Teh Funny!

by hilzoy

The entire point of the rest of this post is to get you to click this link. (Via Pharyngula.) Trust me: do it now, and skip the summary.

***

OK, mistrustful people: it's a description of a fight about linguistics, which is, in the world of the piece, "widely and justifiably seen as the centrepiece of the high-school science curriculum"; and, in particular, about whether 'Wrathful Dispersion' should be taught alongside the usual evolutionary theories of historical linguistics.

"The opponents of Wrathful Dispersion maintain that it is really just Babelism, rechristened so that it might fly under the radar of those who insist that religion has no place in the state-funded classroom. Babelism was clearly rooted in the Judeo-Christian story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1–9); it held that the whole array of modern languages was created by God at a single stroke, for the immediate purpose of disrupting humanity's hubristic attempt to build a tower that would reach to heaven: "Let us go down," God says to Himself, "and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." Wrathful Dispersion is couched in more cautiously neutral language; rather than tying linguistic diversity to a specific biblical event, it merely argues that the differences among modern languages are too perverse to have arisen spontaneously, and must therefore be the work of some wrathful (and powerful) disperser who deliberately set out to accomplish a confusion of tongues. (...)

In the early days of evolutionary linguistics, Babelists used to taunt French-speaking evolutionists with cries of "Your father was a Roman!" WD, by contrast, acknowledges that languages can indeed change over time, and some Wrathful Dispersionists even concede that modern French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and so on may actually have developed from Latin after all. The existence of Latin itself, however, and its mutual unintelligibility with, say, Old Church Slavonic or Proto-Bantu, could only have arisen through the wrath of the disperser. When asked to provide evidence for the existence of a single global language in pre-dispersion times, they reply that of course no such evidence can be found, because the disperser in his wrath was quite careful to obliterate all traces of it. (...)

In lieu of offering any evidence for their own proposal, most Wrathful Dispersionists prefer to devote their energy to attacking the evolutionary approach to historical linguistics, which they generally refer to as Grimmism. Much of their animus is directed against the lone figure of Jakob Grimm, whom they depict as having made up the idea of linguistic evolution off the top of his head, and they delight in pointing out novel "exceptions" to Grimm's Law, such as the fact that English has the word paternal where Grimm's Law obviously predicts fathernal. The evolutionists respond that paternal was a later borrowing into English from Latin, to which the Wrathful Dispersionists reply triumphantly, "So your trees and waves can't explain everything!" (...)

Wrathful Dispersionists are also fond of pointing out gaps in the written record, noting that there is no physical evidence of different languages dating back any earlier than five thousand years ago, a date which is suggestively close to the one commonly attributed to the Tower of Babel by biblical literalists. The bulk of their case against evolutionism, though, is based on the notion of irreducible perversity. For example, they argue that the sheer alienness of Basque—its apparent lack of any resemblance to any other living language—could only have come about by deliberate, wrathful (and, the Babelists would add, divine) intervention. Similarly, they claim that the notorious "ruki rule" in Sanskrit (/s/ becomes retroflex in the environment of /r/, /u/, /k/, or /i/—a "calculatedly chaotic conglomeration comprising two vowels, a rhotic, and a surd") is so arbitrary and so confusing that it must have been the conscious invention of someone who was absolutely determined that Sanskrit should be thoroughly incomprehensible to native speakers of any other language, such as Finnish."

If you don't feel like discussing linguistics or evolution, consider this another open thread.

Comments

[liberal japonicus]

For the first time in my life, I actually followed the instructions of a blog post. Part of it has to do with my BI (believability index) where hilzoy is concerned, and I certainly feel amply rewarded. This pm, I will try (for the ObWi multitudes) to pull up some links to the various linguistic theories that are, shall I say, a bit out there.

[hilzoy]

And since this is a sort of open thread: I spent part of this afternoon tromping through the woods, and then staring for an hour and a half at one tree, trying unsuccessfully to see a Hammond's flycatcher. Seeing it would have been great on two counts. First, it lives in the west, and is almost never seen around here, and I have a soft spot for birds who get seriously lost.

Second, it's an empidonax flycatcher: a member of a family of almost identical-looking little olive-gray birds that are notoriously difficult (if not impossible) to tell apart unless you know their songs, which I don't. This means that I have seen a lot of birds that I knew were empids of one sort or another, but not nearly so many whose species I have identified with any confidence. (It's especially hard to acquire confidence when you bird alone, since then you never know e.g. that this is a Willow Flycatcher, and so you should study it to see what a Willow Flycatcher looks like. To me, they are all just empids.)

This one, however, has gotten enough attention that very good birders have settled on its species; and so it comes pre-identified. Those of you who have never tried to identify empids probably can't appreciate what this means, but it means a lot.

