> news:gEUg6.59$s4....@news.indigo.ie...
> >
> > P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote in message
> > news:slrn98813...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net...
> > > On Fri, 9 Feb 2001 14:35:40 -0000,
> > > Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
> > >
> >
> > > > ... Isidore ... made the Galli descend with the
> > > >Galates from Gomer son of Japhet, the Goths with the Scythians from
> > > >Magog---two modernisations of ideas that had been around for a long
> time.
> > >
> > >
> > > In other words, he made up a bunch of crank nonsense based on other
> > > crank nonsense.
> > >
> > > This makes him an even more appropriate patron saint for the Internet,
> > > I'm afraid...
> >
> > Amazingly persistent and pernicious nonsense, too. I'm sure racist
> > materials still waffle on about sons of Ham (or Shem, or whoever it was
> > supposed to be).
>
> Shemp. Also Larry, Moe, and Curly
In one of the Conan comics (early, canonical Roy Thomas & Barry
Smith), Conan says something like "Gold, or I'm a Shemite!" I always
wondered if this was a reference to the sons of Shem supposedly
becoming the African branch of the human race. And if so, whether
Howard thought it up, or Thomas. Or if it was just a reference to
something else that I didn't recognize, or an offhanded synonym for
dark-skinned people.
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
Mary Kay Kare
I had just taken a swig of iced tea. You owe me a keyboard.
MKK
--
"Books you've bought and shelved but not yet read emit a gentle, beneficial
radiation, and when you finally do read them they're almost old friends."
--Teresa Nielsen Hayden on RASFF
Arwel Parry
<J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <gEUg6.59$s4....@news.indigo.ie>
> eime...@eircom.net "Eimear Ni Mhealoid" writes:
>
>> I quite like that the name is used as the Irish "for" Bartholomew, the
>> actual Christian name of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, so he gets called
>> Parthalan O hEachthairn on the news in Irish.
>
>That's very cool. I was somewhat croggled to see Charles Haughy written
>down as Carolan O Eochaidh, (I think) it looked so much better than he
>deserved.
>
>(Have I mentioned recently that you ought to reform your spelling
>system already?)
But, but... I thought Irish spelling had already been reformed back
about the 1930's?? Otherwise it would look like Scots Gaelic which is
even more impenetrable! (http://eblul.org/ is quite interesting if you
want to compare the lesser-used languages of the EU).
Alison Hopkins
Arwel Parry wrote in message ...
>In article <981744...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>, Jo Walton
><J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> writes
>>In article <gEUg6.59$s4....@news.indigo.ie>
>> eime...@eircom.net "Eimear Ni Mhealoid" writes:
>>
>>> I quite like that the name is used as the Irish "for" Bartholomew, the
>>> actual Christian name of the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, so he gets called
>>> Parthalan O hEachthairn on the news in Irish.
>>
Have I said how I love Terry Wogan's habit of referring to him as the
"Teashop"?
Ali
Rob Hansen
>In one of the Conan comics (early, canonical Roy Thomas & Barry
>Smith), Conan says something like "Gold, or I'm a Shemite!" I always
>wondered if this was a reference to the sons of Shem supposedly
>becoming the African branch of the human race. And if so, whether
>Howard thought it up, or Thomas. Or if it was just a reference to
>something else that I didn't recognize, or an offhanded synonym for
>dark-skinned people.
IIRC, the sons of Shem were, basically, the Jews. R.E.Howards
Hyperborean Age supposedly happened 12,000 years ago and was peopled
by races that were recognizably based on modern ones, often with names
similar to those either currently or historically associated with
them. The first time I ever encountered a reference to 'Zimbabwe' was
in a Conan story, in fact. (This was back when it was still Rhodesia
in our reality.)
--
Rob Hansen
=============================================
Home Page: http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/rob/
RE-ELECT GORE IN 2004.
Joel Rosenberg
> On Fri, 09 Feb 2001 23:55:23 GMT, Kip Williams <ki...@home.com> wrote:
>
> >In one of the Conan comics (early, canonical Roy Thomas & Barry
> >Smith), Conan says something like "Gold, or I'm a Shemite!" I always
> >wondered if this was a reference to the sons of Shem supposedly
> >becoming the African branch of the human race. And if so, whether
> >Howard thought it up, or Thomas. Or if it was just a reference to
> >something else that I didn't recognize, or an offhanded synonym for
> >dark-skinned people.
>
> IIRC, the sons of Shem were, basically, the Jews. R.E.Howards
> Hyperborean Age supposedly happened 12,000 years ago and was peopled
> by races that were recognizably based on modern ones, often with names
> similar to those either currently or historically associated with
> them. The first time I ever encountered a reference to 'Zimbabwe' was
> in a Conan story, in fact. (This was back when it was still Rhodesia
> in our reality.)
And when the "bab" in Zimbabwe didn't stand for "Comrade Bob."
Michael Bernstein
>
> On Fri, 09 Feb 2001 23:55:23 GMT, Kip Williams <ki...@home.com> wrote:
>
> >In one of the Conan comics (early, canonical Roy Thomas & Barry
> >Smith), Conan says something like "Gold, or I'm a Shemite!" I always
> >wondered if this was a reference to the sons of Shem supposedly
> >becoming the African branch of the human race. And if so, whether
> >Howard thought it up, or Thomas. Or if it was just a reference to
> >something else that I didn't recognize, or an offhanded synonym for
> >dark-skinned people.
>
> IIRC, the sons of Shem were, basically, the Jews.
Hence, Semites and Anti-Semites. Although, strictly
speaking, Arabs are supposed to be semites as well.
Michael Bernstein.
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:981744...@bluejo.demon.co.uk...
> You weren't concentrating. Tuan got turned into a salmon and hence
> survived the flood and then got caught and eaten and consequently
> reborn with all his memories, which he then mentioned to people and
> they are thus remembered.
The one that Fionn ate? For some reason I can remember that the old man who
had spent his life trying to catch the Salmon of Knowledge was called
Finegas, but not the SoK's name if it had one. I should, I have a rather
nice scrollworky pendant of it which was a present from my oldest friend.
Must dig out stuff on next visit home. My parents have quite a lot of books
on all manner of Irish cultural/historic stuff.
> Incidentally, the _Book of Invasions_ version of Irish history needs
> updating. The Irish Times accepted Patrick O'Brian as being Irish, even
> though he wasn't originally. This is the first new acceptance of anyone
> as Irish since the sons of Mil. I think it ought to get its own chapter.
Well, we'll claim "Irish roots" for practically anyone, but in O'Brian's
case I think it's a case of adoption by assertion (his). You do know also
about Micheal MacLiammoir?
(Bertie Ahern = Parthalan O hEachthairn)
> That's very cool. I was somewhat croggled to see Charles Haughy written
> down as Carolan O Eochaidh, (I think) it looked so much better than he
> deserved.
Probably Cathal, with a little h in front of the E. But yes, he doesn't
deserve much. If he were fictional people wouldn't believe in him, not only
did he demand huge wads of money to keep his Charvet-shirt lifestyle on the
go but he declined to actually keep track of the spending and the bribes
himself. Oddly he was responsible indirectly for the phenomenon of SF
writers and such moving to Ireland as much of the attraction is that
creative earnings are free of income tax due to one of his notions. He also
brought in free travel on public transport for the over 65s. And when I was
eight or so I got a free toothbrush when he was Minister for Health. Other
than that there is not much good to be said for him, and plenty of bad.
> (Have I mentioned recently that you ought to reform your spelling
> system already?)
Would you believe we already did, a bit, once? Compare to Scots Gaelic and
you might see what I mean. Most of the rationalisation did not apply to
names. Occasionally you get parallel version of names, like Donal and
Domhnall (the latter seems like the "right" one to me because it's my SO's
name. Much fun was had with him and me and a chap called Eoghan working in
the same place in Germany. Did I mention that "Eimer" means bucket in
German?).
It is actually more or less internally consistent, in that I can almost
completely reliably pronounce unfamiliar Irish words correctly. Further
rationalisations run into the problem of privilegeing one dialect over
another, which some people would say already happened with the last reform.
Also a lot of the apparently silent letters are performing a subtle function
of affecting the pronunciation of the remaining ones.
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey
Not disparate at all. I am a Macintoshian, and we have reason to fear and
despise the evils that emanate from Redmond, though at the same time our
fortunes are dependent upon the extent to which M______ft deigns to smile
upon us.
You are probably familiar with Umberto Eco's discourse on the theology of
the Macintosh, which is quoted in many places on the Web
<http://www.semiotica.com/eco.html>. The Macintosh is Catholic, and so
Macintosh users, at least, frequently have reason to utter a prayer such as
the one above.
If this gives us something in common with those in the Linux taliban, well,
hooray for ecumenism, say I.
> Otherwise, quite fine.
Thank you.
--
Bill Higgins | "Between the death of live television and
Fermilab | the birth of the Internet, there was a gap
| of about twenty years when it was impossible
| to make a fool of yourself instantaneously
Internet: | in front of millions of people."
hig...@fnal.gov | --Mark Leeper, quoted by Evelyn C. Leeper
T Nielsen Hayden
>
>> Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey (hig...@fnal.gov) was kind enough to
>> say...
>> > For protection from Satan's minions in Redmond,
>> > St. Isidore, pray for us.
>>
>> Sorry, no combining disparate religions... Talk to the Linux
>> taliban, and submit it for inclusion in *their* liturgy... {toss}
>
>Not disparate at all. I am a Macintoshian, and we have reason to fear and
>despise the evils that emanate from Redmond, though at the same time our
>fortunes are dependent upon the extent to which M______ft deigns to smile
>upon us.
>
>You are probably familiar with Umberto Eco's discourse on the theology of
>the Macintosh, which is quoted in many places on the Web
><http://www.semiotica.com/eco.html>. The Macintosh is Catholic, and so
>Macintosh users, at least, frequently have reason to utter a prayer such as
>the one above.
