From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear Subject: And now we are 3, or is it 4? Date: Mon, 07 May 90 16:59:47 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 1 (1) This is not a major statement from the editors, but rather simply a note to mark the beginning of Humanist's fourth year -- and to remark that Humanist is now appearing in 685 individual e-mail boxes as well as at 19 redistribution sites -- a prodigious accomplishment, for which we again thank Willard. From: Willard McCarty Subject: self-reflections in the machine Date: Fri, 04 May 90 18:06:13 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 1 (2) Since Mary Dee was bold to reveal herself by telling tales of a computer I also remember working with -- in fact [name-drop warning!] I toggled switches on an IBM 709 (with its 6000 vacuum tubes) in my youth -- I'll also uncover. I was once asked by a friend what sex I thought the computer had. Wanting to provoke her, I remarked that it was obviously female: bitchy, powerful, and mysterious. She said, "No, no, it's obviously male -- handy to have around the house, but when I don't need it I can turn it off and walk away." I'm fascinated by the number of people who think of the machine as neuter. There's almost nothing I regard as neuter. According to Chinese tradition, if I'm not badly mistaken, everything can be sorted into male and female. And what do we mean by neuter? Sexually unremarkable, which could suggest the same sex as the beholder? Willard McCarty From: "Eric Johnson DSU, Madison, SD 57042" Subject: Talk about computers Date: Sat, 05 May 90 08:55:07 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 2 (3) I believe it was I who enlarged the tidy question of the gender of words meaning "computer" in languages other than English. My (unexpressed) premise was recently stated by Willard McCarty: the way we talk about computers can "tell us a considerable amount about ourselves." It appears that the systems programmer I know may be using the masculine pronoun for a program (the VM/CMS operating system) rather than for the hardware ("he is thinking about crashing"). The comment is usually not about something good. The only times I have heard feminine references were in speeches of encouragement ("You can do it, girl!") or praise ("She found the file in the root directory!"). I am interested in the pronoun number used for a computer. "The" computer may be used of a mainframe rather than for "a" microcomputer, but it does not seem that simple. I used to think that those who were sophisticated about computing, and who recognized that there were significant differences among computers talked of "a" computer or of "computers," and that those who failed to understand the differences talked of "the" computer. It now appears to me that some very sophisticated computer users speak of "the" computer when they mean any computer: a micro, mini, or mainframe. Another matter (that may "tell us a considerable amount about ourselves") is that we talk about computers in a highly metaphoric way; technical and non-technical language about computers is filled with figures of speech of all kinds: files (a metaphor to start with) are packed, squeezed, crunched, and squashed; they can be killed, or they may hang or crash the system and force us to boot or reboot. I notice that my students "boot" a computer to start it (the original metaphor seems to be that the operating system pulls itself up by its own boot straps), but they also "boot" a computer by kicking out the operating system (rebooting it). Do HUMANISTs have observations about the metaphoric language of computing? Eric Johnson ERIC@SDNET.BITNET From: Willard McCarty Subject: language of computing Date: Sat, 05 May 90 16:44:10 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 3 (4) This query represents somewhat of a digression from the ongoing talk about the sex of computers and the number (singular or plural), but it is the same kind of question. When listening to others talk about the behaviour of computers I have often noticed what seemed to be an unusually high percentage of superstitious expressions. Sheizaf Rafaeli, as I recall, refers in an article to our habit of speaking in animistic terms about the machine, but I wonder if anyone has studied contemporary linguistic usage and found that superstition was unusually prevalent amongst systems programmers and other experts who deal with very complex computing systems. Willard McCarty From: "Peter D. Junger" Subject: First Impressions of the Machine Date: Mon, 7 May 90 13:05 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 4 (5) Mary Dee Harris's posting about not remembering `ever thinking of the machine as anything but a machine -- without gender' invokes memories. At the time of which she speaks--or maybe a little later, the IBM/360 had just come out--I was not working with assembly language. I was a lawyer working on Wall Street, for the most part assembling contracts, leases, and other legal instruments (instruments that to a surprising extent were composed of `so long as ...', `if ... then ... ', `else ...', `while ...', and similar control structures). And then we became peripherally involved with the case of a corporation that had acquired a computer and--as a consequence--ended up with a mismatch between billings and receivables of fifty million dollars, back in those innocent days when that was a lot of money. The corporation wrote off five million dollars for its losses from this matter and went out and purchased a lot of quill pens, while at my office several of us decided that it was time that we learned something about computers. Being a very establishment sort of firm, we were able to pull a few strings and infiltrate ourselves into the IBM Executive Computer Concepts Course--a peculiar cross between a boondoggle and a bootcamp for financial vice-presidents and comptrollers of Fortune 500 companies that were considering the initial purchase of a computer. The course was taught with a simulated time machine: on the first day the computer had just been invented and the only way to program was machine language; the next day assembler was invented; the day following came Fortran; the day following that introduced Cobol, and so-on to APL ... that was on the day they were going to demonstrate the C(athode) R(ay) T(ube), only it was broken. And so, for me too, the first introduction to computers was to registers and to `the Chinamen inside the computer with abacuses that really made it work.' And then years later, when I was trying to write a filter that would insert double underlining into a Wordstar file, I learned BASIC, which didn't work because it would not treat a carriage return as an ASCII character, and PASCALZ, which worked but excruciatingly slowly and required that I like to the machine by telling it that ASCII characters were simply bytes, and finally assembly language, which not only worked but also gave up the pretense that there was no such thing as a register inside the machine. And now whenever I work with a computer I sense the data being moved on conveyor belts through the machine, looping around, like marbles in a pinball machine: tahpucka, tahpucka, ..., tahpucka. The computer is not alive, it does not have gender, it does not have--except most periphally--a G(raphical) U(ser) I(nterface). It is an abacus, disguised is a great, big Rube Goldberg contraption. Peter D. Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, Ohio From: DEL2%phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: The sex of computers Date: Sat, 05 May 90 11:20:40 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 5 (6) I was grateful for Willard's contribution on the sex of computers. We are in danger of making some fundamental linguistic muddles which in my own field (not generally at the forefront of linguistics) were exposed and attacked as long ago as 1961 by James Barr, *The Semantics of Biblical Language*. Only in a language like English where all nouns are neuter unless explicitly male or female could the use of the pronoun be at all significant. If 'computer' in Dutch is a masculine noun of course it will be 'hij', just as 'teknon' (child) in greek is 'auto' (neuter) not 'autos'. But to translate these into English as 'he' (for the computer) or 'it' (for the child) would simply display ignorance of the workings of language. dare I say that parts of this discussion have come perilously close to displays of such ignorance? I liked Willard's analysis of 'metaphorical sex' but feel it's potentially simplistic. Is a car in English 'she' because it is temperamental, or 'she' because it is a symbol of masculinity or 'she' because (like a woman) it gives one a special sort of thrill? Or do males generally personalise things as female, because another male would be a potential rival? One would need to know a great deal more about the sex-stereotyping which influenced the original choice, as well as that (potentially very different!) of the other users of the terminology. Douglas de Lacey From: "Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981" Subject: medieval robots? Date: 4 May 1990 19:44:05 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 6 (7) I am enjoying the discussions of the Golem, but I have to ask: since when is sixteenth-century Prague medieval? Even my advisor, who was fairly expansive about the boundaries of the medieval period, stopped with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, University of Illinois at Chicago From: "HALPORN,JAMES,CLAS" Subject: GOLEM AND COMPUTER Date: 4 May 90 20:07:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 7 (8) In an amusing essay by Primo Levi (from "Other People's Trades" I think), he talks about learning how to use a computer. He compares it to the Golem, because you have to put a disk in its mouth to get it to work. Since Jim O'Donnell insists on broadcasting his observation, I'll point out to him yet again that you can buy connectors that will change gender. From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 3.1359 Golems (62) Date: Sun, 06 May 90 14:36 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 8 (9) Harry Bauer? The GREAT golem film was Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS. The mad genius lives in the odl town in the bowels of the highly-technologized aerial city of the far, thank heavens! future, and the workers there are slaves, before transistorized golemniks or golemnikgals? are invented. Kessler at UCLA From: Itamar Even-Zohar Subject: Re: 3.1355 Queries: Bibliography Software; Nodes; SCORE (63) Date: Sat, 05 May 90 11:17:34 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 9 (10) I have heard (not confirmed officially from any source) that Dragonfly Software are planning to make versions of IBID., Nota Bene's bibliographic software, for both Word Perfect and Word. This will let WP and Word users have one of the privileges of NB, if this is true. As it looks now, NB goes deeper and deeper into fulfilling the needs of researchers and writers, while WP is going in completely other directions (perhaps where the large market is). I expect NB to come up with more IBID-like products in future, and WP & Word will probably always lag behind in these domains. Itamar Even-Zohar. From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: Re: 3.1355 Queries: Bibliography Software; Nodes; SCORE (63) Date: Sun, 06 May 90 05:03:16 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 10 (11) on bibliography packages: dragonfly is working on a version of ibid for word perfect and for word. no release date as yet. perhaps you could be a beta-tester for them. don't say i sent you. From: Harry Hahne Subject: Re: 3.1355 Bibliographic software Date: May 6, 1990 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 11 (12) Regarding Mark West's query about bibliographic software that works with Word Perfect, LIBRARY MASTER sounds like just what you want. It is a database manager designed especially to meet the needs of those who work with a lot of textual and bibliographic information. It overcomes the limitations of typical database managers (such as fixed length fields, column based reports and limited support for non-English text) for this type of application. LIBRARY MASTER allows easy entry of multilingual text of arbitrary length, rapid searches on any combination of fields, and flexible report formatting. The flexible report generator is works especially well with variable length text. Reports can produce documents in the file formats of many popular word processors, including Word Perfect. Annotated bibliographies are automatically formatted according to manuals of writing style such as Modern Language Association, University of Chicago, American Psychological Association and Turabian. Data may be imported from online library catalogs, online information services, other database programs and text files. If Mark West or anyone else wants more information or a copy of the demonstration program, they may contact me. Harry Hahne Wycliffe College, University of Toronto From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 3.1355 Queries: Bibliography Software Date: Mon, 7 May 90 08:00:46 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 12 (13) Dragonfly's IBID works only with Nota Bene. A stand alone package of similar or superior power (except for being available inside the word processor) is Personal Bibliographic Software's Pro-Cite. You can import PRO-CITE output into your word processor. It can extract references from a text file prepared by Word Perfect and generate the appropriate reference list. The following information is a couple of years old: Personal Bibliographic Software, Inc. 412 Longshore Drive Ann Arbor, MI 48105 313-996-1580 The price used to be c. $400. I believe there may be site licensing discounts; you might ask your computer services organization is there is a site license. I haven't seen the package discounted anywhere. There are DOS and Mac versions. There are some add-ins for doing on-line searching of commercial bibliography services. There is a comparative review of bibliographic database programs in Science, Vo. 235, 2/27/87, pp. 1093-1096, Ruth E. Wachtel, Personal Bibliographic Databases. I have heard a rumor on USENET that SCI-MATE, a major competitor of PRO-CITE reviewed there, is defunct. Can anyone confirm or correct this rumor? Alas, learning one word processor after another is the common fate of all users of word processors. I actually use Nota Bene but anticipate having to learn a new system in a few years as products improve. The really upleasant situation to be avoided is having to use several bad word procesors simultaneously. From: Subject: Bibliographic software Date: Mon, 7 May 90 15:35 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 13 (14) Mark West asked about bibliographic software. My experience tells me that you're right to conclude that NB's Ibid. is the best there is. Per- haps others have had better luck, but I have looked in vain for something to match either Nota Bene as a word processor for longer manuscripts des- tined for publication or Ibid. as a bibliographic utility. The newest version even solves most of the problems with multi-language entries. I too am wed to WordPerfect for the time being. It is good and getting better and better. I will say, however, that I would switch to Nota Bene in a minute (I have used it for one large project several years ago. The manual is daunting, but learning the program is relatively easy, and the results marvelous.) if they would support downloadable fonts other than HP's own. I've asked but they show little interest. One possible sidelight. In my attempts to transfer work from WordPerfect to and from Nota Bene, I came across a great little program called "Word for Word" which will transfer files in and out of most formats. It works quite well (better than I expected) and the help line staff was extremely helpful. Alas, I could not solve the problem of transferring italics as WordPerfect and Nota Bene treat the issue differently. Lacking that I would be transferring back and forth regularly. Hope that there's something useful in all this. Randy Donaldson (Donaldson@LOYVAX) From: Alan D Corre Subject: Gender Date: Fri, 4 May 90 16:57:12 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 5 (15) Clearly there is some connection between sex and gender, but in most languages it is not clear cut. English pays little attention to sex/gender. It differentiates chiefly in the third person singular pronouns. Occasionally inanimate things are called "she" but this is often rather deliberate. (Consider the news item that went something like this: "Her Grace christened the ship by breaking a bottle of champagne over her bows, after which she gently slid into the water.") Tamil, a Dravidian language quite unrelated to English behaves in much the same way. It has three third person pronouns like English, but there is no adjectival concord by gender. The third person verb does have separate endings though. On the other hand, German, a language closely related to English, has complex gender distinctions that often relate to the shape of the word rather than the sex of the object referred to. Thus the word for "girl" is neuter, and referred to as "it" because the word has a diminutive ending which selects the neuter gender. The Romance languages lack a neuter gender, or largely so, and squeeze all objects into the masculine/feminine dichotomy. This is often determined by the shape of the word. Thus the word for "sentry" in French is feminine, and referred to as "she" although women rarely fulfill this role. In Latin some words of typically feminine shape can however be masculine, poeta, for example. One looks in vain for logic in natural languages which constantly change, ironing out some irregularities while creating others. We may ask why the distinction exists at all. Professor Rabin of the Hebrew University told me of an individual of his acquaintance who had unilaterally decided that gender distinctions in Hebrew were unnecessary in the modern world, and refused to use any feminines, referring even to his wife as "he". (I mean the English "he"; the word "he" in Hebrew happens to mean "she"). I imagine that most people would find this quite difficult. It is worth pointing out that Semitic languages are particular to distinguish gender in the "you" forms, even where some other distinctions are obliterated in modern dialects. Accordingly one finds that the recipes on the side of food packages in Hebrew ("take one tablespoon..add water..stir") are invariably in the feminine, while the instructions for operating a hacksaw will be in the masculine. It's easy to see how this fosters sex roles, and probably this is part of the key to the whole issue. Natural languages have many subtle markers which put varying degrees of space between interlocutors. In a recent showing of "People's Court" Judge Wapner chastised a defendant who addressed him as "man". The individual replied: "Sorry, judge." I also once had occasion to calm a colleague who was incensed at a student who had used the expression "..and all that shit.." in an exam paper. I pointed out that the student was probably unaware that such a locution may be ok in the local bar, but is not to be used in written English, and he simply should be advised accordingly. These expressions give cues as to the relationship between speakers, and sometimes misfire. French has a familiar "tu" and a formal "vous" and even verbs to indicate the usage ("tutoyer" -- to call someone "tu"). Whether one uses one or the other can sometimes be a matter of difficulty. It's interesting to note that in local Tunisian French, "tu" is routinely used, presumably because the colonists didn't see fit to address the locals ever by the polite form, which is itself a comment on social attitudes. Gender differences are probably tied up with these subtle ways that we differentiate you/me boy/girl lower/higher and so on. Such things can be exasperating or fascinating, and that will probably determine whether you enjoy studying foreign languages, or avoid them like the plague. From: Subject: Query: Oppenheimer's Gita Date: Fri, 4 May 90 16:35 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 14 (16) At Trinity, when they exploded the 1st atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Does anybody know what translation (and what verse & chapter) he was quoting from? My father-in-law has serached through several translations, but this wording has not been evident in any of them. Thanks -- Kevin Berland From: Charles Ess Subject: Scientific wordprocessing Date: Fri, 04 May 90 18:15:58 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 15 (17) On behalf of a colleague who finds writing equations in WordPerfect cumbersome at best -- any experience/recommendations on scientific/ mathematically-oriented wordprocessors? (He has a 386 machine with lots of memory and harddisk, if that is pertinent). Also -- experience/recommendations on 2400 baud modems, especially as available from mail-order? As the American wandering through Switzerland (German-speaking part) was heard to say, Danke field mouse (Danke viel mals) Charles Ess Drury College From: DEL2%phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: Queries Date: Sat, 05 May 90 11:22:32 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 16 (18) A colleague has asked about a specific point with potentially broader implications. Can any Humanist help on either level? He recalls seeing (but cannot now find) a paper on the unity of Luke and Acts which used as an argument in favour a list of words, longer phrases, and motifs which the two had in common. His question, when I confessed ignorance as to the source, was, Is there a program which will identify any phrases or word-groups which two works have in common? Now I confess that although interested in stylometry, I have never seen such sophisticated attempts at measuring it--perhaps just a measure of my own ignorance. Can anyone enlighten me? Douglas de Lacey From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: Re: 3.1350 Queries (89) Date: Sun, 06 May 90 04:53:56 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 17 (19) on kaspar hauser. why don't you write to the goetheanium in arlesheim, swtizerland. they must have a library etc. i think the topic is fantastic! From: psc90!jdg@dartvax.dartmouth.edu (Dr. Joel Goldfield) Subject: "Siegen Conference perplexity" Date: Sat, 5 May 90 17:29:14 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 18 (20) A colleague recently wrote on HUMANIST that he had not received any registration materials for the Siegen conference although he had sent in all requested information a month or two prior. The same is true for me. Are others also in the dark? Regards, Joel D. Goldfield Plymouth State College (NH) joelg@psc.bitnet From: LINDYK@Vax2.Concordia.CA Subject: RE: 3.1333 Meta-Discussions: Matrix and Addresses (57) Date: Sun, 6 May 90 12:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 19 (21) Hello, I quite agree with Mary Dee Harris. I am in the same situation as she is and I quite appreciate having a name and address at the end of a message. This way I can edit out the very long header. I hope the the situation of us modem users is taken into consideration. Sincerely Bogdan KARASEK lindyk@vax2.concordia.ca From: Marc Bregman Subject: Scripture Fonts Date: Mon, 7 May 1990 14:21 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 20 (22) We have heard mention a few times in the last few days of Scripture Fonts (re the communications by John Bloom and Bill Ball), produced by Zondervan Electronic Publishing. I would be very appreciative to hear more about this from anyone who knows. Pehaps even John Hughes, who seems to have been involved in its development would care to contribute a description. I, for one, would NOT consider this commercialism. Since I live outside the US, it is too expensive to simply call Zondervan to get more information, as has been suggested. Marc Bregman, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 3.1350 Queries (89) Date: Sun, 06 May 90 14:18 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 21 (23) And nodes in Budapest, for that matter, if any? Kessler@ucla From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear Subject: Oxford Text Archive Short List Date: Mon, 07 May 90 20:56:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 7 (24) Two new versions of the Oxford Text Archive Snapshot have been placed on the file server: The TAGGED VERSION of the Oxford Text Archive Snapshot should be processable by any SGML-conformant parser capable of dealing with tag minimisation, e.g. MarkIt or XGML CheckMark. A version in canonical form, with all end tags supplied, is available on request for use with e.g. Author/Editor. -------------------- [A complete version of this list is now available through the fileserver, s.v. OTALIST SGML. You may obtain a copy by issuing the command -- GET filename filetype HUMANIST -- either interactively or as a batch-job, addressed to ListServ@Brownvm. Thus on a VM/CMS system, you say interactively: TELL LISTSERV AT BROWNVM GET filename filetype HUMANIST; if you are not on a VM/CMS system, send mail to ListServ@Brownvm with the GET command as the first and only line. For more details see the "Guide to Humanist". Problems should be reported to David Sitman, A79@TAUNIVM, after you have consulted the Guide and tried all appropriate alternatives.] The FORMATTED version of the Short List of Texts held in the Oxford Text Archive is sorted primarily by language, within that by author and within that by title. -------------------- [A complete version of this list is now available through the fileserver, s.v. OTALIST FORMAT. You may obtain a copy by issuing the command -- GET filename filetype HUMANIST -- either interactively or as a batch-job, addressed to ListServ@Brownvm. Thus on a VM/CMS system, you say interactively: TELL LISTSERV AT BROWNVM GET filename filetype HUMANIST; if you are not on a VM/CMS system, send mail to ListServ@Brownvm with the GET command as the first and only line. For more details see the "Guide to Humanist". Problems should be reported to David Sitman, A79@TAUNIVM, after you have consulted the Guide and tried all appropriate alternatives.] From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 3.1347 Slang; Matrix; Euphemisms (86) Date: Sun, 06 May 90 14:10 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 22 (25) were one to be offended at all, then b@lls is just as offensive as Great Balls of Fire! and for that matter isnt it silly and prudishly hypocritical for learned folks to euphemize to satisfy a long dead Queen Victoria? Gee whiz! Kessler From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: note for Humanist Date: Tue, 1 May 90 16:55:41 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 23 (26) In response to the request for computer in various languages: Chinese is dian (1st tone) nao (3rd tone). The first character is the word for electric power and is used in various compounds such as the word for movies. The second character is the word for brain, e.g. the part of your body inside your skull. I asked a Japanese visitor what the word for computer is in Japanese. He said it is "computer" which is spelled out in the phonetic alphabet. From: Subject: scientific wordprocessing Date: Tue, 8 May 90 08:39 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 24 (27) My colleagues in the sciences tell me that TEX (available in mainframe and pc versions) is the wordprocessor of choice. As I understand it, the program works much more like dedicated wordprocessors--very little attempt at "what you see is what you get". The codes are there, obvious, and the user must insert them. Randy Donaldson (Donaldson@LOYVAX) From: Jan Eveleth Subject: Scientific Word Processors Date: Tue, 08 May 90 09:37:56 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 25 (28) Physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers I know use T3 (T-cubed) for the express purpose of having functional equation writing properties. The program should benefit by running on the 386 platform as it is quite large. Learning it is no joy but the results seem to be quite nice. As of Oct. 1988: TCI Software Research Inc. 1190 Foster Road Las Cruces, New Mexico 88001 (800) 874-2383 Inside of New Mexico or outside US: (505) 522-4600 List price $595 Jan Eveleth Yale University From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: Scientific word processing Date: Tue, 08 May 90 10:42 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 26 (29) On Mr. Ess's query about scientific word processors: Probably the best software for mathematical work is TeX (pronounced "tech"). Although it is not especially easy to learn (no "menus", "icons", and other claptrap) and is a bit clunky in its handling of some of the standard features of word processing (such as setting margins), it handles virtually all mathematical notation very well. Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: ANNA MORPURGO DAVIES Subject: RE: 4.0006 Queries (97) Date: Tue, 8 May 90 17:58 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 27 (30) In answer to Charles Ess (4 May) request for a scientific word processor to write equations. I am a comparative linguist who needs endless symbols and find T3 Scientific Word Processing very useful. I persuaded my brother who is a physicist to use it and he has never looked back. The program is produced by TCI Software Research, Inc. 1190-B Foster Road. Las Cruces, NM 88001. Tel. (800)874-2383 or (505)522-4600. Apparently the latest upgrade (T3 2.3), which I have not yet installed, is compatible with Word Perfect. It requires an IBM compatible with a fixed disk and 640K memory. Anna Morpurgo Davies From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 4.0004 Bibliographic Software (122) Date: Tue, 8 May 90 09:12:27 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 28 (31) In the forum on bibliographic software Randy Donaldson (Donaldson@LOYVAX) comments: [deleted quotation] The Lodestar Utilities (Lodestar Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 2870, Canoga Park, CA 91306, USA, phone 818-340-0807), priced at $65, can generate a Nota Bene printer driver for any collection of HP download fonts. It the character set of the font is different from what Nota Bene expects you may have to create an appropriate substitution table. The Utilities include a downloader that can be invoked from within Nota Bene. The NB manual is long and rather formidable, but its organization is head and shoulders above that of the WP manual, in my opinion, and it has indices and tables of contents (in each volume and part), plus abstracts in each chapter, that make it much easier to use than any other word processor manual I have dealt with. The only problem, maybe, is that large sections of it have actually to be read, and it is, after all, a technical manual, not a work of literature. From: Subject: bibliographic software Date: Mon, 7 May 90 20:26 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 29 (32) All the raves about Ibid tempt me, at least for a moment, to move into the DOS world. But for the moment put be down as a fan of the bibliography maintenance facilities in Scribe for VMS. There is a neat bibliography maintenance program for CP/M called (originally enough) Bibliography. It was manufactured by Pro/Tem software, and I got it for about $20 from Spite Software, which was unloading a lot of CP/M stuff at firesale prices. I have seen ads for bibliographic software for DOS from Pro/Tem as well. If they are true to their CP/M form, their program will work well with other wordprocessors and will work as a sort of pre-processor. I think Pro/Tem also makes a text-oriented DBMS (which can handle random unfixed field lengths and so on and is useful for scholarly purposes) called Notebook II. (This would be the DOS offspring of another CP/M parent called Notebook.) John Burt Brandeis University From: John Lavagnino Subject: Explaining computers Date: Tue, 8 May 90 10:55 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 30 (33) As a novice, as a systems programmer, as a graduate student in English, I have never called a computer anything but "it." To think of computers as people, or as supernatural entities rather than dull mechanisms, isn't a way of thinking that seems helpful or natural to me---though I admit I did use to ask people who complained that "it isn't working right" whether they'd remembered to light the three black candles. The superstition I evolved to explain computers is the notion of the Humor Department. I was often struck when working with VAXes how their software, generally pretty good, would tend to have unaccountable flaws. An early C compiler from Digital, for example, included a very complete library of the usual functions found on Unix systems---except for one or two, and these were ones that amounted to a few lines of code, not anything fancy. The people who wrote this compiler obviously knew what they were doing. They couldn't have just forgotten. It would have been easy to put these functions in. It must be the case, therefore, that any product Digital develops has to go through the Humor Department before it is released; and the Humor Department studies the product at length and decides on one tiny change that can be made that will render it almost useless. To my mind, hardware and software do have personality traits, but only in the same way that writing does: these traits derive from those of the creator, and the creation doesn't have the ability to go off and develop on its own. The Humor Department is a comic version of this view---the "real" reason for these software failings is probably lack of imagination and the usual resistance to the portability of software; but no matter what, it's got to be human agency that's behind these things. (By the way, my theory cannot be applied to other manufacturers without modification. IBM, for example, does not have a Humor Department, because the entire corporation is one vast Humor Department.) John Lavagnino, Brandeis From: "Bill Ball" Subject: anthropomorphizing machines Date: Tue, 08 May 90 14:21:21 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 31 (34) God I hope my computer is an IT. As often as I am elbow deep into its internals, I'd need a MD or permission from some animal rights group if it isn't. Actually I have always resisted anthropomorphizing things, especially consumer goods. Seems to me that endowing things with human qualities is a two-way street. We might warm up to the things but we also tend to make people more mechanical/manufactured/instrumental in our minds. The good Dr Kant and I are disinclined to do that. Well the thread on computer gender has been interesting, but in a way it's too easy of a project. After all computers are tangible. Now what kind of beast is 'the network'? How are we gonna reify that sucker? ((( Bill Ball c476721@UMCVMB ) Dept. Pol. Sci. ) U. Mo.-Columbia ) From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Subject: the cruel joke of the paperless office and the sacrifice of Date: 8 May 1990, 16:05:09 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 32 (35) paper, skin and eyes As a person who would like to bring back Zeus-worship because it would help preserve oak trees, I like the idea of saving paper, and my office is full of newspaper, cardboard and laser printer mistakes. I try to save paper, but I do value it, in its place, over what I can see on a VDT. A VDT, even in its best affordable present incarnation, causes us to strain at focusing on a point about fifteen inches from our eyes, for hours on end, with our necks and backs locked rigidly. The repetitive motion of our fingers on the keyboard, while less cramping than writing with the two fingers wrapped around a pen or pencil, creates an occupational hazard of arthritic stress on wrist and finger bones. Neither the seeing nor the sitting is exactly comfortable or natural. Perhaps someone under fifty can resist getting headaches or cramped fingers: hence young hackers. But computing is an unnatural act, done mostly by shy people, privately, with some physical discomfort. Could we get that straight, and then go on to talk about saving paper? Roy Flannagan From: Mark Ritchie Subject: Golem Date: Tue, 08 May 90 09:17:56 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 11 (36) The classic film about the Golem of Prague is the 1920 UFA film. WATERLOO MEDIA CATALOGUING SYSTEM TITLE: der Golem - Wie Er In Die Welt Kam or: the Golem: How He Came Into The World the Man Of Clay SUBJECT HEADINGS: Moving-pictures, Germany INTERSUBJECT HEADINGS: Cinema Studies - Features DEWEY CLASS: 791 DESCRIPTION: PRODUCTION COMPANY: Universum Film Aktien Gesellschaft (UFA) PRODUCTION DATE: 1920 COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Germany ORIGINAL LANGUAGE: German PRODUCTION CREDITS: Acting: Albert Steinruck Acting: Ernst Deutsch Acting: Lyda Salmonova Acting: Paul Wegener Design: Hans Poelzig Design: Rochus Gliese Direction: Carl Boese Direction: Paul Wegener Photography: Guido Seeber Photography: Karl Freund Script: Henrik Galeen Script: Paul Wegener ABSTRACT: For this version of THE GOLEM, Wegener returned to the legend, setting the film in medieval Prague: Rabbi Loew gives life to the Golem who falls in love with the Rabbi's daughter and brings fear to the emperor's court. He is destroyed by an innocent child who offers him an apple then removes the Star of David from his chest, sending him crashing to the ground. Mark Ritchie | Tel: (519) 888-4070 Media Librarian | Fax: (519) 888-6197 Audio-Visual Centre | University of Waterloo | NetNorth: avfilm@watdcs.Uwaterloo.ca -------- From: Marc Bregman Subject: Collage Date: Tue, 8 May 1990 17:15 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 33 (37) I am working on an idea of applying the term Collage to Midrash, a particular type of ancient Jewish Literature. I would appreciate any bibliography on the subject of Collage (Pastische, Cento, etc.) as an art form, particularly in any kinds of literary texts, especially ancient ones. I am particularly interested in the psychological effects which Collage has on its audience and the heurmenutic problems of interpreting such works. Any leads will be most highly appreciated. Marc Bregman, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: WARMCN@AC.DAL.CA Subject: "translatio studii" Theme Date: Tue, 8 May 90 14:10 ADT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 34 (38) I am looking for references to the "translatio studii" theme--that is to the myth of the western movement of civilization. The AENEID is, of course, a central text in this tradition (Troy to Rome); later this would involve Britain (Rome to London). In the eighteenth century the idea is expressed as European, usually English, culture moving to the Americas. Berkeley's "Verses on the Prospect of Planting the Arts and Learning in America" is a good, if short, eighteenth-century example. Does anybody know of any other eighteenth-century or Renaissance examples? David McNeil (WARMCN@AC.DAL.CA) From: Ken Steele Subject: 2400 Baud Modems Date: Mon, 07 May 90 21:51:21 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 35 (39) I have no specific brand name recommendations for 2400 baud modems, although I have no reason to complain about my GVC Supermodem 2400, but I do have some recently-learned advice to share: avoid internal modems! A few months ago I tried to upgrade from a 1200 baud external modem to a 2400 baud internal one, since I finally had a full-size AT case with plenty of expansion slots, and thought it might be nice to clean up some of the clutter on my desk. Almost immediately there were hardware conflicts that three separate batteries of experts could not resolve: I/O addresses, interrupts, COM port settings, etc were the least of the trouble. Erratic problems with various programs occurred without rhyme or reason, yet disappeared whenever the modem card was removed. Ultimately, the only solution was to exchange the internal GVC for an external GVC -- which was just as well, because within a month I needed to use it on a PS/2, and its micro-channel architecture would not have accepted an AT- style modem card anyway. External modems, though aesthetically less pleasing, offer fewer internal hassles and greater compatibility across machines. Any brand should do -- I had absolutely no problem with my first one, either, an Avatex 1200, which was simply the cheapest in town. Ken Steele University of Toronto From: GA0708@SIUCVMB Subject: derogatory terms of reference to students Date: Tue, 08 May 90 14:11:01 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 36 (40) A few weeks ago someone raised the question about slang terms for students. At the time I glanced at these remarks without giving them much thought--although I remember one in particular. This correspondent believed th at the reason we don't make up derogatory references to students is because we recognize them as our bread and butter. I think he may also have said that we are, after all, very fond of the little buggers. As a matter of fact, we do speak of students--both undergraduate and graduate alike--in derogatory terms. We just don't have an argot for describing them. What we do is repeat the incredibly bizarre things that they say and write. For example, I like to tell people about a reading several students gave to a line in Shakespeare's Sonnet 116--"It [i.e., love] is the star to every wandring barke"--which has a stray dog baying at the heavens. Or very recently one of my students wrote that Lady Macbeth was "roofless." But I don't think I have ever had any as funny as a couple printed recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education ("Marginalia"). Did you know that King David was an Israelite king who was always fighting the Falafelites; or that Sir Francis Drake circumcised the globe with a 100-foot clipper? Professors, being articulate and verbose, are not as likely as carnival people to invent words to describe outsiders. But by recording, or at least remembering, these gaffes, we make clear that we, the teachers, "never" appear ridiculous while our feckless disciples always can be counted on to amuse us. In time, of course, they give us less cause to be amused. Herb Donow Southern Illinois U. at Carbondale From: psc90!jdg@dartvax.dartmouth.edu (Dr. Joel Goldfield) Subject: "Finally, some colleagues who admit "it."" Date: Tue, 8 May 90 23:01:42 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 37 (41) Thanks, HUMANIST colleagues Lavagnino and Ball, for lending some support to the anti-anthropomorphic current regarding computer "gender" (ugh). Somehow, the whole golem discussion seems to fit creepily into this look at computer use in the life of humanists. Regards, Joel D. Goldfield Plymouth State College (NH) joelg@psc.bitnet From: brad inwood Subject: computer personalities Date: Wed, 09 May 90 08:42:24 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 38 (42) Our (Classics) department has always had some named and therefore personified computers. Our original PC was dubbed Clytaemnestra by our sometime depart- mental secretary, who was rather resistant to computerization. When the first AT came along, it immediately became Orestes, named by the academics who used him for research purposes, and so named in part as an assertion of the positive value of computers -- a gentle barb in the politics of technological advancement. But then came the peripateia, and Orestes was transferred to the secretaries for administrative work -- and in fact to the same technophobic secretary! So poor Orestes suffered a sex-change and deification in one swoop and became Nemesis. The AST which replaced the old AT for research purposes was dubbed Pylades -- a logical substitution for his pal Orestes, now in limbo I assume. Meanwhile we hired new secretaries, with no trace of resentment for machines. Their computers remain unnamed to this day. And so, by the way, does my own. I wonder if there is anything typical in this story. Do we name what we fear and wonder at? Has anyone else used computer nomenclature to mediate the stress of new technology? And do those of us who most comfortably live with machines least need to name them? From: O.B. Hardison Subject: RE: 4.0002 Thinking about computers (166) Date: 9 May 90 01:14:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 39 (43) There are two subjects here (1) the sex of computers and (2) the metaphorics of computers - especially metaphorics relating computers to human moltives/bahavior/attributes. Take the second first. One very intresting phenomenon is the fact that scientific literature is saturated with the metaphorics of computers. Many metaphors are found in Pamela McCorduck's excellent MACHINES WHO THINK (1979). The relevance of metaphors for thinking about computers is recognized powerfully in Alan Turing's seminal paper in MIND (1950 "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which asserts, "I believe that by the end of the twentieth century, the use of words and general educated opinion will be altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without fear of being contradicted." I have traced a good many of the metaphors of machine life, and related them to the ngpoing debate, nn the chapter "Deus ex Machina" in DISAPPEARING THROUGH THE SKYLIGHT: CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE 20TH CENTURY (New York, Viking, 1989), p. 284ff. Toward the end of this chapter I review some of the still more outrageous (but fascinating and revealing) metaphors being used in the scientific community in relation to machine evolution and even to the interchangeability of machine and carbon-based intelligence. I think in the light of this body of metaphorica that human-like robots of science fiction - and also the human-like robots increasingly rolling off the assembly lines - can be understood in one sense at least as EXPRESSIONS OF THE IMPULSE TO MAKE THE METAPHORS A REALITY. Now, as to item (1) - the sex of computers - I think it is less a matter of concers which sex is choses than the fact that A sex is chosen. To choose a sex is to use a metaphor attributing life (intelligent?) to a machine. There may be good reasons for that beyond the impulse to understand what is coming into being in human terms, but I'll stop here. --O. B. Hardison, Jr. From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0010 Computers: Superstition, Reification, & Stress (79) Date: Tue, 8 May 90 14:10:31 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 40 (44) I was sitting with my programmer last night, and his comment at one frustrating moment was "What's that sucker doing now." Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: Re: 4.0012 Queries: Collage and "Translatio Studii" (28) Date: Wed, 09 May 90 06:02:22 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 41 (45) on collage: i think you are barking up the *right* tree. i have for several years thinking of midrash as cento or mosaic. From: Michel LENOBLE Subject: RE: 4.0012 Queries: Collage and "Translatio Studii" (28) Date: Wed, 9 May 90 00:06 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 42 (46) In answer to Marc Bregman's message concerning bibliographical sources about the topic of collage I would first read the book written by Antoine Compagnon "La seconde main" published by Le Seuil. Michel Lenoble Litterature Comparee E-MAIL: lenoblem@cc.umontreal.ca From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: Re: 4.0012 Queries: Collage and "Translatio Studii" (28) Date: Wed, 9 May 90 08:45:06 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 43 (47) In reply to Marc Bregman's request: Take a look at an essay by David Antin, a poet who has taught visual arts at Univ of California San Diego for many years, on the subject of collage and modernist poetry. The essay appeared in Boundary 2, a journal of postmodern literature in the early 1970s. Antin does a very interesting job of relating the collage techniques of the dada artists, such as Schwiters and Arp, to the poetry of Eliot and Pound. I will try to find my copy of the essay and send you a more precise citation (or a photocopy if you can't locate it in Jerusalem). From: ruhleder@sloth.ICS.UCI.EDU Subject: TeX and LaTeX Date: Tue, 08 May 90 15:10:55 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 44 (48) TeX is a typesetter's dream: described in the preface to ``The TeXbook'' (by Donald E. Knuth, one of the founders of computer science) as ``... a new typesetting system intended for the creation of beautiful books--- and especially for books th contain a lot of mathematics.'' It is DEFINITELY not WYSIWYG, but it truly will transform your manuscript into ``pages whose typographic quality is comparable to that of the world's finest printer.'' The catch: it's not easy to learn, especially if you are trying to produce very intricate documents. And forget graphics, unless you want to torture yourself further by learning ``pic'' or you can afford a Sun Workstation with suntools (ie. picturetool). The alternative: LaTeX (billed as ``A Document Preparation System'' with a manual by Leslie Lamport of DEC) is a special version of TeX which adds a collection of simplified commands. This is what I have used to prepare formulas for statistics classes, and it does a good job. I also use it for all my writing. Note: I don't know what kind of equipment you need; I do know that there is a program on the Mac called ``textures'' that I believe converts from ``TeX'' to whatever is on the Mac and back. Karen Ruhleder From: Willard McCarty Subject: scientific wordprocessing Date: Tue, 08 May 90 18:40:14 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 45 (49) A friend of mine, a mathematically inclined historian of science, has worked through just about every wordprocessing package suitable for equations. Despite his general dislike of WordPerfect, he now regards it as the best such package. What he has shown me looked impressive indeed. T-cubed I discovered years ago. It was originally developed in the UCSD p-system and ever after has dragged some of the features it was given then from version to new version. It seemed to me, when I knew it, a brilliant tour de force but unfortunately saddled with these old features, inappropriate in a DOS environment, such as it own internal file structure. Sorry I cannot remember more. Willard McCarty From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 4.0009 Software: Scientific word processing; Bibliography Date: Wed, 9 May 90 11:13:58 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 46 (50) TeX is not properly a word processor - it is a markup system; you supply the text editor. In most cases, when someone says TeX they actually mean TeX + LaTeX. TeX is a fairly low level system. LaTeX is a "macro package" that implements a high level scheme of markup. I think that TeX/LaTeX with a laser printer produce about the best-looking output of the various scientific word processing tools for the PC that I have seen. In fact, the results are publishable as is. There are numerous versions of TeX for various operating systems. Some DOS versions are freeware. T3 is a WYSIalmostWYG word processor. I believe that the latest version has some tools for importing and/or exporting LaTeX - I forget which. I have had some limited experience with the previous edition, and thought that everything was fairly nicely done, except for two problems. First, the editing interactions (cursor movement, insertion, etc.) were quite awkward, particularly in the default typeover mode. They reminded me of WordMARC, an early DOS word processor. The standard set by WordPerfect, MS Word, and XyWrite/Note Bene, etc., makes this approach seem rather clunky. Second, the design of the system was very DOS-independent. T3 does its own subdirectories (packing several "documents" into one DOS file) and generally behaves as if you still had DOS 2.0. On the other hand, the system of function keys and menus was pretty nice, better than Nota Bene as far as the menus, at least, and the manual was well done. The setup for using and creating exotic fonts and keyboards for keying them in is just plain good. Before deciding on T3 try to get some literature and ask them to supply you with the name of someone nearby, e.g., at your University, who might be willing to demonstrate their copy. From: "Michael S. Hart" Subject: Information About Project Gutenberg Date: Wed, 09 May 90 11:12:29 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 17 (51) The following is posted in response to the flood of inquiries we have had recently from members of various listservers which directly or indirectly carry messages concerning Project Gutenberg. My apologies to those whose names appear on more than one of these lists as you receive two copies. *************** The purpose of Project Gutenberg is to encourage the creation and distribution of English language electronic texts. We prefer the texts to be made available in pure ASCII formats so they would be most easily converted to use in various hardware and software. A file of this nature will also be made available in various markup formats as it is used in various environments. However we accept files in ANY format, and will do our best to provide them in all. We assist in the selection of hardware and software as well as in their installation and use. We also assist in scanning, spelling checkers, proofreading, etc. Our goal is to provide a collection of 10,000 of the most used books by the year 2000, and to reduce, and we do mean reduce, the effective costs to the user to a price of approximately one cent per book, plus the cost of media and of shipping and handling. Thus we hope the entire cost of libraries of this nature will be about $100 plus the price of the disks and CDROMS and mailing. Currently the price of making CDROMS is said to be about $2,000 for mastering and then $5 per copy. I have it on fairly good authority that these prices are negotiable, and as actual cost, the price per CDROM is about $2. To create such a library would take less than one out of ten of a conservatively estimated 100,000 libraries in the U.S. alone: if each created one full text. If all the libraries co-operated, it would be less than 10% of a volume per library. If there were 10 members of each library creating electronic texts, then each only has to do 1% of a single book to create a truly public library of 10,000 books which would each be usable on any of the 100 million computers available today. So far most electronic text work has been carried out by private, semi-private or incorporated individuals, with several library or college collections being created, but being made mostly from the works entered by individuals on their own time and expense. This labor has largely been either a labor of love, or a labor made by those who see future libraries as computer searchable collections which can be transmitted via disks, phone lines or other media at a fraction of the cost in money, time and paper as in present day paper media. These electronic books will not have to be rebound, reprinted, reshelved, etc. They will not have to be reserved and restricted to use by one patron at a time. All materials will be available to all patrons from all locations at all times. The use of this type of library will benefit even more greatly in the presence of librarians, as the amount of information shall be so much greater than that available in present day libraries that the patron will benefit even more greatly than today from assists in their pursuit of knowledge. Therefore, we call on all interested parties to get involved with the creation and distribution of electronic texts, whether it's a commitment to typing, scanning, proofreading, collecting, or what ever your pleasure might be. Please do not hesitate to send any e-texts you might find to this address. If you prefer sending disks, a mailing address follows. We hope to be thanking you soon for your participation. MICHAEL S. HART 405 WEST ELM ST. URBANA, IL 61801 Thank you for your interest, Michael S. Hart, Director, Project Gutenberg National Clearinghouse for Machine Readable Texts BITNET: HART@UIUCVMD INTERNET: HART@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU (*ADDRESS CHANGE FROM *VME* TO *VMD* AS OF DECEMBER 18!!**) (THE GUTNBERG SERVER IS LOCATED AT GUTNBERG@UIUCVMD.BITNET) From: O.B. Hardison, Jr. Subject: RE: 3.1354 Golems (48) Date: 9 May 90 00:34:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 47 (52) Terry's reference to the iron man recalls Spenser's awesome proto-robot Talus, who accompanies Arthegal, symbol of justice, in his adventures in book V of the Faerie Queene. Just now, I'm not certain of the sources of Spenser's image, but they are covered pretty well in the VARIORUM. Another treatment of the golem can be found, with other brief refs. to the Middle Ages, in Isasac Azimov's and Karen Frankel's ROBOTS: Machines in Man's Image (New York: Harmony Books, 1985). - O. B. Hardison, Jr. From: "N. MILLER" Subject: Golems yet again Date: Wed, 9 May 90 11:01 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 48 (53) My thanks to Mark Ritchie for reminding us of Wegener's 1920 film version of the Golem story. I've never seen it, but I now remember looking at some stills. As to friend Kessler there at UCLA, who prefers Metropolis to the e-less Harry Baur film, I wonder whether he might be conflating Metro- polis (which as I recall has no mad genius and is anyway a politically flabby if cinematographically influential flick) with another Fritz Lang film: Mabuse, a theme he dealt with 3 and maybe 4 times. Maybe Mark Ritchie can come to our aid once more. Norman Miller From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: Re: 4.0003 More Golems (33) Date: Wed, 09 May 90 05:45:07 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 49 (54) mcqueen's question about medieval is very important and interesting. there are serious reasons to claim that for eastern european jewish culture, the medieval formation lasted until the eighteenth century! there is no *significant* cultural difference between a prague rabi of the sixteenth and of the fourteenth century. this is not true for italy, where the modern period hit the jews about the same time as the non-jews. by the way, who says that for darkest poland there was a rennaissance anyway? From: Hans Joergen Marker Subject: End of medieval times Date: Wed, 09 May 90 10:41:23 DNT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 50 (55) Michael Speerberg McQueen raises the question on wether 16th century can be considered 'Medieval'. It is quite common in Lutheran countries to set the end of medievial times at the Reformation e.g. 1536 in Denmark. So you will have a tiny portion of the "Dark Ages" in the 16th century. Hans J×rgen Marker Danish Data Archives From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: gender. Date: Wed, 9 May 90 21:47:00 -0200 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 20 (56) In early times, cars used to be masculine in Italian: "un automobile" presupposed "un [veicolo] automobile"; e.g., an automotive vehicle. However, gender was reversed, and now cars are in the feminine: "un'automobile", "una automobile", perhaps presupposing "una mcchina automobile". It was the ultra-nationalist and supermanist poet Gabriele d'Annunzio who decided that car is female, and everybody followed suit. Cars amplify the motive capability, and the ego, of drivers, and are felt to be passive themselves. In Hebrew, too, both "machine" (mekhona) and "car" (mekhonit) are in the feminine: "mekhona" is an aaptation of the international term, but as if the lexical root were "kwn", which in Hebrew used to yield derivatives associated with "standing", and solidly so (and in Arabic, with "being"). I recently inquired about the gender of "car" in Russian with our departmental secretary, a born Russian, and told her about D'Annunzio; I did not get the linguistic datum I looked for, but, instead, her conviction that "cars (`mekhonit') must be female". A man myself, I was somewhat hurt by this sexist attitude, but seemingly the psycholinguistic prejudice about the gender/sex of cars is trans-national and trans-cultural. On the other hand, in Italian, "calcolatore [elettronico]", or, for computer people, also "elaboratore elettronico", is in the masculine; calculators, much more limited in their capabilities, came before, were named before, and are still named and "calcolatrice", "macchina calcolatrice". In the early 1980s there still was a course, in certain out-of-hand universities, named "macchine calcolatrici": by name, concerning calculators, but actually in computing. Morphological patterns are to blame, but considering the lexicon synchronically, ignoring recent history, one is left with the sad impression that computing are "male" and calculators are "female", reflecting considerations on sexual roles in human society. That is, albeit computers are as passive as cars, here it is comparison with calculators which makes computers masculine, as if male. Actually, I don't believe anybody had such sexist intentions, in coining "calcolatore" or "calcolatrice", albeit I have some doubts about "calcolatore": it is the morphological derivation patterns at hand that already carried gender with them. I recall my (by then) old teacher in the humanities, at junior high school in Milan, used to boast that her own teacher used to praise her "male" recall power. Ephraim Nissan Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. BITNET address: onomata@bengus.bitnet From: Lou Burnard Subject: New Book (advert) Date: Wed, 9 May 90 10:25 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 51 (57) Hot off the presses (and on acid-free paper to boot):- `Information technology and the research process: proceedings of a conference held at Cranfield Institute of Technology, UK, 18-21 July 1989' edited by Mary Feeney and Karen Merry. Bowker-Saur, 1990. isbn 0-86291-476-0 This is the published version of the conference on which I posted a detailed report to Humanist last July. It's well worth ordering from your library for my contribution alone. Modestly, Lou Burnard From: "Michael S. Hart" Subject: Earth Day: Reflections on Immortality Date: Wed, 09 May 90 11:20:35 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 52 (58) This arrived too late for Earth Day. I hope it is short enough that those who receive multiple copies will not suffer unduly. What would save the world, More than any other thing, Would be our immortality - For we would no longer try To lie, knowing forever is Too long not to get caught Too long to spoil with our Lies, our cheating, lives, Lives lived so differently If we only knew we will be Around to see all results, ALL RESULTS, of everything We have ever done. More a Benefit to the environment Than to ourselves would be The Gift of Immortality. From: MERIZ@pittvms Subject: Bhagavad Gita quotation Date: Tue, 8 May 90 20:31 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 53 (59) I believe the passage from the Bhagavad Gita quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds", occurs in Chapter 10, verse 34. However, I cannot identify the translation. -Diana Meriz meriz@pittvms From: MERIZ@pittvms Subject: 2400 baud modems Date: Tue, 8 May 90 20:24 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 54 (60) In response to Charles Ess' query on 2400 baud modems, I would certainly recommend the Practical Peripherals external modem I purchased in the not- too-distant past from PC Connection of Marlow, NH. It costs a fraction of the price of the comparable Hayes model, works flawlessly, and is warranted for five years (the Hayes version carries only a two-year warranty). -Diana Meriz meriz@pittvms From: Subject: Addition to Donow's collection Date: Tue, 8 May 90 15:28 PST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 55 (61) A colleague of mine in English found in a graduate student paper on "The Scarlet Letter" the statement, "Hester Prynne had to leave the town that branded her behind." Best wishes, Charles Young From: Malcolm Brown Subject: siegen arrangements Date: Tue, 08 May 90 13:50:33 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 56 (62) Not only have I not received confirmation, a note from Randy Jones suggests that the train stop might not be Siegen, but rather Weidenau. Randy notes that the conference hotels are "scattered across a wide area." I hope the conference folks will be coming forth with information fairly soon. Malcolm Brown Stanford From: Willard McCarty Subject: Project Gutenberg Date: Wed, 09 May 90 19:21:09 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 57 (63) Project Gutenberg sounds fascinating. I wonder if Mr. Hart would do us all the favour of describing the Project itself rather than its aims, that is, its staff, institutional affiliation and funding, current holdings, policies, and formal relationships with other text archives and projects, e.g. the new Princeton-Rutgers Center and the Oxford Text Archive. Willard McCarty From: CHAA006%vax.rhbnc.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: RE: 4.0017 Information about Project Gutenberg (90) Date: Thu, 10 MAY 90 12:27:50 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 58 (64) [deleted quotation] Oh lord, this is going to cause terrible confusion. There already exists an e-mail list / user group called `GUTenberg': `Groupe francophone de Utilisateurs de TeX'. I can't see the French changing the name of their group ..... Philip Taylor Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, ``The University of London at Windsor'' From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Project Gutenberg Date: Thursday, 10 May 1990 1126-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 59 (65) Many thanks the Michael Hart for sharing some basic information on Project Gutenberg. If I have read it correctly, Project Gutenberg focuses (exclusively?) on English language materials, with an emphasis on published books that are widely used. And there is clearly a "missionary" aspect to the Project -- to get people informed and involved -- with which I have great sympathy myself. Nevertheless, as a person involved in related endeavors at a wide variety of levels, and as a potential contributor to projects such as Project Gutenberg, I need to know some other basic information if I am to get serious about cooperation. Who/what is Project Gutenberg? Does it have institutional affiliations? Is it mainly Michael Hart? Does it have or seek funding, and if so who administers the funds? What is its relation to other similar archives, repositories, centers, etc. (see Mike Neuman's list), such Center for Machine Readable Texts? Is it yet affiliated with any library or libraries, and ultimately with the electronic bibliographical sources such as RLIN or OCLC? Does Project Gutenberg also want English language materials that are not among the 10,000 most used books, and how does it make known its holdings (e.g. like OTA catalogues/lists, or on RLIN, or mainly through the GUTNBERG electronic list)? I mean these to be honest questions, and questions which can be answered by some extent by any project. And I think they need to be answered if Project Gutenberg hopes to realize the sort of cooperation envisioned in Michael Hart's description. Bob Kraft (Religious Studies and CCAT, Univ. of Pennsylvania) From: "Michael S. Hart" Subject: Etext Submission to Project Gutenberg Date: Thu, 10 May 90 12:14:37 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 60 (66) We are happy to report submissions of etexts in reponse to our message. Please send only short etexts, i.e. several pages, via email. Texts of longer length should be sent as FILES to or to if you prefer. My apologies to those mainframe operators who had to restart my mail when the mailer died under the load. Thank you for your interest, Michael S. Hart, Director, Project Gutenberg National Clearinghouse for Machine Readable Texts BITNET: HART@UIUCVMD INTERNET: HART@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU (*ADDRESS CHANGE FROM *VME* TO *VMD* AS OF DECEMBER 18!!**) (THE GUTNBERG SERVER IS LOCATED AT GUTNBERG@UIUCVMD.BITNET) From: 6500lisi@UCSBUXA.BITNET Subject: Re: 4.0013 Responses on Modems and on Students (56) Date: Thu, 10 May 90 08:22:54 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 61 (67) About "derogatory references to students"-- as a graduate student in English at UC Santa Barbara, I would just like to add that I think the laughing at the "gaffes" goes in both directions! But I suppose we students don't have as much access to put it in print... Lisa Garmire From: "Ed. Harris, Academic Affairs, SCSU" Subject: Donow's collection Date: Thu, 10 May 90 12:28 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 62 (68) Let us not think solecisms are the exclusive property of students. A former colleague, an epidemiologist, claimed in his vita that he was "responsible for all VD in Boston." --Ed Harris From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0013 Responses on Modems and on Students (56) Date: Thu, 10 May 90 12:13 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 63 (69) after a few more years, perhaps you will weep with compassion and not be so amused at the spoonerist metaphorical malapropisms, since after all you are perhaps asking the wrong questions on quizzes, and they, poor things, are grasping at flaws in your preaching...the pitiful things wear thin after three decades, and by things, I mean the endless errata of unfocussed, and unfocussable minds. Then, in a few decades you will smile with compassion at the pretty things, who are subjecting themselves to you, to us? to it? in hopes of passing a few years towards a degre with some gain from it, and not a feeling of forlorn hopelessness before the Learned and Mighty who qualify them for a low level deskjob some where they hope...and wanting not to be lashed for our pleasure as the Duke and Dauphin were by Twain, those two giants of imposture on the Mississippi about 150 years ago! Same gags, it seems. Same citizens. Same suckers for a bit of orotund pentameter. Kessler here at UCLA From: Subject: ALLC-ACH 90 Date: Wed, 9 May 90 16:33:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 64 (70) Concerning the other problem, the confirmations of Congress Partner, there are two points to consider: During this weeks several strikes of the Deutsche Bundespost employees are carried out and there can be delays on this cause. The other point is, that only if the conditions of Congress Partner are fulfilled the travel documents will be sent out. These conditions are especially: Only Credit cards of Eurocard, Mastercard, Access, American Express or Eurocheque will be accepted n o t Visa or others. If someone try to pay with cheques the second cheque has to show the following sum: First night deposit + DM 35.- handling fee + additional services (ie. Farewell dinner). I have spoke with Congress Partner today and they assured me that oversea participants will get there documents as soon as possible. It would be fine if you could give these information on HUMANIST. Kind regards Rolf Grossmann From: Gordon Dixon, Institute of Advanced Studies Subject: Siegen arrangements Date: Thu, 10 May 90 11:56:56 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 65 (71) THE NEW MEDIUM ALLC/ICCH International Siegen Conference Federal Republic of Germany June 4-9, 1990 Further information re.: Malcolm Brown's 'Siegen arrangements' of 8th May The information that I have been given for travel to the conference via Frankfurt Airport is as follows: Frequent trains run from the airport to Frankfurt Main (which is a journey of about 10 minutes). Trains run from the main station direct to Siegen or via a change at Giessen. For example the Hagen train stops at Siegen and the train to Kassel can be taken to Giessen where a local train runs to Siegen. The cost of a first class ticket from the airport to Siegen is around 15 UK pounds or second class a little over #9. I have received a letter (but not confirmation of registration) from Cornelia Thiede an official of the company that Susan Hockey mentioned in her 4th May 'Siegen reminder' which is: Congress Partner, Reise- und Veranstaltungs GmbH, Tiefer 2, D-2800 Bremen 1, Tel. (UK 01049) 421320028 FAX. (UK 01049) 421324344 Telex: 2 45 837 congr d Gordon Dixon G.DIXON@UK.AC.MANCHESTER From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0014 Conceptualizing Computers (84) Date: Wed, 09 May 90 21:52 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 66 (72) But all this is really silly chatter, at best chitchat. McCorduck is a charming disseminator of enthusiasm, but it is not, ultimately serious. I, who am engaged with poetry and not thinking in the usual ratiocinative, academic sense, dare to suggest this. Thinking is not, pace Turing, something one is able to do easily or consciously. Reflecting on thought, as it is delivered to one, is something else, and what is usually mistaken for thinking. I rather agree with Bergson who observed that it is precisely the activity of thought that one cannot observe without ceasing to think, as one, from a rapidly moving vehicle cannot see both the moving landscape and single objects in it, a phenomenon we have all witnessed and wondered at,I dare say, from trains and cars, from childhood on in this century. Machines do not think as we think, because we can desribe and program, or ordain their "thought," to use the French term for the computer. We can program it. Thought is something else. Who is, who thinks, for example, the thought of saying this equation is right or wrong? The best recent discussion of this matter that I am familiar with is Stanley Rosen's most important book, THE LIMITS OF ANALYSIS. Most of the computer people are analysts, and dont really seem to know how to thnk about thinking. I disliek seeing technologists get all mystical about this thing of theirs. Not mine. My macs are neither he nm or shes, but almost always LEMONS. And that goes for the programming these days too. The are not suckers, to quote someone, but they to do indeed such. Kessler at UCLA From: Subject: two more comments on gender Date: Thu, 10 May 90 07:52 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 67 (73) Here is another anecdote about computers and gender. Those involved in the "coupling" of computers have habitually referred to male and female connectors. In fact, our campus tech staff (male), when called upon to make an adapter cable, calls them "gender benders." I was very interested several years ago when one of the tech guys remarked that many of their female service customers (much more numerous with the proliferation of PCs, compared to the "old days") did not like the use of male and female terminology for these connectors. I asked what he would use instead, and he said "plugs" and "sockets." Now, this always lurks in my mind when the occasional conversation turns to connector-gender!! Those on HUMANIST who, like myself, are not linguists, may be interested nonetheless in parts of George Lakoff's book, "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind," 1987, U. of Chicago Press. (I may have originally seen the reference to Lakoff on this list a year or so ago.) He has interesting examples of how various words in a language may be placed in what, to the outsider, may seem incongrous categories. Jim Cerny, Computing and Information Services, Univ. N.H. j_cerny@unhh From: Sally Webster Subject: The mind in the machine and vice versa Date: Thu, 10 May 90 08:43:14 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 68 (74) I've been reading the mail about computer gender, anthropomorphizing computers, and metaphorizing (!) with great interest. The way computer lingo has invaded the general culture and is used to explain or describe human actions and mental states is every bit as interesting. Looking at the metaphors we use (and have been using for years before computers arrived), I think humans tend to glom onto the newest technological language and apply it to themselves. "...broke the mould after he was born..." "...he's gone off the rails..." "... the old ticker is still going strong..." "...re-programming myself for the single life..." J. David Bolter wrote a whole book about this, TURING'S MAN, which I recommend to you all. Bolter gives a perspective to this question, and as icing on the cake, he's an entertaining writer. From: 6500lisi@UCSBUXA.BITNET Subject: Re: 4.0020 Gender (48) Date: Thu, 10 May 90 08:18:44 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 69 (75) Perhaps the masculinization of the term, "computer", has to do with the fact that computers use extensive programs that at least in the beginning were composed by men. (I have in mind the computer sex programs for the Macintosh-- I don't know if you are aware of them,but they are obviously created by and for men, allowing the computer user to have "control" over the object on the screen). It's an hypothesis, anyway... Lisa Garmire University of CA, Santa Barbara Dept. of English From: 6500lisi@UCSBUXA.BITNET Subject: Re: 4.0014 Conceptualizing Computers (84) Date: Thu, 10 May 90 08:27:54 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 70 (76) I think it's all a question of power. Lisa Garmire UC Santa Barbara From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0018 Golems in Literature and Film (32) Date: Wed, 09 May 90 23:03 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 71 (77) No, no conflation here. The man with the long hari in the long black krtle or c loak in the little gingerbread house in the depths of the Metroplolis, who crea ted a female aluminum robot and sent her upstairs. there is is blond young hero , the mayor's son, in white clothese, tennis clothes of the 20's, and his grilf riend, another