CHAT: Any Physicists lurking? [was: Conlanging has the Hacker nature? (was Re: CHAT: music // was Leaf script)]

Date:    Sun, 29 Aug 2004 14:34:13 -0400
From:    Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>
Subject: Conlanging has the Hacker nature? (was Re: CHAT: music // was Leaf
         script)

>Also
>listed among the traits are a tendency to be more liberal in sexual
>attitudes,
>
>
No.


>a disregard for rules that get in the way of doing fun work,
>
>
Sometimes

>a
>love of spicy food,
>
>
No. Sweet any day.


>an interest in the martial arts,
>
>
Yes.


>an appreciation of
>word-play,
>
>
Yes


>and a feeling that the line between work and play can be
>blurry.
>
>
Absolutely yes.


>Perhaps conlangers can be described as hackers of the
>linguistic realm?
>
>
On this latin & greek learning site, there was a post about what courses
everyone is doing in school and I was surprised to see that far from
being the only Physicist out there, there was a huge herd of us, second
in number only to Latin majors ;).  So perhaps that link between Physics
and Classical languages extends on to conlanging.  I mean when I come to
think of it both Physics and Conlanging require the same type of skills,
a knowledge of the basic rules of the game, a structure, ideas of
symetry, beauty and most importantly  inspiration or intuition.   As
Feynman said ``Physics is like sex, sure it has some uses, but that's
not why we do it'' maybe this extends to conlangs as well, {though I'm
not so sure about the ''uses'' part ;-)}


Shanth
http://home.iitk.ac.in/student/shanth/index.shtml
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    Quidquid latine dictum, altum viditur.
``Anything sai in latin, sounds profound''
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