I'm not perfectly certain of this, but I believe that an extension of Eco's
system would classify *x operating systems as gnostic. Doubtless there's an
operating system out that that can truthfully be called manichaean.
(The other day I was trying to explain to someone that being published is to
being published by iUniverse as getting a diploma is to buying a diploma
from those fake ID companies. If you follow me so far. I wandered into
further convolutions, and found myself explaining that real publication, and
being awarded a real diploma, are outward signs of inward grace; whereas
falling for a vanity publisher or buying a fake diploma is mistaking the
sign for the reality, and mere vulgar magical thinking.)
>If this gives us something in common with those in the Linux taliban, well,
>hooray for ecumenism, say I.
Linux, Unix, and the Macintosh all make more sense to me than Windows, for
waht that's worth.
>> Otherwise, quite fine.
And so it was.
-t.
Erik V. Olson
>I think the un*xes are pagan, myself; many disparate names for similar
>entities, no central direction, various cults which wax and wane in
>influence with economic fortunes and public enthusiasm, and a
>structure advanced by adaptation of other prior individual
>contributions.
Sound more protestant than pagan.
--
Erik V. Olson: er...@mo.net : http://walden.mo.net/~eriko/
P Nielsen Hayden
Erik V. Olson <er...@physiciansedge.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 20:27:00 -0500, Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>
>>I think the un*xes are pagan, myself; many disparate names for similar
>>entities, no central direction, various cults which wax and wane in
>>influence with economic fortunes and public enthusiasm, and a
>>structure advanced by adaptation of other prior individual
>>contributions.
>
>Sound more protestant than pagan.
You guys are all entirely abandoning the elegant structure of the
Umberto Eco essay that began all this. The reason the origianl essay
rings true is that he doesn't build his metaphor between operating
systems and religions based on the inside-baseball politics of the
computer world, but rather based on the experience of the user
confronted with the need to use the system to perform a task.
Randolph Fritz
>
>The problem with me trying to describe a unix in those terms is that
>it's like the little church down the road from one's family home,
>where the denomination is much, much less important than that it's the
>place where everything is normal.
>
Ah. Primitive Protestants. :-)
Randolph
P Nielsen Hayden
Why is it "primitive" to value community and consistency over the
abstract ideological issues that are evidently more important to
faraway privileged people?
Just wondering.
Randolph Fritz
>On 13 Feb 2001 04:21:33 GMT,
> Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 21:11:23 -0500, Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>The problem with me trying to describe a unix in those terms is that
>>>it's like the little church down the road from one's family home,
>>>where the denomination is much, much less important than that it's the
>>>place where everything is normal.
>>>
>>
>>Ah. Primitive Protestants. :-)
>
>
>Why is it "primitive" to value community and consistency over the
>abstract ideological issues that are evidently more important to
>faraway privileged people?
>
Um, Patrick, that's a descriptive term--refers to a little independent
Protestant church, not part of a larger organization. Primitive
churches describe themselves that way.
Randolph
T Nielsen Hayden
>> survived the flood and then got caught and eaten and consequently
>> reborn with all his memories, which he then mentioned to people and
>> they are thus remembered.
I don't suppose you saw the news story about the blind codfish that was
caught forty times by the same fisherman?
>The one that Fionn ate? For some reason I can remember that the old man who
>had spent his life trying to catch the Salmon of Knowledge was called
>Finegas, but not the SoK's name if it had one. I should, I have a rather
>nice scrollworky pendant of it which was a present from my oldest friend.
>Must dig out stuff on next visit home. My parents have quite a lot of books
>on all manner of Irish cultural/historic stuff.
>
>> Incidentally, the _Book of Invasions_ version of Irish history needs
>> updating. The Irish Times accepted Patrick O'Brian as being Irish, even
>> though he wasn't originally. This is the first new acceptance of anyone
>> as Irish since the sons of Mil. I think it ought to get its own chapter.
>
>Well, we'll claim "Irish roots" for practically anyone, but in O'Brian's
>case I think it's a case of adoption by assertion (his). You do know also
>about Micheal MacLiammoir?
>
>(Bertie Ahern = Parthalan O hEachthairn)
>
>> That's very cool. I was somewhat croggled to see Charles Haughy written
>> down as Carolan O Eochaidh, (I think) it looked so much better than he
>> deserved.
I've never managed to shake off the suspicion that what they claim to be
orthography is in truth an extremely elaborate riff the Celts run on their
square-cut flat-footed neighbors. I know it's not true. But when I see Ahern
spelled hEachthairn, not to mention O'Casey spelled Ó Cathasaigh, the notion
occurs to me all over again. Other times I wonder whether the extra letters
are just there for the wonder and splendor and pleasing superfluity of it
all.
Scots Gaelic is downright terrifying. Macbeth is Meigbhethadh. MacAvoy is
Mac Ghiola-bhuidhe. Your source will say that "Qatrige" and "Quadriga" are
both Gaelic spellings of "Patrick", and follow with the observation that
there is no "Q" in Gaelic. Duncan and Malcolm, which you'd have sworn were
Scots names to start with, turn out to be spelled Donnachaidh and
Giollacoluim, or maybe Donnchadh and Gillecalum. All that saves you is the
fact that two-thirds of the names will turn out to be variants of "Hugh",
which is probably Scots Gaelic for "snow".
I used to refused to copyedit genre fantasies with Celtic settings unless
the author had sent a style sheet.
>> (Have I mentioned recently that you ought to reform your spelling
>> system already?)
Please.
>Would you believe we already did, a bit, once? Compare to Scots Gaelic and
>you might see what I mean. Most of the rationalisation did not apply to
>names. Occasionally you get parallel version of names, like Donal and
>Domhnall (the latter seems like the "right" one to me because it's my SO's
>name. Much fun was had with him and me and a chap called Eoghan working in
>the same place in Germany. Did I mention that "Eimer" means bucket in
>German?).
>
>It is actually more or less internally consistent, in that I can almost
>completely reliably pronounce unfamiliar Irish words correctly. Further
>rationalisations run into the problem of privilegeing one dialect over
>another, which some people would say already happened with the last reform.
>Also a lot of the apparently silent letters are performing a subtle function
>of affecting the pronunciation of the remaining ones.
So subtle that whole clusters of them can be left out altogether. I am
bested, but I am not fooled.
-t.
Andrew Plotkin
> On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:43:01 -0000,
> Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
> Scots Gaelic is downright terrifying. Macbeth is Meigbhethadh. MacAvoy is
> Mac Ghiola-bhuidhe. Your source will say that "Qatrige" and "Quadriga" are
> both Gaelic spellings of "Patrick", and follow with the observation that
> there is no "Q" in Gaelic. Duncan and Malcolm, which you'd have sworn were
> Scots names to start with, turn out to be spelled Donnachaidh and
> Giollacoluim, or maybe Donnchadh and Gillecalum. All that saves you is the
> fact that two-thirds of the names will turn out to be variants of "Hugh",
> which is probably Scots Gaelic for "snow".
Small gold star for that last line alone.
(Somewhere I have a CD case that spells out "Turlough O'Carolan" in
Gaelic. I'm nearly sure there's a C in it.)
>>It is actually more or less internally consistent, in that I can almost
>>completely reliably pronounce unfamiliar Irish words correctly. Further
>>rationalisations run into the problem of privilegeing one dialect over
>>another, which some people would say already happened with the last reform.
>>Also a lot of the apparently silent letters are performing a subtle function
>>of affecting the pronunciation of the remaining ones.
> So subtle that whole clusters of them can be left out altogether. I am
> bested, but I am not fooled.
Ok, getting back to the subject line: the silent letters are actually
packet routing headers. You can ignore them, but then you lose the
ability to thread the conversation. And it's a lot harder to track
spam.
--Z (be glad I left out the line about DheavaighoNeibhenes selling
their archive to O'Google)
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* International election observers in '04...
T Nielsen Hayden
>On 13 Feb 2001 05:45:30 GMT, P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>>On 13 Feb 2001 04:21:33 GMT,
>> Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 21:11:23 -0500, Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>The problem with me trying to describe a unix in those terms is that
>>>>it's like the little church down the road from one's family home,
>>>>where the denomination is much, much less important than that it's the
>>>>place where everything is normal.
>>>
>>>Ah. Primitive Protestants. :-)
>>
>>Why is it "primitive" to value community and consistency over the
>>abstract ideological issues that are evidently more important to
>>faraway privileged people?
>
>Um, Patrick, that's a descriptive term--refers to a little independent
>Protestant church, not part of a larger organization. Primitive
>churches describe themselves that way.
When I was small, I thought they were referring to the building. I knew a
place marked "primitive campsite" on a map wouldn't have toilets or running
water.
-t.
T Nielsen Hayden
Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>On 13 Feb 2001 00:57:28 GMT,
>T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> scripsit:
>>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 13:58:08 -0600,
>> Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <hig...@fnal.gov> wrote:
>>>You are probably familiar with Umberto Eco's discourse on the theology of
>>>the Macintosh, which is quoted in many places on the Web
>>><http://www.semiotica.com/eco.html>. The Macintosh is Catholic, and so
>>>Macintosh users, at least, frequently have reason to utter a prayer such as
>>>the one above.
>>
>>I'm not perfectly certain of this, but I believe that an extension of Eco's
>>system would classify *x operating systems as gnostic. Doubtless there's an
>>operating system out that that can truthfully be called manichaean.
I was thinking about it in terms of direct personal knowledge.
>I think the un*xes are pagan, myself; many disparate names for similar
>entities, no central direction, various cults which wax and wane in
>influence with economic fortunes and public enthusiasm, and a structure
>advanced by adaptation of other prior individual contributions.
That's the computer industry.
>>(The other day I was trying to explain to someone that being published is
>>to being published by iUniverse as getting a diploma is to buying a
>>diploma from those fake ID companies. If you follow me so far. I wandered
>>into further convolutions, and found myself explaining that real
>>publication, and being awarded a real diploma, are outward signs of inward
>>grace; whereas falling for a vanity publisher or buying a fake diploma is
>>mistaking the sign for the reality, and mere vulgar magical thinking.)
