Arabtex with Emacs works quite nicely for what I need (Arabic quotes in European-language papers). Otherwise you could, you know, look at the information the arabeyes project put together on the subject (basically arabtex + lyx
...a find that will likely end up in a museum and earn the archaeological team involved in analyzing the find a good few million.
I have yet to meet an archaeologist who makes millions (though I can dream). At least in recent years, and with increasing awareness of and support for antiquities laws, the choice is between a difficult sell on the black market or stiff fines, if not jail time. You'd pretty much have to be mad to keep it (also add Indiana Jones "This Belongs In A Museum!" quote here).
The exceptionally fine ancient monument returned from Italy - a massive obelisk that had been plundered during World War II and was in exceptionally good condition, was smashed into three pieces in order to return it on the cheap.
If you read the early German survey reports on Aksum, you'll find the monument had already fallen into three pieces before the Italians pillaged it during the Invasion of Ethiopia. It was basically glued together before it ended up in front of Mussolini's Africa-Ministry. It has not yet been set up again, as it's undergoing restoration amid debates on how to stabilize it.
While I agree with the general tone of your post, the accusation of widespread gross negligence or incompetence, especially when based on a puff-piece on yahoo news, is out of place. All of these investigations do take place, though few major news outlets are interested in printing them. A site like this will provide enough material for years to come, no results of which will be published in the near future, though. When actual results are published, they'll no longer have the "Oooh, new, shiny!" appeal which helps to get the story into the papers.
Having just gone through several boxes of poorly preserved family photographs, most which have turned to brittle shavings, I'll take the digital route, thank you. Information on the deterioration of prints here,
if you'd like. Even if mom and dad isn't, there are people who will for them.
"This is all the more reason the US govt and the CIA need to invest heavily in recruiting and training Arabic translators."
Except it's not that easy. The CIA has been griping since 2001 that, despite the massive upsurge in students taking Arabic, only about 5% of them - if that - end up competent enough to do intelligence work. With the private sector offering obscene money in comparison to a government job, you can pretty much guess what percentage of those 5% want to end up with the CIA.
I see this sort of foolishness in my department all the time. Some ponce show up for Beginning Arabic saying something like "Yeah, wanna learn, you know, 'cause of the terrorists and all". It takes all of about two weeks before they figure out that, hey, Arabic is hard, you have to actually memorize things which aren't even remotely related to English, spend about 3/4 of your study-time mastering vocabulary, and in the end still can't order a cup of coffee in Cairo. I guess we can just ask nicely if the terrorists would mind sticking to the dictionary and reference grammars.
Add to that what the linguist-lads call diglossia. Spoken Arabic has little to do with written Arabic. Want to read a Qur'an? Written Arabic it is, but you can't converse worth a hill of beans. A friend of mine, freshly finished with his M.A. in Arabic, decided to take a trip to Cairo, steps into a cab and decides to practice with a High Arabic "How are You"? The Cabbie just stared at him and blurted out "Sorry, no English".
Want to listen to a wire-tap? What's it going to be then? Cairene Arabic? Yemeni Highland Dialect? Saudi Bedouin Dialects? Palestinian? Moroccan? How about Qwayrish? I've witnessed a 3-hour long argument among an Iraqi, a Yemeni and an Egyptian about the correct Arabic word for watermelon, for Pete's sake. Each one came up with at least three words which the others hadn't even heard of. (We won't even mention that many of the "terrorists" are Iranian, Pakistani, Afghani...)
So yeah, throwing money into recruitment and training or more funding for the Defense Language Institute might help, but not much.
(30) The rights referred to in this Directive may be transferred, assigned or subject to the granting of contractual licences, without prejudice to the relevant national legislation on copyright and related rights.
and:
(33) The exclusive right of reproduction should be subject to an exception to allow certain acts of temporary reproduction, which are transient or incidental reproductions, forming an integral and essential part of a technological process and carried out for the sole purpose of enabling either efficient transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made. The acts of reproduction concerned should have no separate economic value on their own. To the extent that they meet these conditions, this exception should include acts which enable browsing as well as acts of caching to take place, including those which enable transmission systems to function efficiently, provided that the intermediary does not modify the information and does not interfere with the lawful use of technology, widely recognised and used by industry, to obtain data on the use of the information. A use should be considered lawful where it is authorised by the rightholder or not restricted by law.
Take a look at the text for similar clauses. In other words, if I understand this correctly, this is firstly a question of academic or research usage, secondly a matter of agreement which can be made between any party and the copyright holder.
This doesn't mean that the law sucks any less, but that this agreement is nothing unusual, and has nothing to do with "special rights" granted to a particular class of people/organisations. I haven't been able to find the actual text of the agreement, though. It could be that the National Library in Germany will be paying copy-fees, or similar, for their reproductions.
