THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
10/17/14 -- Vol. 33, No. 16, Whole Number 1828
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
SF Editor Roundtable at Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library
Kudos
The Appearance and Reappearance of Dinosaurs (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE DECENT ONE (DER ANSTANDIGE) (film review
by Mark R. Leeper)
What Is Art? (letter of comment by Jim Susky)
Ayn Rand (letter of comment by Jim Susky)
Slide Rules (letters of comment by Jim Susky
and Walter Meissner)
This Week's Reading (THROUGH THE LANGUAGE GLASS)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: SF Editor Roundtable at Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library
On Saturday, November 1, at 12 noon, the Graden State Speculative
Fiction Writers will host Ellen Datlow, Gordon Van Gelder, and
Sheila Williams talking about "How Has Magazine Publishing Changed
in the 21st Century?" There is no charge for this program. This
one is definitely worth marking your calendars for! [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Kudos
Dale L. Skran has been elected to the Board of Directors of the
National Space Society: http://www.nss.org/about/bod.html.
==================================================================
TOPIC: The Appearance and Reappearance of Dinosaurs (comments by
Mark R. Leeper)
[I am going to start out this column lying to you. The next
statement is false on a technicality, but it is effectively true.]
There were no humans around at the time the dinosaurs were alive
and we have to depend on the artists and paleontologists of our
time to tell us what dinosaurs probably looked like. Despite
terrific detective work humans can never really know what dinosaurs
actually looked like. But while I was growing up I thought I
really did know. Ray Harryhausen (and a few natural history
museums) taught me.
Ray Harryhausen was part of a small elite group of artists who were
pivotal in creating the public's visual image of the dinosaurs.
For dinosaur fans of the previous generation it had been artists
like Charles R. Knight who gave our imaginations the images of
dinosaurs that some of us of a certain age all carried around with
us for years. It was Knight and later Ray Harryhausen who gave
people their idea of what dinosaurs looked like. Then still later
people got their ideas of what dinosaurs looked like from the
makers of the JURASSIC PARK films. The images slowly changed more
or less reflecting what was then current scientific opinion.
If we think of a dinosaur we used to think of it a looking a lot
like how Knight and Harryhausen saw it. The makers of JURASSIC
PARK knew things that Harryhausen and certainly Knight did not
know. But all in all, the JURASSIC PARK dinosaurs still very much
look like Knight's dinosaurs. The biggest difference is that we
now think bi-pedal (theropod) dinosaurs walked with spines nearly
horizontal. Harryhausen and Knight had the tails near the ground
where it could provide the third leg that sort of balanced the
weight on the two feet. We think now that theropods walked leaning
forward with their spines more horizontal not unlike birds.
Now it is starting to look like they may all be missing a major and
important feature. The important new word in describing the look
of dinosaurs is "feathers." Now we have known for some time that
some dinosaurs had feathers. Most of us with any interest in
prehistoric animals knew that the Archaeopteryx was feathered. But
now we know there may have been a large variety of dinosaurs that
had feathers.
Until recently all dinosaurs that paleontologist detectives knew
had feathers were from one part of the evolutionary tree. Now we
are discovering that a dinosaur from the same tree but fairly
distant also had feathers. It is quite unlikely that feathers
would evolve both places in the tree and much more likely that they
were inherited from a common ancestor. That implies that a lot of
dinosaurs that descended from that common ancestor may have been
all feathered. The feathers were just not durable enough to be
identified from what was found in the fossil record. The
Tyrannosaurus we saw in JURRASIC PARK may well be a plucked chicken
version of what the real dinosaur would have looked like. Come to
think of it, it even looked a little like a plucked chicken.
But Knight and Harryhausen never knew to make their dinosaurs
feathered so there is a good chance they were way off-base. If you
search the net you can find images of what familiar dinosaurs would
have looked like feathered. They look a lot like big birds.