>
>I like that.
Thank you.
Systems are useful.
>>>If this gives us something in common with those in the Linux taliban,
>>>well, hooray for ecumenism, say I.
>>
>>Linux, Unix, and the Macintosh all make more sense to me than Windows, for
>>waht that's worth.
>
>Linux _is_ (a kind of) unix.
Is it, then? I'd originally thought so, but then someone told me it wasn't.
So now I know.
-t.
Jo Walton
t...@panix.com "T Nielsen Hayden" writes:
> On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:43:01 -0000,
> Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >
> >Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> >news:981744...@bluejo.demon.co.uk...
> >
> >> You weren't concentrating. Tuan got turned into a salmon and hence
> >> survived the flood and then got caught and eaten and consequently
> >> reborn with all his memories, which he then mentioned to people and
> >> they are thus remembered.
>
> I don't suppose you saw the news story about the blind codfish that was
> caught forty times by the same fisherman?
I didn't. But it sounds as if someone was trying to tell him something.
> >The one that Fionn ate? For some reason I can remember that the old man who
> >had spent his life trying to catch the Salmon of Knowledge was called
> >Finegas, but not the SoK's name if it had one. I should, I have a rather
> >nice scrollworky pendant of it which was a present from my oldest friend.
> >Must dig out stuff on next visit home. My parents have quite a lot of books
> >on all manner of Irish cultural/historic stuff.
No, not Finn's salmon. Tuan shapechanged into a salmon(1) to survive the
Flood and then couldn't turn back and then when he was eventually caught
he was eaten by a woman and his spirit entered into her womb and he was
reborn. Hard reincarnation, which can be found all through the Celtic stuff.
(1) Avid readers of GURPS _Celtic Myth_, recently reprinted by Steve Jackson
Games, will recognise that Celtic shapechanging has different on and off
spells. It is unwise to use the on spell without having mastered the off
spell, except in an emergency. (The Flood counts as an emergency.)
> >(Bertie Ahern = Parthalan O hEachthairn)
> >
> >> That's very cool. I was somewhat croggled to see Charles Haughy written
> >> down as Carolan O Eochaidh, (I think) it looked so much better than he
> >> deserved.
>
> I've never managed to shake off the suspicion that what they claim to be
> orthography is in truth an extremely elaborate riff the Celts run on their
> square-cut flat-footed neighbors. I know it's not true. But when I see Ahern
> spelled hEachthairn, not to mention O'Casey spelled Ó Cathasaigh, the notion
> occurs to me all over again. Other times I wonder whether the extra letters
> are just there for the wonder and splendor and pleasing superfluity of it
> all.
>
> Scots Gaelic is downright terrifying. Macbeth is Meigbhethadh. MacAvoy is
> Mac Ghiola-bhuidhe. Your source will say that "Qatrige" and "Quadriga" are
> both Gaelic spellings of "Patrick", and follow with the observation that
> there is no "Q" in Gaelic. Duncan and Malcolm, which you'd have sworn were
> Scots names to start with, turn out to be spelled Donnachaidh and
> Giollacoluim, or maybe Donnchadh and Gillecalum. All that saves you is the
> fact that two-thirds of the names will turn out to be variants of "Hugh",
> which is probably Scots Gaelic for "snow".
I once invented a theory that they took the letters they needed and
rolled 4D6 on their 24 letter alphabet. The first letter stayed the same.
Then they rolled one dice, 1-2 gives you a (randomly rolled 1 D6, 6 gives
you an h) vowel, 3-4 fives you a (randomly rolled 4D6, naturally rolled
vowel gives you an h) consonant and 5-6 gives you an h. Every four letters,
you roll 3D6 and on a critical success you stop. I actually generated
some names with this method, and they all came out looking very much
like Meigbhethadh. My very favourite bit of _The Tough Guide to Fantasy
Land_ was the parody Irish names. Maebdh Aeiolaien. (Pronouced Mad
Eileen.) (There's a character in the story of Deirdre called Naoise.
I call him Noisy. Emmet keeps telling me it's Nasa. Pah. Maybe his mother
calls him Nasa, but everyone else calls him Noisy. It's a nickname.)
> I used to refused to copyedit genre fantasies with Celtic settings unless
> the author had sent a style sheet.
My copyeditors are entirely safe forever.
It was when I discovered that Medb was Maeve and Niamdh was Neave that
I stopped believing there was a system in there anyone could use work
out and decided to write them in a sensible way instead.
I especially hate it in books where it's entirely and totally unnecessary.
Nicola Griffiths _Ammonite_ is my top example. There are these illiterate
female horse nomads on another planet who have Gaelic names and the
narrator isn't Irish, so how the heck can she hear someone saying "Ayfa"
and intuit that the spelling is "Aiofe"? Doesn't sound very plausible to
me.
I can understand people in Ireland using this sort of spellings, though
thankfully in yellow italic and underneath the more plausible spellings.
It drives me nuts when people do it for no reason, just for jaw-cracking
atmosphere. I don't understand how anyone can want to look at words
like that. They're an abomination.
Oh dear, sorry to rant. I think I'm still cross with Locus for calling
_The King's Peace_ quasi-Celtic.
And, as I always have to think, to be fair, English will be just as
irrational in a thousand years.
Kip Williams
Yes. In Statesboro, we were down the block from the world's largest
Primitive Baptist congregation. In the apartment we lived in here
for years, we were about a block away from a tiny church that hosted
Primitive Baptists once a month. I don't know what they do the other
weeks.
Of course, I used to watch to see if the Flintstones ever showed up
at the Primitive Baptist church, but they never did. Maybe they were
Primitive Methodists.
'ric davis
> >Linux _is_ (a kind of) unix.
>
> Is it, then? I'd originally thought so, but then someone told me it wasn't.
> So now I know.
If you look at the legalities, it isn't. If you follow the moves like a
fish, tastes like a fish, is a fish school of thought then it is.
--
'ric
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:slrn98hl1...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net...
> On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:43:01 -0000,
> Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >
> >Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> >news:981744...@bluejo.demon.co.uk...
> >(Bertie Ahern = Parthalan O hEachthairn)
> >
> >> That's very cool. I was somewhat croggled to see Charles Haughy written
> >> down as Carolan O Eochaidh, (I think) it looked so much better than he
> >> deserved.
>
> I've never managed to shake off the suspicion that what they claim to be
> orthography is in truth an extremely elaborate riff the Celts run on their
> square-cut flat-footed neighbors. I know it's not true. But when I see
> Ahern spelled hEachthairn, not to mention O'Casey spelled Ó Cathasaigh,
> the notion occurs to me all over again. Other times I wonder whether the
> extra letters are just there for the wonder and splendor and pleasing
> superfluity of it all.
Damn, rumbled again.
The names are the worst, since they fossilise old spellings. But if I have
to pronounce Cathasaigh, I say "Cohassey", not "Casey", with the "o" like in
"not".
> Scots Gaelic is downright terrifying. Macbeth is Meigbhethadh. MacAvoy is
> Mac Ghiola-bhuidhe. Your source will say that "Qatrige" and "Quadriga" are
> both Gaelic spellings of "Patrick", and follow with the observation that
> there is no "Q" in Gaelic. Duncan and Malcolm, which you'd have sworn were
> Scots names to start with, turn out to be spelled Donnachaidh and
> Giollacoluim, or maybe Donnchadh and Gillecalum. All that saves you is the
> fact that two-thirds of the names will turn out to be variants of "Hugh",
> which is probably Scots Gaelic for "snow".
Heh. I still don't know why "Aodh" is supposed to be "Hugh"; I think
English pronunciation has changed a lot since that equivalency was dreamed
up, and both names sounded more like somebody clearing their throat. It
must have, because lots of Irish placenames ending in -ch were anglicised to
something similar ending in -gh. Hmm, Giolla- somebody or Maol - somebody
would be equivalent names rather than the same one, devotees or servants of
Saint
Somebody. Macbeth is another of these religious ones as well, IIRC. I
always liked the surname Macanespie, which means "son of the bishop".
(I am tediously building up a list of names I can use which have a
non-croggling authentic spelling, like Cormac. There are not so many.)
(spelling reform)
> >Also a lot of the apparently silent letters are performing a subtle
> > function of affecting the pronunciation of the remaining ones.
>
> So subtle that whole clusters of them can be left out altogether. I am
> bested, but I am not fooled.
Dialect speakers amuse themselves by leaving out _different clusters_ than
the people who speak other dialects.
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in message
news:96akvo$9t9$1...@news.panix.com...
> T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:43:01 -0000,
> > Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
>
> (Somewhere I have a CD case that spells out "Turlough O'Carolan" in
> Gaelic. I'm nearly sure there's a C in it.)
Toirdhealbhach O Cearbhallain, I bet.
(The old Irish script represented all the consonant-h pairs with a dot over
the consonant, so you get what looks like Medb = Maeve. Ph is f, as you'd
expect, ch as in Bach, th is almost soundless or just a h sound, bh and mh
are
either a w or v sound depending on whether the vowel preceding/following is
broad (a, o, u) or slender (e and i). I could go on, but I think I hear
snoring ... )
David Dyer-Bennet
It's not derived from the AT&T source code. I think legally the
rights to the term "Unix" are tied up, and Linux can't legally be
called Unix. But for all practical purposes of a user or
administrator or developer, it's a kind of Unix in my opinion.
--
David Dyer-Bennet / Welcome to the future! / dd...@dd-b.net
SF: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ Minicon: http://www.mnstf.org/minicon/
Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/
Avram Grumer
Well, I've seen Linus Torvalds describe it as "Unix-compatible," but what
does he know?
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | http://www.PigsAndFishes.org
"Soon everyone will be playing with a wireless device in their pocket."
-- from Unplugged Games business plan
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
> > I don't suppose you saw the news story about the blind codfish that was
> > caught forty times by the same fisherman?