To see the problem, here are more photos of different species of empids:

Alder Flycatcher
Willow Flycatcher
Acadian Flycatcher
Cordilleran Flycatcher
Pacific-Slope Flycatcher

Note that a lot of the differences that might seem to exist between these birds are due to lighting, posture, etc. They are evidence of a wrathful creator of species, determined to drive birders to distraction.

[hilzoy]

lj: I am honored.

[cleek]

truly hillarious.

[DaveC]

Female Rusty Blackbird in my back yard today!

[Catsy]

Funny as hell. Mockery this fine could have been written by The Editors, and that is not praise which I lightly bestow.

My trust in hilzoy has been vindicated, for I shall have to share this link.

[Anderson]

Wrathful Dispersion should be the only refutation needed of Intelligent Design, if only the ID folks had a scrap of (1) intellectual conscience or (2) humor.

I do fear that the parody is too good, and that we will see WD foisted on our schoolchildren.

(The parodist evidently has too much free time; but then, so do the ID folks.)

[hilzoy]

DaveC: great. -- I have some red-shouldered hawks that I love to watch. Once I was watching a sparrow through my binoculars, and suddenly one of the hawks swooped in, feet first and claws extended, and grabbed it. Spectacular, if sad.

[lily]

My big bird thrill this summer was the sight of a pair of Pacific loons and a flock of longtailed ducks. I can't tell one female loon from another but a lady with a French accent and a very expensive-looking spotting scope announced the species in confident tones so I marked my bird book. One more for my lifelist! The longtailed ducks I identified my very own self. They're pretty distinctive.

We have two empid flycatchers out here and, since I can't distinguish them, I marked both in my birdbook. That's probably cheating and I have a bad conscience about it.

[DaveC]

Last winter, we had a Coopers hawk visit our feeder, not for the seeds! I think it got one of the many mourning doves that hang out. Thank goodness it didnt get one of the woodpeckers - we have Downy, Hairy and Red Bellied.

The Rusty Blackbird is quite unusual here, at least I've never seen one before. They are about robin-sized, but walk like a starling. When you look thru binoculars and see the rusty /amber edges on the feathers it is quite a surprise.

The Coopers hawks seem to be a new thing. I hadn't seen them until about 3 yrs ago, when I spotted one about 2 blocks from the main street of the village. Now it seems they're all around, but I only moved near this small river parkway about 5 yr ago, and there are quite a number of Great Horned, Barred and Screech Owls. The West Nile virus noticeably killed off many of them a couple of years ago, but with dry summers, the big birds have made a comeback.

[DaveC]

I apparently have complete control of the comments in ObWi at this time, and it is such a rush!

[DaveC]

I once drove to Savanna/Sabula in winter to see the Bald Eagles, but nothing, nada. But driving over the bridge at Clinton, IA I accidentally see one, and this summer at Effigy Mounds, that ranger is saying yeah, there are eagles around here, and lo and behold there is one right there. (well, not RIGHT THERE, but flying over the river.)

[DaveC]

Trying to figure out flycatchers is awful. Vireos are a real be-atch too. Especially when they are up high in trees (Shakes fist, yells "COME DOWN HERE YOU B@ST@RDS!!)

This method hasn't been perfected yet, so I haven't met with much success.

[DaveC]

Back to topic, Would we be better off if we could simply read each others minds?

[rilkefan]

Not funny but happy.

[chris]

DaveC,

We might be better off in the sense that we would have prior warning any time somebody was planning to defraud us, but I doubt we would be any happier. Sex as we do it now, would become close to impossible, for instance, if we all knew every detail of what the other person was thinking all the time.

[liberal japonicus]

rilkefan
Woo-hoo!! Congrats! Any chance you are going to take our suggestions for names?

[liberal japonicus]

Oh, and take a video your wife's stomach when the little one doing his or her Péle imitation. I really regret that we didn't do that with our first. Really is an amazing thing.

[hilzoy]

rilkefan!!! Yay!!!! That's wonderful. Can it be das rilkekind?

[ral]

rilkefan, congratulations and thanks! It's nice to see some happy.

[Ugh]

Ok, can someone please explain to me the origin of "teh" and it's use in things such as "teh funny"?

[Dantheman]

Most excellent news, rilkefan!

Not sure if this is Teh Funny, but it certainly has amused my friends and relations. Last weekend the in-laws were visiting, and the m-i-l said that she had been waiting for so long to go to make a stuffed animal with our 3 year old at Build a Bear, so we had to trek to the mall over the weekend, crowds or not.

While at the store, our 3 year old managed to choose the most feminine choices of accessories imaginable, with a pink princess dress, ballet slippers, a bow for the hair and a purse (and we narrowly averted having the bear be purple). When the person stuffing the bear asked her what the bear was going to be called, our 3 year old proudly proclaimed "Rocky".

It's likely she thought it would make a good companion for the stuffed moose we call Bullwinkle, but I doubt Mr. Stallone would be pleased.

