Re: musicalexemes (was Re: Interesting Words)

 >isn't I Ching that thing where a person tosses 3 coins and
 >depending on which sides turn up they make a symbol with
 >different length lines that means something if you look it
 >up in the book of I Ching? (i got this off a tv show
 >[profiler] so it might not be entirely accurate)

        It's a touch more complex that that.  There are a lot of web
pages on the subject (http://www.pacificcoast.net/~wh/ is the best
collection of links, IMO), but it's not the length of the lines that
matters but the numbers they go with:

        6       -x-  (moving yang)
        7       ---  (yang)
        8       - -  (yin)
        9       -0-  (moving yin)

You cast the coins 6 times, getting you a hexagram, of which there are
64.  Each hexagram can be thought of as the intersection of two of
eight "trigrams" though the Chinese use "gua" for both the trigrams
and the hexagrams.  Anyway, you go look things up.  Because of the
moving lines, you will quite often go look up the another hexagram,
too, after you turn all the moving lines into their opposite (moving
yang -> yin).

        People of course use this as a fortune telling system, and
some people insist it should be a meditation or thinking tool.  In any
case, the Yijing permeates Chinese thought.  I even study a martial
art that uses the Yijing as an approach to fighting.

--
William Annis  -  System Administrator -  Biomedical Computing Group
"When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do
towards other humans."                       Marcus Aurelius  VII.65