>
> I didn't. But it sounds as if someone was trying to tell him something.
(snip)
> No, not Finn's salmon. Tuan shapechanged into a salmon(1) to survive the
> Flood and then couldn't turn back and then when he was eventually caught
> he was eaten by a woman and his spirit entered into her womb and he was
> reborn. Hard reincarnation, which can be found all through the Celtic
stuff.
Ah, like Etain.
> My very favourite bit of _The Tough Guide to Fantasy
> Land_ was the parody Irish names. Maebdh Aeiolaien. (Pronouced Mad
> Eileen.) (There's a character in the story of Deirdre called Naoise.
> I call him Noisy. Emmet keeps telling me it's Nasa. Pah. Maybe his mother
> calls him Nasa, but everyone else calls him Noisy. It's a nickname.)
I would have thought Nasa would be Neasa as in the high king Conchubhair
Mac Neasa who was waiting for Deirdre to grow up and marry him. I suppose
I'd pronounce that Nyasa, actually. It's a woman's name, she must have been
independently famous or something but can't remember why (another thing to
look up). Naoise I'd say more like "Neesha", but with a broad ao segueing
in at the start of the
vowel sound that I can't reproduce in written English pseudo-phonetics.
> It drives me nuts when people do it for no reason, just for jaw-cracking
> atmosphere. I don't understand how anyone can want to look at words
> like that. They're an abomination.
Hey, I find them soothing :)
>I especially hate it in books where it's entirely and totally unnecessary.
> Nicola Griffiths _Ammonite_ is my top example. There are these illiterate
> female horse nomads on another planet who have Gaelic names and the
> narrator isn't Irish, so how the heck can she hear someone saying "Ayfa"
> and intuit that the spelling is "Aiofe"?
I didn't like it in that either. (I thought "Uaithne" was worse, actually,
but that's probably because I've never seen it as a name.) I can like it if
it's done for good reason, and properly, which can be tricky. In a lot of
fantasy it's the current version of speaking forsoothly.
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Kate Schaefer
news:3A8931B0...@home.com...
I believe the Regular Baptists are that way because they follow a rule, but
I always quietly misinterpret their name.
Jo Walton
eime...@eircom.net "Eimear Ni Mhealoid" writes:
> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:982059...@bluejo.demon.co.uk...
> > No, not Finn's salmon. Tuan shapechanged into a salmon(1) to survive the
> > Flood and then couldn't turn back and then when he was eventually caught
> > he was eaten by a woman and his spirit entered into her womb and he was
> > reborn. Hard reincarnation, which can be found all through the Celtic
> stuff.
>
> Ah, like Etain.
Exactly like Etain. And like Taliessin as well. It evidently happened a lot.
Should anyone be looking for a modern translation of the _Book of Invasions_
with terrific illustrations, Jim Fitzpatrick did one and Paper Tiger
published it.
(There's a character in the story of Deirdre called Naoise.
> > I call him Noisy. Emmet keeps telling me it's Nasa. Pah. Maybe his mother
> > calls him Nasa, but everyone else calls him Noisy. It's a nickname.)
>
> I would have thought Nasa would be Neasa as in the high king Conchubhair
> Mac Neasa who was waiting for Deirdre to grow up and marry him. I suppose
> I'd pronounce that Nyasa, actually. It's a woman's name, she must have been
> independently famous or something but can't remember why (another thing to
> look up). Naoise I'd say more like "Neesha", but with a broad ao segueing
> in at the start of the
> vowel sound that I can't reproduce in written English pseudo-phonetics.
Emmet's from a different part of Ireland. At least, that's what he always
says when I pronounce something the way I've been told it is and he was
taught something else in school.
> > It drives me nuts when people do it for no reason, just for jaw-cracking
> > atmosphere. I don't understand how anyone can want to look at words
> > like that. They're an abomination.
>
> Hey, I find them soothing :)
I don't mind Irish people using them. Especially since they have the
courtesy to have them in italic and underneath, most times. There was
this one occasion with a bus in Cork (Chohihrhcbayhliddiuwghduliwudh)
over which I shall draw a veil.
> >I especially hate it in books where it's entirely and totally unnecessary.
> > Nicola Griffiths _Ammonite_ is my top example. There are these illiterate
> > female horse nomads on another planet who have Gaelic names and the
> > narrator isn't Irish, so how the heck can she hear someone saying "Ayfa"
> > and intuit that the spelling is "Aiofe"?
>
> I didn't like it in that either. (I thought "Uaithne" was worse, actually,
> but that's probably because I've never seen it as a name.)
Skya's daughter and one of Cuchulain's girlfriends in "The Winning of Emer".
It means "shadow" IIRC. I could look it up but I have a hot water bottle
wedged just on the right part of my lower back and I don't want to move
even six inches. I'm 99% positive I'm right anyway. I have a head full of
useless Celtic trivia.
I can like it if
> it's done for good reason, and properly, which can be tricky. In a lot of
> fantasy it's the current version of speaking forsoothly.
Yes. That's it exactly. That's why it bugs me, apart from the ugliness.
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) writes:
>
>rights to the term "Unix" are tied up, and Linux can't legally be
>called Unix. But for all practical purposes of a user or
>administrator or developer, it's a kind of Unix in my opinion.
AT&T used to own the rights to use the Unix trademark. (Unix was invented at
Bell Labs, after all.) The rights now reside in "The Open Group", a
consortium of consortia that encompasses X/Open and The Open Software
Foundation, which is amusing because OSF was founded to produce an AT&T-free
Unix-like OS when the rest of the industry was worried about AT&T getting in
bed with Sun. As far as I know, Digital was the only vendor who actually made
a product out of the OSF/1 operating system, which they variously called OSF/1,
Digital Unix, and (now) Compaq Tru-64 Unix.
You get to call your OS Unix if you pay the money to have the Open Group run
the compatibility tests to certify it as Unix, whether or not it has any AT&T
Unix source code in it.
GNU/Linux has no AT&T code in it (unlike FreeBSD, NetBSD, etcetera, which
are Berkeley Unix that derived from (considerable, to say the least, reworking
of) AT&T sources. It could be Unix (tm) if it passed The Open Group's
compatibility tests and somebody paid the money for certification.
Incidentally, AT&T spun off the Unix development into a group called Unix
System Labs in an effort to appease the rest of the industry, which had reacted
so seriously to the Sun thing - AT&T had bought 10% of Sun and pretty much
anointed them Unix kings. AT&T eventually sold Unix System Labs to Novell,
of all people; Novell developed UnixWare, which doesn't seem to have been a
market leader, and eventually sold the product and its rights to the Santa Cruz
Operation, which was entirely in the PC Unix business.
Recent announcements show that SCO's Server Software operation - that is, their
Unix division - is being acquired by Caldera, a Utah-based company with a lot
of ex-Novell executives that is a big player in the Linux business. (Their
OpenLinux product includes DR-DOS, also ex-Novell, for compatibility with DOS
applications. Caldera were the guys who sued Microsoft for tweaking Windows so
it would recognize DR-DOS and refuse to run, so they seem fairly ballsy.)
So the remnants of Unix System Labs are going to a Linux vendor. I think at
least one Linux vendor is going to have a certified Unix pretty soon.
Way more than anybody wanted to know, no doubt.
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Physical mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 69, PO BOX 4349, STANFORD, CA 94309-0210
===============================================================================
David G. Bell
J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk "Jo Walton" wrote:
[Big Snip of Much Neat Stuff, by Jo and others]
> (There's a character in the story of Deirdre called Naoise.
> I call him Noisy. Emmet keeps telling me it's Nasa. Pah. Maybe his mother
> calls him Nasa, but everyone else calls him Noisy. It's a nickname.)
I am now imagining a Moon-high stack of Guinness bottles, with "Naoise"
pointed on the side.
National Ale Of Irish Space Enthusiasts?
No, Guinness isn't properly an ale, is it.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
We suffer as a society and a culture when we don't pay the true value of
goods and services delivered. We create a lack of production. Less good
music is recorded if we remove the incentive to create it. -- Courtney Love
Thomas Womack
news:slrn98hdid....@panix3.panix.com...> >The problem with me trying to describe a Unix in those terms is that
> >it's like the little church down the road from one's family home,
> >where the denomination is much, much less important than that it's the
> >place where everything is normal.
> >
>
> Ah. Primitive Protestants. :-)
I suspect it was in Swansea that I had the Primitive Protestant church
pointed out to me, and looked around for an Advanced Protestant church built
of grown-diamond panels supported by buckyfibre tensile cables the thickness
of hair from a geodesic dome of wrought-iridium struts.
Tom
Berni Phillips
> at the Primitive Baptist church, but they never did. Maybe they were
> Primitive Methodists.
There is a song currently playing on contemporary Christian stations that's
called or referred to as "The Cartoon Song." In it, the singer wonders what
cartoons would say if they were "saved," all of them variations of
"alleluia." He imagines the Flintstones saying "Yabba-dabba-duia," the dog
on the Jetsons saying "Arreruia," etc. It's silly and funny.
Berni Phillips
Jordin Kare
av...@grumer.org (Avram Grumer) wrote:
> In article <slrn98iac...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>, t...@panix.com wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 20:27:00 -0500,
> > Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
> >
> > >Linux _is_ (a kind of) unix.
> >
> > Is it, then? I'd originally thought so, but then someone told me
> > it wasn't. So now I know.
>
> Well, I've seen Linus Torvalds describe it as "Unix-compatible," but what
> does he know?
Probably about as much as that Alvarez guy knows about physics....
Jordin
Jordin Kare
<t...@womack.net> wrote:
No, that's the NanoAssembly of God.
(Every time I pass an Assembly of God church, I imagine a multiply-folded
sheet of paper with text that begins "Insert Tab (A) into Slot (B)...")
Jordin
Kip Williams
Now they need a good video for it. (I'm reminded of PDQ Bach's
"Missa Hilarious" with the Yrie-kay and the K-K-K-Kyrie and 'Kriste!