blondie, in whose likeness the female robot is made. It's metro plois all right, and the workers are below in steam rooms and sweating like gal ley slaves, and big gears and all that and it goes on for 2 hours and more. One never forgets those early MOMA movies. Mabuse is something else again. Kessler here. From: Mark Ritchie Subject: Mabuse and Metropolis Date: Thu, 10 May 90 09:27:28 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 72 (78) In addition to the two Mabuse films listed below there were two others made during the same period. The Testament OF Dr Mabuse and The Thousand Eyes Of Dr Mabuse were not as well crafted as the first Mabuse film. In the films Mabuse makes use of "modern" technology in his crime empire but does not use a robot. In Metropolis the robot is a starring character. WATERLOO MEDIA CATALOGUING SYSTEM TITLE: Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler - Ein Bild Der Zeit or: the Big Gambler Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler, 1 Teil: Der Grosse Spieler le Joueur der Spieler SUBJECT HEADINGS: Moving-pictures, Germany INTERSUBJECT HEADINGS: Cinema Studies - Features DEWEY CLASS: 791 DESCRIPTION: PRODUCTION DATE: 1922 COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Germany ORIGINAL LANGUAGE: German PRODUCTION CREDITS: Acting: Alfred Abel Acting: Aud Egede Nissen Acting: Gertrude Welcker Acting: Lili Dagover Acting: Paul Richter Acting: Rudolf Klein-Rogge Direction: Fritz Lang ABSTRACT: A baroque tale about master criminal Mabuse who gambles with lives and fates, is an allegory of postwar German decadence. Brilliantly directed, designed and photographed, it was originally half of a two-part film, now shown separately (DR MABUSE, KING OF CRIME). TITLE: Dr Mabuse - Inferno Des Verbrechens or: Dr Mabuse, King Of Crime le Demon Du Crime Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler, 2 Teil: Inferno the Inferno Of Crime the Inferno SUBJECT HEADINGS: Moving-pictures, Germany INTERSUBJECT HEADINGS: Cinema Studies - Features DEWEY CLASS: 791 DESCRIPTION: PRODUCTION DATE: 1921 COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Germany ORIGINAL LANGUAGE: German PRODUCTION CREDITS: Acting: Alfred Abel Acting: Aud Egede Nissen Acting: Gertrude Welcker Acting: Rudolf Klein-Rogge Direction: Fritz Lang ABSTRACT: Part two of Lang's epic work DR MABUSE, DER SPIELER, which follows various story threads and details Mabuse's descent into madness. Not as flamboyant as Part One, but still quite good. TITLE: Metropolis: Das Schicksal Einer Menschheit Im Jahre 2000 or: Metropolis SUBJECT HEADINGS: Moving-pictures, Germany INTERSUBJECT HEADINGS: Cinema Studies - Features DEWEY CLASS: 791 DESCRIPTION: PRODUCTION COMPANY: Universum Film Aktien Gesellschaft (UFA) PRODUCTION DATE: 1926 COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Germany ORIGINAL LANGUAGE: German PRODUCTION CREDITS: Acting: Alfred Abel Acting: Brigitte Helm Acting: Fritz Rasp Acting: Gustav Frohlich Acting: Heinrich Geingge Acting: Rudolf Klein-Rogge Design: Erich Kettlehut Design: Karl Vollbrecht Design: Otto Hunte Direction: Fritz Lang Laboratory: Eigen Schufftan Music: Gottfried Huppertz Photography: Gunther Rittau Photography: Karl Freund Script: Thea von Harbou SUMMARY: In the twenty-first century a gigantic metropolis is controlled by an authoritarian industrialist who lives with his son, Freder, and his collaborators in a paradise-like garden. The workers live in a subterranean portion of the city. Maria, a saintly agitator, exhorts the workers to be patient; soon the mediator will come. Freder becomes a devotee of Maria. The industrialist hears Maria and entrusts a mad inventor with the job of creating a robot that looks exactly like her and that will incite the workers to revolt. The inventor is successful and the workers destroy the machines, releasing flood waters that threaten to drown their own children. Freder and Maria save the doomed city and, in the finale, a foreman shakes hands with the industrialist, and Maria and Freder are married: labour and capital are united. "The path to human dignity and happiness lies through the master of us all, the great Mediator, Love," says the industrialist at the end of Thea von Harbou's scenario. This ending is not the one originally planned for the film because the German Censors banned Lang's original ending featuring a successful worker's revolt overthrowing the established powers. Mark Ritchie | Tel: (519) 888-4070 Media Librarian | Fax: (519) 888-6197 Audio-Visual Centre | University of Waterloo | NetNorth: avfilm@watdcs.Uwaterloo.ca -------- From: Jim O'Donnell (Penn, Classics) Subject: Epochenabgrenzung, Date: 09 May 90 17:56:37 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 73 (79) which is what the Germans call these discussions. For the alleged end of the so-called Middle Ages, I would make two observations: first, that the importation of the word `Renaissance' into English is, on the evidence of the OED, a 19th century act of conscious cultural construction (Ruskin, Pater, usw.) -- many marvelous things happened in Italy and elsewhere in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but the decision to enshrine that rebirth, capitalize it, and make it part of our thought-furniture is a conventionalism of the 19th century, not something intrinsic to the evidence; second, P.O. Kristeller had a marvelous article in the *Dante Jahrbuch* perhaps five years back on the survival of Latin as learned and diplomatic language. The success of the vernacular (one of the conventional points of difference marked between medieval and modern times) was nowhere near universal, comprehensive, and thorough: particularly east of the Rhine and south of the Alps and Pyrenees, Latin had a lively and vigorous existence on many levels until well into the eighteenth century. So to quarrel about whether the 16th cent. is medieval or not is quite beside the point: the predication can be useful (`the 16th cent. is medieval' thus meaning that, for purposes of the present discussion, the 16th cent. shares a variety of useful characteristics with the centuries that preceded) but not predictive or determinative (it does not make sense to say that `the 16th cent. is medieval and therefore people then were superstitious, backwards, and unmodern': that is either tautology or nonsense). From: Germaine Warkentin Subject: Did Poland have a Renaissance? Date: Thu, 10 May 90 00:05:03 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 74 (80) Are we connected to Poland yet? If so, the lines will be burning with messages from Polish neo-Latinists, etc., in response to Daniel Boyarin's very thoughtless observation. Poland did indeed have a Renaissance, as my colleague Dr. Jacqueline Glomski taught me during her period at our Centre for and Renaissance Studies! Germaine Warkentin. From: Sarah L. Higley Subject: A query for Terrence Erdt, and thanks Date: Wed, 9 May 90 19:58:22 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 75 (81) I'd like to thank all of you who have given me golems, but I'd like to correspond particularly with Prof. Erdt of Villanova University. Unfortunately, he hasn't included his internet e-mail address in his missives, and I keep getting DAEMON messages when I attempt to put together an address from the openers. To Terrence Erdt, thank you, and my address is slhi@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (internet). I hope you don't think me too presumptuous! But I can't let another android- enthusiast slip by... From: Leslie Burkholder Subject: Tichborne claimant Date: Thu, 10 May 90 08:25:44 -0400 (EDT) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 76 (82) Does anyone happen to know whether a film was ever made dramatizing the Tichborne claimant case? (The case involved a claimant to the Tichborne estates and took place in the UK from 1867-1874.) Thanks, Leslie Burkholder From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0020 Gender (48) Date: Wed, 09 May 90 22:58 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 77 (83) Is it not odd that this discussion about gender never touches on the morphology of male nad female? about how bodies are imaged to the selves within those bodies? the hollow vs the solid, the womb vs the phallus? So much of the chitchat on this topic is very abstract, and in the head, the male head, perhaps. To drive a car is to be inside a body that you can hope to control, much as if one regressed to the imagination of the male fetus directing the great power of the mother's locomotion, form inside, etc. A little imaging might help here, in addition to the linguistic things that so confuse the innocent, about what is male and female in grammar. Hungarian has not she or he, incidentally, but the Magyars seem to know the difference between the genders of things and people. How so ? Kessler at ucla. These are all remnants of remnants left over from a lost past, I fear, the superstitions of the superstitions.... It is amusing, a little. From: 6500lisi@UCSBUXA.BITNET Subject: Re: 4.0021 Book Advertisement; Immortality (41) Date: Thu, 10 May 90 08:14:00 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 78 (84) We are Immortal. The problem is in the definition of the subject. From: Subject: ALLC-ACH 90 Conference "The New Medium" Date: Thu, 10 May 90 15:31 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 79 (85) Dear Humanists, There seems to be a great confusion about the upcoming Siegen Conference ALLC-ACH 90 "The New Medium". Please apologize for the confusion as well as for the late response to these messages by the Conference Organization, but we had network problems and did not receive any message for about ten days. The problem concerning the confirmation of registration seems to be an interculturel one. Credit Card Companies in Europe - especially when it is necessary to contact a correspondend Company in USA or somewhere else over the world - waste a hugh lot of time before delivering money your account will be charged for. Confirmations including travel documents and informations "How to reach Siegen best" will be sent out very soon. If anyone plans to leave his home well before the beginning of the Conference, please contact the Registration Bureau "Congress Partner" in Bremen. They will deliver the hotel reservations to you when you arrive at the Conference Location at Siegen University. If there remain any problems, please contact the Conference Organization by e-mail. Prof. Dr. Helmut Schanze ALLC-ACH 90 Adolf Reichweinstr. 5 D-5900 Siegen Germany Phone: 0271/740-4110 e-mail: GC130@DSIHRZ51 Nevertheless, if anyone plans to attend the Conference and did not yet register he is encouraged to do so as soon as possible. Manfred Kammer (Conference Organization) GC130@DSIHRZ51 From: Subject: Date: X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 80 (86) DATE: 11 MAY 90 14:33 CET FROM: A400101@DM0LRZ01 SUBJECT: Siegen "arrangements"? Willard McCarty's report from Rolf Grossmann is reassuring, but I still think that the performance so far of Congress Partner GmbH has been less than impressive. There have been some brief warning strikes here _in the last two weeks_, but that doesn't explain why CP have treated registrations from February and March (see Humanist postings) with silence. I registered in March, and wrote to the Siegen organizers after five weeks to ask what was going on. I got by the same post (1) a letter from the Siegen organizers to say that CP hadn't received my documents and I should register again (2) a letter from CP, dated a week before that from the Siegen organizers, to ask for more money on the second cheque! I would point out that there is a large registration fee for this conference, plus a not insubstantial fee for handling hotel bookings. In view of this, better service might be expected. Three weeks before a conference starts is too late to be sending documentation across the Atlantic, or even within Europe, regardless of whether or not there are postal strikes. Timothy Reuter, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Munich From: amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert A Amsler) Subject: Gender discussion for computers Date: Thu, 10 May 90 18:00:54 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 81 (87) I find the discussion very strange indeed. The main reason is that I never thought the linguistic concept of gender was intended to be a clue to anything these days---and that the use of gender terms in reference to inanimate things is not itself the mechanism whereby linguistics decides to attribute gender to those entities. That is, just because some people refer to their pet automobile as a female doesn't eventually force the language to attribute gender to automobiles. It isn't a poll. Thus, what I see is a lot of very unscientific heresay based on individual experiences which, even if it WERE representative of general usage in the world at large STILL wouldn't be indicative of what the language as a whole would do. It is a confusion of personal psychology with linguistics. For example. In electrical engineering, gender is definitely used to refer to connectors and plugs. There are male and female connectors. However, I am unaware of anyone using gender pronouns to refer to these. Thus, people don't say things like ``The male RS232 connector on my PC cable has HIS pins bent and I can't plug HIM into the female connector in the PC because the bent pins won't go into HER sockets correctly.'' It is bizarre enough to make people look at you strangely, like you suddenly had decided to start making smart-aleck remarks or deliberately engage in sexism to annoy others. ---- Re: computers `thinking'. Computers don't `think'. We invented the word to refer to the action of human beings and it is self-reserved. However, the issue is whether computers can perform the same tasks we perform by thinking, but using other methods. I believe this reduces to asking whether WE can perform tasks solely through the subset of thinking processes we refer to as reasoning or have to resort to additional methods. I would claim that anything human beings can do by reasoning can be duplicated by a computer. (The reverse, incidentally, isn't true --at least not if the time taken to perform the task is part of the requirement. For example, apparently we can't control equipment such as space shuttles or jet fighters without computers. Our nervous system can't function fast enough to maintain the homeostatic state of these devices at the speeds needed.) --- You're a better machine than I, Space Shuttle. If you want to get into really hot water, consider the issue of what qualifies a device for humane treatment as a sentient being. That is, how and when would we decide that a machine was deserving of the same considerations we afford human beings, such as unborn children. Is our world view such that no other form of sentience can ever have the same rights we have? From: Boyd Davis Subject: Re: 4.0014 Conceptualizing Computers (84) Date: Thu, 10 May 90 19:59:21 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 82 (88) Brad Inwood asks if we name what we fear or wonder at. In fall, 1988, while introducing my undergraduates in a linguistics class to terminals and BitNet,I asked them to log on to our balky IBM mainframe in pairs, to speak their reactions and comments, to write down what their partner said and did, and to bring their notes back to class after the mid-class break time. They reported that they addressed the terminal almost continually after the initial glitch; utterances fell into two categories, Baby Talk, usually with false and honeyed endearments, and Curses, usually scatalogical epithets. Baby-talkers usually coupled their naming with exhortations to perform better ("Come on, honey"), and Cursers usually employed rhetorical questions (You Bleep, why won't you Do X"). Most agreed with the student who commented that each mode of address was really a form of denigration and reflected the frustration and anxiety they felt, and had chosen to direct at the terminal. From: Jim O'Donnell (Classics, Penn) Subject: Rebirth in eastern Europe Date: 10 May 90 17:59:53 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 83 (89) Our ignorance of eastern European Renaissances (here is the place to praise Matthias Corvinus Hunyadi, fifteenth century king of Hungary and creator of an astonishing library of precious manuscripts: there is a volume of facsimiles of selected pages edited by two persons named Csapodi, I believe, and well worth a half hour in the library turning the pages) is in part a reflection of the long Stalinist darkness in the east. Too many important historical investigations in that area can only be carried out with a variety of linguistic skills and local awareness likely to be found only in native speakers. For Corvinus, for example, it would be necessary in order to write his biography (not yet written in a `western' language -- what may exist in Magyar I have no way of knowing) to master at least German, Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish (his best moments outside the library spent fighting the Turks). It is hard even to imagine from what department of an American university one could acquire the Ph.D. that would fit one to write his story. As our e-links to the east begin to open, it is pleasant to think that in restoring the central and eastern Europe of the present to the European community, it may also be possible to restore more of its past. Our standard history textbooks (the ones that worry about when the Renaissance started) are too often (I'm thinking of one textbook by Peter Gay, for example) histories not of Europe but of France and England, with Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Low Countries in supporting roles. Or look at Barbara Tuchman's books about the run-up to WWI, *The Proud Tower* and *Guns of August*: the Balkans don't exist for her, nor the Baltic. Two books that threw much light in these areas for me (and I'd love to hear of more): Rebecca West, *Black Lamb and Grey Falcon* (account of her journies in Yugoslavia in the 30s, long and rambling and idiosyncratic, but fascinating), and Patrick Leigh Fermor, *Between the Woods and the Water* (account of the Hungarian and Romanian stages of a walking tour he made in the early 30s from Holland to Constantinople -- but written in the 80s, with no mawkish nostalgia or melancholy recollections about what happened in those lands since: Leigh Fermor's books generally are marvels of amateur erudition, shedding light wherever he goes). From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: Re: 4.0028 Poland, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (38) Date: Fri, 11 May 90 07:14:23 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 84 (90) i apollgize for thoughtless observation about Poland. I must admit that my image is really of backward little Jewish villages and I have no, repeat, no knowledge of anything about Poland. One of the disadvantages of email is that the casual idiocies that one usually only shares with friends get broadcast to strangers. From: SA_RAE@VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK Subject: recent mailing - new word Date: Thu, 10 MAY 90 22:48:11 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 85 (91) In a recent contribution to the GENDER question from Sally Webster she used a word I've not come across before ... "to glom onto the newest technological language" Is "glom" correct or was it a typo? I hope not ... to glom sounds such a nice verb! Has it any history - or is it just another of those words that appear 'on the streets' in the US and hasn't yet crossed over to the UK? I would like to hear of any background to glomming (is that right?). Simon Rae: The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. SA_RAE@VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK From: Michel LENOBLE Subject: ALR-Powerflex 286. Date: Fri, 11 May 90 00:42 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 86 (92) Is one of the HUMANIST the happy owner of a ALR Powerflex 286? I would like to get in touch with him/her. Please contact me directly. Michel Lenoble Litterature Comparee Universite de Montreal C.P. 6128, Succ. "A" MONTREAL (Quebec) Canada - H3C 3J7 E-MAIL: lenoblem@cc.umontreal.ca Tel.: (514) 288-3916 From: CATHERINE@ VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: Tex and Latex: Cons and Pros Date: Fri, 11 MAY 90 11:30:50 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 35 (93) TeX and LaTeX: Cons and Pros Reading the high praise of TeX and LaTeX, I feel the picture is not quite complete. TeX and LaTeX are very good tools; handled well, either can give very good results. And so far as their capabilities for typesetting Maths, both score very high indeed. But there are some hefty drawbacks: 1) The fonts they use. Both come with Computer Modern fonts; these are fonts that have been designed especially for TeX, using the related program Metafont. Computer Modern is not a very attractive typeface. On the Macintosh it is possible to access other typefaces. It is also possible to set the system up so that it will work with postscript or other fonts, but this is a very large undertaking. 2) TeX is very 'low level'. You have to tell it almost everything. It has no notion of a structured document. If you want all the headings etc to be treated in the same way, it is up to you to write a macro to do this. The result is that the majority of things typeset with TeX do not look good. Most people who typeset their own papers, documents, books do not yet have the knowledge or the discipline to produce a well-planned, well-laid out document. 3) LaTeX produces structured documents. It knows about different levels of headings, and different parts of documents. It can, with the greatest of ease, produce lists of figures, tables, tables of contents, abstracts, and many other things. Cross references are a doddle. BUT again you rarely see something produced with LaTeX that really looks good. This is because while it is easy to use the style sheets provided, it is notoriously difficult to alter them. These considerations are undeniably important; this is shown by the amateura look at many documents produced by TeX and LaTeX. If you are expert enough to write your own style sheet, and knowledgeable enough to design a good layout, and preferably use a system which employs fonts other than Computer Modern, LaTeX is an excellent typesetting program. As for TeX: with TeX, really anything is possible. Someone, it seems, can always write a macro to do whatever it is that you want. And TeX gives you wonderfully fine control over the white space on a page, and this, I believe, is one of the crucial factors in really good typesetting. But not only do you need the sometimes highly skilled Tex experts at your elbow, you also need a good sense of design (or, preferably, to have your document professionally designed), and the discipline (experience?) and eye for detail to see it through. Bearing these things in mind, yes, TeX is maybe a dream. But beware, dreams can become nightmares... Catherine Griffin Oxford University Computing Service From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Philadelphia Consortium Announcement Date: Friday, 11 May 1990 1644-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 87 (94) THE PHILADELPHIA CONSORTIUM ON THE STUDY OF RELIGION The Philadelphia Consortium on the Study of Religion, organized in April, 1989, provides an umbrella organization for encouraging and facilitating cooperation in the academic study of religion among institutions and departments of religion-- undergraduate, graduate, seminary, and post-graduate--and their faculty and students. At the present the Consortium consists of forty-seven institutions within a hundred mile radius of Philadelphia. Dr. Robert B. Wright, Chair of the Religion Department, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, is the Chair of the Consortium. Four projects sponsored by the Consortium to date are: a monthly calendar of special events in Consortium schools; a sharing of graduate level courses for cross-registration purposes (both of these facilitated by Temple University); A "Guide to the Libraries of Member Institutions," produced by Dr. Robert Emmet McLaughlin, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, Villanova University. The fourth project, produced by Dr. Glenn A. Koch, Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, is a Directory of 226 faculty, listing personal and professional facts, including fields of specialization and areas of research. In addition, the Directory lists the Consortium's statement of purpose, officers and committees, and member institutions. Printed directories, as well as electronic forms of it, are available. Contact Dr. Koch at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, City & Lancaster Aves., Philadelphia, PA 19151, for orders (Ph. 215-896-5000). The printed Directory is $13.00. For further Consortium information contact Dr. Wright: 617 Anderson Hall, Philadelphia, PA, 19122 (Ph. 215-787-7923). From: HUMM@PENNDRLS (Alan Humm Religious Studies U. of Penn) Subject: Quoting the Gita Date: Friday, 11 May 1990 1238-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 88 (95) According to _The New Promethians_, as I recall, Openheimer read Sanskrit (I do not know how well). If no published translation of the Gita readily presents itself, it may have been his own. Alan Humm (Humm@PENNdrls) From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: collage Date: Fri, 11 May 90 08:49:31 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 89 (96) The two pieces by David Antin on collage in art and poetry are: Modernism and Postmodernism: Approaching the present in American poetry, Boundary 2, Vol 1 #1 Fall 1972 (SUNY Binghamton) Some Questions About Modernism, Occident, Vol VIII new series, Spring 1974 (U.C. Berkeley) Neither has anything to do with the Talmud, but both are excellent essays about the