Now there is a certain irony here. When dinosaur bones were
originally found the first thought was that these bones belonged to
very large birds. Or at least they were thought to be creatures
that were very much like birds. More was discovered about the
beasts and we found a lot of shapes of the beasts that were much
less birdlike. Our progenitors all learned that these fossils in
the ground were dinosaurs, not birds. Birds were considered a
category of animal different from dinosaurs. Humans and dinosaurs
never lived at the same time. Now we know that humans and
dinosaurs actually did live together in the past. And by the past
I mean times like 8:37 this morning. Or later. Paleontologist
used to think that birds descended from dinosaurs and still had a
lot of dinosaur-like biological similarities. And as the fossils
were studied it came down to the primary difference between the two
was that dinosaurs lived a long time ago and are all dead. Birds,
on the other hand, are not all dead. If birds had lived 65 million
years ago in the Age of the Dinosaurs they would have been
dinosaurs. Eventually the scientists decided that not being
extinct was no good reason to say birds are not dinosaurs. So you
are really still is the Age of Dinosaurs.
Now people were unhappy enough with scientists for telling us that
Pluto is no longer a planet. Pluto may not be a planet, but we now
have real live dinosaurs living today, something the kid in us
always wanted. Birds are from a line of dinosaurs that did not go
extinct 65 million years ago. It is still alive today. Birds are
live dinosaurs that you probably see every day. You may actually
have a live dinosaur as a pet. And you will have to be satisfied
with that until Pluto learns to clean up its orbit and hence be a
planet again. Science has taken away Planet Pluto but has given us
live dinosaurs. We have to be content with that. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
The opening scene shows how much difficulty we have in
communicating even among ourselves, using the same medium of
communication (sounds as words). Three languages are involved and
they need to translate Spanish into English and then English into
French. So later we should not be surprised at the difficulties in
communicating with an alien species using music, or hand signals,
or whatever.
They apparently have no bugs wherever the kidnapped boy Barry
lives (no screens in the windows).
The "Tolono" referenced is the Tolono Expressway, not the town
(which is in Illinois, and is three hours away). "Cornbread Road
south of [Route] 20" is in Yorktown near Muncie (where the
newspaper is from). The Indiana-Ohio toll road must be I-90, which
is mentioned, but that is way too far north, and the Telemark
Expressway seems to be fictional. The only "Harper Valley" in
Indiana is a farm a considerable distance from Muncie.
Neary has a BSU paddle; "BSU" stands for "Ball State University",
which is in Muncie. (Barry wears a Boston University T-shirt.)
What makes Neary's truck start up again?
Neary's kids (and his wife) are so annoying it's no wonder he wants
to leave the planet. (One wonders if the friend's family in
RAISING ARIZONA was patterned after them.)
Dharamsala is where the Dalai Lama lives. The plants we see in
Dharamsala look an awful lot like southwest desert plants, but they
were actually filmed in Dharamsala.
The (Asian) Indians' arm motions far too synchronized.
The film credits Zoltan Kodaly with the hand signs and claims they
are to teach music to deaf children. Actually John Curwen did the
majority of the development, the signs were to provide a visual aid
to children singing, and they were not all done with the arm
outstretched, but in front of the body, with different tones at
different heights.
Helicopters in films always seem to be very quiet until they are
practically on top of people.
How do they know the coordinates the aliens send are North and
West, rather than South or East?
44-35-26 N, 104-42-56 W Devil's Tower
44-35-26 S, 104-42-56 W ocean near South America
44-35-26 S, 104-42-56 E ocean near Australia
44-35-26 N, 104-42-56 E Mongolia
You could not hide all those lights behind Devil's Tower, not to
mention a spaceship several times wider than the Tower, nor would
the Tower do anything to block the sound from the loudspeakers
reaching the entire countryside.
[-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: THE DECENT ONE (DER ANSTANDIGE) (film review by Mark R.
Leeper)
CAPSULE: THE DECENT ONE--the title could not be more ironic--tells
the story of the life and times of Heinrich Himmler and his two
faces. He was the chief architect of the Holocaust and responsible
for the deaths of millions of people in the concentration camps.
At the same time he was a loving family man who cherished his wife
and children. We hear read newly discovered diaries and
correspondence with his family combined with historical and news
camera footage recounting Himmler's history, which closely follows
the history of the Nazi Party. There is not a lot new about the
Nazis here, and what is new is just about Himmler's relation with
his family while he was responsible for some of the worst days of
the 20th century. Some viewers who have not seen film of the
Holocaust will likely find some of the visuals disturbing. Rating:
high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10
The film reminded me of an incident in my youth. I remember one
Sunday morning when I was growing up. Our neighbor across the
street was on his sidewalk dressed up for church. While his family
was getting ready he casually took a kettle of boiling water and
poured it down an anthill. He was taking a moment before church to
cause pain and death to what was possibly hundreds of ants. I
would have thought it would be an unchristian act. But I am sure
my neighbor felt he was being a good Christian without placing
value on the lives of ants. God does not care about ants.