Kriste! Jesu H. Kriste!' and other dignified lyrics. Maybe more
dignified than some Christian filks I've heard on the radio, like
the Mozart symphony fitted with the inane refrain "alle-loo,
alle-loo, allelujah!" going on and on.)
I was in college learning about the neolithic age, which the teacher
referred to as 'the modern stone age.' It occurred to me then that
the Flintstones were undoubtedly dwellers in this age, which the
teacher described as 'sophisticated' for its time. They tied in with
Christian history, I figured, in that they were too worldly and
infected with sin, so they were wiped away in the great flood.
That's why we lost the secrets of micro-rock-wave ovens and jet-rock
airplanes.
David Dyer-Bennet
> So the remnants of Unix System Labs are going to a Linux vendor. I think at
> least one Linux vendor is going to have a certified Unix pretty soon.
>
> Way more than anybody wanted to know, no doubt.
Cool; glad to know it.
Nancy Lebovitz
Jordin Kare <jtk...@ibm.net> wrote:
>In article <96chl7$pli$6...@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk>, "Thomas Womack"
><t...@womack.net> wrote:
>
>> "Randolph Fritz" <rand...@panix.com> wrote in message
>> news:slrn98hdid....@panix3.panix.com...
>> > On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 21:11:23 -0500, Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca>
>> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >The problem with me trying to describe a Unix in those terms is that
>> > >it's like the little church down the road from one's family home,
>> > >where the denomination is much, much less important than that it's the
>> > >place where everything is normal.
>> > >
>> >
>> > Ah. Primitive Protestants. :-)
>>
>> I suspect it was in Swansea that I had the Primitive Protestant church
>> pointed out to me, and looked around for an Advanced Protestant church built
>> of grown-diamond panels supported by buckyfibre tensile cables the thickness
>> of hair from a geodesic dome of wrought-iridium struts.
>
>
>(Every time I pass an Assembly of God church, I imagine a multiply-folded
>sheet of paper with text that begins "Insert Tab (A) into Slot (B)...")
>
white paper.....
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Ken MacLeod
>
>I suspect it was in Swansea that I had the Primitive Protestant church
>pointed out to me, and looked around for an Advanced Protestant church built
>of grown-diamond panels supported by buckyfibre tensile cables the thickness
>of hair from a geodesic dome of wrought-iridium struts.
>
That's Post-Singularity Protestants. Each individual believer can talk
down to God.
--
Ken MacLeod
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
> Exactly like Etain. And like Taliessin as well. It evidently happened a
lot.
>
> Should anyone be looking for a modern translation of the _Book of
> Invasions_ with terrific illustrations, Jim Fitzpatrick did one and
> Paper Tiger published it.
I might keep an eye out for that. What's a good version of Welsh myths in
English?
(pronunciation stuff)
> Emmet's from a different part of Ireland. At least, that's what he always
> says when I pronounce something the way I've been told it is and he was
> taught something else in school.
Well, I'm from Cavan, which is in Ulster as it happens, but my pronunciation
is all a la Connacht Irish, since my father is from Connemara. I have
vaguely assumed that Emmet is from Munster, possibly due to occasional
references to Cork.
The problem with Irish dialects is that sometimes there is no one true way.
The standard taught in school is a hammered together compromise, and of
course it depends on your teachers. Before free secondary education (in the
60s) there was a set-up to provide scholarships for poor Gaeltacht children
to go to schools which prepared you for the teacher training colleges, and
your college fees were deducted from your salary over a couple of years.
Addendum, next day;
As it happens my brother left his copy of Thomas Kinsella's translation of
the Tain around yesterday, and I was looking at it. Kinsella chose to use
the oldest extant version, rather than a later one which was the basis for
most other translations. Thus he has spellings like Deirdriu instead of
Deirdre and ... Noisiu, which he suggests pronouncing as "Noyshu". So I
think you can call him Noisy all you want :)
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Cally Soukup
[much snippage]
> I was recently quite bowled over when I received a beautiful framed antique
> image of St. John of the Cross, given to me by a friend in the industry
> who'd gotten to hear my rant about why St. John of the Cross should be the
> patron saint of writers. (Along with St. Teresa of Avila, of course.)
I can see why St. Teresa, but why St. John of the Cross? This sounds
like an entertaining rant, if you'd care to repeat it.
--
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend
to the death your right to say it." -- Beatrice Hall
Cally Soukup sou...@pobox.com
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
> Maybe more
> dignified than some Christian filks I've heard on the radio, like
> the Mozart symphony fitted with the inane refrain "alle-loo,
> alle-loo, allelujah!" going on and on.)
Unbidden, a dreadful vision of this somehow combined with the Irish song "An
Poc ar Buile" has sprung into my head. I cannot possibly explain how
horrible this is, you'll have to take my word for it.
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Jo Walton
eime...@eircom.net "Eimear Ni Mhealoid" writes:
>
> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:982095...@bluejo.demon.co.uk...
> > In article <cmfi6.1440$r4....@news.indigo.ie>
> > eime...@eircom.net "Eimear Ni Mhealoid" writes:
> >
>
> > Exactly like Etain. And like Taliessin as well. It evidently happened a
> lot.
> >
> > Should anyone be looking for a modern translation of the _Book of
> > Invasions_ with terrific illustrations, Jim Fitzpatrick did one and
> > Paper Tiger published it.
>
> I might keep an eye out for that. What's a good version of Welsh myths in
> English?
Thomas and Gwyn Jones translation of the Mabinogion. The Everyman Classics
one. Avoid the Penguin (Gantz) one at all costs. There's a nice childrens
illustrated edition of the Four Branches bit of the Jones translation,
called "The Four Branches of the Mabinogion" and (separately) "The Quest
for Olwen" (they didn't call it "Culhwch and Olwen" for the general market,
gosh I wonder why? :) and "The Tale of Taliessin". I think the children's
versions are just as good as the adult ones, in fact in the case of "The
Quest for Olwen" better reading, unless you're a C&O namelist fanatic.
If you're interested in weird druidic poetry in editions with Welsh on
one side and English on the other, look out for the translations Meirion
Pennar has done for Llanerch Press, _The Taliessin Poems_ and _The Black
Book of Carmarthen_.
> (pronunciation stuff)
>
> > Emmet's from a different part of Ireland. At least, that's what he always
> > says when I pronounce something the way I've been told it is and he was
> > taught something else in school.
>
> Well, I'm from Cavan, which is in Ulster as it happens, but my pronunciation
> is all a la Connacht Irish, since my father is from Connemara. I have
> vaguely assumed that Emmet is from Munster, possibly due to occasional
> references to Cork.
He was stuck in Cork doing a PhD, but now he is unCorked and is in Cambridge.
This is very good. I got so sick of that ferry you wouldn't believe.
He's from Rosslare, originally. I'm not sure if he was told Nasa in school
there or in Dublin.
> As it happens my brother left his copy of Thomas Kinsella's translation of
> the Tain around yesterday, and I was looking at it. Kinsella chose to use
> the oldest extant version, rather than a later one which was the basis for
> most other translations. Thus he has spellings like Deirdriu instead of
> Deirdre and ... Noisiu, which he suggests pronouncing as "Noyshu". So I
> think you can call him Noisy all you want :)
That's why I do, that's an edition I have.
Oh, and I was wrong about Uaithne, it's a magic harp. I was thinking of
Uathach. Easy mistake to make.
Lydia Nickerson
<slrn98hig...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>:
>On 13 Feb 2001 04:21:33 GMT,
> Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 21:11:23 -0500, Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca>
>>wrote:
>>>
>>>The problem with me trying to describe a unix in those terms is that
>>>it's like the little church down the road from one's family home,
>>>where the denomination is much, much less important than that it's the
>>>place where everything is normal.
>>>
>>
>>Ah. Primitive Protestants. :-)
>
>
>Why is it "primitive" to value community and consistency over the
>abstract ideological issues that are evidently more important to
>faraway privileged people?
>
>Just wondering.
>
>
'Cause that's what it's called, is all. The term may have encompassed a
moral judgment at some previous time, but now it's just technical
terminology. It's like the division of "higher" and "lower" animals, and
come to think of it, probably date from much the same time and culture.
Del Cotter
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> said:
>Thomas Womack <t...@womack.net> writes
>>I suspect it was in Swansea that I had the Primitive Protestant church
>>pointed out to me, and looked around for an Advanced Protestant church built
>>of grown-diamond panels supported by buckyfibre tensile cables the thickness
>>of hair from a geodesic dome of wrought-iridium struts.
>
>That's Post-Singularity Protestants. Each individual believer can talk
>down to God.
*splutter*
--
. . . . Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk . . . .
JustRead:rnelleTheBurningCity:StevenBrustJhereg:HomerHHickhamRocketBoys
:GKChestertonTheNapoleonofNottingHill:RudyardKiplingCaptainsCourageous:
ToRead:NealStephensonCryptonomicon:CSLewisTheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe
Vicki Rosenzweig
>On 13 Feb 2001 05:45:30 GMT, P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>>On 13 Feb 2001 04:21:33 GMT,
>> Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 21:11:23 -0500, Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>The problem with me trying to describe a unix in those terms is that
>>>>it's like the little church down the road from one's family home,
>>>>where the denomination is much, much less important than that it's the
>>>>place where everything is normal.
>>>>
>>>
>>>Ah. Primitive Protestants. :-)
>>
>>
>>Why is it "primitive" to value community and consistency over the
>>abstract ideological issues that are evidently more important to
>>faraway privileged people?
>>
>
>Um, Patrick, that's a descriptive term--refers to a little independent
>Protestant church, not part of a larger organization. Primitive
>churches describe themselves that way.
>
But the church down at the corner may or may not be unaffiliated--it's
just that, whether it's unaffiliated or Lutheran or Baptist or
Episcopalian or AME Zion, or for that matter a synagogue, it's the
one you're used to, where they do things the way you grew up with.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html
Vicki Rosenzweig
12:39:27 -0000:
No, no, no!
