Heinlein Readers Discussion Group
Saturday 02/26/2005 5:00 P.M. EST
Word Mastery (and More on Love) by the Grandmaster
Here Begins the Discussion
You have just entered room “Heinlein Readers Group chat.”
leetheflirt has entered the room.
leetheflirt: hello
DavidWrightSr: Welcome Lee. Nobody here yet but us
leetheflirt: that’s ok
DavidWrightSr: They should all start showing up in a few minutes.
DavidWrightSr: How did you find out about us. On the a.f.h. list? or otherwise?
leetheflirt: slowly trickle in I’ll bet
leetheflirt: I googles Heilien – been a fan since I can’t remember
leetheflirt: ps I knat spel
leetheflirt: kant
leetheflirt: ah the theck with it
leetheflirt: what is the a.f.h. list?
DavidWrightSr: Great. Don’t worry about spelling. we are very informal. I’ve been a fan for 52 years. a.f.h. is alt.fan.heinlein newsgroup. Are you familiar with newsgroups?
leetheflirt: not really – like listserves?
DavidWrightSr: Somewhat similiar. The effect is pretty much the same, but they use a different setup. What do you use for e-mail? Usually, e-mail allows both newsgroups as well as regular e-mail.
leetheflirt: BTW I am having difficulty with my other computer, so I may be on and off as my son’s helping me fix it
leetheflirt: I have hotmail and comcast
DavidWrightSr: No problem. We often have people going and coming. Sometimes, we call it the ‘revolving door’. Do you use a browser for hotmail or a e-mail program like Outlook Express?
leetheflirt: yes. (I know, ha-ha) OE for comcast and and IE for hotmail
DavidWrightSr: Comcast may have a news server that you can hook to. If so, it’s basically a matter of clicking on Tools–>Options and adding the information for the particular news server. .
DavidWrightSr: don’t know where you would get the exact information that you need but Comcast ought to be able to provide it if they have one. If not, there are some free and pay news servers out there.
leetheflirt: the prob with that is I made a promise to my husband when I got on the web that I’d never get involved with a newsgroups
DavidWrightSr: Well, they can be a problem of sorts O:-)
leetheflirt: darn straight, especiaslly if you’re as chatty as I tend to be 😀
DavidWrightSr: Mostly in terms of the time that it takes up to participate. I am on 4 groups and except for a.f.h. I usually just skip most of the stuff in the other 3.
LV Poker Player has entered the room.
leetheflirt: hello
LV Poker Player: Hi
LV Poker Player: Same topic as Thursday?
Kultsi KN has entered the room.
Kultsi KN: Howdy!
leetheflirt: hi
DavidWrightSr: Yes. We have a newcomer. LV meet Lee
leetheflirt: hi all
DavidWrightSr: Hi Kultsi. Bien Venue
Kultsi KN: Hello. Lee! Everybody calls me Kultsi
DavidWrightSr: Lee. Kultsi lives in Finland.
Kultsi KN: Hello to you too, LV, David
leetheflirt: coolnesses
leetheflirt: that wasn’t meant to be a pun, sorry
Kultsi KN: real cold at the moment 😛
DavidWrightSr: Looks like a small crowd at the moment. I expect others to be showing up momentarily.
DavidWrightSr: David Silver is supposed to be honcho for tonight’s discussion.
leetheflirt: does anyone know where I might find the name of my local network in Windows?
Kultsi KN: IP, yes; network name is lots harder
leetheflirt: network name is what I need. Of course.
DavidWrightSr: How do you mean ‘network name’? I don’t understand.
leetheflirt: when you set up a home network, you must name it, same way you name your computer. If you don’t remember the name, windows gets fussy about getting back on it. Just another wonderful gift from Microslop.
Kultsi KN: the command ‘ipconfig’ run in command window does give you the IP; there are programs for getting reverse DNS and IP block info:
Kultsi KN: Oh _that_
DavidWrightSr: OK, Now I get you. I’ll take a look and tell you how to get it.
leetheflirt: I can get the IP from the device manager
Kultsi KN: right click ‘My Computer’ open ‘Properties’
DavidWrightSr: What operating system are you using? Win98, XP ,2000?
leetheflirt: XP
Kultsi KN: select ‘Network Identification’
leetheflirt: not on there
DavidWrightSr: Actually, I don’t think that I can help. I never set up a ‘home’ network. I use a router which does all of that for me.
leetheflirt: System Restore, Aut Update, Remote, General, Computer Name, Hardwear, or Advanced
leetheflirt: BTW my computer’s name is Mycroft Holmes
DavidWrightSr: You might try Computer Name and see if any of the information there reminds you of what you used.
Kultsi KN: is that what’s in your computer’s properties?
leetheflirt: yep
Kultsi KN: Computer Name
DavidWrightSr: Would what you see under ‘workgroup’ be it?
Kultsi KN: no workgroup name visible?
Kultsi KN: (I don’t do XP, ’cause I think it _vacuums_)
leetheflirt: It sais “workgroup” under workgroup
leetheflirt: only vaccums?
Kultsi KN: ah! workgroup _is_ your network name
leetheflirt: and, of course, it doesn’t work. But thanks for the help (we’re callin support)
Kultsi KN: XP is a PITA, thinks it’s smarter than it is, and with SP2 a _major_ PITA
leetheflirt: PITA?