It is the revelation of Vanessa Lapa's new documentary THE DECENT
ONE that Heinrich Himmler thought of himself as a sensitive, decent
man and as a good German doing his duty to the Fatherland. At
least that was the way he presented himself in his personal
correspondence and his diaries. These writings had been thought
lost since the end of the war, but have now been rediscovered.
Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler was a major force in the Nazi Party and was
one of the chief architects of the Holocaust that killed eleven
million people. He was one of the people most responsible for the
murder of millions of Jews, gays, gypsies, and communists following
his personal belief that these people were bringing down the German
state and Germany had an obligation to exterminate them. Himmler
we see was not a mad man, as it is often convenient to label the
leaders of the Nazi Party. He was just a very ordinary man who
through his writings just expressed that the captive people's lives
were worth no more than those of my neighbor's ants. They needed
to be killed so that a new Germany could rise modeled on a mythical
historic Germany. Himmler idolized previous generations and wanted
to return to the values of historic times.
The newly rediscovered writings of Himmler appear to show that he
was a family man, though with just a little infidelity on the side.
But he loved his wife and his children. And he enjoyed his
terrible work, as much as he grouses about it in his letters home.
That said there is not a lot in this film that is not familiar
history for any who wanted it. We hear actors reading the writings
and behind the subtitles we see relevant news and documentary
footage of the time. One touch taken from the last days of silent
film: there are sound effects added to the footage, much after the
fact, to give it a little bit of the impression of sound film.
There is a problem with the words spoken in rapid-fire German and
then subtitled so that the subtitles flash by very quickly. Some
viewers will feel that if they look at the movie footage they will
miss the subtitles and vice versa. Also, in the version I say the
subtitles were in white with black border over black and white
film. This frequently makes the subtitles hard to read. The words
are read by actors, but they are unfamiliar voices, and at times
the viewer needs to recognize the voices to keep track of who is
speaking.
Heinrich Himmler's rather prosaic personal life is about all that
is really new here. Still it is a "nice" (if that is the word)
summary of Himmler's life and his "achievements" (if that is the
word). I rate THE DECENT ONE a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or
6/10.
Film Credits: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3508830/combined
What others are saying:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_decent_one/
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: What Is Art? (letter of comment by Jim Susky)
In response to Evelyn's comment on "What Is Art?" in the 10/03/14
issue of the MT VOID, Jim Susky writes:
I woke up to an NPR radio piece last week that relates to MT VOID
topic "What is Art?", wherein you stated: "(van Meegeren pointed to
his most famous Vermeer forgery), and said, 'Yesterday, this
painting was worth millions... Today, it is worth nothing (but the
picture has not changed).'":
http://tinyurl.com/void-landis
"For nearly thirty years, art forger Mark Landis duped dozens of
museums into accepting fakes into their collections. His stunts
made headlines around the world. But Mark Landis never asked for
money so he never went to jail."
I am much more familiar with books than "art" (per se). So are
most, I imagine, in the SF fan/fanzine/writer/creator/consumer
world. As a child, with relatively limited means, I always waited
for the paperback to come out--and often got that discounted at
Waldo's (a local SF book emporium). As an adult, I find that I do
much the same. A worn-out paperback is essentially equal to a
brand new hard cover--even preferable, since a paperback is easier
to hold with one hand while stretched out on the couch.
Likewise, a high-quality print, until you get close, is essentially
equal to the "oil". When you do get close, a high-quality forgery
is too.
I once collected coins. Nice copies of rarities are OK if one does
not pay the same price for copies as authentically struck examples.
At this point, it's interesting to note that coins are effectively
"prints", since many are struck from a single die--which themselves
are made from "hubs". I don't get out as much as I'd like, but
recall that the Art Institute in Chicago once had some very nice
electrotypes of Greek and Roman ancients--looking far too new to be
"real" (no patina at all). Better to have shiny copies than photos
or nothing-at-all.
