Eurogen,Sinogen,Terragen(wasRe: OT Academia)

In a message dated 07/09/2002 01.08.01 PM, john cowan quotes me & writes:

>J Y S Czhang scripsit:
>
>>     Hmm, some of the first Cantonese to encounter "White-skinned", Pigment-
>> Impaired Folk thought these so-call "Caucasians" were ghosts, too...
>
>If Alex Haley is to be believed, so did his African ancestors.
    Based on this and other "data," this seems to a possible universal
::tongue-1/2-in-cheekie::

<SNiP>
>If all of humanity were destroyed except any one small ethnic group, 80%
>of human genetic variation would still be preserved.
    Interesting. Does that mean the gene pool is getting shallower or that
the gene salad more tossed?  ;)

>>     Do "of European ancestry" or "Eurogen" sound like reasonable
alternatives
>> in order to describe ancestral origins/biocultural background (instead of
>> so-call "racial categories")?
>
>Sounds good to me.
    :))))

... and in a message dated 07/09/2002 01.09.48 PM, Steg writes:

>Hmm... i like "-gen"... it's a nice suffix.
>It reminds me of the David Brin "Uplift" science-fiction novels where the
>multi-species clan founded by Humans, and including Neo-Dolphins,
>Neo-Chimpanzees, and possibly others is known as the "Terragens".
    :)))))))  Two votes of confidence in my lingua-mangling/conlanging... I
think I will use it creolego. It sounds sufficiently futuristic besides ;)

In a message dated 07/09/2002 03.56.36 PM, barbarabarrett@ORCHIDSERVE.COM
writes:

>Ditch ancestry altogether; it still implies "breeding" and thus carries
>all the inferiority/superiority baggage with it. In the ancient world no
>one would have understood "race" as we do today. Culture was much more
>important; eg; if one grew up in ancient egypt it was where you grew up,
>what culture you practised, and what language you spoke as a first
>language that mattered. eg; you might have been born a Libyan, minoan,
>bedu, etc, etc, but if you fulfilled the above conditions you were an
>egyptian. In other words your ancestry had nothing to do with it.
    Hmm, pretty good things to ponder and plunder/pulverize...
... that would make me a SinoIndonesianBritishAmerican... (but I _do_
self-identify as "SinoBritish" or "SinoEnglish")... because of just the
_major_ cultures I "practise." (What about identities by subcultures
*snarfle* which are becoming increasingly as or more important than one's
cultural upbringing in terms of self-identification 0_o?)
    As to identity by language, what if a culture is bilingual or
multilingual/polyglot?

John Cowan:
 > In Grandmother Little Bear Woman's latest story suite,
>_Birthday of the World and Other Stories_, the term "Chi-An" is used for
>people of Chinese ancestry.
    I will hafta read that. I really like Ursula Le Guin's (Grandmother Lil
Bear Woman's) writings and poetry. I hafta read _The Telling_, too.

>> Hanuman Zhang, Sinogen and sympathetic supporter of the Beige Race
Liberation
>> Front and their tongue-firmly-in-cheek struggle to have a
>> "Beige/Multi-Racial" category in/on US census polls and all other public
>> documents
    OOPSIES!   ^^^^ "Beige/Multi-CULTURAL"

>Sounds good to me, as father of an "Other" (a brown-skinned person of
>Hispanic descent who has no Spanish language or culture).
>
>Avery Brooks, the actor who played Sisko on ST:DS9, insists on being
>called brown rather than black.
    Hmm, sounds like he might even be one of the Beige Race Liberation Front
"patrons." There are quite a few Hollywood actors and writers, etc, who are
in this movement for a "beige/multi-cultural" classification or at least
sympathetic to it. And I remember Mr. Brooks is quite politically out-spoken
at times.
    Or he is just simply honoring/remembering his "White-skinned" ancestors
(a highly respectable - and reconciling - decision from this Asian's
viewpoint).

>One art / There is                      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
>No less / No more                       http://www.reutershealth.com
>All things / To do                      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>With sparks / Galore                     -- Douglas Hofstadter
    Nice sig.line...  ;)

Steg not to be out-done in the sig.line dept. quotes:

> "rest / rest and listen / rest and listen and learn, creideiki /
>  for the startide rises in the currents of the dark /
>  and we have waited long for what must be..."
>     ~ _startide rising_ by david brin
    Sweetnicenesses...

Hanuman Zhang
~§~

    "To live is to scrounge, taking what you can in order to survive. So,
since living is scrounging, the result of our efforts is to amass a pile of
rubbish."
                            - Chuang Tzu/Zhuangzi, China, 4th Century BCE

    "The most beautiful order is a heap of sweepings piled up at random."
                            - Heraclitus, Greece, 5th Century BCE

Ars imitatur Naturam in sua operatione.
    [Latin > "Art is the imitation of Nature in her manner of operation."]

" jinsei to iu mono wa, kinchou na geijyutsu to ieru deshou "
    [Japanese > "one can probably say that 'life' is a precious artform"]