Kultsi KN: I like W2k much better
Kultsi KN: Pain In The Ass
leetheflirt: lololol
DavidWrightSr: OK. We’ll give everybody a few more minutes before I attempt to get a discussion going. I am just the Resident Archivist and don’t have enough creativity to keep these things going.
leetheflirt: ok then I’m gettin’ a bheer brb
Kultsi KN: I stay with this malt, thankyou.
Kultsi KN: LV, how’s LV?
DavidWrightSr: You getting settled in OK? LV. BTW, do you have a new internet identity?
LV Poker Player: I need to change my ‘nym. I live in Michigan now.
leetheflirt: oooh malt, I’m jealous
DavidWrightSr: What part of Michigan?
LV Poker Player: A little north of Flint. I am well settled in.
DavidWrightSr: My son is across Lake Michigan on the Wisconsin side.
leetheflirt: that’s a nice area in the summer
LV Poker Player: I’ve been trying to figure out a new ‘nym. PokerMI and PokerMich are taken, and I am not sure I want to base it on poker anyway.
LV Poker Player: Nicer than Las Vegas. Too hot there.
DavidWrightSr: Whereabouts do you live Lee?
leetheflirt: RAHer?
DavidWrightSr: RAHer? Who? My son?
leetheflirt: Arlington VA, which is the missing part off the Washington DC diamond
leetheflirt: as a screen name
Kultsi KN: David and I don’t find anything wrong with _names_
LV Poker Player: That is also possible.
Kultsi KN: Although mine’s a nick, I use it in daily RL
leetheflirt: brb
DenvToday has entered the room.
DenvToday: Greetings all!
Kultsi KN: Hi!
BRSTAHL has entered the room.
BRSTAHL: Anyone home?
Kultsi KN: Hi!
Kultsi KN: I was just about to ask David to invite you
DavidWrightSr: Just a few here so far. We are chatting for a little while longer.
BRSTAHL: Just thought I’d stop in. Couldn’t stand studying anymore.
DavidWrightSr: Folks, I have just run into a problem with AIM. Apparently it has a 200 item limit to the buddy list and I have just reached it. I may have to start removing people who haven’t been here in a long while.
DenvToday: What are you studying?
DavidWrightSr: You are studying 2 languages simultaneously, right? as well as some other stuff?
DenvToday: aaaaaack. Cut down in my prime?
Kultsi KN: AOHell does have a 200 buddy limit
BRSTAHL: Just Spanish, but I have no real language talent. It did give me a reason to start reading SST in Spanish, though.
DavidWrightSr: Fortunately, Denv, you were already in my list even though I didn’t see it at first.
DenvToday: Glad to hear it!
DavidWrightSr: Who was it that was doing 2 languages?
Kultsi KN: not me!
BRSTAHL: Don’t know about two, I have enough problems with English.
Kultsi KN: I can _do_ three and a half in a pinch
DenvToday: I’m beginning to pick up a little Bulgarian.
DavidWrightSr: How is that?
DenvToday: My gf is from Bulgaria.
Kultsi KN: slavic, right?
DenvToday: Yep
Kultsi KN: alphabet a bit different from russki, IIRC
BRSTAHL: Well, I have one more week of Spanish, and I get to go back to computer classes. End of May, off to Mexico.
DenvToday: They use slavonic too. Nearly the same as Russki.
DavidWrightSr: Bulgarian is South Slavic as opposed to Russian etc., which are East Slavic. If you know any of the slavic languages, you can pick out a lot of vocabulary, even if you don’t understand it all.
DenvToday: I have the cyrillic overlays on my keyboard. She uses it for e-mail.
DavidWrightSr: Slavonic ususally is used to refer only to the Liturgical language of the Orthodox church. Actually, it is Old Bulgarian, mostly.
DenvToday: Well, she isn’t THAT old.
DenvToday: These are the jokes, folks.
leetheflirt: I always wondered why it wasn’t understandable
leetheflirt: 😉
DavidWrightSr: Well, I should hope not. That was done in the 9th-10th centuries. Unless she is a relative of Lazarus Long.
leetheflirt: please forgive that I am on and off, working on a computer problem
DenvToday: Moyat Bulgarski e un mnogo beden.
leetheflirt: lol
DavidWrightSr: My Bulgarian is a little ?
DenvToday: Yep
Kultsi KN: your Bulgarian… ??
DavidWrightSr: sorry, that should be ‘much’ rather than little
DenvToday: Actually, I typoed. Moyal Bulgarski e mnogo beden.
DenvToday: Moyat
DenvToday: lol
DavidWrightSr: what is beden?
DenvToday: I only speak a little Bulgarian is the trans
DenvToday: insufficient
leetheflirt: lot more than I have
DavidWrightSr: Do you speak Russian Lee?
Kultsi KN: nye snayu
DavidWrightSr: or one of the others?
leetheflirt: Da, ya govoroo po Russki.
DavidWrightSr: Ochen Xorosho.
DenvToday: I notice you can get Russki on the website
leetheflirt: coolnesses
BRSTAHL: I’m just learning that to learn languages, you have to bring out your inner retarted 4-year-old.
DavidWrightSr: Yeah, there are plans to have more international stuff. They started with Russian.
leetheflirt: it helps when you’re brought up in a multi-lingual home
DenvToday: lol
DavidWrightSr: I was. They spoke red-neck and English.