I suppose one could go completely relativistic (with apologies to
Dr. Einstein) and assert that Art, like Beauty, is "in the eye of
the beholder". With Modern Art--with only vague expressions to
define quality--this is especially true, with the proviso that
there is a great deal of herd-behavior that goes on in certain Art
circles. We have Art as Social Construct.
(Individuals who frequent those circles will now roll their eyes,
sharpen their knives, and claim that I don't understand Modern Art-
-which is accurate in that I don't sip wine, munch cheese, and nod
when important critics make their vague pronouncements. Mine is
very much a view from outside.)
It seems, however, that van Meergen's question was rhetorical--at
least for the curators whom he had duped. The difference is one of
provenance and the perception thereby. Pollock was a starving
artist until he wasn't - that is until the right people said the
right things about his paintings.
In 1964 a Swede, who made a living as a newspaperman, exhibited a
number of "paintings" by "Pierre Brassau" who was in fact a
chimpanzee named Peter. These "works" were received with critical
acclaim:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau
I rhetorically mirror van Meergen's question: "What was the
difference between works by Pierre and Peter?"
For kicks I tried this test, which asks of six paintings: "Artist
or Ape?":
http://reverent.org/an_artist_or_an_ape.html
(FWIW, my 18-year-old film-buff son Alex and I got 6/6, my 19-yr-
old roommate got 5/6.) [-js]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Ayn Rand (letter of comment by Jim Susky)
In response to Kip Williams's comments on Ayn Rand in the 09/26/14
issue of the MT VOID, Jim Susky writes:
I think Kip Williams was earnest (not trolling) with his two
comments on Ayn Rand and her novels, so I offer a lens to bring a
different focus to them.
In the MT VOID (09/26/14) he wrote:
It is the writing of ANTHEM that I described as toxic brain sludge:
stilted, unnatural, affected diction, like listening to a bad
accent, or trying to read page after page of someone's attempt to
write in a dialect they don't understand. Reading it hurts my
brain. I saw some pages of a comic that adapted it, and they had
the same effect.
As I said, ATLAS SHRUGGED is entertaining in an alternate-reality
way, where one accepts the author's premises and moves on.
Naturally, the idea that one is probably a superman, and only being
held back by the horror of having to consider others (and their
contribution) is appealing to some adolescents, but the
repulsiveness of other ideas entertained by the writer
(particularly that rape is the highest form of love) caused me to
step back and question the precepts of the books, with the result
that, apart from one or two valid observations (like Toohey's "Give
it up, give it up, give it up" speech in THE FOUNTAINHEAD), I
rejected all of it.
They are enjoyable escape fiction, and not much more. I've tried
to penetrate Rand's nonfiction, and it's as hard as understanding
recordings of her talking--for different reasons, of course.
The fact they are still in print is perhaps due to the desire of
some people to believe in their superiority at any cost, but I
haven't interviewed each of those purchasers, or even verified that
they read it at all.
Sorry I don't have time for more. [-kw]
And (06/20/14):
"I've read THE FOUNTAINHEAD twice and ATLAS SHRUGGED three or four
times*--they can be read for enjoyment, as an exercise in
temporarily swallowing a premise--but no power on earth will make
me revisit that pretentious toxic brain sludge. Reading it was
like being subjected to a dose of the solvent fumes from the alley
behind a dry cleaning shop. Never again: I'm free.
[*I skipped through The Insulting Monologue at least once, so an
exact count is tricky.]" [-kw]
REPLY
My wife once told my overly-literal self that THE MATRIX is easier-
to-enjoy if one regards it as a video game. Indeed, I found that
it was much more tolerable that way
Likewise, to characterize ATLAS SHRUGGED as an alternate-reality
perhaps explains how one could read 250,000 (twice) and 550,000-
words of solvent-fumes (three or four times).
(I've only watched THE MATRIX twice--the first time took three
tries)
Let's dispense with one straw man--that THE FOUNTAINHEAD has a
"rape scene" (never mind that "rape is highest form of love"). It
may be apocryphal, but Rand is alleged to have publically answered
The Question (Roark's rape of Francon): "If it was rape, it was by
engraved invitation."