Please go on. I want the whole set. Ideally with examples.
P Nielsen Hayden
>T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote in article <slrn986ol...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>:
>
>[much snippage]
>
>> I was recently quite bowled over when I received a beautiful framed antique
>> image of St. John of the Cross, given to me by a friend in the industry
>> who'd gotten to hear my rant about why St. John of the Cross should be the
>> patron saint of writers. (Along with St. Teresa of Avila, of course.)
>
>I can see why St. Teresa, but why St. John of the Cross? This sounds
>like an entertaining rant, if you'd care to repeat it.
I seem to recall Teresa answering this: because he wrote _The Dark
Night of the Soul_ while imprisoned for some incredibly long period of
time in what was essentially a latrine.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Samuel Kleiner
And then he was rescued by the Idrians, right?
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Vicki Rosenzweig <v...@redbird.org> wrote in message
news:9adm8tk7eqbd653kn...@4ax.com...
Okay. Having slightly lost the flow, I'll have to think about this for a
bit, because I usually come up with the example by muttering semi-audibly
for a while.
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Susana Serras Pereira
"Eimear Ni Mhealoid" <eime...@eircom.net> wrote in message
news:01bi6.1380$r4....@news.indigo.ie...
>
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in message
> news:96akvo$9t9$1...@news.panix.com...
> > T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:43:01 -0000,
> > > Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
> >
>
> > (Somewhere I have a CD case that spells out "Turlough O'Carolan" in
> > Gaelic. I'm nearly sure there's a C in it.)
>
> Toirdhealbhach O Cearbhallain, I bet.
>
> (The old Irish script represented all the consonant-h pairs with a dot over
> the consonant, so you get what looks like Medb = Maeve. Ph is f, as you'd
> expect, ch as in Bach, th is almost soundless or just a h sound, bh and mh
> are
> either a w or v sound depending on whether the vowel preceding/following is
> broad (a, o, u) or slender (e and i). I could go on, but I think I hear
> snoring ... )
No, that's not snoring you hear, that's me whimpering and reaching
for an aspirin. And I was saying German was a wall of consonants!
Susana, but it is interesting, in a oh-my-god-I-will-
never-understand-this sort of way -- like
astrophysics, or cricket
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey
>
> Vicki Rosenzweig <v...@redbird.org> wrote in message
> news:9adm8tk7eqbd653kn...@4ax.com...
> > Please go on. I want the whole set. Ideally with examples.
>
> Okay. Having slightly lost the flow, I'll have to think about this for a
> bit, because I usually come up with the example by muttering semi-audibly
> for a while.
I'm hijacking this entire thread. Into outer space.
Been meaning to get around to this for a while. Where to start?
My conversation with Diana Challis last summer?
Diana (an English planetary geologist working at the Adler Planetarium in
Chicago) was complaining about the features on Europa, Jupiter's
third-largest moon.
Except for half the Moon, the real estate of the Solar System is quite
recently explored, and beginning to be mapped. There's a small gang of
people in charge of approving names for the craters, canyons, ridges,
plains, splotches, etc. that spacecraft have revealed to us.
These mostly-male, mostly-white scientists have bent over backwards to
include names from a variety of Earthly cultures on these maps. In fact,
they've chosen themes for most of the worlds: fire deities on Io, characters
from the Arabian Nights on Enceladus, and so forth.
Europa got the Celts.
More precisely, some features on Europa got Celtic names, and some got Greek
or Roman names connected with the story of Europa herself. From
<http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/append6.html>:
Type of feature: Named for:
Chaos Places associated with Celtic myths
Craters Celtic gods and heroes
Flexus Places associated with the Europa myth
Large ringed features Celtic stone circles
Lenticulae Celtic gods and heroes
Lineae People associated with the Europa myth
Maculae Places associated with the Europa myth
Regiones Places associated with Celtic myths
Diana Challis said that she wished for a pronunciation guide to all these
names; the IAU provided a table with the names and locations of features,
and a little note about their meaning ("Brigid, Celtic goddess of healing,
smiths, fertility and poetry"), but nothing to help pronounce them.
Those of us who speak about Europan geography in public would like to avoid
embarrassing ourselves.
So I was hoping to talk to some people familiar with Celtic pronunciations
about this, and try to get some advice.
What would be really cool would be a Web site that has the table of named
features with a bunch of little soundfiles attached. You could click on a
name, and hear an expert pronounce it. Great for boning up when you're
about to give a geology lecture.
Somebody with time on his or her hands could take such data and make it into
a click'n'say planetary map.
(Doing the Barsoomian version with Lowell's Mars maps is left as an exercise
for the Burroughsphile.)
I was hoping to corner Jo Walton at Minicon and ask her about this, but
since the subject of Irish pronunication and transliteration has come up,
I've written this up.
The home page for the fascinating subject of planetary nomenclature is
<http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/nomen.html>.
Astute observers will note that I've gotten more than one fanzine article
out of this subject.
A list of craters on Europa, many of which are named for characters in
Celtic myths, may be found at
<http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/jupiter/eurocrat.html>.
A PDF map of Europa labeled with names for its features is available at
<http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/index_images.html>.
(I worry that Jo's machine may not handle PDFs, though. I gather it's
somewhat primitive.)
--
"Excuse ME, Professor Brainiac, but | Bill Higgins
I WORKED in a nuclear power plant | Fermilab
for ten years-- and, uh, I think I know |
how a PROTON ACCELERATOR works!" | Internet:
--Homer Simpson, just before the accident | hig...@fnal.gov
T Nielsen Hayden
He wrote it in his head, in the dark, while imprisoned in the tiny cramped
insalubrious guest latrine of a medieval monastery. If I were going to
divide things up, I'd assign him to problems during composition. Saint
Teresa of Avila would be in charge of problems the world wishes on authors
once the manuscript is written.
-t.
T Nielsen Hayden
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <slrn98hl1...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>
> t...@panix.com "T Nielsen Hayden" writes:
>
>> On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:43:01 -0000,
>> Eimear Ni Mhealoid <eime...@eircom.net> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >> You weren't concentrating. Tuan got turned into a salmon and hence
>> >> survived the flood and then got caught and eaten and consequently
>> >> reborn with all his memories, which he then mentioned to people and
>> >> they are thus remembered.
>>
>> I don't suppose you saw the news story about the blind codfish that was
>> caught forty times by the same fisherman?
>
>I didn't. But it sounds as if someone was trying to tell him something.
Judge for yourself:
Blind Cod Clings to Life, Cheating Death 40 Times
Updated 9:42 AM ET February 9, 2001
OSLO (Reuters) - A blind cod was clinging to life on Friday after
surviving a critical medical operation and 40 nettings by a Norwegian
fisherman. The celebrity fish was caught off Norway for the 40th and
final time Wednesday by Harald Hauso, 69, who gave up the chase and sent
it to retire in a private pool in a marine park in Aalesund.
Almost entirely blind in both eyes and weighing a meager 4-6 lbs., it was
touch and go whether it would survive the 190-mile journey north from the
Hardanger fjord where it was caught.
The cod had to undergo an emergency operation to remove gas which built
up inside its body because of its repeated capture. "He had too much gas
inside, so we put the needle inside and took the gas out," Jan Einarsen,
director at Aalesund's Atlantic Sea Park, told Reuters.
He said the cod -- nicknamed Balder after a handsome god in Norwegian
mythology -- was also stressed after being trapped and released so many
times.
Einarsen said his biggest concern was the fish's loss of appetite,
despite being tempted by squid, shrimp, herring and mussels.
The cod first blundered into Hauso's nets last March and returned almost
every week, apparently attracted by the smell of the nylon. Hauso
repeatedly freed the scrawny fish because it was too thin to eat and he
felt sorry for it.
(...)
>> Scots Gaelic is downright terrifying. Macbeth is Meigbhethadh. MacAvoy is
>> Mac Ghiola-bhuidhe. Your source will say that "Qatrige" and "Quadriga"
>> are both Gaelic spellings of "Patrick", and follow with the observation
>> that there is no "Q" in Gaelic. Duncan and Malcolm, which you'd have
>> sworn were Scots names to start with, turn out to be spelled Donnachaidh
>> and Giollacoluim, or maybe Donnchadh and Gillecalum. All that saves you
>> is the fact that two-thirds of the names will turn out to be variants of
>> "Hugh", which is probably Scots Gaelic for "snow".
>
>I once invented a theory that they took the letters they needed and rolled
>4D6 on their 24 letter alphabet. The first letter stayed the same. Then
>they rolled one dice, 1-2 gives you a (randomly rolled 1 D6, 6 gives you an
>h) vowel, 3-4 gives you a (randomly rolled 4D6, naturally rolled vowel
>gives you an h) consonant and 5-6 gives you an h. Every four letters, you
>roll 3D6 and on a critical success you stop. I actually generated some
>names with this method, and they all came out looking very much like
>Meigbhethadh. My very favourite bit of _The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land_
>was the parody Irish names. Maebdh Aeiolaien. (Pronouced Mad Eileen.)
>(There's a character in the story of Deirdre called Naoise. I call him
>Noisy. Emmet keeps telling me it's Nasa. Pah. Maybe his mother calls him
>Nasa, but everyone else calls him Noisy. It's a nickname.)
I've always thought of him as either Nosy or Noisy. This should be a caution
to aspiring fantasists, but I doubt they'll take it that way.
>> I used to refused to copyedit genre fantasies with Celtic settings unless
>> the author had sent a style sheet.
>
>My copyeditors are entirely safe forever.
>
>It was when I discovered that Medb was Maeve and Niamdh was Neave that I
>stopped believing there was a system in there anyone could use work out and
>decided to write them in a sensible way instead.
>
>I especially hate it in books where it's entirely and totally unnecessary.
>Nicola Griffiths _Ammonite_ is my top example. There are these illiterate
>female horse nomads on another planet who have Gaelic names and the
>narrator isn't Irish, so how the heck can she hear someone saying "Ayfa"
>and intuit that the spelling is "Aiofe"? Doesn't sound very plausible to
>me.