Neither the syntax of English (or for that matter of any other included language) nor the morphology have much to do with the problem. The citation form is fixed by convention, and this is what counts. Note that the dictionary includes morphological expansions (plural, etc.) in the base search. This is the problem inherent in any dictionary: you have to know what you're looking for in order to find it, and one you'll have no matter what language you choose as a base.
The much greater problem is that the structure is based on a correlation word(language X)=word(language Y), without (at least after a quick sample of a few words) lexical subgroupings, phrase expansions, or context citations.
A basic part of any definition is a hierarchy of meanings. A cell can designate, among other things, an enclosed space in general, a biological term, or a battery (not to mention an abbreviation for a cellular telephone). The last two can be derived from the first in English, but may have completely different designations in other languages. Similarly produce "to create" and produce "fruits and vegetables". All definitions are spit back in a random list. It might be worthwhile, using English as a base, to correlate meaning, and not simply words. (Does remind me of the old joke: "Any Arabic word has four basic meanings: A definition, its exact opposite, something to do with the naughty bits, and something to do with a camel.")
Lastly, how are they coming up with their definitions? Most (good) dictionaries base them on context. I need to know why "shoot" has such a wide range of meanings, whether I "shoot a rifle", "shoot an intruder", "shoot hoops", or "shoot the shit", and I need to know in which context I can apply each. I need to know what arguments a word can take, whether I can date a document to a time-period or whether the document dates from that time. A random correlated list provides me with none of these things. There are more problems (free composites like the bizarre English ability to tack nouns together as a specification of the second element, e.g. "computer chip", which should rightly be a lexical item of its own, and not subsumed under "chip", etc.)
A dictionary, rightly done, is more than a laundry list of words and definitions. It should contain a subtle record of cultural context, language history, and usage. In other words, nice idea, but I'll still stick to the OED and company.
Where did you read this? The article mentions nothing about it. The case is even more ludicrous when you realize that the Maori's threatened suit rests almost entirely on these similar words. Take a look at bionicle.com: the game is about an island "at some distant point in the future", populated by what look like some sort of mutant, mask-wearing cyborgs. So the law-suit is about Lego's taking particular elements of maori culture? The estate of J.R.R. Tolkien is screwed (theft from Norse and Anglo-Saxon traditions), then, as is National Geographic (theft from pretty much everybody to sell their nifty magazine).
Of course, the sad thing is, there seems to be enough precedent. "Senet", the name of an ancient Egyptian board-game, is a registered trademark of some gaming company ('course, they don't have to worry about lawsuits....).
Loprieno has tried very hard to come up with something coherent; it is admirable. James Allen tries to do the same in his work, and gives a decent introduction to it in his new grammar, as does Carsten Peust in Egyptian Phonology. The method, of course, is always the same; backdate vowels from coptic and try to reconstruct the old egyptian in stages.
But it would be damn foolish to say we have anything even close to a real approximation. They are speaking something based on Egyptian, but it still isn't much better than the academic attempts made by Gardiner years ago. Even if you ignore heavy Greek influences on the sahidic coptic of 300/400 A.D., you've got some 4000 years until you manage to get back to Old Egyptian. Sound shifts in Middle Egyptian are deviously hidden; the language is intentionally conservative, and displays close to none of the patterns of the spoken word.
As I said below, I agree that the language isn't babble; it is based on some sort of composite egyptian. Same example, though; you'd be hard-pressed to prove the pronunciation of the negative n as "nai". This isn't "accurate", because it's impossible to be accurate. Modern Egyptologists (I'll assume that's what you meant by your "linguists") have advanced some, but not by much.
The movie's Egyptian dialogue is a whole-hearted attempt, and praise-worthy at that, but let's not get carried away
The consultant on the movie was Stuart Smith, the same guy who consulted for Star Gate; he used to be a real egytologist, once upon a time. These days, he can most definitely afford not to give a damn anymore. The language was part attempt at actual Egyptian (I could recognize only bits and phrases), with a little Arabic and what sounded like French (WTF?) thrown in for good measure.
Problem is, you can't really call anything the "real thing"; Egptian throughout all its phases until Coptic doesn't write weak vowels. So, for the word for Egypt, for example, you just get K.M.T.; a negative (no), is just written 'N', which in the movie they scream out as 'nai'.
Anyway; whatever, the movie was awful, campy, and a hell of a lot of fun; little Egypt, little Indiana Jones, little Jurassic Park, little Final Fantasy, a little steam-punk, and you a movie best described as "wacky" (a word usually reserved for "I Love Lucy" episodes). Katz, your review smacks of self-righteous effort; lighten up, or at least go harrass some other films. Can't wait to hear how The Transformers failed us in their depiction of world-destroying mutant robots. Bah, humbug.
P.S. Haven't tried to translate any of the murals, or the tattoo on whatchamacallit's forehead. probably mean nothing.
Dunno. I just read through this statement by Sam Palmisano. Who really cares about IBM's motives? Are they looking to exploit it as a business solution for their own profit? Sure. Yay for them. They're also apparently pumping some $1 billion into Linux development (small change, I'm sure, but it's something). Whatever their motives, how is this a bad thing?