[ral]

My guess was that is was related to "pwned", so with the help of Google here is the Urban Dictionary definition. [It's long, so just a link.]

Google "teh pwned" gives an interesting collection of results.

[Francis / BRGORD]

rilkefan:

congrats, indeed. another democratic voter, and we only have to wait 19 years.

[rilkefan]

Thanks, everybody. Re names, Mrs. R is thinking about a dactyl, esp. if the Rilkekind is a girl, because my last name is one syllable. I mentioned the name of one of the male posters here I admire and she seems to have liked that to the extent of ignoring all subsequent suggestions. The girl's name she best likes so far (not a dactyl) is the long form of the name of a long-time former girlfriend of mine, so that's slightly problematic. Anyway, no doubt I'll be asking for advice on other matters.

[xanax]

way to go rilke & mrs. rilke-fan!

for me, having children has been the purest slice of paradise i've yet encountered in life and it just goes on and on. hope (and suspect) it will be the same for you. you didn't ask, but, isabel's a pretty cool dactylic girl's name. and while we're on the subject, mrs. r must be a very emotionally-advanced soul to be favoring any form of an ex-girlfriend's name for her first child.

you're a lucky man and from the sound of things rilkefan jr. will be luckier still.

best to you.

[LowLife]

What's so funny? Either the story is true, and we face many man/woman years of fruitless debate, or it is false and our Canadian friend has given the religious right an idea to muddy more water. In either case is is not to laugh. I do admit the post has Poorman-like cleverness.

[Jay C]

I see this has devolved into a sort of open thread (not so much open, as just unlatched, IMO): but I will lead with the following:

rilkefan:

Mazel Tov to you and Mrs. R.: but, please: what do you mean by "dactyl" as a name for your expected? IMNSHO, this would mean naming him/her something realted to "finger"; but I must obviously be wrong on that!

DaveC:

If it isn't too personal a question: where DO you live? About 4 years back, I was walking through Central Park (as you might guess, I live in NYC); and spotted a large raptor snacking down on something avian (I saw feathers) - not 30 feet from Fifth Avenue. The best guess anyone (online, phone or print) could come up with was that it was either a "Cooper's Hawk" or a "Sharp-shinned Hawk" - neither of which really should be found in Manhattan.

so, ¿donde está?

[xanax]

Jay C: "but I must obviously be wrong on that"

a dactyl is a three-syllable metric foot (in poetry) with the accent on the first beat. rilkefan has disclosed that his last name is a single syllable. so he (and mrs. r) obviously like the rhythm the combo would create. for heuristic purposes, think "Canada Dry."

[DaveC]

I'm in suburbia between Chicago and Milwaukee. Unincorporated area, so it's relatively cheap and is in an excellent school district.

NYC and downtown Chicago both have Peregrine Falcons, so those might be also be a possibility.

I'd say Coopers and Sharp Shinned are most likely, because they hang out close to the ground, and seem to be pretty fearless of humans.

Congratulations Rilkefan! I thought of naming my daughter Dorcas (ancestral name), but spared her.

[rilkefan]

"Dorcas" is a nice name but the association with Gene Wolfe's _The Book of the New Sun_ is too strong for me.

Some friends of Mrs. R suggested "Dactyl" as a middle name and "Terry" as a first name...

We're both on the small end of the spectrum so presumably Rilkekind will be too, so I wonder about the suitability of some of the longer dactylic names. Anyway, we have plenty of time to overthink this.

[Jeremy Osner]

Rilkefan -- If you're going for the combination of dactyl and admirable ObWi poster, how 'bout Katherine?

[Jeremy Osner]

(Also I just noticed 'Sylvia' is dactylic but she's a bit close to my heart, for me to recommend using her name willy-nilly.)

[rilkefan]

One of Mrs. R's close friend is a Katherine, so that would be hard to use. I kinda wish we could just pick a nice prime or perfect number.

[DaveC]

I kinda wish we could just pick a nice prime or perfect number.

Evelyn?

[Jeremy Osner]

Archibald? Buttercup? Gargamel?

[Jay C]

DaveC:
Yeah, the Peregrine was my first (obvious) thought, since they are (now) the most common raptor in the NYC area: but the creature I saw in Central Park didn't meet ANY of the "Peregrine" metrics (bigger, long-leggier, uglier) that I could associate it with. The local Audubon Society was not much help: "Cooper's" and "Sharp-shinned" were all that they could suggest (without a picture and/or DNA samples) - and there we go.
xanax:
Thanks for the reminder that the term "dactyl" may, (in this case) refer to "foot" rather than "finger" - but I still don't think it is a good idea to name the little darling "Canada" (however euphonious) - unless one is securely North of the Border.
Cultural dislocation, eh??