Moving on, Williams speculated that ATLAS appeals to "adolescents"
(a form of projection?) who fancy themselves supermen who lack
consideration for others.
I'll flatter and imitate him by speculating about his state-of-
mind: I wonder at the notion that the merely competent (the
protagonists in those half-million words) could be characterized as
supermen (and women--don't forget)! This makes one wonder what the
threshold for "super" is in Williams's World.
Those protagonists are like all of us in that they discriminate (in
the broad non-derogatory sense of that word). They do so by
choosing with whom to interact and more importantly with whom to
*transact*. This is only "super" if one validates the second-
handers (to use AR's term) who have the power to compel
"consideration of (selected) others" through the law--often to the
exclusion of those deemed worthy by, not only the protagonists, but
everyone to whom the law applies.
When Williams chooses his company (when he discriminates same as
the protagonists) does that make him "adolescent"? Or was that
another exclusion to the "all of it" he rejects?
We all like various flavors of Kool-Aid (common wisdom, ideology,
"fumes"). Those who prefer voluntary interaction to coercion
might, in some circles, be considered "adolescent". In other
circles it's ordinary common sense. [-js]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Slide Rules (letters of comment by Jim Susky and Walter
Meissner)
In response to Mark's comments on slide rules in the 10/10/14
issue of the MT VOID, Jim Susky writes:
I vividly remember (ca. 1970-72) when my mom brought home a Sears
"four-banger" calculator. This was a wonder to me, as I had only
done arithmetic up until then with pencil and paper. It cost $70
(about $450 scaled using the CPI).
Some time later I found in the basement my dad's slide rule, along
with instructions, in the same box as his log tables and
multiplying and dividing work. I tried a few problems and put it
back.
Flash forward to the 1975-76 school year--a fellow math kid showed
me his brand spanking new HP-25 ($125 then--nearly $600 today) with
RPN and the horrendously complex example expression in the book. I
got the "right answer" first time out and immediately went to go
get my own which got me through engineering school. To this day I
can't tolerate a calculator with parentheses.
These days I use Excel spreadsheets almost exclusively, mainly
because calculators don't readily store figures. Some may note,
with some irony, that spreadsheet formulas require parenthetical
expressions (unless, of course, one distributes the work using
multiple cells).
A few weeks back I watched the film APOLLO 13 on cable, wherein a
quick calculation was performed in the Houston control center with
a slide rule--an anchronism? [-js]
Mark replies:
APOLLO 13 was April 1970. My earliest memories with calculators
were about 1972. I would suspect that the film was right. That
might have been just about the time of the cut-over. [-mrl]
And Walter Meissner writes:
I did enjoy DR. STRANGELOVE when I watched it after the cold war
ended. It would have been too traumatic to watch it before then.
Slide rules are based on the principle of logarithms. It allows
for multiplication/division as easy as addition/subtraction.
To multiple x * y or divide x / y use ...
log (x*y) = log(x) + log(y).
log(x/y) = log(x) - log(y).
So the scales are logarithmic, but the 'addition' on the slide is
linear.
Number must be put in scientific notation.
The two mantissas are multiplied on the slide rule (2 to 3 decimal
place precision) and the twp exponents are added together. The
placement of the decimal point and any subsequent adjustment of the
exponent was done in one's head.
The normalized form of scientific notation is
0.nnn * 10^exponent
where the mantissa is between 0 and 1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule
When I went to engineering school, it was the first year they
allowed calculators. However, I wanted to learn how to use a slide
rule.
So I bought one of the best ... a Keuffel & Esser (K&E) Log Log
Duplex Deci-Trig model. It was made of fine mahogany. The factory
was located in Hoboken, NJ, the same town as the engineering
school.
"The 4081-3 Log-Log Duplex DeciTrig from K&E was a mainstay for
engineering students and practicing engineers in the 1940s, 50s,
and 60s"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keuffel_and_Esser
However, on one of the more difficult freshman chemistry exams, I
made a mistake in adjusting the exponent after moving the decimal
point.
It was the first answer to a multiple part question, where the
answer of each part depends on the answer of the parts above it.
Even though I had shown all the equations and step clearly, I was
given half off on the first question part and zero (0) points for
all subsequent answers.
When I went to the TA to talk about how it was graded, the answer
was ...