Boehse Onkelz, eh? I'll refrain from comments about shitty metal bands and technology. Well, let's see here. By this principle:
I bought some herb alpert (yeah, i'm 14m3) and buena vista social club. i'm writing down the notation for the trumpet parts so I can play it. My pencil and note paper should be taxed, as should my trumpet, mouthpiece, and, if they keep on losing money, the valves and individual components.
I use cdparanoia and bladeenc to rip most of my cd's to mp3. both should be taxed.
I use linux; my operating system lets me access my cd and hard drive; all of these should be taxed.
I also write; when I do, I usually use Abiword, sometimes a manual typewriter, but make frequent allusions/blatantly steal from other books and authors. My work, my typewriter, my word processor, and my typewriter/printer paper should be taxed.
I sing in the shower; I'm not making money off of it, but I let my neighbors hear all that music for free. My voice, water, ceramic tile, and shower head should be taxed
Just thought I'd write up this little list for myself...I know other people have posted some very good suggestions (I like the larynx tax), but I figure there's a good chance I'll be moving out of America at the beginning of the summer, so I may as well start figuring out how much I owe.
As a side note, Europe and America seem completely deluged by these Recording-industry loons. Can we one of these days hear about a country (other than, say, Djibouti or Biafra) where these fools have no power? What are tech-friendly countries? Or is this just a utopian opium-dream?
Yes, you're probably right; but "I'm a 4th year undergraduate studying Classical Philology and Near Eastern Languages who will be attending graduate school next year and intends to make a career of it" was a bit long.
And Mr. Flynn is not a fool; he has a valid point, just poorly stated.
Well, I would, Mr. Flynn, but first you would have to tell me where you are, what generation we're talking about, and what exactly it is that you think your generation stood for. (obviously not walks in the snow).
I have to say, you did have me going for a while; I was right there with you until you started going off on the uselessness of art, the futility of teaching unobtainable ideals, etc. But first, a little background; I'm a classicist. I finished High School here in 1997, with several years of Latin and Greek. I had to memorise good chunks of the Aeneid and Homer, as well as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Byron, Milton, and others. I had the sort of education you seem to be advocating. On the other hand, I had a year of music, two years of art, history and practice. Throw in a little calculus, physics, chemistry, and 4 years of religious studies, and you've got my High School experience in a nutshell. By now, I've probably done more dead languages than you've ever heard of.
So why all this bullshit about removing art and other intangibles from the curriculum? Nobody (sane) ever said that they have to be mutually exclusive. Art, beauty, truth were the great ideals of those classical civilisations you seem to love so much; Medieval Europe stole those values from Rome, Rome stole them from Athens and Greece, Greece stole them from the Hittites and Assyrians, the Hittites and Assyrians stole them from the Sumerians, the Sumerians...well, that's where the record ends, but I'm sure they came from somewhere. Sure, throw in a little innovation at each point along the way, borrowings from a lot of 'loser' civilisations, and you start to come somewhat close to history.
I suppose I still agree with your end point, the combination of fact/memorisation and analysis, but your methods stink.
It's very easy to love education when you're told that there are no wrong answers. New math, anyone? ('2 + 2 = 5? Well, little jimmy, it's great that you're trying!).
Bullshit. Like one of my High School teachers...he was a great teacher, but hated Latin and Greek and pushed for it to be removed from the curriculum. Yet, he had gone through some 10 years of both himself, and expected students to understand literary references to those same Classical languages. Odd, huh?
I believe the original poster meant that real education demands a combination of the two, memorisation and analysis. Nobody learns Calculus through theory without practice. Even your Caltech course taught 'facts', principles. Those facts were then applied. Years ago Education fought against memorisation without analysis; the pendulum slowly swung to the other side, analysis without memorisation. Both are pretty damn wretched without the other.
Fine. When you revolutionise the state of modern physics, we can talk.
(rant)...What's with the Einstein references everywhere? Einstein failed classes and got C's in school, so I can too? Einstein forgot everything, including his phone number, so I can too? Einstein married his cousin, so I can too? Bah, humbug.
MSG? Possibly, but probably then only a contributing factor. Educational system is probably the heart of it; as you say, few people are made to memorise anything anymore, and, like any other muscle, memory weakens.
But computers are a big part of it, and an even bigger part of education these days. Why memorise when something's just a google or E2 search away? Why teach the multiplication tables when you have calculators (the theory of the Chicago public school system)?
Years ago someone published a book (the name and author of which, ironically, I can't seem to remember right now) about memory as the fake intelligence of the middle ages. He was partly correct; yes, the days of glorifying memory are over, but not much seems to have replaced it. This to me is disturbing. You can't memorise Shakespeare, but you can do what now? Memorise the 30% of Perl you use 70% of the time? Remember the 20 some odd unix commands you use almost 90% of the time?