[Jeremy Osner]

Or if you wanted a dactylic prime, I reckon 17 would be the way to go. I think it's the only one out there.

[Slartibartfast]

Belated congratulations, rilkefan! Your life, although probably very different already, is about to become even more different. Sometimes in a Monte Python way, but mostly not.

[xanax]

"I still don't think it is a good idea to name the little darling "Canada"

But you must admit JC as dactyls go it beats the hell out of Buffalo and Utica. But Mindanao and Monaco sort of sing.

[Dantheman]

And unfortunately (to my ear, anyway), dactyl placenames have become popular names (Madison, Dakota, Savannah, etc.), especially for girls.

[rilkefan]

"Evelyn"

Yeah, that's high on Mrs. R's list, esp. as her nephew-to-be's mother has a similar name. For me the name is associated with the male author of unhappy if beautifully-written novels.

[Jay C]

"...as dactyls go it beats the hell out of Buffalo and Utica. But Mindanao and Monaco sort of sing."

Right, then: "Mindy" it is.....rikefan, take note!
Heh. :)

[rilkefan]

"Dakota" and "Savannah" are amphibrachs to my ear - short-LONG-short. Nice names though.

[rilkefan]

"Mindy"

Yeah, a lifetime of people turning to her brother or boyfriend and saying, "You must be Mork!"

A lot more names would be practical if idiots realized they're not witty.

[kenB]

rilkefan, let me add my congratulations to the pile. And I'd point out that "rilkekind" is dactylic and distinctive, plus applicable to either sex.

I mentioned the name of one of the male posters here I admire and she seems to have liked that to the extent of ignoring all subsequent suggestions

Tacitus?

[Jeremy Osner]

{X: A lot more X would be practical if idiots realized they're not witty.)

[lily]

Congratulations on the on the new Rilkefan!
Jay C.
About the Central park raptor--is there any chance it was one of the Pale Male lineage? Central Park was famous for a awhile for nesting redtails, but surely the Audubon Society would have mentioned it. Or maybe I'm remembering wrong and the nesters were Cooper's hawks.

[dutchmarbel]

My spouse is half Irish and the middle name of our youngest is sheridan

His third name is Garrick so if nomen est omen he ought to go into arts :)

[hilzoy]

rilkefan: and speaking of the influence of idiots on names: consider nicknames, and their possible uses in rhyming insults. I am told that Abigail is bad, since it leads to 'crabby/gabby/flabby Abby'. Likewise, Victoria: 'icky/sticky/sicky/yiccchy Vicky'.

I am lucky: Hilary only really rhymes with pillory and, if you're a bit catholic, celery, neither of which is particularly good for insults. On the other hand, given my last name, people have always done variants on 'Hickory Dickory Dock'.

[Anarch]

Yay Rilkefan! May I suggest Kitty Obwouie [tm Jes, but I think she'll let you get away with it] as a truly euphonious and appropriate moniker for the little one?

As a baby-filled aside, just sang a concert yesterday with one of our choir members who had just given birth two weeks ago. Not only was she singing along with the rest of us, she brought her two-week old baby (and husband, naturally) to the concert as well! While his sense of pitch left something to be desired, his breath control was a thing of beauty; truly, such awesome cuteness in such a tiny package.

[Anarch]

I kinda wish we could just pick a nice prime or perfect number.

Why not do both: Mersenne.

[rilkefan]

"Why not do both: Mersenne."

I thought primes above 2 are odd and all known perfect numbers are even so there's no useful intersection.

[Jay C]

lily:
The bird I saw having its lunch on the Central Park grass was much bigger than the pergrines or redtails which are common in the City (size is the first thing I checked) - which is why I was baffled: this bird was at least 20-24" high standing; and only the Cooper's and Sharp-shinned are that big (IIRC) according to the Audubon Guide.
Dunno: my urban birding has suffered of late since I moved, and no longer walk by the Pond and Bird Sanctuary on my way to work.

[dr ngo]

Rilkefan: Please don't name your daughter "Mindanao" on the assumption that that is a dactyl. Correctly - well, over-precisely - pronounced, it has four syllables, with the accent on the last "a". (Most Philippine languages don't have diphthongs written as such, so assume each vowel is a consonant. Bataan, famous in World War II, is not actually "Bah-tan" [as US vets pronounce it], but "Bah-tah-ahn," with a glottal stop between the last two syllables.)

The best of all possible female dactyls is, of course, Eleanor, as in the best of all possible granddaughters, Eleanor (the First) of Hitchin, just turned three. I'm sure she would be happy to share it with your offspring.

[rilkefan]

I knew M but not B - the latter being I take it a most unsuitable dactyl.

If I were more of a Tolkein geek I'd consider "Elanor", but oh well. Well, I did consider it, but not in a "could we get away with this" way.

[Anarch]

I thought primes above 2 are odd and all known perfect numbers are even so there's no useful intersection.

