Re: translation needed

On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Daniel Seriff wrote:

>Ed Heil wrote:
>>
>> I felt compelled to reply.
>
>I'd love to see what he wrote back to you, if anything.
>
>--
>Dan Seriff <microtonal@...>
>
>"Mozart is just God's way of making the rest of us feel inferior."
>        - David Barber
>
His reply:
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Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:46:34        sci.lang.japan
Lines 81                 Re: RE: translation needed
Respno  23 of  29
ceicher@inav.net   Charles Eicher

In article <38118B58@...>, Ed says...
>
>Actually, Chuck-o, I've spent some time reading that mailing list.
>And in my experience people who enjoy the aesthetic exercise of
>constructing languages tend to be *more* aware of the problem of
>language death than other people are, and tend to be more
>appreciative of the unique nuances of exotic languages than other
>people are.  (Indeed, the most famous practicioners of the art,
>Tolkien, M.A.R. Barker, and Marc Okrand, are or were all professional
>linguists themselves, with a respectable amount of real-world
>linguistics work to their credit.)
Hey, even linguists need hobbies. Just don't expect me to take such
frivolous hobbies seriously. But I will make one exception, in all
seriousness.  Please forward me some information and citations of
publications, and the name of the guy who invented pseudo-Japanese
dinosaur speech. I intend to nominate it for the igNobel Prize. I'm
100% serious.

>One might as well object to anyone painting new paintings because it
>is "frivolous" to do so, in a world where old Renaissance masterworks
>may be crumbling for lack of restorative work...  Or object to anyone
>writing new books when there are ancient manuscripts which need to be
>photographed and catalogued.
Your analogies are massively flawed. A more direct analogy would be an
art restorer who spends his time "researching" and analyzing the art
techniques used in Atlantis and how they would be restored, if they
existed.

Let me give you a concrete, realworld example. Comedy Central
channel's "The Daily Show" presented the story of a librarian from the
Library of Congress. The story was presented completely deadpan,
because sometimes truth is funnier than fiction. The story covered the
librarian's personal avocation, "The Library of Erotica." Yes, the guy
collected porn. He collected MASSIVE amounts of porn. He had them all
indexed and cross-indexed and catalogued, and had extensively
documented everything he owned. The "Library" was his bedroom, in the
basement of his mother's house, where he lived. And the punchline: he
hired an aging, retired porn actress to make his own video. They
showed a segment of the film (with a heavy mosaic) and you can even
see his shelves of porn in the background, the scene was filmed in his
"Library."  Was this guy serious? Hell yes. He went on and on about
the scholarly aspects of his work. But it is obvious to everyone
(EXCEPT himself) that he's just another otaku who is obsessed with
porn.

>If there is anyone who has ever made time for the hobby of language
>construction by neglecting work they would otherwise have done
>cataloguing dying languages, I would be very surprised.  And yet, if
>that is not the case, your complaint is utterly vacuous.
I used it merely as an example. Life is too short to waste time
researching non-existent things. Even as an exercise in abstraction,
it needs SOME sort of basis in reality. Excuse me if I don't believe
in elves or talking dinosaurs.

>I guess I can only ask how you possibly justify spending time posting
>to newsgroups when you could be spending your time preserving obscure
>sub-dialects of Nez Pierce or something.
I'm not a professional linguist, by training I am an artist. But its
funny you should mention that. My longest-running activity on Usenet
is a continuous battle in some arts newsgroups over photo-conservation
issues relating to ink-jet prints. I do have professional
qualifications in photo-conservation. I am battling some unscrupulous
businessmen who are promoting "archival"  inkjet prints that
supposedly will last for hundreds of years, when photo-conservators
all clearly know that these prints will fade away in about 5 years.
Imagine what would have happened if Daguerrotypes had not been
archival, and every single photo from that period had been lost. That
would have been a tragic loss to the historical record of the time.
And now, due to the efforts of some fast-buck operators, we are faced
with that same possibility. If the entire photo industry goes ink-jet
(as it appears it will) then every photo print made in this
contemporary era will fade away and be irretrievably lost.  So, what
have YOU done for the historical record lately?  >"Idiots" "unworthy
of pity" who "waste their lives" indeed.  One could say >the >same of
someone who makes such immensely poorly thought out comments as you
>have here, sir.
I can say the same about your hasty, illogical, poorly thought out
response. But I invite you to try again.

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