Just a little example of where I'm coming from; about a year ago, a brilliant professor by the name of Hans Gustav Guterbock died. By the end of his life, he was almost completely blind, and yet somehow had memorised almost the entirety of extant Hittite texts (his field), in addition to countless other in Akkadian and various other languages. He could in an instant draw parallels and see patterns which it would take most others even in the field hours of searching to see. Another, a palaeographer, could instantly recognise the origin and style of almost any text by remembering similarities in hundreds of others. Isn't this the 'good' kind of memory that's being lost?
Cheap knock-offs? Nothing but misplaced childhood penis-envy! The go-bots...those were toys. Solid metal, looked like big blobs of metal vaguely reminiscent of actual vehicles you could use either use to pretend to save the universe from Cy-kill and Cop-tur(ha! you think they'd waste money on the tom-foolery of a marketing department to come up with names!?) or crush your friends skull in with the force of a tiny die-cast sledge hammer; Toys you could defend your village with.
And names? No Optimus-Prime-straight off the hairdryer names for the go-bots, no sir! They were too cool for names: they got assigned a function, and then a number. Leader 1, baby, or Turbo as one of the frillier ones (bet he was a pooftah). Those were the days, crushing those anarcho-communist Renegades for the good of Gobotron!
Nor did they stick around to become a burden on toy society, to be mentioned with shame these days; the go-bots knew when to die off and leave their heroic legend to posterity. bah, humbug.
Yes, but then Mr. T. ate my balls, and all I could do was sit for days in front of the big red button that doesn't do anything waiting for it to do something.
Damn...seems like the site's been slashdotted, so this is a rather uninformed opinion. But I will say this: Everything2 as an encyclopaedia has severe limitation, since that's not what it was meant to be. If you've hung around there for more than an hour or so, you'd realize this. You head on over looking for information on A.E. Housmann or cellular Redox reactions, and find the place filled with nodes with titles like 'DMan (or 'insert user here') sucks monkey balls' and 'why I started wearing dresses and tucking it under...). That's fine, but it means anything there is highly experiential and rather useless as a reference tool (look up the entries for Linux, RMS, and Microsoft...).
I like the idea of a project for factual reference; it's nice to have a place to go to without sifting through pages of hot pr0n on altavista or yahoo (or, gasp!, even google), or random homepages with useless, self-aggrandizing drivel. Why not have an encyclopaedia online, readily available, with cursory descriptions of subjects that can constantly be updated? On the other hand, coding this in pure html seems foolish; the everything engine is perfect for this, and (though I may be wrong) even GPL'd. I'm curious how this will develop.
True, but, guess what? spam isn't illegal! Wow, who would have thought? Spam itself probably won't (and shouldn't) be illegal for a very long time; spammers are going to get jailed for related crimes, though, and if it takes fraud charges to put them there, I certainly don't mind. Think about Mr. Capone's sentence for tax evasion after years and years of murder, theft, and god only knows what else.
Besides, if there is ever a law passed against spam, it will be because of cases like this. If you notice, the dumbest articles posted around here, even if Mrs. Taco and Hemos never realize it, are interesting for reasons never alluded to in the post.
No. Suspension of disbelief is fine, but it only works so far. I can read Dracula and believe there's a vampire sucking London dry, but I still think they're all fools for inviting him into their homes in the first place.
Yes, you can read Tolkien without analyzing it, and you should at least once. That doesn't mean you can't, it doesn't mean that the child-like reading will help you understand it, and it certainly doesn't mean it was intentionally senseless; the best fiction works within its own defined logic. Tolkien was my first introduction to Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology, as I suspect it was for many people; the more academic work I do on both, the more I appreciate Tolkien each time I reread it. And, by the by, he was a hobbit, and he had a sword (eventually).
Plus you don't have to skim through those damn chapters on hats and other nonsense when you watch the Princess Bride.
But Tolkien is in the details, and in the language itself. My prime example was always the balrog; I've never seen a picture of a balrog, drawn by any artist, that captures the sense of ancient horror, urgency, panic of the book's description, and yet somehow I can picture it perfectly in my mind. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but no thousand words can be summed up in a single picture. Ever see the animated Ralph Bakshi cartoon? It looks like a lumbering circus bear someone set on fire and chased down the street.
You hear that rushing noise over your head? That's the point; seems you've just missed it.
This is not a mythology; this is a myth, and a well-crafted one at that. If Tolkien seems to be using archetypes (yes, those same ones Star Wars and the Matrix use, thank you very much, Joseph Cambell), it's because he is. His sources include everything from Homer (By the way, what bloody Greek myth were you reading? Ever read the stuff in Greek? 101 ways to spear a man through the ankle...) to the Prose and Poetic Eddas to the Mabinogian, with a little of the Tain Bo Cuailnge (sp? damn irish...) thrown in, and a heavy smattering of Anglo-Saxon social history. Linguistics comes from Anglo-Saxon, Finnish, Old High German, Old English, and the list goes on and on. Is this a reason to appreciate it? No, it's a decent beginning guide on how to read it, though.