Right, but all (even) perfect numbers are in a straightforward 1-1 correspondence with Mersenne primes, so there's a very fertile intersection in concept, if not in actual set.

[Amos Newcombe]

all known perfect numbers are even

True so far, but not proven for all perfect numbers. You can prove that no prime can be perfect. (The only divisor of a prime p less than p itself is 1, and 1 < p.)

[liberal japonicus]

As a small token of appreciation to Hilzoy for this, I offer a brief introduction to some of the iffier theories about language relationships, which is why I found the essay so damn funny.

I don't know if perfect strangers buttonhole Hilzoy about their latest moral system (though they have been known to publish them at their web site, I've heard tell). I have heard that physics profs are often presented with lovingly prepared proposals for perpetual motion machines, or occasionally the more up to date anti-gravity idea. I imagine that chemists (the US kind, not the UK ones) while not inundated with people who have discoverd the philospher stone, certain had a nice run with the cold fusion craze. But linguists are often the recipient of various proposals explaining the origin of language.

Basque might be a good place to start, given that it is a language isolate with no apparent relation to any other living language. The sorely missed Larry Trask, a linguist who specialized in Basque, wrote:

"The favorite candidates for relatives of Basque have long been the several groups of Caucasian languages (themselves not known to be related) and the Afro-Asiatic family (especially the Berber language of North Africa), but people have tried everything: Iberian, Pictish, Etruscan, Minoan, Sumerian, Burushaski, Niger-Congo, Khoisan, Uralic, Dravidian, Munda, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, the Na-Dene languages of North America -- even Indo-European. Nothing. Nada. Zero. All they ever come up with is a list of miscellaneous resemblances between some Basque words and a few words in some other language or family. But you can always find such miscellaneous resemblances between arbitrary languages, and finding them when you're looking at Basque means nothing except that the laws of probability are not taking the day off.link"

That last part, that the number of chance resemblances is going exist in any two languages, is the primary motor driving people who are convinced that languages are more related than they actually are.

However, lest one think that lingustic scholars are sober realists, they as well fall victim to the fever of proposing relationship that are a bit out there. Lyle Campbell, in the authorative text _American Indian languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America_, notes, as a preliminary to considering long range genetic relationships between languages, lists relationships that he feels have a -100% probability that the relationship exists, and a confidence rating approaching 100%. In other words, no, there is no chance these languages are related and yes, I am sure. They include
Hokan (a language family from California) and Malayo-Polynesian
Uto-Aztecan-Polynesian
Mayan-Altaic (languages from Siberia)
Quecha-Turkish

These are all referenced, with people publishing them in peer-reviewed journals, yet they are probably constructed solely of tinfoil.

Linguists who study native American languages are often divided into 'lumpers' (who want to conglomerate the various families into larger protofamilies) and 'splitters' (who argue that there is not enough evidence to propose the linkage, hence Campbell's two figure rating of probability and confidence) However, when a respected linguist named Joseph Greenberg proposed a set of superfamilies for New World languages based on waves of migration across the Bering straits, the space between lumpers and splitters was transformed into a no man's land. Here is a list of articles about the disagreement and this article lets you know how bitter the argument is.

But those arguments are really only a taste of the fun when we start talking about the notion of longer range genetic relationships, which is why the essay had me laughing all day.

The discovery of the fact that a large number of languages ranging from the Indian subcontinent to the west coast of Ireland were all related to a single language that was never written down but could be reconstructed with a rather impressive degree of accuracy is, imho, one of the greatest scientific achievements of man. While we can have a pretty good idea of individual words, linguists are now using ritualistic language to make attempts at reconstructing the syntax of Indo-European.

After Indo-European, however, it's a consensus that we can't go back further. But, like any good consensus, there are some who don't accept it and they propose a various languages that predate Indo-European. As is the case with people who go against the consensus, often, their disagreements with each other are as strong as with the consensus. Here are a few links
A good NYTimes article
As is often the case, the Wikipedia article is a good reference as is the talk page of the article, which introduces an even broader language called Borean.

Now, there is a lot to argue about. And linguists love to argue. But if you get too convinced about all this, you may end up with a book entitled Edenics: Intelligent Design in the Original Language.

Anyway, just some various references as a small token of appreciation for Hilzoy's post.

[rilkefan]

Hey lj, get a blog already, or at least a diary.

[hilzoy]

lj: thanks. (I missed this earlier.) Very cool.

[LizardBreath]

About 4 years back, I was walking through Central Park (as you might guess, I live in NYC); and spotted a large raptor snacking down on something avian (I saw feathers) - not 30 feet from Fifth Avenue.

Jay -- as lily said, there's a famous nest of Red-tailed hawks on Fifth Avenue, just across the street from the Central Park boat pond, and of course they hang out in the park. Does this look like your guy?