DavidWrightSr: 😎
DenvToday: Uh oh…I feel some “you might be a redneck if…” jokes coming on
leetheflirt: lolol which are different languages, true
leetheflirt: what’s wrong with redneck jokes?
Kultsi KN: my … geographical location does bring russki close
DenvToday: Not a thing.
DavidWrightSr: I got my Russian courtesy of the US Army, some 45 years ago. But now, I go to a Russian Orthodox Church where I have some opportunities to speak it.
DenvToday: You Might Be A Redneck If . . .. . . you were acquitted for murdering your first wife after she threw out your Elvis 45’s.
leetheflirt: if you think “on line” is where you get your welfare check
Kultsi KN: woudn’t that make the jury & the judge rednecks?
leetheflirt: jury of your peers…..
DavidWrightSr: Well, it looks as if our Discussion Leader is not going to make it. Anybody want to lead off with a comment on Heinlein and his Word Mastery?
leetheflirt: he sure knew how to start a book. .”There once was a Martian”
DenvToday: You might be a redneck if that billboard that says, “Say No To Crack” reminds you to pull up your jeans.
Kultsi KN: well, he was _lots_ better than me in that
Kultsi KN: in any of my languages
leetheflirt: actually, I found one of his greatest talents the way he caught the cadences of regular speech
DavidWrightSr: Ok. I’ll ask a question? What, if any, was his purpose in giving us ‘grok’?
DavidWrightSr: And what did it mean to you?
Kultsi KN: immersion?
leetheflirt: because there are always words in other languages that do not properly translate
BRSTAHL: A concept needs a word to before it can be discussed.
DenvToday: He had to invent a word. Nothing in English could communicate sufficiently.
Kultsi KN: true, denv
leetheflirt: ok that makes sense too
DavidWrightSr: He said in _Between Planets_ that you need a symbol to be able to think about a subject. Do you think that that is true?
Kultsi KN: absolutely
BRSTAHL: Isn’t that from Hayakawa(sp)?
leetheflirt: oh yes, and his comment in SIASL that various languages give you different “maps”
DavidWrightSr: Think or Talk About? Actually from Korzybski. Hayawawa was a populizer of his.
DenvToday: Sessue or S.I.? lol
DavidWrightSr: Heinlein attended two seminars with Korzybski, in 1939? and 1940.
BRSTAHL: That’s probably it. I haven’t gone into this for a long time.
DavidWrightSr: You noticed that ‘Sessue or S.I’
leetheflirt: interesting
Kultsi KN: symbols as such are _not_ sufficient; to understand, you need to grok thise symbols
BRSTAHL: That was the reason for the Martian dictionary at the end of the book.
leetheflirt: where? I never saw a dictionary
DavidWrightSr: I always found it interesting that he only gave a definition, and that was very limited, late into the book long after he had been using it.
BRSTAHL: Direct translation rarely works, sometimes knowing the language is the only way to get it.
BRSTAHL: The FSI way is translate the idea, not the words.
leetheflirt: and even then, the own language can’t define a word
Kultsi KN: I agree, Bryan: my English has taken years and years to reach the point I’m in now
DavidWrightSr: On the other hand, there was a phrase which was a translation of a Martian word which was never spelled out, but was given meaning in many different ways. Anyone know what I am thinking of?
DenvToday: RAH did that a lot. In Podkayne you didn’t know that Uncle Tom was black until well in the Book.
BRSTAHL: Thou art God?
BRSTAHL: Again, where direct translation can fall down.
DavidWrightSr: You got it. And it was tied very closely to ‘grok’. ‘All that groks is God’, or in other words, ‘grokking is goding’.
leetheflirt: I always loved the way his humor played such a part in all this too, she said in an aside
DenvToday: You can find half of what we now call “New Age” in SIASL. I wonder what RAH’s reaction would have been.
leetheflirt: you kidding? He’d have a conniption!
DavidWrightSr: He laughed all the way to the bank. Have you read his comments in Grumbles?
DenvToday: A long time ago. I haven’t looked through Grumbles in years.
DavidWrightSr: Basically, he said that anyone who looked for ‘answers’ in SIASL was missing the whole point. He was giving questions, not answers.
Kultsi KN: SIASL was not the only book in which he was giving questions
DavidWrightSr: In my opinion, he did that in every thing he ever wrote, but I may be exagerrating. GMTA
leetheflirt: he loved to make people think
DavidWrightSr: And he said, that he was only a simple storyteller. Yeah, right O:-)
leetheflirt: lol
BRSTAHL: He wanted people to figure it out for themselves, and you need to stretch your mind to get there.
DenvToday: One of the hallmarks of RAH’s work is the smartass banter between intelligent people. It’s one thing I loved most.
leetheflirt: and I bet we’ve all tried to imitate it, too
Kultsi KN: He was one of a _hell_ of storyteller — but that’s only one level
DavidWrightSr: I’ve said this a number of times, but Heinlein’s major technique, IMHO, was to write so that the reader
DavidWrightSr: ‘filled-in-the-blanks’ for himself/herself.
BRSTAHL: Remember, his first book tried to teach directly, and wasn’t published. When he told stories, he could sneak in almost anything.
DavidWrightSr: which is one of the reasons why we get so many different viewpoints about just what he was saying.
leetheflirt: brb
DenvToday: Any news on a films of SIASL? One hears rumors all the time.