First off, the plot is archetypal, but coherent; you have a point that Gandalf is the odd-ball deus ex machina at times, but that's the reason he's there in the first place. He represents an almost divine interaction with humanity (elfdom, whatever...). He was the catalyst for the entire ring business anyway, right? The elves are clearly declining; mention of how there just isn't going to be another elven host getting their feet wet anymore. Read it until the end, you realize this book explains the beginning of the age of man, and the final fall of the elven people.
The plot is never really original; there's only so many ways to save the maiden, slay the dragon, win the gold, save the world. If you ever decide to pick it up again (and I don't really care if you do or don't, you're entitled to your opinion, after all (as long as it is made expressly clear that you are wrong)), what you're looking for is variation. Why does Tolkien pick and choose what he does, and how does he piece the narrative together? Go for the details. Recognize what he's stealing, and how he's changed it.
The one honest criticism I've always had is his weak character development. Personality is pretty superficial. It's like trying to tell apart Rosenkranz and Guildenstern, or Merry and Pippin; in the end, you can really only tell by the costume. Character is defined by role. But so what? This isn't just Tolkien swamped with grading termpapers while scribbling away. He picks his style carefully, and subordinates individual development for a smooth narrative, almost as if he's writing a Tacitus-style chronical.
And the beauty of it is, Kiss the Blade isn't wrong. You could ignore all of it and read it for a book about the problems of other people, who just happen to be wearing chain shirts and lopping off orc heads; true escapism. But since you've already made a critical analysis, it's a bit late, dontcha think? Just a few thoughts.
Slashdot Mirror
Arabtex with Emacs works quite nicely for what I need (Arabic quotes in European-language papers). Otherwise you could, you know, look at the information the arabeyes project put together on the subject (basically arabtex + lyx
I have yet to meet an archaeologist who makes millions (though I can dream). At least in recent years, and with increasing awareness of and support for antiquities laws, the choice is between a difficult sell on the black market or stiff fines, if not jail time. You'd pretty much have to be mad to keep it (also add Indiana Jones "This Belongs In A Museum!" quote here).
If you read the early German survey reports on Aksum, you'll find the monument had already fallen into three pieces before the Italians pillaged it during the Invasion of Ethiopia. It was basically glued together before it ended up in front of Mussolini's Africa-Ministry. It has not yet been set up again, as it's undergoing restoration amid debates on how to stabilize it.
While I agree with the general tone of your post, the accusation of widespread gross negligence or incompetence, especially when based on a puff-piece on yahoo news, is out of place. All of these investigations do take place, though few major news outlets are interested in printing them. A site like this will provide enough material for years to come, no results of which will be published in the near future, though. When actual results are published, they'll no longer have the "Oooh, new, shiny!" appeal which helps to get the story into the papers.
Having just gone through several boxes of poorly preserved family photographs, most which have turned to brittle shavings, I'll take the digital route, thank you. Information on the deterioration of prints here, if you'd like. Even if mom and dad isn't, there are people who will for them.
"This is all the more reason the US govt and the CIA need to invest heavily in recruiting and training Arabic translators."
Except it's not that easy. The CIA has been griping since 2001 that, despite the massive upsurge in students taking Arabic, only about 5% of them - if that - end up competent enough to do intelligence work. With the private sector offering obscene money in comparison to a government job, you can pretty much guess what percentage of those 5% want to end up with the CIA.
I see this sort of foolishness in my department all the time. Some ponce show up for Beginning Arabic saying something like "Yeah, wanna learn, you know, 'cause of the terrorists and all". It takes all of about two weeks before they figure out that, hey, Arabic is hard, you have to actually memorize things which aren't even remotely related to English, spend about 3/4 of your study-time mastering vocabulary, and in the end still can't order a cup of coffee in Cairo. I guess we can just ask nicely if the terrorists would mind sticking to the dictionary and reference grammars.
Add to that what the linguist-lads call diglossia. Spoken Arabic has little to do with written Arabic. Want to read a Qur'an? Written Arabic it is, but you can't converse worth a hill of beans. A friend of mine, freshly finished with his M.A. in Arabic, decided to take a trip to Cairo, steps into a cab and decides to practice with a High Arabic "How are You"? The Cabbie just stared at him and blurted out "Sorry, no English".
Want to listen to a wire-tap? What's it going to be then? Cairene Arabic? Yemeni Highland Dialect? Saudi Bedouin Dialects? Palestinian? Moroccan? How about Qwayrish? I've witnessed a 3-hour long argument among an Iraqi, a Yemeni and an Egyptian about the correct Arabic word for watermelon, for Pete's sake. Each one came up with at least three words which the others hadn't even heard of. (We won't even mention that many of the "terrorists" are Iranian, Pakistani, Afghani...)
So yeah, throwing money into recruitment and training or more funding for the Defense Language Institute might help, but not much.