[Dantheman]

OT -- even by open thread standards:

A grim and very long range look at the budget from those noted commies at the Heritage Foundation.

Note that in either their or CBO's calculations, by far the greater part of long term change to the budget between the present and 2050 is interest on the national debt (increasing by 9.4% of GDP in the CBO's projections, out of a total increase in spending of 12.7% of GDP, and by 45.6% of GDP (!) in the Heritage projections, out of a total increase in spending of 53.0% of GDP). By contrast, the projected change in Social Security expenditures is 2% of GDP over that time period.

Can anyone remind me why we have spent much of this year dealing with changes to Social Security while passing tax cuts which significantly exceed the supposedly offsetting expenditure cuts with as little public debate as Congressional leadership would allow?

[Gary Farber]

"Sex as we do it now, would become close to impossible, for instance, if we all knew every detail of what the other person was thinking all the time."

Good thing there are no assumptions there.

"Ok, can someone please explain to me the origin of 'teh' and it's use in things such as 'teh funny'?"

Yes.

Was there another question? One using the apostrophe properly? Oh, well, anyway.

"On the other hand, given my last name, people have always done variants on 'Hickory Dickory Dock'."

"Fairy Garber" has generally been the height of wit and cleverness brought to mine.

"If I were more of a Tolkein geek I'd consider 'Elanor"', but oh well."

My suspicion is that Tolkein had a character named "Eleanor," but I've really not read him, so I couldn't say.

"But linguists are often the recipient of various proposals explaining the origin of language."

Unfortunately, book editors are proffered manuscripts on all of the above, and everything else. (And authors are offered, of course, "ideas"; "you do the writing, and we'll split the money.")

[hilzoy]

Harry Frankfurt, of 'On Bull****' fame, once bounded into a room where I was sitting and asked, 'Has anyone ever made a joke about your name, with 'Hickory Dickory Dock?' -- Yes, I said, in the nicest way I could manage on the spur of the moment; but he looked completely crestfallen, as though he was sure he was the first person ever to think of it, and slunk away.

[Gary Farber]

I have, incidentally, no idea which thread LJ posted the quite interesting Rick Pearlstein link on, but does anyone have a cite on this: "I wonder how many conservative activists know what most liberal activists know: that the White House has in operation an automated program to make it impossible for citizens access through Google certain combinations of words on its website--like: 'president/mourning/Iraq.'"

Sic.

Do, in fact, most liberal activists know this? And do we have a cite on the claim itself?

[Gary Farber]

"...as though he was sure he was the first person ever to think of it, and slunk away."

I'd think it was rather obvious that the odds are quite high that the user of a given name (any given name, of course, not just given given names) will have heard any comprehensible jokes or plays on it before anyone coming new to it, but I suppose there's something to be said for a completely fresh approach.

Less to be said for an approach that one merely assumes is fresh, though.

[Gary Farber]

Further on the Pearlstein assertion: setting aside all the other oddities of the quote, and rewriting to something closer to something that makes some sense, such as asserting that, somehow, the WH "has in operation an automated program" [a bot?] "to make it impossible for citizens" to get results, not "access" "through Google certain combinations of words on its website--like: 'president/mourning/Iraq,'", well it takes three seconds to find that that's not true.

So: huh? Wha?

[DaveC]

Do prople these days, especially kids address each other by their last names? How about you, Barfer?

I had a Junior High teacher who always used my last name, and when she was angry changed it into original spelling, but alternate pronunciation as if to say I was a mangy dog or something.

[rilkefan]

me: "If I were more of a Tolkein geek I'd consider 'Elanor', but oh well."

GF: "My suspicion is that Tolkein had a character named 'Eleanor,' but I've really not read him, so I couldn't say."

I'd explain about the name "Elanor", Gary, but it's a small spoiler. I would suggest reading _The Lord of the Rings_, even if you've seen the movies.

[rilkefan]

chris: "Sex as we do it now, would become close to impossible, for instance, if we all knew every detail of what the other person was thinking all the time."

GF: "Good thing there are no assumptions there."

In my view the original statement is a tautology and hence assumptionless, unless you want to argue about the existence of sex and people and knowledge.

[Gary Farber]

"I would suggest reading _The Lord of the Rings_, even if you've seen the movies."

Oh, thanks for that suggestion.

It's all in storage, but I still have a lot of spare copies of various issues of Tolkien Journal, circa 1969/70, from when the Tolkien Society archives were passed on to my collection in 1974, so I'd be happy to send you a couple, if you like, next time I get back to the East Coast and my fanzine collection. Any other copies of various Sixties Tolkien zines (Orcrist, Niekas, and so on), or articles about Tolkien from fanzines of the Fifties I could only loan, though.

I guess I was too subtle in my attempted joke, though. Oh, well.