Nor to me. The trilobites won't return to Capistrano.
>I can understand people in Ireland using this sort of spellings, though
>thankfully in yellow italic and underneath the more plausible spellings.
>It drives me nuts when people do it for no reason, just for jaw-cracking
>atmosphere. I don't understand how anyone can want to look at words
>like that. They're an abomination.
>
>Oh dear, sorry to rant. I think I'm still cross with Locus for calling
>_The King's Peace_ quasi-Celtic.
Well, and why not? The Scots and Irish arguably have their reasons for
retaining those spellings, but there's neither practical benefit nor
amusement value in others adopting them.
>And, as I always have to think, to be fair, English will be just as
>irrational in a thousand years.
It's already irrational.
-t.
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>On Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:23:35 GMT,
> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>In article <slrn98hl1...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>
>>I especially hate it in books where it's entirely and totally unnecessary.
>>Nicola Griffiths _Ammonite_ is my top example. There are these illiterate
>>female horse nomads on another planet who have Gaelic names and the
>>narrator isn't Irish, so how the heck can she hear someone saying "Ayfa"
>>and intuit that the spelling is "Aiofe"? Doesn't sound very plausible to
>>me.
>
>Nor to me. The trilobites won't return to Capistrano.
>
Okay, I understand this is a reference to the yearly return of the
nesting swallows to San Luis Capistrano (reputed to always take
place on the exact same day of the year, but that's just
exaggeration), but I don't get what it means here, and I don't get
what the trilobites do in the sentence, with reference to Celtic
spellings.
I'm lost, again.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Patrick Connors
: I'm hijacking this entire thread. Into outer space.
I'm hijacking it back.
: Been meaning to get around to this for a while. Where to start?
: My conversation with Diana Challis last summer?
: Diana (an English planetary geologist working at the Adler Planetarium in
: Chicago) was complaining about the features on Europa, Jupiter's
: third-largest moon.
Diana's a friend of mine, but I've lost her contact information.
Have you got her e-mail address?
--
Patrick Connors |
| Smile! The fresh air's good for your teeth.
| -- Jack Bogut, KDKA Radio, 1970s
|
Cally Soukup
Oof. Yes, I can see the appropriateness of this. (The Catholic
Encyclopedia entry on the Web didn't mention the latrine part. Ick.)
Jo Walton
rit...@cruzio.com "Lucy Kemnitzer" writes:
There's a myth that the swallows don't migrate but instead dive down
into the lake and curl up and become ammonites until next year.
Jo Walton
hig...@fnal.gov "Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey" writes:
> I was hoping to corner Jo Walton at Minicon and ask her about this, but
> since the subject of Irish pronunication and transliteration has come up,
> I've written this up.
>
> The home page for the fascinating subject of planetary nomenclature is
> <http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/nomen.html>.
> Astute observers will note that I've gotten more than one fanzine article
> out of this subject.
>
> A list of craters on Europa, many of which are named for characters in
> Celtic myths, may be found at
> <http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/jupiter/eurocrat.html>.
I've had a look at this. There aren't any names there I don't know how
to pronounce. I'd be happy to tell you how to say them at Minicon, if
this helps at all.
David Langford
[who needs context?]
>There's a myth that the swallows don't migrate but instead dive down
>into the lake and curl up and become ammonites until next year.
Oh goody, an excuse to quote Dr Johnson: "Swallows certainly sleep all
winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round,
and then all in a heap throw themselves under water and lie in the bed of
the river." (I love "conglobulate".)
Dave
--
David Langford
ans...@cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.co.uk/
Kip Williams
>
> On Sat, 17 Feb 2001 09:29:49 GMT, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote:
>
> [who needs context?]
>
> >There's a myth that the swallows don't migrate but instead dive down
> >into the lake and curl up and become ammonites until next year.
>
> Oh goody, an excuse to quote Dr Johnson: "Swallows certainly sleep all
> winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round,
> and then all in a heap throw themselves under water and lie in the bed of
> the river." (I love "conglobulate".)
And if I might, I'd just like to add to that by saying:
"conglobulate."
Conglobulate, conglobulate. Heh.
--
--Kip (Williams)
conglobulating the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
Avedon Carol
>On 13 Feb 2001 04:21:33 GMT,
> Randolph Fritz <rand...@panix.com> wrote:
>>On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 21:11:23 -0500, Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>The problem with me trying to describe a unix in those terms is that
>>>it's like the little church down the road from one's family home,
>>>where the denomination is much, much less important than that it's the
>>>place where everything is normal.
>>>
>>
>>Ah. Primitive Protestants. :-)
>
>Why is it "primitive" to value community and consistency over the
>abstract ideological issues that are evidently more important to
>faraway privileged people?
>
>Just wondering.
Probably someone else said this, but I don't think it has anything to
do with what you "value", it's just what you're used to. (To me
"normal" church is Armenian Apostolic, and the rest of you have alien
churches.)
--
Avedon
"At holiday parties, Republican political operatives boasted freely about
their success in snaring the White House. A common refrain, told in a
joking style, was: 'We stole the election fair and square.'" (Robert Parry)
Jonathan J. Baker
>av...@grumer.org (Avram Grumer) wrote:
>> In article <>, t...@panix.com wrote:
>> > Graydon Saunders <gra...@dsl.ca> wrote:
>> > >Linux _is_ (a kind of) unix.
>> > Is it, then? I'd originally thought so, but then someone told me
>> > it wasn't. So now I know.
>> Well, I've seen Linus Torvalds describe it as "Unix-compatible," but what
>> does he know?
>Probably about as much as that Alvarez guy knows about physics....
Well, it's supposed to be binary-compatible with Xenix, a commercial
Unix for Intel machines. My old manager took the Xenix version of our
company's product (a large database language), and put it on his Linux
box at home. It worked pretty well, but it couldn't handle interprocess
communication. He worked for a while trying to port that part, but I
think he eventually handed it over to an actual porting group.
--
Jonathan Baker | Happy birthday, trees!
jjb...@panix.com | Web page <http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker/>
Mark Atwood
>
> Well, it's supposed to be binary-compatible with Xenix, a commercial
> Unix for Intel machines. My old manager took the Xenix version of our
> company's product (a large database language), and put it on his Linux
> box at home. It worked pretty well, but it couldn't handle interprocess
> communication. He worked for a while trying to port that part, but I
> think he eventually handed it over to an actual porting group.
The Linux kernel with glibc is very easy to port other UNIX apps
to. When Oracle first did their port, they admitted that pretty much
the entirity of the port consisted of typing
"tar xzf sourcetree.tgz && make install" at the shell.
--
Mark Atwood | I'm wearing black only until I find something darker.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Jordin Kare
> David Langford wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 17 Feb 2001 09:29:49 GMT, J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote:
> >
> > [who needs context?]
> >
> > >There's a myth that the swallows don't migrate but instead dive down
> > >into the lake and curl up and become ammonites until next year.
> >
> > Oh goody, an excuse to quote Dr Johnson: "Swallows certainly sleep all
> > winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round,
> > and then all in a heap throw themselves under water and lie in the bed of
> > the river." (I love "conglobulate".)
>
> And if I might, I'd just like to add to that by saying:
> "conglobulate."
>
> Conglobulate, conglobulate. Heh.
Conglobulations!
Jordin
Doug Wickstrom
<slrn98ieno....@localhost.localdomain>
gra...@dsl.ca (Graydon Saunders) excited the ether to say:
>Since I'm using the Cananglais dipthongs when I do this, no doubt the
>shade of Cathbad is plotting how to make an oak tree fall on me at an
>inauspicious time, but it does add a pleasing element of challenged to
>such works.
Then you must be sure to stand only beneath an ash (or a yew)
tree -- for safety's sake.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"On my best days, I'm not perfect, I'm just performing admirably under
circumstances that happen to aid me." --Josh Jasper
Doug Wickstrom
<slrn98pjl...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>
t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) excited the ether to say:
> Almost entirely blind in both eyes and weighing a meager 4-6 lbs., it was
> touch and go whether it would survive the 190-mile journey north from the
> Hardanger fjord where it was caught.
Ah, well then. It was a Hardanger cod. They're nearly as
hard-headed as the two-legged denizens of Hardanger fjord. It
think it was the fiddling as attracted the fish, itself.
Now for the vital question: was this a true cod, or a ling cod?
--
Doug Wickstrom
"It's like an Alcatraz around my neck."
--Boston Mayor Thomas Menino on the shortage of city parking spaces
Kip Williams
>
> On 16 Feb 2001 06:54:15 GMT, in message
> <slrn98pjl...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>
> t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) excited the ether to say:
>
> > Almost entirely blind in both eyes and weighing a meager 4-6 lbs., it was
> > touch and go whether it would survive the 190-mile journey north from the
> > Hardanger fjord where it was caught.
>
> Ah, well then. It was a Hardanger cod. They're nearly as
> hard-headed as the two-legged denizens of Hardanger fjord. It
> think it was the fiddling as attracted the fish, itself.
>
> Now for the vital question: was this a true cod, or a ling cod?
A codd cod?
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
Bernard Peek
writes
>Doug Wickstrom wrote:
>>
>> On 16 Feb 2001 06:54:15 GMT, in message
>> <slrn98pjl...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>
>> t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) excited the ether to say:
>>
>> > Almost entirely blind in both eyes and weighing a meager 4-6 lbs., it was
>> > touch and go whether it would survive the 190-mile journey north from the
>> > Hardanger fjord where it was caught.
>>
>> Ah, well then. It was a Hardanger cod. They're nearly as
>> hard-headed as the two-legged denizens of Hardanger fjord. It
>> think it was the fiddling as attracted the fish, itself.
>>
>> Now for the vital question: was this a true cod, or a ling cod?
>
>A codd cod?
A relation of the true cod I'm sure.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
b...@shrdlu.co.uk
Alison Hopkins
Bernard Peek wrote in message ...