DavidWrightSr: Going on further about ‘maps’ and so forth, why was it necessary to teach Martian, before people could start doing the telepathy, telekinesis and so on? Couldn’t he have ‘translated’ the concepts into English?
DenvToday: on a film, that is
BRSTAHL: English lacked vocabulary. You needed the symbol for the concept.
DenvToday: I agree. Language can do only so much.
BRSTAHL: this was again part of the Martian dictionary project.
Kultsi KN: RAH books are like those multi-ending Japanese love-sim games: every time you go through them, you find something different
DenvToday: It’s what I asked about a film. Perhaps images can do what language can’t.
DavidWrightSr: The dictionary was not a translation dictionary, but a dictionary in Martian, IIRC.
DenvToday: It’s why, that is. My typing. Sheesh.
BRSTAHL: Another thing is to get agreement on what the symbol actually means. Until they got it settled in martian, translation didn’t work.
Kultsi KN: I’m using gaim client on AIM. it’s got ‘buddy pounce’. how many of you know what that is?
leetheflirt has left the room.
DenvToday: Not me
Kultsi KN: a new symbol for most, I suspect
BRSTAHL: Martians knew what their symbols meant, and humans lacked the cultural background to explain it. It means that they had to define things to translate them.
DavidWrightSr: It’s somewhat analogous to English and quantum physics. The structure of English denies the equality of ‘waves’ and ‘particles’. There is no such dichotomy in reality. It has been
DavidWrightSr: said that some of the Native American languages don’t divide them either, but treat them as a single concept.
BRSTAHL: Well, it’s the problem. Can you think of a thing without a symbol to define it?
BRSTAHL: And math is just using another language for the issue.
DavidWrightSr: Hang on everybody. Lee is having trouble getting back. Can someone add her name to your buddy list and give her an invite. She can’t see mine and I can’t do another. leetheflirt is the name
DenvToday: There’s an interesting new TV show called Numb3rs. It’s basic concept is that mathematics are the most profound expression of the ordinary things in life.
leetheflirt has entered the room.
Kultsi KN: wb!
leetheflirt: sorry about that folks
DavidWrightSr: I think that you have to distinguish between ‘thinking’ and ‘verbalization’. What we do when we say we are thinking is really we are verbalizing our thoughts. Most linguists today….
DavidWrightSr: treat thinking as below consciousness and verbalization is merely our attempts to articulate it. How often have you said something and realized that ‘wasn’t what I meant’?
DenvToday: David, great point.
BRSTAHL: Alot, since I started Spanish.
DenvToday: Chomsky made similar points before he stopped being a linguist and started being a nutcase.
DavidWrightSr: And we have to be able to ‘think’ new thoughts, or we would never be able to learn anything. Once we have a new thought, then we create symbols to encode it.
leetheflirt: actually that’s a good point – we use phrases and words from other languages when we can’t find the one we want
BRSTAHL: And there’s the difference between abstact ideas, and physical items. Where does the abstract come from?
DavidWrightSr: Chomsky, like most linguists of the early to mid 20th centuries were obsessed with logical positivism and language.
Kultsi KN: learning quite often is getting symbols without reference, and then putting those symbols in our reference frame
DavidWrightSr: You should read Lakoff on metaphors and how it does exactly that. Hang on, I’ll get a URL.
DenvToday: Thanks. I’d like to examine Lakoff. He was also in the news, lately.
Kultsi KN: Lee — I cannot translate very well, ’cause I _think_ in the other language
leetheflirt: but anyway, I think RAH had such an ability with words because he was charmed by them
LV Poker Player: Ok, I’m back, had not expected to be away that long.
DavidWrightSr: From what I’ve read, I doubt that I would agree with his politics,/ but his Theory of Metaphors has a lot going for it.
DenvToday: Lakoff has recently been “deconstructing” phrases which he considers Republican bunk, such as “war on terror.”
leetheflirt: you can’t have a war on a technique
DavidWrightSr: Yeah, I know. He was a student of Chomsky’s and apparently took on a lot of his politics even if he broke off in schism from his linguistics
leetheflirt: that’s drivel (IMHO)
Kultsi KN: “war on terror” is meaningless
DenvToday: Lakoff is trying to reframe political language to promote socialism.
DavidWrightSr: I haven’t read any of that yet and probably won’t, at least, for a while. But I still maintain that his linguistic theories have some very valid viewpoints, and they are not original with him, but derive essentially from Whorf ….
Kultsi KN: ‘political language’ = talking a lot without saying anything
DavidWrightSr: and I think from Korzybski also, although modern linguists won’t admit it.
DenvToday: I should read up on it. My knowledge of linguistics is limited, to put it kindly.
BRSTAHL: The word “war” is simlply being diluted the way many other words have been throughout history. We have war on terror, war on crime, war on fat… It eventually kills the word, and a new one has to take its place.
DenvToday: Very true. We had an excercise in school where we would repeat a word over and over again until it became meaningless.
DavidWrightSr: Basically, his Theory of Metaphors has to deal with mapping physical domains onto abstract domains, such as when we use phrases like ‘He achieved victory in his case’ being from the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor.
LV Poker Player has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: ‘victory’ being a concept associated with wars and applied to abstract concepts.
leetheflirt: there was a DJ back in the 60’s – lost his job over it – used the work f*ch repeatedly on the air until it was just another word
DavidWrightSr: I’m on alt.usage.english where they discuss, of course, English usage. After they have discussed the ‘proper usage’ of a phrase or word from 30-40 different people. I ….