The EUCD [http://ukcdr.org] explicitly states:
and: Take a look at the text for similar clauses. In other words, if I understand this correctly, this is firstly a question of academic or research usage, secondly a matter of agreement which can be made between any party and the copyright holder.This doesn't mean that the law sucks any less, but that this agreement is nothing unusual, and has nothing to do with "special rights" granted to a particular class of people/organisations. I haven't been able to find the actual text of the agreement, though. It could be that the National Library in Germany will be paying copy-fees, or similar, for their reproductions.
A few thoughts.
Neither the syntax of English (or for that matter of any other included language) nor the morphology have much to do with the problem. The citation form is fixed by convention, and this is what counts. Note that the dictionary includes morphological expansions (plural, etc.) in the base search. This is the problem inherent in any dictionary: you have to know what you're looking for in order to find it, and one you'll have no matter what language you choose as a base.
The much greater problem is that the structure is based on a correlation word(language X)=word(language Y), without (at least after a quick sample of a few words) lexical subgroupings, phrase expansions, or context citations.
A basic part of any definition is a hierarchy of meanings. A cell can designate, among other things, an enclosed space in general, a biological term, or a battery (not to mention an abbreviation for a cellular telephone). The last two can be derived from the first in English, but may have completely different designations in other languages. Similarly produce "to create" and produce "fruits and vegetables". All definitions are spit back in a random list. It might be worthwhile, using English as a base, to correlate meaning, and not simply words. (Does remind me of the old joke: "Any Arabic word has four basic meanings: A definition, its exact opposite, something to do with the naughty bits, and something to do with a camel.")
Lastly, how are they coming up with their definitions? Most (good) dictionaries base them on context. I need to know why "shoot" has such a wide range of meanings, whether I "shoot a rifle", "shoot an intruder", "shoot hoops", or "shoot the shit", and I need to know in which context I can apply each. I need to know what arguments a word can take, whether I can date a document to a time-period or whether the document dates from that time. A random correlated list provides me with none of these things. There are more problems (free composites like the bizarre English ability to tack nouns together as a specification of the second element, e.g. "computer chip", which should rightly be a lexical item of its own, and not subsumed under "chip", etc.)
A dictionary, rightly done, is more than a laundry list of words and definitions. It should contain a subtle record of cultural context, language history, and usage. In other words, nice idea, but I'll still stick to the OED and company.
Where did you read this? The article mentions nothing about it. The case is even more ludicrous when you realize that the Maori's threatened suit rests almost entirely on these similar words. Take a look at bionicle.com: the game is about an island "at some distant point in the future", populated by what look like some sort of mutant, mask-wearing cyborgs. So the law-suit is about Lego's taking particular elements of maori culture? The estate of J.R.R. Tolkien is screwed (theft from Norse and Anglo-Saxon traditions), then, as is National Geographic (theft from pretty much everybody to sell their nifty magazine).
Of course, the sad thing is, there seems to be enough precedent. "Senet", the name of an ancient Egyptian board-game, is a registered trademark of some gaming company ('course, they don't have to worry about lawsuits....).
Absurd! This is Absurd!
Loprieno has tried very hard to come up with something coherent; it is admirable. James Allen tries to do the same in his work, and gives a decent introduction to it in his new grammar, as does Carsten Peust in Egyptian Phonology. The method, of course, is always the same; backdate vowels from coptic and try to reconstruct the old egyptian in stages.
But it would be damn foolish to say we have anything even close to a real approximation. They are speaking something based on Egyptian, but it still isn't much better than the academic attempts made by Gardiner years ago. Even if you ignore heavy Greek influences on the sahidic coptic of 300/400 A.D., you've got some 4000 years until you manage to get back to Old Egyptian. Sound shifts in Middle Egyptian are deviously hidden; the language is intentionally conservative, and displays close to none of the patterns of the spoken word.
As I said below, I agree that the language isn't babble; it is based on some sort of composite egyptian. Same example, though; you'd be hard-pressed to prove the pronunciation of the negative n as "nai". This isn't "accurate", because it's impossible to be accurate. Modern Egyptologists (I'll assume that's what you meant by your "linguists") have advanced some, but not by much.
The movie's Egyptian dialogue is a whole-hearted attempt, and praise-worthy at that, but let's not get carried away
The consultant on the movie was Stuart Smith, the same guy who consulted for Star Gate; he used to be a real egytologist, once upon a time. These days, he can most definitely afford not to give a damn anymore. The language was part attempt at actual Egyptian (I could recognize only bits and phrases), with a little Arabic and what sounded like French (WTF?) thrown in for good measure.
Problem is, you can't really call anything the "real thing"; Egptian throughout all its phases until Coptic doesn't write weak vowels. So, for the word for Egypt, for example, you just get K.M.T.; a negative (no), is just written 'N', which in the movie they scream out as 'nai'.