I do think "Elanor" is a pretty name; almost have. It's almost flower-like, wouldn't you say?

Of course, "Luthien" and "Arwen" are also both pretty. Do you have a preference for Sindarin or Quenya? (Or another of the tongues of Arda? Not the Black Speech?!)

I really should do up a page or two from a Tolkein Journal, perhaps. Meanwhile I just practice Ghandian patience.

[DaveC]

Gary knows way too much!!

Back when I used to read, I liked William Kotzwinkle and Samuel Delany. Any opinions on them?

[rilkefan]

GF: "Ghandian patience"

You probably mean "Gandhian", after Gandhi.

[DaveC]

Dont take the bait!

[Gary Farber]

I think Chip Delany is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met or known, let alone whose manuscripts I've had go through my hands, let alone been friends with, or slept in the same bed with.

Beyond that, I have a few tens of thousands of words, maybe. I'd have to say that I couldn't recommend his fiction for everyone, to be sure (nor his nonfiction). But, then, I'm not sure there exists a fiction writer I'd recommend to everyone. Chip is definitely in the "not entirely broad" category, though. (I'll likely never forget the eager reader who asked me to recommend "another book like Dhalgren"; I'd be interested in anyone's suggestions in response.)

Hell of a damned nice guy, too. Super-sweet. Taken to looking like a damned Biblical patriarch in recent years, though, with that beard. I remember when it was short.

Kotzwinkle I pretty much just know of. Yes, having just double-checked a bibliography of his work, I can fairly safely say that I've never read a damn thing by him. No particular reason. Know of him perfectly well, as I said; since at least 1977, when Docter Rat won the World Fantasy Award; but somehow never got around to reading anything by him. This happens.

"Gary knows way too much!!"

This is nicely flattering, but I have to note that any such effect is largely produced by my at least partial tendency to try to restrict my commenting mostly to topics I do know something about. The vast surfeit of comments in which I reveal how little I know about a subject is thus minimized faintly. Faintly.

I haven't kept up on the latest Lost Tales for quite a long while, as well.

Which Delany work do you recall particularly liking?

[Gary Farber]

"You probably mean 'Gandhian', after Gandhi."

Nice try.

[DaveC]

Which Delany work do you recall particularly liking?

I think that Triton, which I think is about freedom vs loneliness, (I read it a long time ago) was the one that posed the most big questions. But Babel 17 and Einstein Intersection were great, one sitting reads. I probably read both of those 2 or 3 times.

Kotzwinkle wrote great short stories, Elephant Bangs Train, especially was a funny collection of stories. The Fan Man novelette was also entertaining. I dont think he is really that strong at sci-fi or fantasy, though he adapted ET to a children's book

[DaveC]

Speaking of funny, and sort of short books, I'd recommend TC Boyle's Budding Prospects.

[rilkefan]

I've been trying to understand what Gary intended above. My current guess is that it's common among those who discuss Tolkien to misspell "Elanor" as "Eleanor" or to mistakenly correct the former. If so, why this audience would get that escapes me.

Apropos, odd Rilkefact: I've read _LotR_ in English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. I found the last extremely annoying and gave up after the first volume.

[Gary Farber]

"I think that Triton, which I think is about freedom vs loneliness, (I read it a long time ago) was the one that posed the most big questions. But Babel 17 and Einstein Intersection were great, one sitting reads. I probably read both of those 2 or 3 times."

Chip always called it "Trouble With Triton," as a play on old-style titles, and it was eventually republished with his preferred title, by the way; I still think of it as much by the single-word title, though.

I'd say that as much as anything it was about people's unconscious sexism, and how utterly oblivious they can be to that sort of thing, and in general about how people lie to themselves, but I've also chatted with readers to whom those omnipresent themes were utterly invisible. But there's plenty else there beside's Bron's Most Utterly Unreliable Narrator. (I've talked to readers who were utterly clueless Bron was an unreliable narrator, but, then, I've had people argue with me for an hour while I'm trapped in a car that everything William Goldman wrote in the intro to The Princess Bride is true.)

I'm still fond of "you are trapped in that bright moment where you learned your doom," but mostly because it's one of the few bits of sound-bitable Delany, not because Fall Of The Towers is other than minor early work.

I'm reasonably sure you shouldn't try Hogg/The Mad Man. It might be interesting to see what you thought of The Motion Of Light In Water, though.

No Nova or short stories? (Driftglass knocked my socks off when I was 13.) And perhaps you'd stopped reading by any of the Neveryona work.

I'd definitely recommend the nonfiction essays in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine to anyone interested in writing or language or thinking. And some of the stuff in Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics. Wagner/Artaud, on the other hand, probably a slightly more limited audience.

I haven't caught up to more recent stuff, which reminds me I should. You know who his aunties were, right?