And does a codd cod get eaten with ginger beer?
(i'll bet *someone* picks up on that!)
Ali
Tim Illingworth
fn...@dial.pipex.com "Alison Hopkins" writes:
*wallop*
Tim
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Illingworth t...@smof.demon.co.uk Go not to Usenet for advice, for
Coveney, tim...@compuserve.com they will say both 'No' and 'Yes'
Cambs, UK tim...@cix.co.uk and 'Try Another Newsgroup'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alison Hopkins
Tim Illingworth wrote in message <982528...@smof.demon.co.uk>...
>In article <96p9dj$2vi$5...@lure.pipex.net>
> fn...@dial.pipex.com "Alison Hopkins" writes:
>
>>
>>Bernard Peek wrote in message ...
>>>In message <3A8FE32F...@home.com>, Kip Williams <ki...@home.com>
>>>writes
>>>>Doug Wickstrom wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Now for the vital question: was this a true cod, or a ling cod?
>>>>
>>>>A codd cod?
>>>
>>>A relation of the true cod I'm sure.
>>>
>>
>>
>>And does a codd cod get eaten with ginger beer?
>>
>>(i'll bet *someone* picks up on that!)
>
>*wallop*
>
>Tim
>
So, I lost my marbles on that one?
Ali
Alison Scott
>(I love "conglobulate".)
Hmm. I think it may be time to run another small friendly convention.
--
Alison Scott ali...@kittywompus.com & www.kittywompus.com
Ninni Pettersson
> On 16 Feb 2001 06:54:15 GMT, in message
> <slrn98pjl...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>
> t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) excited the ether to say:
>
> > Almost entirely blind in both eyes and weighing a meager 4-6 lbs., it was
> > touch and go whether it would survive the 190-mile journey north from the
> > Hardanger fjord where it was caught.
>
> Ah, well then. It was a Hardanger cod. They're nearly as
> hard-headed as the two-legged denizens of Hardanger fjord. It
> think it was the fiddling as attracted the fish, itself.
>
> Now for the vital question: was this a true cod, or a ling cod?
The Swedish newspapers called it _torsk_ and not _långa_, so
presumably it's a true cod. But newspapers being what they are, this is
of course not necessarily true.
/Ninni Pettersson
--
Ninni Pettersson - Stockholm - Sweden
Mail-adress is vidumavi at swipnet dot se
Niall McAuley
>A list of craters on Europa, many of which are named for characters in
>Celtic myths, may be found at
><http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/jupiter/eurocrat.html>.
The list of names includes my wife, my daughter, a nephew,
several workmates and a few of my daughters friends.
No Nialls though.
--
Niall [real address ends in se, not es.invalid]
Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey
> Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey wrote in message ...
> >A list of craters on Europa, many of which are named for characters in
> >Celtic myths, may be found at
> ><http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/jupiter/eurocrat.html>.
>
>
> The list of names includes my wife, my daughter, a nephew,
> several workmates and a few of my daughters friends.
>
> No Nialls though.
Reminds me-- I must tell my sister Moira there's an asteroid with her name.
--
Bill Higgins || "[Theatregoers], if they did not happen to like
Fermi || the production, had either to sit all through it
National || or else go home. They probably would have
Accelerator || rejoiced at the ease of our Tele-Theaters, where
Laboratory || we can switch from one play to another in five
Internet: || seconds, until we find the one that suits us
hig...@fnal.gov || best."
|| --Hugo Gernsback predicts Channel-Surfing
|| in *Ralph 124C41+* (1912)
T Nielsen Hayden
I like the other explanations so much better than my own: I had started to
feel very sleepy, and was trying to come up with a way to say that time
doesn't run backwards, and vanished complex archaic systems don't just
spontaneously reappear. Sorry about that. It made sense to me at the time.
-t.
Doug Wickstrom
<1ep2twj.3efd1l19x1wd6N%see_sig...@email.xx>
see_sig...@email.xx (Ninni Pettersson) excited the ether to
say:
>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@uswest.net> wrote:
>
>> On 16 Feb 2001 06:54:15 GMT, in message
>> <slrn98pjl...@pnh-1.dsl.speakeasy.net>
>> t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) excited the ether to say:
>>
>> > Almost entirely blind in both eyes and weighing a meager 4-6 lbs., it was
>> > touch and go whether it would survive the 190-mile journey north from the
>> > Hardanger fjord where it was caught.
>>
>> Ah, well then. It was a Hardanger cod. They're nearly as
>> hard-headed as the two-legged denizens of Hardanger fjord. It
>> think it was the fiddling as attracted the fish, itself.
>>
>> Now for the vital question: was this a true cod, or a ling cod?
>
> The Swedish newspapers called it _torsk_ and not _långa_, so
>presumably it's a true cod. But newspapers being what they are, this is
>of course not necessarily true.
I think we just hit a translation problem. Here, "torsk" is
translated as "ling cod."
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Rasff is a game in which we trawl each other's posts for .sig quotes."
--Avedon Carol
Cally Soukup
> I'm lost, again.
Kind of sideways apropos to this, I heard, yesterday, when I switched
on the radio, the last couple of sentences of a discussion about
trilobites. And it sounded like they were talking about *living*
trilobites. There was mention of them (or their eggs) being "dormant"
in some clay somewhere, and hatching, and how this one person owned
them all.
They then went on to talk about games and toys. I have *absolutely no
idea* whether they were talking about some toy with trilobites in it;
it sounded like they were talking about living organisms.
Anybody know what they might have been talking about?
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote in article <3a8d32c1...@enews.newsguy.com>:
An abstract from "The Trilobite Papers,"
http://www.island.net/~rolfl/TP6.htm
Xiguang Zhang and Brian Pratt
University of Saskatchewan
In an upcoming issue of Science we report the discovery of
phosphatized arthropod eggs from the lower Middle
Cambrian of China. These eggs are gently ovoid, about 0.3
mm in size, and the embryo is preserved as tightly packed
cells seen as polygons on the outer surface. We argue
that they probably belong to the eodiscid trilobite that
also occurs in the collections.
it's what I came up with.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Dave Slusher
J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote:
> I especially hate it in books where it's entirely and totally unnecessary.
> Nicola Griffiths _Ammonite_ is my top example. There are these illiterate
> female horse nomads on another planet who have Gaelic names and the
> narrator isn't Irish, so how the heck can she hear someone saying "Ayfa"
> and intuit that the spelling is "Aiofe"? Doesn't sound very plausible to
> me.
>
> I can understand people in Ireland using this sort of spellings, though
> thankfully in yellow italic and underneath the more plausible spellings.
> It drives me nuts when people do it for no reason, just for jaw-cracking
> atmosphere. I don't understand how anyone can want to look at words
> like that. They're an abomination.
I tried to send this once and it never showed up here. Apologies if
multiples of this appear.
From Nicola Griffith's web page at <http://www.sff.net/people/nicola/>
in the Ask Nicola section:
"I wouldn't dream of telling you how to pronounce something. I can tell
you how *I* pronounce the names, but you paid for the book, you're the
one doing the reading--say them any way you like. I pronounce
"Echraidhe" as Eck-RAVE, "Aoife" as EE-fee, "Uaithne" as WAITH-nee and
so on. Standard Celtic pronounciation. Second part: I didn't set out to
make them unpronouncable. I had originally intended to make the
tribeswomen Mongolian (as you can probably tell from things like: yurt,
fermented mares milk, herding lifestyle, clothes etc.). When I was
writing Ammonite, though, I couldn't think of any Mongolian names, so I
stuck in celtic ones as place holders until I could go off and do some
research, but once I'd finished the book, I found myself unable to
change the names--the characters had claimed them. Oh, well."
And since Jeep isn't strictly speaking full of "extra-terrestrials" but
the descendants of Earth born colonists, the names could have had any
sort of origin and stuck around from linguistic survival of the fittest.
d
--
http://www.sff.net/people/dave_slusher
Listen to my shift on WREK 91.1 FM in Atlanta:
http://www.evilgeniuscorp.com/radio/dave_shift.php
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:982408...@bluejo.demon.co.uk...
> In article <Pine.SGI.4.21.010215...@fsgi02.fnal.gov>
> hig...@fnal.gov "Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey" writes:
>
> > I was hoping to corner Jo Walton at Minicon and ask her about this, but
> > since the subject of Irish pronunication and transliteration has come
> > up, I've written this up.
> >
> > The home page for the fascinating subject of planetary nomenclature is
> > <http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/nomen.html>.
> > Astute observers will note that I've gotten more than one fanzine
> > article
> > out of this subject.
> >
> > A list of craters on Europa, many of which are named for characters in
> > Celtic myths, may be found at
> > <http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/nomen/jupiter/eurocrat.html>.
>
> I've had a look at this. There aren't any names there I don't know how
> to pronounce. I'd be happy to tell you how to say them at Minicon, if
> this helps at all.
In which case, I think you're sorted; these things are always better done in
person. I'm still wrestling with how to explain pronunciations in print to
a bunch of people with different flavours of English. Vowels are the worst.
(And I just bloody lost the post I was writing about that. Wah. Stupid
fingers.)
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
Jo Walton
dave_s...@sff.net "Dave Slusher" writes:
> And since Jeep isn't strictly speaking full of "extra-terrestrials" but
> the descendants of Earth born colonists, the names could have had any
> sort of origin and stuck around from linguistic survival of the fittest.
The names could. But the characters are illiterate except for the POV
character who isn't Irish. So the spellings wouldn't. I'd have no
problem if they were called EE-fee or Ayfa or whatever, but how can
anyone know that an illiterate tribeswoman spells her name Aiofe?
It _really_ bugged me.
I like the book a lot. But if I'd liked it less the combination of them
and Hannah Danner might have made me put it down. In fact, if the novel
hadn't got away from the Celtic mongolian nomads I might have given it
up even as it was. If I'm distracted and irritated, it destroys a lot
of my reading pleasure.