Anyway; whatever, the movie was awful, campy, and a hell of a lot of fun; little Egypt, little Indiana Jones, little Jurassic Park, little Final Fantasy, a little steam-punk, and you a movie best described as "wacky" (a word usually reserved for "I Love Lucy" episodes). Katz, your review smacks of self-righteous effort; lighten up, or at least go harrass some other films. Can't wait to hear how The Transformers failed us in their depiction of world-destroying mutant robots. Bah, humbug.
P.S. Haven't tried to translate any of the murals, or the tattoo on whatchamacallit's forehead. probably mean nothing.
Dunno. I just read through this statement by Sam Palmisano. Who really cares about IBM's motives? Are they looking to exploit it as a business solution for their own profit? Sure. Yay for them. They're also apparently pumping some $1 billion into Linux development (small change, I'm sure, but it's something). Whatever their motives, how is this a bad thing?
- I bought some herb alpert (yeah, i'm 14m3) and buena vista social club. i'm writing down the notation for the trumpet parts so I can play it. My pencil and note paper should be taxed, as should my trumpet, mouthpiece, and, if they keep on losing money, the valves and individual components.
- I use cdparanoia and bladeenc to rip most of my cd's to mp3. both should be taxed.
- I use linux; my operating system lets me access my cd and hard drive; all of these should be taxed.
- I also write; when I do, I usually use Abiword, sometimes a manual typewriter, but make frequent allusions/blatantly steal from other books and authors. My work, my typewriter, my word processor, and my typewriter/printer paper should be taxed.
- I sing in the shower; I'm not making money off of it, but I let my neighbors hear all that music for free. My voice, water, ceramic tile, and shower head should be taxed
Just thought I'd write up this little list for myself...I know other people have posted some very good suggestions (I like the larynx tax), but I figure there's a good chance I'll be moving out of America at the beginning of the summer, so I may as well start figuring out how much I owe.As a side note, Europe and America seem completely deluged by these Recording-industry loons. Can we one of these days hear about a country (other than, say, Djibouti or Biafra) where these fools have no power? What are tech-friendly countries? Or is this just a utopian opium-dream?
And Mr. Flynn is not a fool; he has a valid point, just poorly stated.
I have to say, you did have me going for a while; I was right there with you until you started going off on the uselessness of art, the futility of teaching unobtainable ideals, etc. But first, a little background; I'm a classicist. I finished High School here in 1997, with several years of Latin and Greek. I had to memorise good chunks of the Aeneid and Homer, as well as Shakespeare, Tennyson, Byron, Milton, and others. I had the sort of education you seem to be advocating. On the other hand, I had a year of music, two years of art, history and practice. Throw in a little calculus, physics, chemistry, and 4 years of religious studies, and you've got my High School experience in a nutshell. By now, I've probably done more dead languages than you've ever heard of.
So why all this bullshit about removing art and other intangibles from the curriculum? Nobody (sane) ever said that they have to be mutually exclusive. Art, beauty, truth were the great ideals of those classical civilisations you seem to love so much; Medieval Europe stole those values from Rome, Rome stole them from Athens and Greece, Greece stole them from the Hittites and Assyrians, the Hittites and Assyrians stole them from the Sumerians, the Sumerians...well, that's where the record ends, but I'm sure they came from somewhere. Sure, throw in a little innovation at each point along the way, borrowings from a lot of 'loser' civilisations, and you start to come somewhat close to history.
I suppose I still agree with your end point, the combination of fact/memorisation and analysis, but your methods stink.
Bullshit. Like one of my High School teachers...he was a great teacher, but hated Latin and Greek and pushed for it to be removed from the curriculum. Yet, he had gone through some 10 years of both himself, and expected students to understand literary references to those same Classical languages. Odd, huh?
I believe the original poster meant that real education demands a combination of the two, memorisation and analysis. Nobody learns Calculus through theory without practice. Even your Caltech course taught 'facts', principles. Those facts were then applied. Years ago Education fought against memorisation without analysis; the pendulum slowly swung to the other side, analysis without memorisation. Both are pretty damn wretched without the other.
(rant)...What's with the Einstein references everywhere? Einstein failed classes and got C's in school, so I can too? Einstein forgot everything, including his phone number, so I can too? Einstein married his cousin, so I can too? Bah, humbug.
But computers are a big part of it, and an even bigger part of education these days. Why memorise when something's just a google or E2 search away? Why teach the multiplication tables when you have calculators (the theory of the Chicago public school system)?
Years ago someone published a book (the name and author of which, ironically, I can't seem to remember right now) about memory as the fake intelligence of the middle ages. He was partly correct; yes, the days of glorifying memory are over, but not much seems to have replaced it. This to me is disturbing. You can't memorise Shakespeare, but you can do what now? Memorise the 30% of Perl you use 70% of the time? Remember the 20 some odd unix commands you use almost 90% of the time?