[Gary Farber]

"My current guess is that it's common among those who discuss Tolkien to misspell "Elanor" as "Eleanor" or to mistakenly correct the former. If so, why this audience would get that escapes me."

I was just trying to make a simple play on the "Tolkein" typo or misspelling by suggesting that "Tolkein" would likely have a character named "Eleanor," following on Tolkien having a character named "Elanor."

I didn't claim it was hilarious.

I'm having a little trouble connecting your lack of understanding to your attempted (I assume) bait with Ghandi/Gandhi. Haven't we touched on all this before?

What would be the most useful/inoffensive/humorous response to try to get people to stop writing about "Tolkein" and "Ghandi" (and Leguin, Azimov, and the rest of the league of chronically compulsively misspelled)? (Of course, to stay funny, one couldn't repeat it.)

[rilkefan]

Ah. Well, that was useful.

"What would be the most useful/inoffensive/humorous response to try to get people to stop [making typos]?"

Don't the Nielsen-Haydens have a suggestion? Far as I'm concerned, anything other than letting it go will make things worse ("I just typed 'blah'. I always get it wrong. I guess it must be 'blaah'." Later: "I just typed 'blaah'. etc") and annoy everyone. Well, the next time I see someone misspell "Eleanor", I may quip, "GF is sputtering somewhere."

[Gary Farber]

"Well, that was useful."

Generally speaking, most light-hearted banter, or attempted, is of little use.

"Don't the Nielsen-Haydens have a suggestion?"

I'm really the wrong person to ask that, given our thirty-year history, and the fact that it's been a couple of years since I was made an unperson and banned from posting at their blogs. (And I'll probably regret even pointing out that much; it's not a topic I intend to discuss further.)

No hyphen in their name, though.

"What would be the most useful/inoffensive/humorous response to try to get people to stop [making typos]?"

The fact that you apparently believe that your substitute for my elided words conveys my intended meaning strongly suggests that you're still completely not understanding my point/reaction, by the way. (That sort of danger in restating the words of other people is why I'm cautious even about reordering quotes without saying I'm doing that.)

It wasn't about trying to "get people to stop making typos." Only an idiot would have such a goal. I'd sort of hope that the actual pseudo "goal" that I actually stated, only one post back, would be sufficiently silly (but reflecting a genuine irritation) as to be faintly amusing, but obviously not, once again.

Possibly I should give up all expectation of ever writing anything funny, and commence writing only with a Fierce And Utterly Serious Growl, since sometimes it feels as if that's the only way way some folks may ever read me. But this is likely simply all because of my own failings, because I'm so damned completely unfunny.

I shall ponder more why it is that people nonetheless point and laugh at me so often.

With utter solemnity shall I ponder. Likely uselessly.

Perhaps a course of Thullenesque tutology, or tautology, or somesuch, could save me.

But probably not. Alas. Alack.

[rilkefan]

"The fact that you apparently believe that your substitute for my elided words conveys my intended meaning"

No, that would probably have been rephrasing as disagreeing.

"No hyphen in their name, though."

Who knows whether that's a joke.

Just to end this conversation on a friendlier note, I'll mention that I once got PNH quite upset on some newsgroup by chiding him about discouraging (maybe just my perception thereof? - it's been about 10 years) Gene Wolfe from writing another Soldier book. Something like that. Hard to imagine apparently reasonable people finding you banworthy, but maybe something like something like the above.

[Dantheman]

"Harry Frankfurt, of 'On Bull****' fame"

has the temerity to make jokes about other people's names with a punch line waiting to happen like that? Consider that my wife had a friend in high school whose name was Harry Weiner, and who likely didn't have a day in high school without the obvious joke being made.

[Slartibartfast]

Yes, I said, in the nicest way I could manage on the spur of the moment; but he looked completely crestfallen, as though he was sure he was the first person ever to think of it, and slunk away.

I've done this so many times that it's now an automatic assumption that when I hear someone's name that brings funny rhymes or other word-plays to mind, I automatically (if they're past third grade, anyway) assume that whatever I come up with has already been done by at LEAST six or seven other people before me, and that the person having name with aforementioned humor potential is just sick of it. So I don't do name jokes anymore. If you're going to do them, at least have the grace to come up with something that's not going to occur to more than a fraction of a percent of the population.

Now, composing an original song or an epic poem around someone's name, that would take a great deal more creativity and wit (to do well, anyway), which is probably why it's rarely done these days.

[DaveC]

I'm reasonably sure you shouldn't try Hogg/The Mad Man. It might be interesting to see what you thought of The Motion Of Light In Water, though.

You're probably right about that (I got around to reading Wikipedia).

Funny I didn't remember The Fall of the Towers because I really liked it.

Also old memory brought back from Wikipedia: I was reading Dhalgren, rd laings "The Politics of Experience", and "Finnegans Wake" at about the same time. Talk about confused! Dont try this at home, people!