No additional credit. If this was used for a real application, the
error could have cost lives. From then on, I used a calculator.
But I still have that slide rule.
PS. I never did learn how to use some of the fancier functions on
it, which include exponential and trigonometric functions. [-wm]
Mark responds:
I could have explicitly mentioned logarithms in my description, but
I thought that a segment of our readers would go all glassy-eyed
and would skip to the next item. I was trying to explain in a way
that that would get the idea across but might require only basic
knowledge. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THROUGH THE LANGUAGE GLASS: WHY THE WORLD LOOKS DIFFERENT IN OTHER
LANGUAGES by Guy Deutscher (ISBN 978-0-8050-8195-4) covers a lot of
what I have discussed here before: William Gladstone's analysis of
color in Homer's writings, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and so on.
Back in 2012 I wrote about how the words for colors develop in a
language, and the use of color in Homer. Linguists had discovered
that all languages create words for color in a particular order.
The first words created are for black and white. Next invariably
comes red, and after that yellow and green, although the order of
the latter two may vary, and last comes blue. Apparently orange,
purple, brown, and other more specific colors such as aquamarine
come later and in some sense do not count, although in some
languages there are more terms than we have for "basic" colors.
For example, Russian has a word for light blue (goluboy) and
another for dark blue (siniy), but no word for just blue.
In the 19th century William Gladstone was the first to point out
that Homer's use of words for color was, well, odd. Homer rarely
mentioned color, and never mentioned blue. The term "wine-looking"
(or "wine-dark") was applied both to the sea and to oxen.
Gladstone's explanation was that the Homeric Greeks had no sense of
color other than black, white, and red. Linguist Guy Deutscher
(among others) claimed this was wrong, that the Greeks could
distinguish colors every bit as we can.
But Deutscher seems to have modified his views somewhat. While it
is true that the Homeric Greeks were not color-blind in the
traditional sense, they may have been color-blind because they were
not attuned to distinguishing between some colors. Various
experiments have shown that if a culture does not have different
names for green and blue, it will take longer for people from that
culture to distinguish that a blue swatch is different from a bunch
of green swatches than it would for a person who had different
names for the color of the blue swatch and the color of the green
swatches. (The same occurs when showing people a set of dark blue
swatches and a slightly lighter blue swatch. If the difference
crosses the "goluboy/siniy" line, a Russian-speaker can detect the
difference faster than an English-speaker.
Deutscher says that one issue of "blue" is that there really is not
much blue in nature. (The blue flowers we see and all artificially
created genetically.) Until one can create a color, he says, there
is no need for a term for it. Red is the easier color to produce;
blue is the hardest.
As for the sky, Deutscher performed an experiment. After his
daughter Alma was born, he and his wife taught her all the colors,
including blue, with one exception: they never told her the sky was
blue. Then when she knew her colors well, he asked her what color
the sky was. At first, she could not understand the question; the
sky was not a thing like a blue ball or a blue towel. Then, after
many weeks of being asked, she said it was white. Only later did
she say it was blue. She came to this conclusion on her own, but
had someone not been asking her, she might not have ever thought
about it.
Deutscher says of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that Sapir and Whorf
looked at the wrong aspect. They said that the language limited
what people *could* think of, but as Deutscher points out, the lack
of a word does not mean the idea does not exist. That is how new
words are created or adopted. English has no word for
"Schadenfreude"--or rather, the English word for "Schadenfreude"
*is* "Schadenfreude".
Deutscher says that language does affect how we think, but it is in
what it *requires*, not what it *allows*. When we say we met a
friend for lunch, the listener does not know whether the friends is
male or female unless we choose to tell them. In French, we must
specify the sex. When we make a statement, we do not need to
specify how or why we think it is true. The Matses has a system of
evidentiality for verbs that requires the speaker to say whether
they are speaking from direct evidence, inference, conjecture, or
hearsay. (They also have three different forms for the past,
depending on whether it is immediate, recent, or distant.)
And a note on last week's column: The correct title is HOMENAJE A
AGATHA CHRISTIE: EL CASO DEL COLLAR and the author's name would be
catalogued as "Cuevas Cancino, Francisco". [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Education is what remains after one has forgotten
what one has learned in school.
--Albert Einstein