relationship between the visual and literary usage of collage in the 20th century. From: Michel Pierssens Subject: Translatio studii Date: Ven, 11 Mai 90 11:35:20 SET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 90 (97) In reference du D. MacNeil's query: the major literary expression of the idea of translatio imperii (hence studii too...) in Renaissance france is Ronsard's failed epic LA FRANCIADE. Francus is the hero that supposedly came from the Mediterranean to found the new people that would inherit antique culture. Rabelais' vision is equally strong in GARGANTUA but less political. But every french " humaniste" of the period labored on that "poncif", of course... From: Stephen Clausing Subject: students Date: Thu, 10 May 90 17:22:21 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 91 (98) I have never heard a derogatory term for students, but I do remember seeing once a satire of student excuses called "The Professor's Bill of Rights." Basically this consisted of axioms such as "I reserve the right to come to class totally unprepared because I had a bad night last night." Speaking of malice towards students, I just finished reading my student evaluations. My favorites this semester were two students who condemned me for using family names, rather than first names in the classroom. What students never realize is that I have heard this complaint ever since I was a first year graduate student, rejected it then, consider it utterly inane now, and really have no desire to hear more moral indignation about it year after year. Have I been teaching too long or does everybody feel this way? From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: David Sewell's request 2 May 90 Date: Fri, 11 May 90 08:47:03 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 92 (99) In response to David Sewell's request for information about software for collaborative writing: I pass his message around to various researchers at IRIS who are working on group annotation systems. A report on our work can be found in "InterNote: extending a hypermedia framework to support annotative collaboration" in the Hypertext '89 Proceedings published by ACM. Paulette Bush, one of the researchers, suggest that you look at Syllabus for the Macintosh, Number 10 (March/April 1990) [P.O. Box 2716, Sunnyvale CA 94087-0716] which has a write up on several programs currently used on the Mac for this kind of thing. From: "Paul N. Banks" Subject: Re: 4.0034 Queries: "Glom"; ALR-Powerflex (32) Date: Fri, 11 May 90 16:57:25 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 93 (100) In response to Simon Rae's query about "glom": I don't have any idea of its origins, but "to glom onto" is, I'm almost certain, a phrase from my childhood, which means that (if I am correct in remembering it from childhood) it has been around in the U.S. at least forty or fifty years. From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: Re: 4.0034 Queries: "Glom"; ALR-Powerflex (32) Date: Fri, 11 May 90 17:42:58 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 94 (101) Glom Well, the word gets used at IRIS alot. People glom things together, as in "If you glom together all the different options you come up with..." I always assumed it was a linguistic mutation of conglomerate, which is in my online version of the American Heritage Dictionary as a verb, along with the adjective glomerate, both from Latin glomerare, to wind into a ball and glomus ball. Must be American usage. From: James O'Donnell Subject: appendix to last message Date: 11 May 90 18:02:11 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 95 (102) ... [eds] `Glom', on the other hand, is fine old American slang, but not the sort of thing that turns up on paper very often. I would say that it is initially a verb of seeing, but with overtones of acquisition: you glom on to something when you not merely look at it, but look at it all over, get the idea behind it, and somehow or other make the seen into your own possession. So it can appear in context just as a rough equivalent for `to learn'. Also a useful word. From: ruhleder@sloth.ICS.UCI.EDU Subject: ``Glom'' Date: Fri, 11 May 90 15:43:32 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 96 (103) In a recent message, Simon Rae asked about the word, ``glom.'' I've heard it used for several years now (but only among people in an information and computer sciences department, as far as I can remember). It's not in my dictionary, though it might well come from ``glomerate,'' which is. To ``glom onto something'' is to latch on to a new idea, technology, or even group of people. I wouldn't deem it a commonly use word. Karen Ruhleder UC Irvine From: John Unsworth Subject: Glom Date: Fri, 11 May 90 20:54:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 97 (104) Simon Rae asks for information about the word "glom"--I also noticed it with pleasure in Sally Webster's mailing. It's a word I've heard and used for at least ten years. I don't know where it comes from, but my guess would be that it is related to "conglomerate" (abbreviated from?). Perhaps it originated as slang in the business world, where to "conglomerate" with another company might be abbreviated as "glom onto". There is a word "glomerate" (adj., meaning formed into a ball): the Latin root of that word is "glomus"--a ball. At any rate, glomming is definitely something done with the hands (though the word is used metaphorically to describe any type of grabbing or latching onto, e.g. by the attention). John Unsworth From: Robin Smith Subject: Glom Date: Fri, 11 May 90 21:31 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 98 (105) Simon Rae asks about 'glom.' I've been aware of this word since childhood; in American use, at least, it occurs only in the expression 'glom on to,' which I have always taken to have the sense 'grab.' Eric Partridge says: glom on to: To grab; to steal: Can.: since ca. 1920. (Robin Leech, 1974.) Via US, ex Scots dial. glam, glaum, to clutch. I have never heard the word used in the sense 'steal.' For what it's worth, the earliest printed occurrences I can recall are in Pogo comic strips from the 1950s (Walt Kelly was rather fond of the expression). From: GA0708@SIUCVMB Subject: Glom Date: Sat, 12 May 90 12:09:14 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 99 (106) Simon Rae wrote asking about the word "glom." Hadn't crossed the boundary into UK yet, he thought. Actually the word, according to Websters Ninth Collegiate Dictionary, has been around for close to a century. In fact, from an English d ialectal form, "glaum," meaning to grab. H. Donow Southern Illinois U. 5 From: "Adam C. Engst" Subject: Re: 4.0034 Queries: "Glom"; ALR-Powerflex (32) Date: Sat, 12 May 90 17:59:53 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 100 (107) Ah yes, 'to glom'. An interesting word which I use rather often, mostly in reference to an action approximating that with which my plecostomus catfish sucks on to the side of the aquarium and refuses to move. Also appropriate for describing the actions of small children clutching soon-to-be-favorite new stuff animals. Possibly related to the Greek lamBanw or maybe even to some lesser usages of proseXw (ASCII terminals are terrible for Greek). Certainly not linguistically descended from the above words however. :-) Adam Disclaimer: I haven't the foggiest idea what I'm talking about, I can't remember my Greek from Matt Neuburg as well as I'd like, and if pressed would claim my mother invented the word. :-) Adam C. Engst pv9y@cornella.bitnet From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0034 Queries: "Glom"; ALR-Powerflex (32) Date: Sat, 12 May 90 15:28 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 101 (108) To glom onto is Americanism. goes as far back as 1907. "glom; glaum; glahm: n. A hand, considered as a tool for grabbing. v.t. To grab; to seize; to take hold of. and to steal. 1907. "we discovered that our hands were gloved. "Where'd ye glahm 'em?" Iasked JACK LONDON, The Road, 131. 1951: "Under the pretense of glomming a diamond from the strongbox of a rascally broker..." S J Perelman, NEW YORKER, Mar 3, 27.2. THE MOST COMMON MEANING; ORIG. HOBO AND UNDERWORLD USE. v. i. to be arrested. Lit:= to be grabbed by the hand of the law. glommer=A hand, used from grabbing or stealing. since c1930=ONe who uses his hands to graps things,as a fruitpicker. Cf MITTGLOMMER. from DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SLANG, Wentowrth & Flexner 1960. Kessler@ucla From: Germaine Warkentin Subject: Glom Date: Sat, 12 May 90 09:48:47 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 102 (109) Glom is a delightful and expressive verb, and I suspect it's widely used here in Canada. I remember it from my adolescence in the second-largest city in the country, and my husband from his forties boyhood in a rural Manitoba town. I always thought it must be a Brit word, and I may be right: a Webster's we have at home (where I am as I write) says: 1907; from British dialect "glaum". It's not in the old OED (which we have in the magnifying-glass version) but may be in the Supplements or second edition. Is the set of words associated the word "agglomerate" (roll into a ball) part of all this? Germaine Warkentin From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" Subject: RE: 4.0034 Queries: "Glom"; ALR-Powerflex (32) Date: Sun, 13 May 90 06:41 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 103 (110) "Glom"has unfortunate connotations to me; I've heard it only in the form "glom those gams!" in speaking of female legs. My husband tells me it is a common expression. Other than that, I have never hear of it! L. Morgan (Morgan@LOYVAX) From: Bronwen Heuer Subject: Glom Date: Mon, 14 May 90 09:03:02 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 104 (111) My Websters show a date of 1907 for the adoption of GLOM--and yes, I use it all the time; my mother has used it for a long as I can remember: ``You kids will glom on to anything!'' 1. Slang: take, steal. 2. slang: seize, catch. glom on to, slang: to take possession of. [vt. glommed, glomming] bronwen heuer room 137 phone(516)632-8054 coordinator of user services computing center state university of ny bitnet: bronwen@sbccvm stony brook, ny 11794 internet: bronwen@ccvm.sunysb.edu From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: Glomming Onto Date: Mon, 14 May 90 08:36:25 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 105 (112) glom onto v.tr. to take up the use of (colloquial) This doesn't strike me as particularly new usage, but I couldn't say when or where I picked it up. From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Clausing on addressing students Date: Monday, 14 May 1990 1148-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 106 (113) I'm surprised. As long as I can remember, I have resisted creating or maintaining formal barriers between students and myself, and thus attempt to learn their first names as soon as possible. Sometimes I manage to learn last names as well. Nor do I discourage them from using my first name, although few of them feel comfortable doing this. Am I missing something? Is there an educational benefit to using last names, etc.? I see it as a mater of style and choice, and am happy for Stephen Clausing to follow his style -- and I hope he can respect my choice as well. Bob Kraft From: DONWEBB@CALSTATE (Donald Webb) Subject: The last last names Date: Mon, 14 May 90 11:29:30 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 107 (114) Call it superstition, but for twenty-six years I have made it a rule to address students by their first names, using their family names only when I have to. While I sympathize with Prof. Clausing's reaction to students who say they would prefer to be addressed by their last names (Humanist, May 10th), I've never heard such a request from my students, and I'm surprised that he has. In fact, students have told me that they appreciate my using their first names in class. It's a practical matter more than anything else: they address each other by their given names only, and my using their first names makes it easier for them to get acquainted with each other. However, I have another reason to use first names, whereby hangs a tale. It is reminiscent of Vercors' short story "Le Cheval et la mort," where one of the characters says that the anecdote he is about to tell is obviously true because it has no ending, and one can always find an ending for fictional stories. When I was a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, we did not receive lists of the students in each section but packets of hole-punch computer cards, each with a student's name on it. I found the cards quite handy, and to this day I still write the students' names on individual 3x5 cards in order to help me learn their names quickly, as well as for other uses. Anyway, I would normally go through each packet of cards before meeting a class for the first time, if only to check for names I couldn't be sure how to pronounce. This habit was especially helpful because we assistants were officially encouraged to address students by their last names, presumably to lend a little dignity to the classroom. For some reason, in the semester beginning in January 1964, I received a packet of cards too late for me to review before the first day of class. That seemed unimportant; class cards did occasionally arrive at the last minute, and it could hardly even be called an inconvenience to have to read them cold. Greeting the class, I took out the cards and proceeded to call the roll, little suspecting that I had been dealt the equivalent of a royal flush. The roll-call went routinely at first: call the name, match the name with the face when the student responded, and then turn up the next card, until: "Mr. Johnson?" "Here." Next card: "Mr. Kennedy?" "Here." (Nervous smile to acknowledge the coincidence) Next card: "Mr. Oswald...." That's all there is. Any ending seems superfluous. How did we react? Outwardly, not at all, but if you can remember those times, you can imagine... Johnson and Kennedy are common names, but Oswald is not; and to turn up those three names, one after the other, with no others in between, only a few weeks after that day in Dallas, felt somehow retrospectively ominous. That combination of names has never reappeared on my class lists since then. But from that day on I have always called students by their first names. It's friendly. It helps them to get to know each other. And I always read the names silently, to myself, before calling the roll on the first day of class. At least I'll know which names I can't pronounce... And you never know when fate will deal you the ace of spades. Call it superstition, if you wish... From: lang@PRC.Unisys.COM Subject: more on gender discussions Date: Mon, 14 May 90 10:29:28 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 108 (115) Bob Amsler writes: [deleted quotation] I'm surprised that nobody has yet brought up the old linguistic chesnut (well, I think of it as a chestnut) that in Romance languages, words (both clinical terms and slang locutions) denoting male sex organs tend to be of feminine gender, and vice-versa. I haven't done extensive research in this area (!), but I've always heard this to be true. From: Alan D Corre Subject: Poem [eds] Date: Mon, 14 May 90 14:17:19 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 109 (116) By popular request--well, at someone's suggestion--I am submitting a poem I wrote some six years ago. Previously it was only privately circulated, but it may serve as a contribution to the discussion of computer gender. The computer must have been a 64K Apple Two Plus. On account of explicit language you may wish to press the fast forward button on your keyboard if a child is looking over your shoulder. Here it is. My Computer My friend said: "Go screw your Computer. It's really her that you love. I'm tired of hearing of constants, Of gosubs, intrinsics and such. "I don't want to be the rival Of transistor, circuit and switch. There's no room for you in my program. Our romance has one big glitch! "It's far too late to debug me. My charms--you'll no more load 'em. So take your touch-tone Princess phone And stick it in your modem!" Dejected and sad I left her, Ashamed at what I had done. Flesh and blood I'd surrendered For a silicone son-of-a-gun. I sat down to my Computer, And then, I turned her on. She warmed to me as usual And sang to me this song: "Don't worry about your girl friend. She wasn't the one for you. I'll be loyal and faithful My limited warranty through. "I'll keep your checkbook for you Like a microcomputer should. I'll follow your stocks, track investments, Give you recipes for your food. "I'll answer your phone, write your letters, And though you may not believe it, I'll measure your stress and your tension, And suggest ways to relieve it. "Video games we'll play together, Have lotsa fun you 'n me. We'll battle torrents and whirlwinds, And sail the mighty sea. "I won't have bad breath in the morning Or put curlers in my hair. I just need a dime's worth of current And a little bit of software. "I'll be loyal and faithful. To you I shall ever be true. My Basic desire is service, My functions are all for you." I stopped her seductive output With my final touch of her switch. Her amber went dark and dismal, Her blinkies ceased to twitch. I traded my Computer For a bunch of roses red. I took them to my girl friend And got her back instead. "I'll never touch her keyboard Or view her monitor. I'll never feed the printer. I'll cease to be a bore. "I'll never stuff her disk-drive Or warm her up, to boot. I'll be a macro-lover And not a micro-brute!" So now we're wed and happy, Have children, one, two, three; Yet--sometimes--in my dreams--I Tickle ctrl-C. From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: computer personalities Date: Sun, 13 May 90 20:05:44-020 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 14 (117) [deleted quotation] Please observe that Digital's version of Bell's UNIX, is ULTIX. Seemingly they coined the term from "ultra" and an ending looking like the ending of UNIX. However, the name happens to be also the feminine form of Latin "ultor" ("avenger"). Thus, "The Avengeress". [Against Bell?] Whereas ULTRIX supports networks, we had some drawbacks with running AI programs, and also because of some commands and online documentation missing. The Avengeress is mistargeting... [deleted quotation] Perhaps it means the new secretaries have not such a background in the classics as the former one (too skilled for the job?). Perhaps it also means we like to know our foes by name, whereas mere instruments that do not arouse passions would not get a proper name. On the other hand, I guess the technophobic secretary had a good ergonomic intuition: indeed, instead of accepting dreariness with nameless problems, she surrounded her workplace with fictitious characters from the classics she is fond of. It made problems heroic, and made them show also a pleasant aspect. Having problems with Orestes & Co. means you, too, are in Wonderland. After all, socialism, too, either Marxist, or Tolstoian, or Gordonian Zionist (with its post-Gordon Work Religion) also tried to make work look appetizing by cute and heroic conceptualization. (Pasolini's "Lavorare stanca", "Work is tiring", was a heresy from this viewpoint.) Sincerely, Ephraim Nissan Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. BITNET address: onomata@bengus.bitnet From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Typical KDEM/OCR Errors Date: Friday, 11 May 1990 1647-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 110 (118) As I sit here yet again doing global changes on a KDEM produced file by identifying those impossible combinations of letters that result when "e" is read as "c" (ncw, wc, vc, etc.) or when "1n" represents "m" (1ny), or "rn" also for "m" (rnu, sorn, rnay, etc.), it occurs to me to ask if any other KDEMites have prepared such a list for inclusion in an automatic correction (tailoring) program? This would be the sort of program that is sure that a letter combination is impossible, and thus corrects it on the spot. If such a program or list is not available, I'd be happy to be involved in creating one! Bob Kraft From: George Aichele <73760.1176@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Modems Date: 12 May 90 10:29:05 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 111 (119) Let me add my vote to K. Steele's and D. Meriz's recommendations of external modems. I'm afraid I have no experience with 2400's, but my Practical Peripherals 1200 has been trouble-free. Whatever brand you buy, be sure that it is "Hayes-compatible." You will also need telecommunications software, of which there is quite a variety. You might want to start with a freeware program --there are some very good ones--and then when you know what your needs are, buy one of the more versatile shareware or commercial programs. George Aichele Adrian College 73760,1176@compuserve.com From: gwp@hss.caltech.edu (G. W. Pigman III) Subject: Re: 4.0035 TeX and LaTeX (56) Date: Sat, 12 May 90 00:10:51 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 112 (120) Since I've had a hand in typesetting seven books with TeX (published or to be published by Longmans, Oxford University Press, and the University of California Press), I'd like to respond to Catherine Griffin's reservations about the program. We agree with Don Knuth, the author of TeX, on a crucial point: designing a book is a difficult task best left to the professional. (Six of the books I mentioned were set to specifications provided by the publisher; the seventh was designed by a colleague who had already typeset one book, had once worked for a publisher, and had founded and directed the Caltech Art Gallery.) In fairness one should note that this difficulty is not peculiar to TeX; it applies to all desktop publishing. Catherine Griffin mentions three drawbacks: 1) unattractive fonts 2) the "low level" of TeX 3) the difficulty of modifying LaTeX style sheets. I can't speak to the third because I have never used LaTeX, but I would like to say a few words about her first two points. 