Just a little example of where I'm coming from; about a year ago, a brilliant professor by the name of Hans Gustav Guterbock died. By the end of his life, he was almost completely blind, and yet somehow had memorised almost the entirety of extant Hittite texts (his field), in addition to countless other in Akkadian and various other languages. He could in an instant draw parallels and see patterns which it would take most others even in the field hours of searching to see. Another, a palaeographer, could instantly recognise the origin and style of almost any text by remembering similarities in hundreds of others. Isn't this the 'good' kind of memory that's being lost?
make menuconfig
make-kpkg clean
make-kpkg --revision=custom.1.0 kernel_image
makes you a nice little debian package to install, anyway. mind, you're listening to a debian newbie, too, but it works for me.
And names? No Optimus-Prime-straight off the hairdryer names for the go-bots, no sir! They were too cool for names: they got assigned a function, and then a number. Leader 1, baby, or Turbo as one of the frillier ones (bet he was a pooftah). Those were the days, crushing those anarcho-communist Renegades for the good of Gobotron!
Nor did they stick around to become a burden on toy society, to be mentioned with shame these days; the go-bots knew when to die off and leave their heroic legend to posterity. bah, humbug.
Yes, but then Mr. T. ate my balls, and all I could do was sit for days in front of the big red button that doesn't do anything waiting for it to do something.
I like the idea of a project for factual reference; it's nice to have a place to go to without sifting through pages of hot pr0n on altavista or yahoo (or, gasp!, even google), or random homepages with useless, self-aggrandizing drivel. Why not have an encyclopaedia online, readily available, with cursory descriptions of subjects that can constantly be updated? On the other hand, coding this in pure html seems foolish; the everything engine is perfect for this, and (though I may be wrong) even GPL'd. I'm curious how this will develop.
Why would anybody pay to launch dead Yugoslav dictators into space? Oh, wait...
Besides, if there is ever a law passed against spam, it will be because of cases like this. If you notice, the dumbest articles posted around here, even if Mrs. Taco and Hemos never realize it, are interesting for reasons never alluded to in the post.
Yes, you can read Tolkien without analyzing it, and you should at least once. That doesn't mean you can't, it doesn't mean that the child-like reading will help you understand it, and it certainly doesn't mean it was intentionally senseless; the best fiction works within its own defined logic. Tolkien was my first introduction to Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology, as I suspect it was for many people; the more academic work I do on both, the more I appreciate Tolkien each time I reread it. And, by the by, he was a hobbit, and he had a sword (eventually).
But Tolkien is in the details, and in the language itself. My prime example was always the balrog; I've never seen a picture of a balrog, drawn by any artist, that captures the sense of ancient horror, urgency, panic of the book's description, and yet somehow I can picture it perfectly in my mind. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but no thousand words can be summed up in a single picture. Ever see the animated Ralph Bakshi cartoon? It looks like a lumbering circus bear someone set on fire and chased down the street.
This is not a mythology; this is a myth, and a well-crafted one at that. If Tolkien seems to be using archetypes (yes, those same ones Star Wars and the Matrix use, thank you very much, Joseph Cambell), it's because he is. His sources include everything from Homer (By the way, what bloody Greek myth were you reading? Ever read the stuff in Greek? 101 ways to spear a man through the ankle...) to the Prose and Poetic Eddas to the Mabinogian, with a little of the Tain Bo Cuailnge (sp? damn irish...) thrown in, and a heavy smattering of Anglo-Saxon social history. Linguistics comes from Anglo-Saxon, Finnish, Old High German, Old English, and the list goes on and on. Is this a reason to appreciate it? No, it's a decent beginning guide on how to read it, though.
First off, the plot is archetypal, but coherent; you have a point that Gandalf is the odd-ball deus ex machina at times, but that's the reason he's there in the first place. He represents an almost divine interaction with humanity (elfdom, whatever...). He was the catalyst for the entire ring business anyway, right? The elves are clearly declining; mention of how there just isn't going to be another elven host getting their feet wet anymore. Read it until the end, you realize this book explains the beginning of the age of man, and the final fall of the elven people.
The plot is never really original; there's only so many ways to save the maiden, slay the dragon, win the gold, save the world. If you ever decide to pick it up again (and I don't really care if you do or don't, you're entitled to your opinion, after all (as long as it is made expressly clear that you are wrong)), what you're looking for is variation. Why does Tolkien pick and choose what he does, and how does he piece the narrative together? Go for the details. Recognize what he's stealing, and how he's changed it.
The one honest criticism I've always had is his weak character development. Personality is pretty superficial. It's like trying to tell apart Rosenkranz and Guildenstern, or Merry and Pippin; in the end, you can really only tell by the costume. Character is defined by role. But so what? This isn't just Tolkien swamped with grading termpapers while scribbling away. He picks his style carefully, and subordinates individual development for a smooth narrative, almost as if he's writing a Tacitus-style chronical.
And the beauty of it is, Kiss the Blade isn't wrong. You could ignore all of it and read it for a book about the problems of other people, who just happen to be wearing chain shirts and lopping off orc heads; true escapism. But since you've already made a critical analysis, it's a bit late, dontcha think? Just a few thoughts.