From: Alienthe@hotmail.com   
      
   Omixochitl wrote:   
      
   > Alienthe  wrote in   
   > news:4012DD73.3090302@hotmail.com:   
   >>Omixochitl wrote:   
   >>>Alienthe  wrote in   
   >>>news:4004751E.1010803@hotmail.com:   
   >>>   
   >>>>Omixochitl wrote:   
   >>>>   
   >>[time for another snip]   
      
      
   [ ... and another snip]   
      
   >>>Reminds me of linguistics class.  At one point the professor said   
   >>>that   
   >>>   
   >>>- Danes and Swedes who only studied Danish and Swedish claim to   
   >>>understand Norwegian   
   >>>- Norwegians who only studied Norwegian claim to not understand   
   >>>Danish - Danes who only studied Danish claim to understand Swedish   
   >>>- Swedes who only studied Swedish claim to not understand Danish   
   >>   
   >>This is at odds with what I have heard, also it is too simplified.   
   >   
   > Yeah, 'twas *Introduction* to Linguistics class.   
      
      
   Interesting. I thought physics was rather alone in basing   
   training on telling ever smaller lies.   
      
   [snip]   
      
   > Meanwhile, the professor said there's a similar issue with Serbian and   
   > Croatian.  Apparently they sound the same, Serbian uses the Cyrillic   
   > alphabet, Croatian uses the Roman alphabet, and one of her Croatian   
   > students kept insisting "I don't understand a single word Serbians say!!!".   
   > Later in the term the prof used a Serbian example of some structure of   
   > grammar and the student was all "Oh yeah, that means- OMG, I do understand   
   > them!"   
      
      
   The Balkan states have a lot of history of wars and conflict; not   
   sure that is conducive to learning of each others cultures. While   
   wars were once common in the Nordic countries things are more relaxed   
   in our times and listening to radio or watching TV broadcasts from   
   a neighbouring country is common and probably helps mutual understanding.   
   Bible translations brough on by the protestant wave over Europe   
   standardised the written language I hear oral language understanding   
   improved with TV. Italy is an example of where once mutually   
   incomprehensible dialects were evened out.   
      
   [snip]   
      
      
   >>>There was a little bit about how only stuff which had been compiled   
   >>>could be decompiled (hence Purple et al. surviving Tequila's   
   >>>boyfriend's stuffing all Nell's toys in the deke bin).   
   >>>   
   >>>Maybe that was supposed to imply that someone in the setting had   
   >>>a) considered the possibility of someone deking a living being   
   >>>b) wanted to prevent it   
   >>>c) figured "stuff which wasn't made in an M.C." included all living   
   >>>beings - which means s/he thought nobody compiled life, and may have   
   >>>even been right about that   
   >>>   
   >>Compiling a living being is of course technically difficult   
   >>but would also introduce problems in the world scenario of   
   >>the book which Neal Stephenson might have wanted to avoid.   
   >   
   > He seemed to want to avoid compilation of some dead stuff too - Nell could   
   > get rice from the compilers, but only paste instead of either fish or   
   > vegetables.  As for replication of people, see _Silence de la Cité_   
   > below....   
   >   
   >>>>That is a possibility, yet I just couldn't imagine expensive   
   >>>>mattresses in a nanotech economy. Would there be piracy in   
   >>>>   
   >>>Unless someone came up with a new idea for mattress filler and   
   >>>patented/copyrighted it to sell to peeps who would pay extra for   
   >>>something more designer than a garden-variety bed.  Kinda like the   
   >>>way I know someone who looked forward to replacing her futon with a   
   >>>mattress made with some kind of foam originally designed at NASA.   
   >>>   
   >>She would? I rather liked my futon, and not just for any   
   >>cyber points either. However it works best with tatami mats   
   >>which wear out after a few years.   
   >   
   > I like my futon too, on a metal frame.  When I lived with her we also had a   
   > futon for a sofabed (the metal frame could keep the futon either folded   
   > like a sofa or flat like a double bed).   
      
      
   "Her"? I am getting undeclared variables here; did I miss   
   out on a thread here?   
      
   Anyway, a futon with a metal frame doesn't quite sound like   
   a real futon. In Japan they are rather conservative about   
   such things. I guess the tatami-room is a cultural sanctuary   
   of some sort in Japanese families.   
      
   >>>Maybe Harv freaked out because the mediaglyphs for those were   
   >>>flashier than the mediaglyphs for generic mattresses, and hence more   
   >>>appealing to a 4-year-old at the M.C. who didn't understand money   
   >>>yet...?   
   >>>   
   >>Well, I can only guess, and my guesses on what a nanotech economy   
   >>would look like will probably be rather wrong. The only thing that   
   >>is fairly safe to bet is that it would mean serious upheavals in   
   >>the world economy.   
   >   
   > Yup.   
      
      
   [snip]   
      
      
   >>>>True. Still, a baby economy just seems so strange yet it is   
   >>>>clear that something somewhere has to give when the gender   
   >>>>imbalance issue becomes critical.   
   >>>>   
   >>>It's not so strange given that lots of people already pay bride   
   >>>prices and dowries for girls and boys (sometimes very young girls and   
   >>>boys, especially if the customers don't plan to collect the goods   
   >>>immediately).  In a sense, the baby economy's been around for   
   >>>centuries.  >:(   
   >>>   
   >>I thought it normally was the parents of the girl that had to   
   >>pay, are tehre many cases of the reverse being the norm?   
   >   
   > It varies.  The Maasai have bride prices and India has dowries (these days   
   > a dowry above $70 is illegal, but that law doesn't always get enforced) and   
   > so on.   
      
      
   There are many places where tradition has presedence over the law.   
      
   > Dowries have even gone sorta full-circle in some modern cases too.  The   
   > original official purpose of a dowry was the wife having some wealth of her   
   > own in case something happened to the husband.  Then came the days of her   
   > in-laws spending her dowry on themselves and demanding more from her   
   > parents.  Now in middle- and upper-class Iran, lots of couples "follow the   
   > dowry tradition" by spending a pile of money not on carpets and DVD players   
   > but on engineering or med school tuition for their daughters.  The idea is   
   > half still impressing the in-laws, half now giving the daughter valuables   
   > other people *can't* steal from her.   
      
      
   Interesting trend. Iran looks like a country that could go   
   many interesting places.   
      
   >>>Anyway, more fictional speculation on gender imbalances:   
   >>>   
   >>>_Ammonite_ (1992) by Nicola Griffith: set on a planet centuries after   
   >>>the first human colonists got hit with a native virus and lost   
   >>>contact with the rest of the galaxy: 100% of the men and boys and 20%   
   >>>of the women and girls killed, 80% of the women and girls left with   
   >>>alterations (including an electromagnetism-as-handwavium means for   
   >>>women to get each other pregnant).  Non-CP   
   >>>   
   >>Handwaving rarely is CP, handwaving approaching relativistic   
   >>velocities definitely isn't CP.   
   >   
   > Of course.  Still has some decent fight scenes, though.   
      
      
   That always helps. And big explosions too of course.   
      
   >>>_Chroniques du pays des mères_ (_The Maerlande Chronicles_ in   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)