1) Attractiveness of fonts is a matter of taste. I myself find the Computer Modern fonds attractive, and Computer Modern Roman, the basic text font, is very similar to Times Roman, although lighter. I would suggest that those interested in judging look at a book produced on a phototypesetter (such as Knuth's own *The TeXbook*) rather than 300dpi output from a LaserWriter or comparable printer. CM fonts look significantly better at resolutions higher than 300dpi. Moreover, I must disagree that it "is a very large undertaking" to use other fonts. If one prefers Postscript fonts, the public domain dvips enables one to use them without too much trouble. And it is fairly easy to use Bitstream fonts (Times, Garamond, and many others) with TeX, although one must buy them. Finally, there is a fine set of Greek fonts (complete with all the accents) that complements CM. 2) Yes, TeX is "low level" and provides little help towards producing a structured document, but there are a number of public domain macro packages to help with such amenities as numbered footnotes or endnotes or even complicated matters like the production of a critical apparatus (I use the latter myself thanks to the good graces of HUMANIST John Lavagnino of Brandeis). And writing macros for running heads is not as formidable as Catherine Griffin implies. An example might be useful; at least it will give the flavor of simple TeX commands. To center left and right running heads with pagenumbers in the outer margins on every page after the first, one could do something like this: \headline={\ifnum\pageno>\firstpageno \ifodd\pageno\headfont\hfil RIGHT HEADER\hfil\rm\folio \else\rm\folio\headfont\hfil LEFT HEADER\hfil\fi\fi} In English, If this is the second or subsequent page if the page number is odd (the recto) center RIGHT HEADER in the desired font and place the page number in Roman in the right margin else (if the page number is even (the verso)) center LEFT HEADER in the desired font and place the page number in Roman in the left margin else (if this is the first page) omit the running head (print a blank line). (One would need another line to specify the first page number and the font desired for the running head.) If this code looks terrifying, then I dare say that TeX is not for you, but if you can puzzle your way through it, you can probably learn enough to typeset most books published in the humanities. Yes, you will need someone who knows TeX to answer your questions, but isn't that true of any wordprocessing program? In closing, let me mention two advantages of TeX, one mentioned by Catherine Griffin, one not. First, let me elaborate a little on her comment, "TeX gives you wonderfully fine control over the white space on a page, and this, I believe, is one of the crucial factors in really good typesetting." TeX allows you to control (with very little trouble) the looseness or tightness of lines (i.e., the amount of space between words), and this usually makes it easy to avoid widows and clubs or bad breaks in displayed quotations or to suppress almost all hyphenation (even though TeX has an excellent hyphenation algorithm). Furthermore, one of the real joys of TeX is the ability to balance pages (i.e., to make recto and verso begin and end in exactly the same place regardless of section headings, displayed material, footnotes, etc.). It's easy to to request variable amounts of space before and after headings, displays, or before footnotes, since TeX doesn't determine the spacing until it has processed an entire page. Second, since TeX produces device-independent output, one can easily produce proofs on a LaserWriter and final copy on a phototypesetter without making any changes to one's input file (in fact, without even running TeX twice). -Mac Pigman gwp@hss.caltech.edu pigman@caltech.bitnet From: amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert A Amsler) Subject: TeX, LaTeX, and Scribe Date: Sat, 12 May 90 12:25:43 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 113 (121) TeX was created to compensate for the difficulties Donald Knuth had in getting his textbooks typeset the way he wanted. It offered significant advances over previous typesetting languages in several areas (mathematics (The American Mathematical Society endorsed TeX), font design (Metafont allowed users to sculpt fonts--albeit according to professional font designers only as `artificial' fonts), kerning, and later auto-hyphenation) and in general gave the user control over very delicate matters of appearance often ignored by other languages. It's major problem was that it was too difficult for novices to easily master. At the time, Scribe, created by Brian Reid, was a language which provided very nice high-level control of the typesetting task with possibilities for low-level intervention provided the user were willing to become a hacker. LaTeX was created, I believe by Leslie Lamport, to offer a high level interface and commands for TeX. It worked quite well. The model which he used was that of Scribe's command language. This model has also been used by Symbolics for their limited typesetting of output on the Symbolics LISP workstations and who knows where else. As far as I'm aware, LaTeX can also run TeX code. The biggest problem one faces in using these is that one can so customize one's typesetting, adding one's own macros to do exactly what one wants, that in effect one renders one's text into a program that requires its own subroutine library to be `compiled' into print. Mathematics typesetting has since advanced past TeX to special packages such as Mathematica, that outperform TeX. Scribe has since added a TeX-like mathematics typesetting capability. Scribe is a commercial product available from Scribe Systems and quite expensive. It does offer the best device-independence of any typesetting system I know of, offering output ranging from screen-display to Postscript, and with every other device inbetween supported at some level. This means one can readily print a Scribe document on a terminal, line printer, Imagen laser printer, or Postscript printer. I use it at Bellcore to do color Postscript typesetting. TeX was public-domain and thus quite a bit less expensive. --- My general experience with typesetting languages is that: (1) There is no GOOD way to typeset text. The process is inherently more complex than you want to be involved with and will force you to diddle with more things that you want to. In this regard it means that subjective statements about typesetting languages and their ease of use will abound. The devil you know can easily appear to be simplier than the devil you don't know, but what is actually being judged is familiarity in most cases. (2) Higher-level typesetting is a nice goal, and best represented today in the form of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and its applications such as that of the AAP's markup language. Texts marked up with these tags can readily be translated downward into actual typesetting languages. But alas, they have to be translated in most cases. This is somewhat better than it sounds since having a Rosetta Stone is an advantage over not having one, but: THE PROBLEM IS THAT WE LACK A HIGH-LEVEL DEVICE-INDEPENDENT SPECIFICATION LANGUAGE FOR DEVICE-DEPENDENT TYPESETTING FEATURES. This means that you have to get into the ink and onto the print surface at some point to actually make your document print out and the only way to do that is to do it in a lower-level language. From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0033 Eastern European Renaissance (48) Date: Sat, 12 May 90 15:11 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 114 (122) Actually, Maria D Birnbaum, Professor Hungarian Lang & Lit at UCLA, has been at work for a decade on Matthias Corvinus, and if I am not mistaken, has published the book. I would have to get out of this program to look it up on ORION, but I can get the Bibliogrpahical entry, if you like. She is of course from Budapest, a '56er, and has done it all in English for the world. Anyone want the reference, or can you suice it yourselves from ORION, at UCLA? It is online, as is Melvyl, if I recall Humanist letters about it last year. Jascha Kessler From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0027 Metropolis and Mabuse (147) Date: Sat, 12 May 90 15:07 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 115 (123) Actually, the original METROPOLIS, with the two piano score, is being shown at this instant (I am making a Beef minestrone),alas, at the Goethe Institut in Los Angeles. What a fiery Joanna Baptista that Maria was, is, and ever shall be, with that quasi-balletic Expresionistic silent acting! What a lissome blonde, w hitedressed (pleated tennis skirt) proselyter of revolt. And so it has come to pass: Labor & Capital are united in West Germany as never before! When was the last strike? A business-manager of my acquaintance is touting investment in European mutal funds: stability is almost as sure as it can be, for all those quasi-solcialist, welfare states have suppressed the unions. So much for the Proletarian dreams of Marx and Engels, if not the suppressed LaSalle. Only our Teamsters Union has it both ways: with a gun to the heads of government, well-concealed, but then cf Claire Sterling's studies in the big M. Kessler From: Jim O'Donnell (Classics, Penn) Subject: Doddle? Date: 11 May 90 17:59:28 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 116 (124) The very informative piece on TeX etc. included the throwaway line `Cross-references are a doddle.' I think I infer correctly that they aren't handled very well at all, but the word `doddle' attracts me: a recent Britishism? It sounds useful and with a little instruction I would be happy to propagate it. Life, I surmise, is full of doddles waiting to be called by name. From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Idiom trading? Date: Monday, 14 May 1990 1132-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 117 (125) To "glom onto" something is familiar to me -- I have a sort of oral-dental image, maybe like eating with no teeth -- but despite ongoing conversations with British friends, I don't recall hearing of things that "are a doddle" (Catherine Griffin, on LaTeX). Seems to mean they are a snap, or a piece of cake, or "no problem" (with correct intonation). Origin(s)? Bob Kraft From: Geoff Rockwell Subject: MaxSpitbol Date: Mon, 14 May 90 12:12:23 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 118 (126) Can anyone provide an address for the distributors/publishers of MaxSPITBOL? Thanks in advance Geoffrey Rockwell rockwell@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca From: "Paul N. Banks" Subject: Various Date: Fri, 11 May 90 17:11:47 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 119 (127) ... [eds] I will be spending much of the summer in Paris, and am trying to determine if it is possible to keep in e-mail contact with my account at Columbia University (including possibly receiving Humanist if that doesn't represent too large a load) while I am there. I can dial directly into the Columbia computer system with a modem (which I could if necessary purchase for my laptop), but that obviously gets expensive and I worry about various compatibilities). Is there any way to (e.g.) get a guest account for a reasonable fee at some institution in Paris from which I could log on to (ultimately) the Internet? I don't remember having seen postings of a similar character, but I imagine that this issue must arise for other Humanists. Thanks for any tips you can provide. Paul N. Banks ===== Thanks for your assistance. Paul N. Banks | Conservation Education Programs Research Scholar | School of Library Service pbanks@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu | 516 Butler Library 212 854-4445 | Columbia University 212 865-1304 | New York NY 10027 From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Subject: e-mail makes the NY Times Date: 14 May 1990, 07:28:03 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 120 (128) The Sunday, June 13, Times carried a cover story about the increasing use of electronic mail, discussing the medium partly in terms of a lonely hearts club where two University of Maryland programmers met and fell in love but also discussing the emergence of corporate e-mail at such places as Microsoft and Bell Labs, with voice and television mail in the near future. The Internet was mentioned, along with Compuserve, but not BITNET. Anyone want to write the Times a letter? Roy Flannagan From: Oliver Berghof Subject: re: macros for editing Date: Fri, 11 May 90 16:20:31 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 121 (129) A friend of mine came up with the idea of using (wordprocessor) macros to teach students in English Composition classes revision techniques. Involved would be the retrieval of an initial, "faulty" version of a text, quotation etc. , and the step - by - step revision, on-screen, of this document, triggered by only a few keystrokes, for which the student would be prompted. He is certainly not the first one to have come up with this idea. As only few of us enjoy re-inventing the wheel he would be very grateful if HUMANISTs who have worked on a similar project could get in touch. Of course recommendations as to wordprocessing packages that are especially suited for this task would be very helpful. Ideally, the macro-capability should extend to the possibility of slowing down the on-screen demonstration, and to the option of calling upon several other files during one demonstration. Suggestions are needed for both the IBM and the Apple- world. Many thanks in advance, Oliver Berghof Department of English and Comparative Literature University of California, Irvine oberghof@next.acs.uci.edu OR mschwab@orion.oac.uci.edu From: edwards@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Jane Edwards) Subject: establishing sub-lists within Humanist Date: Fri, 11 May 90 14:43:01 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 47 (130) I have noticed lately that a quite a few of the notices posted to Humanist have to do with social and political themes - e.g., the various postings relating to earth day, trees, and lately our perspectives of Polish society. Interesting as these may be, I find them to be mainly expressions of personal opinions which don't help me with my work in using electronic texts, computer methods, etc., and they load up the mail queue and do take time to screen. I had thought at first of terminating my membership, but have found much of value in Humanist once I strip away these other things. I wanted to ask if others feel this way. If so, perhaps a 2-tiered mailing list could be devised. Those interested only in topics relating to electronic texts, computer methods, queries relating to academic topics, etc., would receive only those; people interested in everything would receive everthing. I mean nothing pejorative here. I certainly don't mean to imply that these other topics are not important; rather only to question whether they belong on Humanist or could be circulated as effectively on one of the usenet groups (e.g., talk-politics). -Jane Edwards From: Michael Ossar Subject: glom Date: Tue, 15 May 90 10:33 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 122 (131) The discussion of "to glom onto" seems to have prompted an international wave of linguistic benevolence and affection. To judge from several of the responses, it's everybody's favorite slang word (or one of them). It's curious how some locutions enjoy such universal popularity and others, like "proactive" and "empower," get such mixed reviews. From: "HALPORN,JAMES,CLAS" Subject: SERIOUS THINKERS Date: 14 May 90 21:43:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 123 (132) The correspondence on glom and on gender reminds me of the book of Don Marquis, *Hermione and her little group of serious thinkers* (NY, 1916). Well, anyway, Randall Jarrell and Mary McCarthy would have had fun with HUMANIST contributions. One of the guilty ones, Jim Halporn From: krovetz@UMass Subject: doddle Date: Mon, 14 May 90 19:44 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 124 (133) The word `doddle' is listed in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English as informal British English. It is defined as: `Something that is very easy to do: That driving test was a real doddle' -bob krovetz@cs.umass.edu From: DM@GEOVAX.ED.AC.UK Subject: Doddle [eds] Date: Tue, 15 MAY 90 10:35:25 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 125 (134) I find the Transatlantic exchange of words like "glom" and "doddle" to be quite fascinating. Jim O'Donnell from Penn asked if a "doddle" was some sort of Britishism; yes. Students often refer to classwork being a doddle, meaning that it was very easy. I'm not sure of the origins of the word but feel confident in saying that I've only rarely heard it used outside Scotland. I've heard the word used on a couple of occasions in England, but then by people with Scottish links of one sort or another. So Jim O'Donnell's reading of "doddle" just goes to show that Transatlantic communication is not the doddle that it's made out to be. David Mitchell (Geography, Edinburgh) From: R.M.McRae@VME.GLASGOW.AC.UK Subject: Doddle Date: Tue,15 May 90 12:42:16 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 126 (135) Shorter OED: DODDLE v. 1653 [var. of DADDLE] 1. trans. To shake, nod (the head ). 2. intr. To toddle; to totter; to dawdle 1761. Definition 2 is the one relevant here, I think, specifically in the sense of "dawdle", implying an effortless stroll. A common enough scottish word used eg to denote an easy victory in a football (soccer) match. Rod Macrae at Glasgow. From: N.J.Morgan%vme.glasgow.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: Re: 4.0045 Doddle (24) Date: Tue,15 May 90 12:56:59 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 127 (136) In Edinburgh a doddle is apparently a small piece of home made toffee; more generally it is something that is easy to do (bastardised dawdle). In North east Scotland to walk feebly, and in Caithness, male genitals (since the eighteenth century) in the plural. All this and more from the Concise Scots Dictionary (which says that glomming is a derivative of gloamin). Nicholas Morgan Department of Scottish History University of Glasgow From: "Ed. Harris, Academic Affairs, SCSU" Subject: Glom Date: Tue, 15 May 90 09:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 128 (137) As a native glommer who has spent almost exactly half his life in the midwest (St Louis) and half east of the Hudson (NYC and CT) with a 3-year stretch in the middle in LA (how about them credentials?), whenever I have glommed, I have acquired *visually*. I can't wait to see how our other new word--is it boddle? I don't save my correspondence, so forgive the looseness of my memory--works out. Someone feels it connotes something positive and someone else something negative. It sounds like it should mean 'foul up' to me, though I've never run across it before. --Ed. Ed Southern Connecticut State U, New Haven, CT 06515 USA Tel: 1 (203) 397-4322 / Fax: 1 (203) 397-4207 From: Subject: 4.045 Doddle Date: 15 May 1990 11:32:39 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 129 (138) Doddle does indeed mean "easy, a snap", as Bob Kraft surmises. As an American living in Britain, I am intrigued and heartened by this recent exchange of information on local slang. As someone has said (Shaw?) and as I have learned the hard way, Britain and the U.S. are indeed two countries divided by a common language. (Sorry about the repetitions of "as"--4 times in three sentences!) Don Spaeth University of Glasgow gkha13@cms.glasgow.ac.uk From: Germaine Warkentin Subject: Sublists for Humanist Date: Mon, 14 May 90 19:47:33 EDT (1 lines) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 130 (139) I am deeply puzzled by Jane Edwards' feeling that people who are interested only in computer information, "academic queries" (whatever that means in such a context), etc., should constitute a separate sublist of Humanist. What would then make them Humanists? One of the distinctions of this seminar is its refusal to accept such compartmentalization. Most of the time I zap the longer technical items, but rarely before reading them. I have learned a lot that way. Surely a person with technical interests who joined Humanist would assume that the intellectual traffic moves in _both_ directions? Germaine Warkentin (with some asperity!) From: LNGDANAP@VM.UOGUELPH.CA Subject: Re: Humanist structure Date: Tue, 15 May 90 02:45:33 EST (3 lines) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 131 (140) I am sad to see (hear? read?) that yet again, someone is suggesting that HUMANISt segregate the techies from the non techies. The current editors, following in Willard's footsteps, have done a splendid job of grouping messages and labelling them as to content. As a non-techie, I have no problems in quickly deleting discussions dealing with Tex and Latex...although I appreciate having the opportunity to read them, should I wish to. surely the same would apply to techies faced with discussion of computer gender and student names? The name HUMANISt implies, for me, a wide ranging discussion, in which a hardware/software topic might well branch off into a non- computing subject. And if such a branching leads to various ruminations, including gentle humour, then does it not reflect the way that *humans* conduct conversations of a most edifying type? I vote to keep HUMANIST as open-ended as possible... From: Rich Mitchell Subject: Serendipity files; electronic texts vs. humanism Date: Tue, 15 May 90 00:57:01 PDT (1 lines) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 132 (141) [...]. Regarding Jane Edwards hope to remove the distractions of social, political and humanistic commentary from the "substance" of talk about electronic texts and computers, I would appreciate quite the opposite. For me, HUMANIST is a forum for humanist thought, not production techniques. To suggest that a dialogue on the human condition belongs elsewhere is to place mechanism ahead of its social meaning, a notion one social critic, Marx, would find alienating. From: Dr. Gerd Willee 0228 - 73 56 20 UPK000 at DBNRHRZ1 Subject: establishing sub-list within HUMANIST; Date: 15 May 90, 15:07:36 MEZ(14) (1 lines) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 133 (142) I totally agree to the idea that the main aim of HUMANIST is to inform or better said to communicate about matters related to humanists' work with computers. Therefore I too sometimes have difficulties to find the nuggets in the masses of sand and really would prefer, if some discussion items would be distributed only for those, who really want it. E.g., the discussion about computer gender, aboutslang words, about problems with laptops in planes (for my oppinion the only problem related to this topic is the one people must have, if they need to take with them such rather problematic machines when travelling ... ), etc. is worth being mentionned once or twice for the complete HUMANIST group, as these topics are interesting for many, but not for all of us, but if such discussions begin to grow, one really should transplant them to a special sub-list. The contributions to such sub-lists could be stored as files for the HUMANIST fileserver, so that interested people could get the information, even without getting each single contribution directly into the mailbox. Gerd Willee From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET Subject: 4.0047 Query on Humanist Struct Date: Tuesday, 15 May 1990 9:43am CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 134 (143) A similar question to the one raised by Jane Edwards has come up recently on Megabyte University, which is devoted primarily to issues pertaining to computer-assisted writing instruction but which has lately been the medium for a number of more "personal" exchanges. The consensus on MBU was that those personal messages, expressions of opinion and friendship and so on, are somehow essential to the social fabric (virtual fabric, I should say); and I think the same is true here as well. I often don't know very much about the technical/scholarly issues being discussed (no Greek at all, no Hebrew since my Bar Mitzvah, etc., etc.), and while I often enjoy and learn from the stores of knowledge so freely shared here, I would very much hate to lose the other messages; they seem to me integrally related to what it means to *be* a humanist. John Slatin University of Texas, Austin From: Jim Cahalan Subject: HUMANIST subjects Date: 15 May 90 11:33 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 135 (144) In response to Jane Edwards' query, I find most of the technical computer postings deadly boring and other kinds of postings refreshing. My feeling is that the name of the newsgroup is "HUMANIST," not "COMPUTER NERDS IN THE HUMANITIES." Don't get me wrong: I'm as excited about computer developments as the next humanist; it's just that I enjoy humanistic conversations more than technical ones. Perhaps some other Humanists may feel the same. Jim Cahalan, Graduate Literature English Dept., 111 Leonard, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA 15705-1094 Phone: (412) 357-2264 From: edwards@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Jane Edwards) Subject: more on Humanist structure Date: Tue, 15 May 90 09:38:44 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 136 (145) I would like to add etymologies of slang terms to the list of things which might be considered for selective distribution (the 2-tiered suggestion) or distribution over one of the Usenet groups (e.g., sci.lang) instead of Humanist. From my perspective the reason for this is the "needless nuisance" factor - i.e., the meaning of "glom" was clear from context in the original message, but also could have been clarified locally (i.e., without needing to post a query to Humanist). Of course, there is also the fact that such postings change the feel of Humanist to be in fact more like a coffee clatch or social club, while at the same time diluting the average information-level of messages distributed on Humanist. If this is what people want, then, it will surely go that way, but I wanted to raise the issue so that at least that choice, if it is made, will be made consciously. -Jane Edwards From: Subject: 4.045 Humanist structure Date: 15 May 1990 11:41:32 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 137 (146) I have some sympathy with Jane Edward's views and have expressed similar ones myself in the past. BUT (I hasten to say) I've changed my mind since this issue was last raised about 6 months ago. Humanist is a community of scholars, and as such may discuss a wide variety of issues, just as we would if we were to meet in person. (See Sunday NY Times front page for more on such communities.) Still, there is a limit to the amount of time we can spend on such chat. So I hope Elaine and Allen will continue (as they appear to be doing) Willard's custom of breaking contributions up into different topical files. One demonstration of the hold that the Humanist umbilical cord has on me is that I have resubscribed while on holiday in the U.S.! I expect that my Glasgow colleagues have read my contributions with some surprise. Don Spaeth From: vivace!cb%kcp.UUCP@XAIT.Xerox.COM (Christopher Bader) Subject: Introductory files; First impressions Date: Tue, 15 May 90 13:27:20 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 138 (147) I'm a new HUMANIST member; I joined on May 4. [note to editors removed] I haven't been too pleased with what I HAVE received. I agree completely with Jane Edwards' suggestion that a sub-group be created for "those interested only in topics relating to electronic texts, computer methods, queries relating to academic topics, etc." -- Christopher Bader From: djb@harvunxw.BITNET (David J. Birnbaum) Subject: Re: 4.0047 Query on Humanist Structure (28) Date: Tue, 15 May 90 15:11:25 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 139 (148) I would like to endorse Jane Edwards's thoughtful proposal of a two-tiered mailing list. --David David J. Birnbaum djb@wjh12.harvard.edu [Internet] djb@harvunxw.bitnet [Bitnet] From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 4.0042 OCR errors; ... Date: Mon, 14 May 90 16:21:39 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 140 (149) The solution to the problem that Bob Kraft mentions with correcting OCR character recognition problems is to use a spelling checker. The checker in the PC word processor Nota Bene, for example, will build a table of automatic corrections, like change wc to we or lne to me, etc., as you go along. You just add the correction to your personal list by specifying that the correction is to be made automatically hereafter. I think that other word processors and stand alone spelling checkers would in most cases have similar features. A problem would arrise if a misrecognition resulted in a correct spelling, but the examples he cites do not seem to result in such problems. As an aside, for languages other than English, especially highly inflected ones, note that SIL has a package of PC tools that can be used to check spelling in languages that use phonemic or quasi-phonemic orthographies. These tools can check plausibility of spelling based on canonical form, as well as on list membership. This package is available for $3.00 or $4.00 and is called something like Documentation Aids for Non-Major Languages. From: Mark Rooks Subject: Scan errors Date: Tue, 15 May 90 04:26:45 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 141 (150) Regarding Bob Kraft's inquiry concerning lists of common scanner error-letter combinations: I too would be interested in such a list; however, I would find of more use a list of mis-scanned words, in which the scanner error results in a different correctly spelled word. For example 'modern' is sometimes scanned as 'modem,' 'but' as 'hut,' etc. We have begun assembling such a list, but would certainly be interested in what others have. Writing an acceptable program to automate scan error correction would be very difficult, since it would require a substantial semantic component. Any ambitious automation would inevitably introduce correctly spelled words which were not the words scanned, even with a semantic component. A simple-minded automation would introduce even more. Impossible letter combinations are usually not, particularly when dealing with scholarly materials and abbreviations. Of course such a program would be acceptable (in my view), if it merely showed the context of the presumed error to a human with the appropriate alternative, and gave the human the option of rejecting the alternative. (See below.) Although scan errors tend to cluster around certain letter combinations, this is just a tendency. 