From: Omixochitl2002@yahoo.com   
      
   Alienthe  wrote in   
   news:40353B01.5010307@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.   
      
   Don't biology, chemistry, history, etc. do that too?   
      
   >> 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   
      
   OTOH I heard that just before the 1990s war up to 25% of weddings in   
   Sarajevo were interethnic.   
      
   > 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.   
      
   And England is another.   
      
   >>>>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....   
      
   BTW, this reminds me: any possibility of Gibson writing a sequel to _All   
   Tomorrow's Parties_, or does he definitely move on after ever trilogy +   
   side stories combo?   
      
   >>>>>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?   
      
   Nope, I just forgot that I forgot to mention that she of the NASA   
   mattress purchase used to be one of my roommates.   
      
   > 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.   
      
   I didn't think the tatami was the defining feature, though.   
      
   >>>>>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.   
      
   Or at least where the law fails to have precedence over the cops'   
   inertia.   
      
   >> 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.   
      
   Have you followed the news about their Parliamentary elections?   
      
   >>>>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.   
   >>   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)