DavidWrightSr: find myself not able to determine just how I do use it.
Kultsi KN: been there, done that, David
leetheflirt: we all have our own idea of what any given word means
DavidWrightSr: The problem is that no word actually
DavidWrightSr: ‘means’
DavidWrightSr: sorry
DenvToday: True. Language works well to define objects. It’s abstract concepts that give us difficulty. I suspect they always will.
DavidWrightSr: ‘means’ anything. All meaning is in the mind of the sender and receiver.
leetheflirt: anyway, I must regrettably retire to my evening repast
DavidWrightSr: Thanks for coming Lee. Can I add your name to the notification mailing list for the next meetings?
BRSTAHL: True, and unless the meanings are fairly close, there can be conflict.
leetheflirt: yes please – and nice meeting you all!
DenvToday: Take care lee
BRSTAHL: Goodbye.
leetheflirt has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: Precisely, Denv. Most language has enough overlap to make general communictaion possible, but there are always minor areas where they don’t match. And according to Lakoff, you have to take in all of the current context for meanings
DavidWrightSr: to get across.
DavidWrightSr: Actually, sender–>receiver is what has been termed as the CONDUIT METAPHOR. Again using physical related referents to map to an abstract domain.
Kultsi KN: one of the toughest tasks for me in uderstanding English is the lack of everyday, constant interaction with people in their cultural background
DavidWrightSr: Precisely, Kultsi. As I like to put it, ‘Language influences Culture and Culture influences Language’.
DavidWrightSr: What about other Heinlein neologism? Any one?
BRSTAHL: Well, there’s waldo, though I’ve seen discussion on whether it’s actually used or not.
DenvToday: RAH solved the problem of complete communication in Methuseleh’s Children well before SIASL.
DavidWrightSr: Did He?
DenvToday: The group intelligence on one of the worlds
DenvToday: I can’t remember which planet
Kultsi KN: I think that was pretty easy for _me_ a new word, a new concept — _everything_ in English was/is new to me
DavidWrightSr: OK. I was thinking of the telepathy of the ‘sensitives’.
BRSTAHL: True, if you know everything they know, you know what they mean.
BRSTAHL: The Planet of the Little People.
DenvToday: Yes
DavidWrightSr: What about the telepathy? How does it relate to what we have been talking about?
DenvToday: Spielberg borrowed a bit of RAH in Minority Report with his use of sensitives.
BRSTAHL: Telepathy may get the symbols out of the way of the ideas.
DavidWrightSr: Remember the problem that the semanticists had in devising a working lingua franca between the humans and the Jockaira. What did RAH say about that?
DavidWrightSr: No takers?
BRSTAHL: IIRC, there seemed to be concepts missing on both sides, and the humans took the gods as mythical.
Kultsi KN: when they were all too concrete
DavidWrightSr: Basically, as I remember it, they were limited in coming up with terminology, because the sensitives themselves didn’t have the concepts.
BRSTAHL: That’s been a problem with translations throughout history. You get tranlaters who don’t speak either language well, and things are confused.
Kultsi KN: most of us have been into foreign languages, be they natural or the computer kind
Kultsi KN: and we cannot understand those until we understand and have the underlying concepts
DavidWrightSr: More on Metaphor Theory. Heinlein’s famous, ‘the door dilated’ would be considered a metaphor as it relates what we know about one physical object onto another physical
DavidWrightSr: object. i.e. ‘eyes dilate’–>’doors dilate’ or in other words, his doors work just as eyes do.
DavidWrightSr: or rather similar to what eyes do.
Kultsi KN: BTW — _speaking_ a language and _understanding_ a language are two different animals, at least in my vocab
DenvToday: Sorry, I’m back
Kultsi KN: That’s no reason to be sorry! 😛
BRSTAHL: That’s the problem of new things. You describe them using older words. Sometimes the words don’t quite fit, and the language changes.
DavidWrightSr: Right you have to come up with new words, or modify existing words.
DenvToday: In Time for the Starts, the twins had complete communication. Yet…they seemed to use their telepathy like cell phones, not complete merging of consciousness.
DavidWrightSr: Yeah and the communication came out as ‘language’. Implying to me also what I have saying. ‘thinking’ goes on subconsciously, while ‘language’ is used to articulate it.
BRSTAHL: Telepathy seemed to change depending on the needs of the story. There were a few who could send pictures, others only words. In others, concepts went across.
Kultsi KN: there is a reason for that, I think: merging would cause lunacy sooner or later, when they were physically separated
DavidWrightSr: Especially, tied in with the Methusaleh’s Children example with the Jocks
DavidWrightSr: Unk could tell that Sugar Pie was ‘thinking’ about him even though they couldn’t ‘communicate’ during peaks.
DenvToday: I agree Kult.
BRSTAHL: And what did Slayton Ford see?
DavidWrightSr: One of Heinlein’s never answered questions. 🙂
DavidWrightSr: It was ‘big magic’ however.
Kultsi KN: heh. _everybody_ talks about ‘telepathy’ yet nobody can define it and/or have any firsthand proof/knowledge of it
DenvToday: You can’t give it all away. You have to retain a little mystery.
DavidWrightSr: Some of Lakoff’s work
DavidWrightSr: And some more
BRSTAHL: Telepathy is the problem of an idea without anything concrete to hang it on. Until it’s here, it can mean almost anything.
DenvToday: Thanks for the link. I’ll read it.
DenvToday: That one too.
DavidWrightSr: The book _Metaphors We Live By_ goes into a lot more detail and ties the theory in with previous linguistic theories.
DavidWrightSr: Dr. John Lawler of the University of Michigan was a student of Lakoff’s and has some stuff also Lawler
DavidWrightSr: Especially an article called “Metaphors We Compute By”
DenvToday: I’ve bookmared them. I’ll read them later. Looks like good stuff.
DenvToday: Well, I must be off.
DenvToday: Great seeing you all. It’s been too long.
DavidWrightSr: Nobody want to take a crack at Heinlein’s other neologisms? or unusual uses of ordinary words?
Kultsi KN: ok, take care!
DavidWrightSr: So long Denv. Thanks
DenvToday: Take care 🙂 You you next time.
BRSTAHL: Bye
DenvToday: Bye!
DenvToday has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: Well, I guess it’s time to call it a night. Any thing else?
BRSTAHL: I’ve read his works so often, I’m not sure which words are neologisms anymore. They’re just words he used.
Kultsi KN: David, I really could not tell — new words, new concepts: I took it _all_ in on the run, and I was not able to tell it might be something new to _you_ as well
DavidWrightSr: Yeah, I get both your points. The only one that comes readily to mind is ‘fresher’.
Kultsi KN: ’cause it was _all_ new to me
Kultsi KN: yeah, clear as the day
DavidWrightSr: for ‘bathroom’ or whatever one calls it.
Kultsi KN: ‘fresher’ I mean
BRSTAHL: He had words that were new to me that were regular English, I just ran into them for the first time in his books.
BRSTAHL: I ran into many math terms first in RAH before i ever saw them in school.
Kultsi KN: RAH always put the words into context
DavidWrightSr: I get what you mean. I considered a lot of the stuff just made up and only later reallized that he was referring to something real.
DavidWrightSr: But he made it so real, that it didn’t matter.
DavidWrightSr: Have you heard me talk about TANSTAAFL?
BRSTAHL: He did end up making me the only one in my high school to use a slide rule.
DavidWrightSr: I don’t think I was the only one, but I was one of the few for the same reason. Golly I miss my old KE? I got desparate in college and sold it. I had already left physics as my major.
BRSTAHL: Well, for me it just before cheap scientific calculators came out, and it was more to see what they could do.
Kultsi KN: we are about the same age group — Bryan, you might be a tad younger and David is older than me
DavidWrightSr: I’ll be 65 in May.
Kultsi KN: I’m 56
BRSTAHL: 43 back on Tuesday.
DavidWrightSr: This fall will be the 52nd anniversary of my first Heinlein. I can’t remember whether it was _Starman Jones_ or _Between Planets_, but it was one of those.
BRSTAHL: It’s been about 34 years for me with SST.
DavidWrightSr: One neat thing about being such a RAH fanatic, is that it makes reading Heinlein in Russian and German a snap. Ginny Heinlein gave me a copy of ‘The Past Through Tomorrow’ in German, although it was titled _Methusalem’s Kinder_.
Kultsi KN: I was quite a bit older before my first exposure
DavidWrightSr: And you were seriously infected? 😉
Kultsi KN: indeed, I was
BRSTAHL: And the Spanish translation I got of SST seems to be well done. The only problem is it’s in the Castillian dialect, which is a little different than the Latin American Spanish i’ve been doing.
Kultsi KN: and the Finnish translations _suck_
DavidWrightSr: Hah. Another metaphor. ‘His works infected me’. HEINLEIN IS A DISEASE metaphor 😉
Kultsi KN: In getting a vaccination you are infected, too
Kim Kinnison999 has entered the room.
Kultsi KN: Hi, Kim!
BRSTAHL: Is it as bad as the Pournelle translation in german I heard about. The translator decided Jerry was a fascist, and changed the book to make him sound like one.
DavidWrightSr: I think that the only vaccination against Heinlein is ‘stupidity’.
Kim Kinnison999: sigh. late as usual. maybe next time
BRSTAHL: It was a slow night, anyway.
DavidWrightSr: Welcome Kim. Yeah, we are getting close to closing shop.
Kim Kinnison999: sure. well, i’m on the mailing list. maybe next time 🙂
DavidWrightSr: I enjoyed it. But, of course, I did a lot of the talking and I sometimes like to hear myself talk.
DavidWrightSr: 😀
BRSTAHL: Well, with less people, I can keep track of things, and make comments before the idea has changed.
DavidWrightSr: It is sometime very difficult with 2 or 3 conversations going on simultaneously.
BRSTAHL: true.
Kim Kinnison999: i did pick up For Us when i saw it in paperback. Mr. H was a bit of an idealist much as he tried to gruff all over such behavior
DavidWrightSr: Yes. It’s amazing how much of the stuff that he was later criticized for later in life was actually there in his very first work.
Smn Jester has entered the room.
BRSTAHL: He wanted his ideas out, but really din’t want to be seen as leading people anywhere.
DavidWrightSr: But as someone said, he had to learn to package it all differently.
DavidWrightSr: Welcom Simon.
Kultsi KN: Hi, Simon! 🙂
Smn Jester: Hiya!
BRSTAHL: Hello
Smn Jester: Barely made it…
Smn Jester: This all that showed up, or am I Tail End?
DavidWrightSr: Just barely. We were about to close up shop. Not a lot of people here tonight, but it was interesting, I think, nevertheless
Oceanfilly30 has entered the room.
DavidWrightSr: I think that we had 6 maximum
Oceanfilly30: was afk, but thanks Kultsi
DavidWrightSr: Stephanie?
BRSTAHL: Did the time between the Thursday and Saturday meetings get confused?
Oceanfilly30: yes indeed, sir
Smn Jester: I’ll read the archives. You may want to give more a lead. I didn’t even read the email til today.
DavidWrightSr: Sorry. I keep trying to get out several announcements ahead of time, but I always seem to miss.
Oceanfilly30: I missed Thursadya
Smn Jester: Need a flunky? I make a good flunky.
BRSTAHL: I know I sawthem on afh and the SFF group.
DavidWrightSr: Archives are going a bit slow these days. I only take a couple of days to get them into shape, but they took several weeks before they were put up on the site. I may start posting them temporarily on my own site before they get ther
DavidWrightSr: I’ve been posting them daily on a.f.h. in my sig files. Also did it on alt.usage.english hoping to attract a few of those people over here.
DavidWrightSr: ‘before they get there onto the HS site’
Oceanfilly30: I was so durn excited to have the second line in that I forgot about the meeting to be honest
DavidWrightSr: In the pre-discussion on a.f.h. there were 171 posts, but a lot of them are off-topic and I’ll have to trim them.
Smn Jester: There are some Heinlein people on livejouranl.com that might be interested. Let me know ahead of time and I’ll post tehre.
Oceanfilly30: What’s your livejournal name?
Smn Jester: Mine? mynameisnotreal
DavidWrightSr: Thanks. I’ll try to remember to do that.
Oceanfilly30: I’m merfilly on LJ
Oceanfilly30: not much on mine, I usually just skim the journals of friends
DavidWrightSr: Any of our late arrivals want to make any comments on RAH’s word mastery?
Kim Kinnison999: he told a helluva story and taught good ethics 😀
Kultsi KN: amen to that
Kim Kinnison999: 😀 there it is. stupid aim
DavidWrightSr: Well, I keep hearing that he was ‘too preachy’ in his later works. I have asked those who made to say what they meant and nobody ever answers?
Kim Kinnison999: IWFNE was abit gushy for me, but ya know..
DavidWrightSr: ‘gushy’?
Kim Kinnison999: well, how can i put it..
BRSTAHL: The “preachy” tone seems to be there, but I never minded it. It seems he got tired of being overly subtle, and brough it more into the open.
Kim Kinnison999: characters a bit too lovey i guess.
Kultsi KN: IWFNE is not one of my favs — only once — but is it one of the ‘later works’
Oceanfilly30: IWFNE took me several times to read in entirety, but now, I do not skip it in my rereading
Kim Kinnison999: JOB however a masterpiece imho
DavidWrightSr: Well, if you are referring to the 2-in-1, they had better be lovey. They are sharing the same body. ;?)
Oceanfilly30: Job was definately a critical work…it took satire to a new level for me
DavidWrightSr: _The Number Of The Beast_ was that way for me. It took several times for me to acclimate myself to it.
Kim Kinnison999: yeah, beast a little too, but the storys just so great i got over it fast
Kultsi KN: I _loved_ NotB from the first go on
DavidWrightSr: I don’t really grok ‘satire’ so a lot of that was lost on me in both _Job_ and _SIASL_. Had to read Patterson and Thornton’s book before I could get it.
DavidWrightSr: I had trouble with the shifting viewpoint narrative. Kept having to look at the bottom to see who was talking. Finally associated people in some way so that I new.
BRSTAHL: Job is the one I understand best. If my grandmother had had her way, I would have been Alex.
Oceanfilly30: that restrcited?
BRSTAHL: She was jealous over the minister sons of her sisters. She thought she missed the chance with my father, and wanted me to be her success.
Smn Jester: NotB is great for the head jumping. He did a really good job of that.
DavidWrightSr: I had the saddest feeling when I read it that he thought that it would be his last book. I was happy to find out that it didn’t turn out that way.
Oceanfilly30: the very changing of ‘voice’ is what almost stopped me from reading NotB
DavidWrightSr: Have you all read the essay on the HS website about how he meant it as an ‘expose’ of how to write a good book?
Oceanfilly30: I did….good piece
Kultsi KN: yes
Smn Jester: Really?
DavidWrightSr: Yeah. I don’t see the URL at the moment, but it’s there. Hang on a mo https://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/numberbeast.html
BRSTAHL: Drag good story in and compare them to a pulp story.
Oceanfilly30: got to check on dinner, brb
DavidWrightSr: The Number of The Beast
Oceanfilly30: .
Kultsi KN: The other night I compared my favorite RAH stories with Jackie’s: we agreed on most
Oceanfilly30: -*
Kultsi KN: If those stories have an appeal to a 20-year-old, they are _not_ dated, dontcha think?
Smn Jester: Merfilly has a new LJ friend…
DavidWrightSr: Pulp reminds me of something I asked on a.f.h. I read in Hayakawa about how pulp writers write at a more concrete level, not requiring as much of the reader as did the ‘more literary magazines’. I asked the question
DavidWrightSr: ‘
DavidWrightSr: “Was this true for Heinlein”? Was it possible that he rose above such a level and this helped gain him his reputation so quickly?
DavidWrightSr: Did this contribute to his ‘being something new’ in SF magazines of the time?
BRSTAHL: Pulp writers, in general, were writing for groceries. The slick writers had preentions of literature. Some in both categories actually had talent, and rose above all that.
Kim Kinnison999: that was also the transition time from the Smiths and Campbells who had the ideas but by god wrote in 19th century prose hehe
DavidWrightSr: Well, one of Heinlein’s outstanding characteristics was his ‘lack’ of overt descriptions. Wouldn’t it be true that this would automatically require ‘more’ of the reader?
Oceanfilly30: Thank you, Jester
Kim Kinnison999: never required more of me. he could put a picture in my mind as well or better than anybody.
Smn Jester: I don’t know… I read the stuff by Smith, the Lensman series, and it had a flow and rhytm to it. Sure, it was a pulp, but it was kind of like eating the best chocolate bar in the store as opposed to hand made truffels.
Smn Jester: It was cheap, but it was damn good stuff.
Kultsi KN: Doc Smith and RAH were friends
Kim Kinnison999: oh yeah. i still reread every couple, three years. i still love it
DavidWrightSr: And Heinlein certainly thought well of some of it, especially, Smith. I think, literarily, as well as personally.
Oceanfilly30: I agree with that sentiment…no thinking involved to just enjoy the read for Smith
Smn Jester: Honestly, I don’t think Heinlein had any special way with prose; he was more the meat and potaoes kind of guy. It was filling, but nothing to write home about.
BRSTAHL: There was the good pulp, and it’s the stuff you can still find today. Then there was the dreck, and that’s where pulp gained it’s low reputation.
Oceanfilly30 has left the room.
Oceanfilly30 has entered the room.
Dehede011 has entered the room.
Dehede011: Good evening
Kultsi KN: wasn’t/isn’t leaving things unsaid a true and proven method of the romantic gaga à la Harlequine
DavidWrightSr: You left me on that one Kultsi. 🙁
DavidWrightSr: But, I am sure that Heinlein wouldn’t refulse to strip off anyone’s serial numbers and use it for his own.
BRSTAHL: And it probably made editors who paid by the word happy.
Kultsi KN: well, those _steamy_ books that never said the deed was done, but sure implied it
Kultsi KN: RAH just did it better
DavidWrightSr: Sorry. Hi Ron. Welcome.
Kultsi KN: hi, Ron
Smn Jester: I prefer when ‘the dee’ is left to me. Murder or sex, it’s all better in my head.
Smn Jester: ‘the deed’…
DavidWrightSr: Agreed!
Oceanfilly30: Hey Ron
Dehede011: Hi y’all
Oceanfilly30: I don’t need a blow by blow account of anything graphic…my head is imaginative enough
DavidWrightSr: “Let the reader fill-in-the blanks, he can probably do a better job of it than I can”.
DavidWrightSr: Or at least, “He will make it his own”!
Smn Jester: When I write, it goes from teh bedroom door being closed to the smoking of the cigarette. Anthing else is just simple tittilation.
Kultsi KN: yes, and that was exatly the vehicle RAH used masterfully
Oceanfilly30: “the boot scene” as one slash fic writer called it
Smn Jester: As in pulling on the boots?
Oceanfilly30: jump from the clinch to the scene where Captain Kirk is pulling on his boots, she said
Smn Jester: Heh… *G*
Kultsi KN: I went to ballet one time, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ of all things
Dehede011: The old time 40s and 50s movies did that very well
Oceanfilly30: yes
Oceanfilly30: and I find some of that era’s work to be bawdier for it
Smn Jester: It’s just why woman with long, flowing dresses are sexier, in cases, thana woman in a wo piece skimpy bikini. It’s what you CAN’T see that turns you on.
Kultsi KN: there was the beginning of the third act, I think, in which the music started, came to a crescendo three times, and the curtain opens to a scene of Juliets bedroom
Kultsi KN: Romeo get up from the bed and starts pullling on his boots. I almost lost it there.
Oceanfilly30: That was a bit like the Zaffernelli *sp version for film
DavidWrightSr: Well, folks. I hate to be a kill-joy, but I’ve got to get some other things done. I am going to close the official log, but if any of you want to stay and say anything that you feel is appropriate to the topic, mail me a copy and ..
DavidWrightSr: I’ll include it
Oceanfilly30: actually, I need to run
DavidWrightSr: Log officially closed at 7:53 P.M. EST
Oceanfilly30: I have dinner for tykes to fetch
Oceanfilly30: evening all
Kim Kinnison999: good night and take care
BRSTAHL: Well, I am using this to avoid homework.
Oceanfilly30 has left the room.
Kim Kinnison999 has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: Thanks to all for showing up.
BRSTAHL: Bye
Dehede011: You are welcome
Kultsi KN: thanks, David
BRSTAHL has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: Nichevo, De Nada,
Dehede011: Bye everyone.
Dehede011 has left the room.
Smn Jester: See ya in the funny papers…
Smn Jester has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: Night Kultsi. or is it morning?
Kultsi KN: sic transit…
DavidWrightSr: Tuesday is usually worse.
Kultsi KN: around three am
DavidWrightSr: Get some sleep. Thanks for being here.
End of Discussion
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