'rnay' (e.g.) might be generated by a word other than 'may,' though it commonly would be. In our experience, a correctly spelled "incorrect" word, is worse than a host of misspelled "incorrect" words, given that any word error causes us sleepless nights. At some point a human must look at the remaining errors in the file, and it is easier to overlook a correctly spelled word than an incorrectly spelled one. Omnipage has just introduced a spell-checking dictionary (Omnispell), which we have purchased (but yet to receive), designed for use with scanners. Common scan errors (with scan flags (e.g. '~' and '^')) are anticipated by the spell-checker, but a human must look and (at least) click a button in each case (or so the advertising goes). Mark Rooks InteLex From: Mark Olsen Subject: Kurzweil errors Date: Mon, 14 May 90 19:13:07 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 142 (151) As usual, Bob Kraft has the good idea. After writing more routines to clean up KDM errors in various languages and on various computers than I care to recall, I think that a general program would be very helpful. The following is a description of the corrections that we make to scanned material and the sed script (UNIX Stream EDitor) which performs those corrections. Unfortunately, most of this example is probably French specific. I too would be happy to contribute to Bob's program. Mark This is a list of the automatic corrections for kurzweil documents, as of 4/20/88. The caret "^" means at the beginning of a line, and the dollar sign "$", at the end of a line. Note that spaces are significant. Besides changing "," to "'", space is changed to "'" in that environment. characters: changed to: "dc" "de" "nI" "M" "^^I" "M" "qu," "qu'" "Qu," "Qu'" "qu " "qu'" "Qu " "Qu'" " v " " y " "^v " "y " " ct" " et" "^ct" "et" " nc " " ne " "^nc " "ne " " nc$" " ne" " cc " " ce " "^cc " "ce " " cc$" " ce" "quc" "que" "Quc" "Que" "unc " "une " "rnm" "mm" "mrn" "mm" " rn" " m" "^rn" "m" "rnent " "ment " "rnent$" "ment" ":." ":" ".:" ":" ";," ";" "]-" "j" ")-" "j" "1-" "i" " -- " " --- " "^'" " " "^." " " " c," " c'" " C," " C'" " d," " d'" " D," " D'" " j," " j'" " J," " J'" " l," " l'" " L," " L'" " m," " m'" " n," " n'" " t," " t'" "^c," "c'" "^C," "C'" "^d," "d'" "^D," "D'" "^j," "j'" "^J," "J'" "^l," "l'" "^L," "L'" "^m," "m'" "^M," "M'" "^n," "n'" "^N," "N'" "^s," "s'" "^S," "S'" "^t," "t'" "^T," "T'" " ll(s) " " Il(s) " " 1l(s) " " Il(s) " "^ll(s) " "Il(s) " "^1l(s) " "Il(s) " " ll(s)$" " Il(s)" " 1l(s)$" " Il(s)" "^ *" " " (tab) # corrdocs.sed # s/dc/de/g s/nI/M/g s/\^^I/M/g s/\([qQ]\)u[,\ ]/\1u'/g s/ v / y /g s/^v /y / s/ ct/ et/g s/^ct/et/ s/ nc / ne /g s/^nc /ne / s/ nc$/ ne/ s/ cc / ce /g s/^cc /ce / s/ cc$/ ce/ s/\([qQ]\)uc/\1ue/g s/unc /une /g s/rnm/mm/g s/mrn/mm/g s/ rn/ m/g s/^rn/m/ s/rnent /ment /g s/rnent$/ment/ s/:\./:/g s/\.:/:/g s/;,/;/g s/[])]-/j/g s/1-/i/g s/ -- / --- /g s/^['\.]/ /g s/ \([cCdDjJlLmMnNsStT]\)[\ ,]/ \1'/g s/^\([cCdDjJlLmMnNsStT]\)[\ ,]/\1'/g s/^1'/l'/g s/ 1'/l'/g s/ [1l]l / Il /g s/^[1l]l /Il /g s/ [1l]l$/ Il/g s/ [1l]ls / Ils /g s/^[1l]ls /Ils /g s/ [1l]ls$/ Ils/g s/^ */.P / s/^\ \ */ /g From: Sebastian Rahtz Subject: Re: Tex and Latex: Cons and Pros Date: Tue, 15 May 90 13:59:40 bst X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 51 (152) Catherine Griffin's note on "TeX and LaTeX: Cons and Pros" in HUMANIST 4.35 passed before my eyes in a circuitous way. Its a long time since I left HUMANIST, but I can't resist sending you a quick reply. I highlight a few points [deleted quotation]... [deleted quotation] I agree with Catherine that Computer Modern Roman isn't an attractive typeface, particularly at low resolution. And I would concede that TeX and CMR have been unhealthily associated for too long now. But I would certainly *not* agree that using other fonts `is a very large undertaking'! It is essentially trivial. I have been producing books, reports, handouts etc with TeX for the last four years, and I have yet to use CMR for my final draft. The last three books I have done were in Baskerville, Lucida and Times. I have used three different ways of getting TeX in sync with PostScript fonts, and I could set any of them up on Catherine's computer in half an hour. No, I don't use a Macintosh! LaTeX 2.10 will, by the way, provide a much easier way of setting up new font families. [deleted quotation] ------ this is a non sequitur, m'lud [deleted quotation] This is an argument against all known typesetting systems... [deleted quotation] Criticisms at this level apply to the whole, spurious, field of `desktop publishing', not to TeX. [deleted quotation] Again, Catherine is right - there is a lot of hideous stuff produced with LaTeX; there is a zillion times more produced with Macwrite, Pagemaker and Ventura. Blame the craftsman, not the tools! It is not `notoriously difficult' to write new LaTeX styles (nor is it fair to criticize Leslie Lamport for creating default styles which suit American, not Oxford, taste), but neither is it *supposed* to be easy to do a designers job. [deleted quotation] The amaterishness comes from the designer, not LaTeX. Last year I did a book in PostScript Times Roman using LaTeX for Oxford University Press. Since OUP specified all the parameters of the layout, who is to blame if you don't like the result? - OUP for the layout, and Adobe for the font, but not LaTeX. [deleted quotation] a bit like all other typesetting systems, then? [deleted quotation] Yes, of course. But we are in the context of computers here. Computers and their software are *general purpose tools*; that is their horror, and their excitement. To criticize a program which embodies all that is best and worst in computers is a swipe at the fundamental assumptions of our business! When someone points me at a program which allows me the control over typesetting that TeX provides; is free; runs on every computer I use; is almost infinitely extensible; whose source comes with it; which has almost no known bugs (that is not to say it is perfect!) - then I'll have one, thanks. Sebastian Rahtz Southampton University From: matsuba@writer Subject: Re: 4.0040 Addressing Students (77) Date: Mon, 14 May 90 17:41:01 EDT(5) (13 lines) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 143 (153) Writing as a graduate student who moved from a rather formal department to a much more informal one, I find that using first or second names really depends on what is more comfortable for the person being addressed. At the University of British Columbia, it was more or less expected that you refer to a professor as "Dr." or "Professor" so-and-so. There were, of course exceptions. At York University, it is the opposite. It is almost expected that you address profesors by their first names. Again, with some exceptions. My way of coping is to address people as "Dr./Professor/Mr./Ms. ______", and then wait for a response. Usually they will SAY, "NO CEREMONY, STEPHEN, NO CEREMONY," or they will smile in way that says you did the right thing. Stephen Matsuba York University Toronto, Canada matsuba@writer.yorku.ca (no ceremony) From: Jim O'Donnell (Classics, Penn) Subject: nomenclature Date: 14 May 90 17:54:31 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 144 (154) Long ago, trying to figure out a sensible way to deal with sticky issues of names and titles, I decided that two rules ought to suffice: 1. Always call other people by whatever name/title/nickname *they* will feel comfortable with. If first names, fine, if last name and titles, if Miss, fine, if Ms, fine, if Mohammed Ali, fine, if Binky, fine. My experience has been that my students expect and are comfortable with first names, so first names it is. 2. Always allow and encourage other people to call *me* by whatever name/ title/nickname *they* will be most comfortable with. So when I taught at Catholic U. of America, where the culture demanded `Dr.', I gritted my teeth and took it (growling when I came into the office with an older, wiser, and more learned friend, and the secretary punctiliously looked up and said, `Good morning, Dr. O'Donnell, Good morning, Mr. M-----r.' So when I taught at Cornell, it was all first names. Now at Penn it tends to be Dr. again, but not always: but I'm *not* going to put students on the spot by insisting on something less formal. I suppose the exception would be a flagrantly contemptuous address: but then I'm not objecting to the form of address, but to the contempt -- and so if then (it's never happened), I have to say, `That's DR O'DONNELL to you, bud,' it's not really a question of nomenclature. Anyway, these rules work for me and I find I spend little if any time worrying about such things. More important problems. From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0040 Addressing Students (77) Date: Mon, 14 May 90 15:35 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 145 (155) Well, having grown in a tough-enough Bronx, the last name is the name to address anyone by safely. Gladhanding with the first name seems to me a condescension and intimacy not earned, and I hate to give a D or F to someone I call by his or her first name. Using the first name makes me feel I am laying hands on the student, and not respecting their maturity. Without a Ms or Mr it is intimate enough for me, thank you. Kindergarteners get to be called by their first name, but that is a childish thing one puts away on coming to voting age, I should hope. Just because one is friendly, one is not friendly to people who not one's peers, and the lack of formal heirarchy is a bit disorganizing. Of course, if you let them decide who is teaching and who is being taught, what little one can teach, because one knows so little, then one is getting down and not bring them up. I'll be damned if I let a stranger call me "Yosha" or something like that, when it cost me a front tooth in childhood because I didnt like the hamfisted guy who sneered when he call me that. I prefer the last name, with or lwithout Professor or Doctor, Mr will do to approach this old fella. Next thing one knows, one is hauled in for giving a nuance to"Suzy, dont you know a dangler when you see one?" NOt for me. Miss Jones isbetter than Suzy Q. Kessler here at UCLA From: Stephen Clausing Subject: not addressing students Date: Mon, 14 May 90 19:59:49 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 146 (156) It was never my intention to begin a discussion on the merits of using first vs. last names with students. I chose that example almost at random from my student evaluations to show that students get very upset over issues that are inherently trivial. The general rubric was "malice towards students" and this was my contribution. I know one colleague who refuses to read his student evaluations because of the utter stupidity of student comments. He is, I might add, one of our best teachers. I do read my evaluations if only because I am vain enough to believe the good ones and arrogant enough to think that the bad ones are wrong. I sometimes get evaluations in which the student says I am the best teacher he or she has ever had, and in the same class I may have a student who blames me for the D he or she is going to get. What I really would appreciate would be this evaluation: "Dear Professor X. You obviously attempted to do a good job teaching the class even though the administration doesn't care and no one will ever know that you did, except me. Thank you." From: Tzvee Zahavy Subject: Student names Date: X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 147 (157) Wait a minute. After 14 years at the U of M now you tell me that I am supposed to learn my students' names! Why? ... But seriously, doesn't context have anything to do with the issue? In a course with 340 students I give up. In a seminar with 4 students I know them well, much more than by first name. I know their talents, personalities and egos. I find a class of 40 to be a problem. It is time consuming to call roll but tempting to get to know individuals. In evening school I prefer first names. In morning classes, last names. Context counts. From: MHEIM@CALSTATE Subject: Cyberspace Conference Date: Mon, 14 May 90 20:35:50 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 53 (158) Humanists might want to know about a recent conference held at the University of Texas at Austin, May 4-5, 1990. The First Conference on Cyberspace was convened through email by Professor Michael Benedikt of the School of Architecture at UT. The School of Architecture worked with Computer Science to sponsor the event. "Cyberspace" was the term the novelist William Gibson used for computer-simulated virtual reality. Cyberspace is a total sensory environment constituted by information. The information comes in holograms and other multi-dimensional structures. To enter the holographic data environment, the user dons headset and data-gloves which transmit retinal images and textures. Attending the conference were representatives of American Express, IBM, EDS, etc. Several companies envision cyberspace as the office environment of the future. These "virtual workplaces" will advantages, as they see it, over real-time geographical workplaces, including less dependence on a physical transportation infrastructure. Other planners conceived cyberspace in more poetic and imaginative terms. Two things struck me about the conference. One was the intrinsically interdisciplinary nature of the discussion. Another was the spontaneous combustion of metaphysical problems raised by the plans for cyberspace. The conference papers will be published in a book called early in Fall 1990 by MIT Press. ** ** ** ** ** The papers were as follows: Session One: Why Cyberspace? 1. Joel Anderson, NCR Comten, "Ancient Landmarks in Cyberspace" 2. Natalie Stenger, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, "The Mind is a Leaking Rainbow: How Cyberspace Fills New Levels of Reality" 3. Steve Pruitt, Texas Instruments and Tom Barrett, Electronic Data Systems Session Two: Visions of the System 1. Chip Morningstar and Randall Farmer, American Information Exchange Corp. (formerly of Lucasfilm Ltd.), "The Lessons of Habitat" 2. Michael Benedikt, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin, "Cyberspace: Some Proposals" 3. Tim McFadden, Altos Computer Systems, Inc., "The Structure of Cyberspace and the Ballistic Actors Model" Session Three: Logical and Ontological Problems 1. Marcos Novak, The Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Texas at Austin, "Liquid Architecture in Cyberspace" 2. Joseph V. Henderson, Interactive Media Lab, Dartmouth College, "Cyberspace Representation of Vietnam War Trauma" 3. Michael Heim, Department of Philosophy, California State University at Long Beach, "The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace" 4. Michael Lewis, Department of Information Science, University of Pittsburgh, "Cyberspace and the Two Gibsons" Session Four: Representing and Manipulating Data in Space 1. Meredith Bricken, Human Interface Technology Lab, The University of Washington, "No Interface to Design..." 2. Randall Walser, Autodesk, Inc., "Elements of a Cyberspace Role Playing System" 3. Carl Tollander, Autodesk, Inc., "Collaborative Engines for Multi-Participant Cyberspaces" 4. Wendy Kellogg, John Carroll, and John T. Richards, IBM Watson Research Center, "Making Reality a Cyberspace" ** ** ** ** ** Hope Humanists will get in on the planning stages of this habitat of the near future. Mike Heim Cal State Long Beach From: David Zeitlyn Subject: Dictionaries & Databases. Date: Tue, 15 May 90 14:49 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 148 (159) Hello, I'm back from more work in Cameroon, and return to the computerised world determined (ass I am every time I get back) that THIS year I will write my Mambila - English dictionary. For those who forget Mambila (language no. 710 in the Cameroon Linguistic Atlas) is a non-Bantu Bantoid, and usually classed in the Mambiloid group. I would appreciate comments from Humanists about the choice of database to use to make the dictionary. Unless VERY good arguments are produced I will use a MAC since I've sorted out the necessary phonetic fonts for this, which is part of the battle - BUT has any one yet worked out how to change the sort-order on a MAC? The dictionary will collate existing information on the various different dialects and include french and english focal glosses for reverse sorting. As I see it the main question - which I keep changing my mind about - is whther to use a flat file d-base (hcard even, although that'ld probably be too slow for the intended size approx 3,000 entries) OR whether to use a relational database. This would have the advantage that the dialects could be entered as separate simple word lists and hence be easily farmed out, then combined using relational qualities... but that 'merging@ would be fairly complex while a single but messy flat file 'card' could handle it. All opinions and comments gratefully received Best wishes (and nice to be home) David Zeitlyn in sunny but cool Oxford From: "L. Dale Patterson" Subject: Computer Maps Date: Sun, 13 May 90 14:19:55 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 149 (160) I am looking for a computer product which will generate maps for me which I can then add to and alter. I teach courses in American history, and no matter how good the textbook there could always be one more map. What I would like is so mething which starts with the basic outline of the U.S. and which includes the outlines of the states (it would be great if there could be different outlines for specific time-periods) and then would let me fill in cities I want to empha size, draw lines, shading to emphasize westward movement, strength of a given party or religious group, etc. I would appreciate any ideas or comments. Thanks. -- Dale Patterson University of Louisville BITNET: ldpatt01 @ ulkyvm From: "Eric Johnson DSU, Madison, SD 57042" Subject: MaxSPITBOL Date: Tue, 15 May 90 06:38:57 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 150 (161) In answer to the question by Geoffrey Rockwell, MaxSPITBOL is available from Catspaw, Inc., P.O. Box 1123, Salida, CO 81201 U.S.A. (719) 539-3884. Eric Johnson ERIC@SDNET From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: sneaking someone into the bedroom Date: Tue, 15 May 90 06:17:31 IST (6 lines) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 151 (162) a colleague wants to know: does anyone know of stories in which a wife sneaks someone else into bed with her husband instead of herself, because she is barren or for any other reason and suceceeds in fooling him? thanks From: janus@ux.acs.umn.edu Subject: ANY NERDS KNOWN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE? Date: Mon, 14 May 90 21:55:42 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 152 (163) A Danish colleague here at the U of Minnesota wonders if any HUMANETS (?) have ideas on the first literary representation of a nerd. He is astounded at Americans' negative reaction to nerdiness (which he sees as more bookishness), and would like to find out if there are some classic American nerds in literature. Obviously he is not interested only in nerds by that name, but any nerds will do. Ideas? Louis Janus Dept of Scandinavian Studies U of Minn From: Tzvee Zahavy Subject: NY Times on E-Mail Date: 05/14/90 22:27:04 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 153 (164) Just to prove the power of E-mail wouldn't it be nice if all members of Humanist wrote a brief letter to the NY Times immediately to tell them about this marvelous list-server. Imagine the impact of such a network of correspondents. From: ANNA MORPURGO DAVIES Subject: RE: 4.0048 Etymologies of 'Glom' and 'Doddle' (116) Date: Tue, 15 May 90 23:31 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 154 (165) It is odd that so far noone has quoted the OED supplement for GLOM and DODDLE. The latter is labelled 'colloquial' and glossed 'something that is easy or requires little effort; a 'walk-over'. First evidence 1937. The former is labelled U.S. slang and glossed 'to steal, to grab, snatch'. First evidence 1907 (Jack London). Anna From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Subject: nerds in American lit. Date: 15 May 1990, 18:43:13 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 155 (166) Surely Holden Caulfield in _The Catcher in the Rye_ is something like the classic American nerd, though one could make an argument for Tom Sawyer. Roy Flannagan (Incidentally, I think Buddy Holly gave the look to nerdism, and a nerd is usually classified by former athletes as "someone I should have beat up on the playground, if I didn't.") From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0055 General Notes and Queries (29) Date: Tuesday, 15 May 1990 18:54:40 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 156 (167) By the way, Ichabod Crade in Washington Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow is the earliest nerd I know of. (Crane; that's CRANE) From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0055 General Notes and Queries (29) Date: Tuesday, 15 May 1990 18:53:10 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 157 (168) I think that the word NERD was coined for the TV show HAPPY DAYS. The show was set in American High School culture of the 1950's (although it played in the 70's & 80's) and the local hoodlum, Fonzi, called individuals who weren't COOL, NERDS. I remember the fifties, and I remember the Fonzis of the period, and they did not have hearts of gold, like the fellow on TV, nor did they refer to people they didn't like as NERD, although they might have used a rhyming word. But what they might have said couldn't be used in a family-based TV sitcom, so NERD was coined. Or, at least, I've always thought that was it. The word narrowed from a general one meaning UNCOOL which was associated with bookishness (one of many ways to be uncool) to a term for a studious person with no concern for style and fashion to someone devoted to computers, it seems. I don't think the word was used in the movie AMERICAN GRAFITTI, from which HAPPY DAYS comes, but it may have been. As I say, this is all guesswork. --Pat Conner From: amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert A Amsler) Subject: Nerds Date: Tue, 15 May 90 20:28:47 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 158 (169) Interestingly enough, the OED2 cites Dr. Seuss as the earliest occurrence of `nerd', i.e. the 1950 quote from `If I ran Zoo' is ``And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo and Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!'' The origin of the term is alternatively also seen as possibly being a variant on `turd' (in a commentary that looks far too unsupportable). The person was deemed to be someone insignificant or contemptable who was conventional, affected or studious. Noplace does the entry doesn't mention computers. Gosh... maybe Preppie or Geek came from Preep too? Has Dr. Seuss been instrumental in directing U.S. Slang to other categories of people we find socially annoying? (Geek is thought to be U.S. carnival slang, so this is basically a bit of whimsy). From: "Ed. Harris, Academic Affairs, SCSU" Subject: Nerds Date: Wed, 16 May 90 09:41 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 159 (170) Although he's not very early, how about Thurber's Walter Mitty? Ed Southern Connecticut State U, New Haven, CT 06515 USA Tel: 1 (203) 397-4322 / Fax: 1 (203) 397-4207 From: "Peter D. Junger" Subject: Nerds in literature Date: Wed, 16 May 90 13:55 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 160 (171) I cannot think of any nerds in American literature, but surely (I may not be spelling the name correctly) Widmerpoole in Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time is an archetypical nerd. Perhaps it might be well to suggest to Danish Colleagues that the fact that no one in Denmark today would name a child So/ren has something to do with the perception that Kirkegaard--the man, not the writer--was rather a nerd: what was the name of his unfortunate girlfriend? Peter D. Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, Ohio From: GA0708@SIUCVMB Subject: nerds in American lit. Date: Wed, 16 May 90 08:49:58 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 161 (172) A quick response to Janus on nerds in American literature. I am sure as the day wears on I will think of many but Melville's Bartleby comes immediately to mind. "Tertan, Ferdinand R." from Trilling's "Of This Time, Of That Place" also has to be a prime candidate. The pursuit of nerds through literature sounds like fun. Searching for a lost identity, Janus? Good luck from an erstwhile nerd. Herb Donow Southern Illinois University From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Subject: sneaking someone into the wife's or husband's bedroom Date: 15 May 1990, 18:49:54 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 162 (173) It is a medieval and Renaissance motif, something to do with Gyge's ring? Maybe the best version is the infamous Canto 28 of Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_, in which infidelity, at first a cause for depression and despair, finally becomes a huge joke between two men. Ariosto cautioned women not to read that canto. Roy Flannagan ú From: John Morris Subject: Sneaking in a surrogate wife Date: Tue, 15 May 90 17:58:14 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 163 (174) Re: Daniel Boyarin's query about a wife who sneaks a surrogate into her husband's bed. In _The Changeling_, by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley (c. 1652), Beatrice-Joanna is to marry Alonzo de Piracquo, but she prefers Alsemero. Beatrice asks her loathed servant, de Flores, to murder Alonzo. In return for the murder, de Flores extorts Beatrice's sexual favours from her, and he continues to blackmail her with threats of fresh exposures of her compounded and compounding crimes. Beatrice finally marries Alsemero, but, fearing that he will discover that she is no longer a virgin, sends her maid, Diaphanta, to him on her wedding night. The deception works until the end of the play when Beatrice and de Flores are exposed. From: TBESTUL@crcvms.unl.edu Subject: RE: 4.0055 General Notes and Queries (29) Date: Tue, 15 May 90 21:55 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 164 (175) On the matter of wives sneaking another woman into bed with her husband and he not knowing: the classic example in medieval literature is in the Tristan and Isolde stories (see especially the version by Gottfried von Strassburg, ca. 1210). Isolde on her wedding night persuades her servant Brangane to take her place, since she has (unfortunately) lost her virginity to Tristan. Isolde's husband Mark is completely deceived by this subterfuge. Tom Bestul, University of Nebraska-Lincoln tbestul@unlvax1.bitnet tbestul@crcvms.unl.edu From: DJT18@HULL.AC.UK Subject: Re: 4.0055 General Notes and Queries (29) Date: Wed,16 May 90 10:21:04 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 165 (176) Sneaking someone into the bedroom... Machiavelli's "Mandragola" (Mandrake) springs to mind immediately. Translation available at University of Hull, if not commercially. June Thompson, CTI Centre for Modern Languages. From: Jeffrey Perry Subject: Bedchamber substitutions Date: Wed, 16 May 90 08:50:28 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 166 (177) In 4.0055 Daniel Boyarin asks: [deleted quotation] A good example of this trope (if that's the expression -- I just do the computer support thing) is "The Three Bushes" of W.B. Yeats, wherein a virtuous nobelwoman arranges an assignation with her equally high-born beloved, sending her chambermaid to him in her place. "And maybe we are all the same / where no candles are". Later the nobleman falls from his steed and dies of a broken neck, noblewoman follows suits of a broken heart, and the chambermaid is left to tend both their graves, which are, of course, adjoining. The priest who hears the latter's confession in old age buries her between the two, and plants three bushes, one to a grave, which eventually entwine and are as one. Sort of like certain LANs I could name. From: John Lavagnino Subject: Sneaking nerds into the bedroom Date: Wed, 16 May 90 13:43 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 167 (178) Something like this switching can be found in W. B. Yeats's poem ``The Three Bushes'' and the six associated poems that follow it in editions of Yeats's collected poems: here it's a woman substituting her chambermaid for herself in her lover's bed, to preserve her chastity. One distinction between a nerd and a merely bookish person is that---at one time, anyway---the nerd was always someone greatly, maybe solely, interested in science and far better at dealing with technology than with other people. Such a nerd is always male. Kurt Vonnegut's novel ``Cat's Cradle'' is concerned in part with this sort of personality, though I don't think it uses the term. John Lavagnino, Brandeis From: Subject: Re: 4.0040 Addressing Students (77) Date: Tue, 15 May 90 17:54 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 168 (179) I can't help wondering what the students call *you*. I have consistently asked students to call me "Sue." I know that other faculty use their own first names; others, more formal, opt for Dr. or Professor ***. Curious to see a poll from here, I remain.... Sue Besemer.... From: "HALPORN,JAMES,CLAS" Subject: THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST Date: 15 May 90 20:32:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 169 (180) It's OK for an 850 lb. gorilla like Jim O'D to be addressed as Jim, and address his students as Dick and Jane if he wishes. Little gnats like me prefer to follow Miss Manners and consider students as students and not as pals. First name calling is a bad American habit (particularly annoying in phone solicitations). Further, experience of others has shown me that teaching in a torn T-shirt and cutoffs and addressing your students by first names makes them uncomfortable and less able to accept any evaluation (or grade) you give them as being a serious assessment. Humanists have a bad enough reputation for being blowhards and frauds to encourage those beliefs. One of the nerds, Jim Halporn From: Stephen Clausing Subject: first names after all Date: Wed, 16 May 1990 09:59:15 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 170 (181) Again, I never meant to begin a discussion on first names vs. last names, but since this has happened, I might as well join in. I use first names for friends and good acquaintances, not for students, because they are neither. I try very hard to establish a comfortable atmosphere in the classroom, but I also try never to forget that these people have their own lives and in reality there is no personal connection between us, nor should there be. Experience has shown me that students who are the best of friends during the semester will hardly look twice at me one year later. These relationships are really quite superficial and we should not pretend otherwise by using first names. When I was the TA supervisor at another university, I always advised against using first names with students, but I never forbid it either. From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET Subject: 4.0052 Addressing Students (10 Date: Wednesday, 16 May 1990 9:13am CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 171 (182) Stephen Clausing is of course right in pointing out that "students get upset over issues that are inherently trivial"; so do most members of the faculty, myself included. But I'm not at all sure that the issue of naming is one of those "inherently trivial" ones-- as witness the interest here on HUMANIST. Personally, I still have moments when someone says "Dr. Slatin" and I turn around to see if my father's in the room (I being an academic brat). And although I'm generally more comfortable when students and colleagues and staff address me as "John," I too encourage people to call me whateverr *they* feel comfortable with. An amusing and instructive incident took place last year, during a computer-mediated discussion in a graduate seminar: it seemed to me that, among other things, it simply took too long for students to type "Dr. Slatin" every time they wanted to address a remark to me, so I suggested that "John" would do just fine. Two students, both women-- one a Mexican-American from South Texas, the other from the Republic of China-- immediately replied that they felt such informality to be grossly improper given their cultural training, and said they'd go on callling me "Dr." To which another student, a retured Navy officer, said that where he came from, when a superior suggested you call him by his first name, that superior *meant* for you to call him by his first name. So much, I thought, for any attempt on my part to pretend there was no power differential in the room. There is a differential, of course, and students (at least here in Texas, a state with a very strange devotion to individual liberty and supreme authority) do not like it when we attempt to cross the lines they believe to be drawn in concrete (not dust). What we call students, and what they call us, matters a lot: it's one of the principal means by which we define our relationships with them. I had a professor in grad school, the late Larry Holland, who scrupulously called each of us by our last names until the end of the first semester of his American lit seminar; then, when we arrived at his home for an end-of-semester/Xmas party, we were astonished to find that he greeted each of us by first name-- a practice he continued for the rest of our time at Hopkins. It was as if we'd passed some breakpoint we didn't know was there, and it meant a good deal to each of us, I think. John Slatin, UT Austin From: Norman Hinton Subject: 1 tier, I hope: address by rank Date: Wed, 16 May 90 10:21:24 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 172 (183) ... [eds] 2) Addressing by rank: when I was still quite young, and a non-tenured Assistant Prof at ST. Louis U., I was going to lunch with a Full Professor and an Associate Professor, and we met the then Chair of Classics on the stairs: he said "Hello, Professor, Doctor, umm"....I was "umm". From: Subject: scrambling Date: Wed, 16 May 90 15:51 N X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 59 (184) Forwarded by: Willard McCarty C A L L F O R P A P E R S =============================== TILBURG UNIVERSITY WORKSHOP ON ******************************* ******************************* ***** ***** ***** SCRAMBLING ***** ***** ***** ******************************* ******************************* Place: Tilburg University / Bestuursacademie Noord-Brabant Meerkoldreef 6, Tilburg (next to RR station Tilburg- West) Time: October 18 through 20 1990 (Thursday through Saturday) Keynote speakers: Hans den Besten Ken Hale (invited - yet to be confirmed) Katalin Kiss Selected speakers: There are 15 slots for 40 minutes presen- tations. Speakers whose abstracts have been selected may expect a honorarium of dfl. 300.-- (about US$ 150.--). Abstracts: You are invited to submit abstracts whose length should not exceed 2 pages. Pertinence to the topic will be an im- portant criterion. The original abstract should contain your name, address and affiliation, and preferably also your e-mail address. In addition you should send 6 copies of the abstract. Your sub- mission should be addressed and mailed to: e-mail: corver@kub.nl snailmail: SCRAMBLING c/o Corver Dept. of Language and Lit. Tilburg University P.O. Box 90153 5000 LE Tilburg The Netherlands Deadline: Deadline for the submission of abstracts is September 1 1990. You may expect a decision by September 15. Participation: Participants (non-speakers) will be ex- pected to pay a registration fee of dfl. 50.-- (about US$ 25.--). Topic: Scrambling: Scrambling refers to a set of phenomena in natural languages which have to do with (relatively) free word order. While the delimitation of this set is not entirely obvious, we take permutations of XPs (complements and adjuncts) in the inner areas of the sentence to be the core case of scrambling. This means that wh-movement and other movements to the (roughly) first position, extrapositions (movements to the last position) and head movements such as Verb Second are not included. Fringe cases are clitic movement, at least of the Germanic type, and embedded topicalization as found, for example, in English. This delimitation is undoubtedly arbitrary in many ways and should itself be considered part of the problem: current theorizing simply does not tell us much about the status of such phenomena. In fact, if we approach the question from a theoretical perspective, we notice that there is a considerable discrepancy between current conceptions of Move Alpha and scrambling phenomena. One of the central problems a theory of the Barriers type confronts, for example, is the status of adjunction to such nodes as the VP. In languages like German, this is often assumed to be the cause of the relative freedom of word order in the Mittelfeld. For languages like English, on the other hand, the problem is that adjunction to VP may have to be assumed for theoretical reasons but can only be an intermediate stage in a derivation (it cannot survive at s-structure). More generally speaking, if adjunction of XPs to a variety of nodes is allowed, why is so little visible use made of this possibility in many languages. Are there any alternatives that get by with little or no adjunction? Of course, Heavy-NP-Shift may be an instance of adjunction to VP, but that is rightward adjunction, as opposed to the adjunction assumed for long movement. So one empirical generalization might be that overt adjunction to VP may never cross the verb, i.e. it must leave the adjoined XP on the same side of the head. It appears, then, that, while vague in certain respects, the problems related to scrambling phenomena are connected with several important and difficult issues, both empirical and theoretical. From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0054 Technical Notes and Queries (73) Date: Tue, 15 May 90 15:22:23 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 173 (185) Just yesterday there showed up in the mail a mailer from Egghead Software enclosing a demo disk for PC Globe and PC USA. I quote: "Includes maps of the entire country as well as regions and individual states. Shows major natural features, elevations and the location of each state's largest cities. Displays statistical information on each map." Also includes demographic data. Maps can be exported in PC Paintbrush format. Price not given since it depends on educational discounts, but it probably retails for about $70. Requires IBM compatible with 512 K. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: LINDYK@Vax2.Concordia.CA Subject: RE: 4.0042 OCR errors; Modems (40) Date: Wed, 16 May 90 08:36 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 174 (186) RE: Modems I have been using a GVC Super Modem 2400 for 6 months now and Have had no problems. It is Hayes compatible which is a very important criterion as it is the industry standard. Also, for the few extra dollars, get a 2400 baud as opposed to a 1200 baud; transmission is faster. Also, get an external modem; you will save a slot and you can see the flashing lights that will indicate that all is proceding normally. Suggest *CROSSTALK FOR WINDOWS* as your communications software if you using a PC. It is very easy to use, especially if you have a mouse and it also contains the KERMIT protocol that enables you to communicate with a mainframe. This is very important if you are using e-mail on the Bitnet system. Sincerely Bogdan KARASEK lindyk@vax2.concordia.ca From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0043 TeX (162) Date: Tue, 15 May 90 13:59:56 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 175 (187) [deleted quotation] The Publisher (ArborText, Ann Arbor) offers a nice front end for TEX. It provides a high-level SGML interface for writing, WYSIWYG previews, but the capability of inserting straight TEX for truly special requirements. I've been using it for about two years on a SUN 3/50 and have been quite pleased with it. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: Subject: RE: OCR errors Date: Wed, 16 May 90 14:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 176 (188) We just got a scanner, so I'm having fun playing around with it. However, I'm fascinated by some of the poetic misreadings that the Kurzweil performs. Instead of "bulletin board" it read "bulletin bard"! Every bulletin board should have its bulletin bard. I would nominate Willard. My favorite error is its changing "subject to change" to "subject to chance". This one seems to have metaphysical implications. I'm beginning to wonder if this machine contains the reincarnated soul of some dead poet. Perry Willett SUNY-Binghamton PWILLETT@BINGVAXC From: Mary Massirer Subject: new book Date: Wed, 16 May 90 14:14 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 177 (189) I'd like to recommend, for your summertime edification, a new book by Page Smith called *Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America* published this year by Viking Penguin. Since I have no Ph.D and no tenure, I was delighted to hear him condemn both systems. I have not gotten to the chapter called 'The Inhuman Humanities' but it promises to be interesting. Mary Massirer (massirerm@baylor) From: "David L. Barr" Subject: Humanist topics et cetera Date: Tue, 15 May 90 20:44 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 178 (190) Recently rereading some of e.e. cummings' poetry, I came across the following delight. I pass it along well knowing the risk of reopening dead topics and side-tracking our more technical discussions. my sweet old etcetera aunt lucy during the recent war could and what is more did tell you just what everybody was fighting for, my sister isabel created hundreds (and hundreds)of socks not to mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers etcetera wristers etcetera, my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could meanwhile my self etcetera lay quietly in the deep mud et cetera (dreaming, et cetera, of Your smile eyes knees and of your Etcetera) From: farrukh Subject: Re: 4.0046 Notes and Queries (81) Date: Tue, 15 May 90 20:36:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 179 (191) [regarding the article on electronic mail in the New York Times. eds] the article may have appeared on may 13 instead of june 13. From: Geoffrey Rockwell Subject: Thanks for the Max Date: Wed, 16 May 90 9:43:36 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 180 (192) I would like to thank everyone who has sent me information about MaxSPITBOL. Geoffrey Rockwell rockwell@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca From: Alan D Corre Subject: Hypercard and ProIcon Date: Wed, 16 May 90 10:17:16 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 62 (193) I am currently engaged on two educational projects for the Macintosh computer. One employs Hypercard and one ProIcon. Since both these packages have interest for Humanists, I should like to offer some comments on the comparative strengths and weaknesses of each. 1. The Hypertext Concept. This concept, which arranges knowledge in a tree structure, has great potentiality for changing the way we learn. Hypercard is specifically designed to exploit this concept, and can be used to great effect. ProIcon is not so designed. 2. Graphics. Hypercard has remarkable graphics capacities, while ProIcon has none. A caution is needed. It is all too easy to produce badly designed software with Hypercard, and alarms are sounding that this is already occurring. In my Hypercard project I am cooperating with an artist, and our areas are clearly delineated. It seems to me hazardous to get involved with Hypercard unless you have graphic design capabilities, or can work with someone who has them. 3. Sound. There is an excellent separate package, HyperSound, for adding custom sound to Hypercard. This can be speech or music. Be warned that sound takes up a great deal of space, and must be used judiciously. HyperSound is part of the MacRecorder, which is useful for learning basic concepts in acoustics, if that topic is of interest. ProIcon does not have sound. 4. Windows. Hypercard has text fields which can be made visible and artistically customized. ProIcon has an excellent windowing system. It is easy to use, and very powerful. Here too some graphic design is desirable, although it is not so serious a problem as in Hypercard. 5. Speed. Hypercard is not compiled, and saving is automatic, so time is saved in programming. But with complex programs Hypercard can be impossibly slow in execution. This can be remedied by using external functions and commands which have to be "glued" to Hypercard--at which point Hypercard ceases to be the "erector set" it is claimed to be. ProIcon is an integrated development program which works swiftly and neatly. I have never found any problem at all with the execution speed of ProIcon. It's fast. 6. System. You need a hard disk for Hypercard. ProIcon will work on any except a first generation Mac. 7. Programming. Hypercard has its own programming language called Hypertalk, which is designed to be "English-like." For example the statement Put cherry into cocktail is Hypercard's English-like way of assigning the string "cherry" to the variable "cocktail," i.e. cocktail := "cherry" In my view, the experience with COBOL demonstrated that such attempts are liable to fail. Executive types are not interested in reading programs, however English-like they may be, while programmers like shortcuts which render English-like programs cryptic anyway. Moreover, Hypercard would not understand the (for me) more natural Put cherry in cocktail Icon, the programming language underlying ProIcon, has, in my view, an excellent blend of brevity and explicitness which avoids this whole pseudo-issue. Hypertalk is object-oriented. You program separately items such as fields, cards and buttons, so the programming is fragmented. This offers interesting new possibilities, but makes it difficult to design an overall program. ProIcon is structured, has procedures of equal status (unlike the nesting you have in Pascal) and offers the possibility of linking to frequently used libraries of procedures. Hypercard has a number of string procedures which are quite useful. It cannot generally process single characters entered without a carriage return, although buttons may compensate for this. ProIcon has a highly sophisticated way of handling strings which is as ingenious as it is practical. 8. Conclusion. Hypercard and ProIcon are not in competition, rather they supplement each other. With the help of the two, or by using programers familiar with them, humanists can become latter day alchemists, marshalling their knowledge for inspiration, education and entertainment. Hypercard comes free with the Macintosh. ProIcon is published by Catspaw, Inc. of Salida, CO (719-539-3884). MacRecorder is published by Farallon Computing, Inc. of Berkeley CA (415-849-2331). I have no connexion with any of these developers, and offer these comments only to aid colleagues. I would be glad of any comments on these packages, or tips to further enhance their usefulness. From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0049 Humanist Structure (179) Date: Tuesday, 15 May 1990 18:08:03 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 181 (194) The assertion of power often begins by making rules about what should and should not be said in a given context. Indeed, that's one of the major agenda of kindergarten teachers and drill sergeants. I am not interested in much of what comes over HUMANIST, but I am less interested in Jane contexts which would make some topics illegitimate. I want to continue to be able to glom onto this and that as it appeals to me; after all it's a doddle to delete what's not of interest. From: "Sheizaf.Rafaeli" <21898MGR@MSU> Subject: Humanist Structure Date: Tuesday, 15 May 1990 8:05pm ET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 182 (195) Clearly the most parsimonious solution would be to eliminate suggestions about metacommunication. Esp. those that suggest elimination. Sheizaf From: DENNIS CINTRA LEITE Subject: RE: 4.0049 Humanist Structure (179) Date: Tue, 15 May 90 22:49 -0300 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 183 (196) Since everyone seems to be flaming on the subject either of getting rid of the computer nerds or of segregating the humanist nerds in their own litle corner, let me throw in my own morsel into the fray. I find most humanist mailings fascinating, although they do take up more of my time than I realy should be dedicating to them. Although I ocasionally grow bored with some of the subjects flamed over, I can always not read them, seeing that the editors do such a good job in segregating the subject matter and informing us about what to expect in the "subject" heading. If you don't like the subject, by all means don't read it, but don't take away the opportunity of others having the chance of reading it. Let's have a bit less chauvinism in this list. Ciau Dennis From: Natalie Maynor Subject: Re: 4.0049 Humanist Structure (179) Date: Wed, 16 May 90 00:45:40 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 184 (197) Although HUMANIST is the very first list I subscribed to, I've been considering dropping it. It's not because the contributions aren't interesting. It's because I hate wading through many things that are not of interest to me in order to reach one item near the end of the chunk. Has HUMANIST ever considered going the un-moderated route? Although automatic lists usually involve clutter of various kinds (including misguided messages saying things like "review" or "sub"), I prefer them to moderated lists. The dialogue moves more quickly, and it's easier to delete unread the threads of discussion you're not interested in. Natalie Maynor (nm1@ra.msstate.edu) From: MFZXREP%cms.manchester-computing-centre.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: Splitting of Humanist Date: Wed, 16 May 90 11:03:12 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 185 (198) I have been following the discussion on the splitting of Humanist into sublists for *techies* and *non-techies*. A sublist in any form would really constitute a totally new discussion group and as such would, in my humble *techie* opinion, defeat the object of Humanist as I see it. Discussion between members of any community are generally far ranging, this suggested split would probably cause those members who are interseted in computing as a tool for research/education/communication to receive predominantly from the suggested sub-list. Many of the problems faced by subscribers with software/hardware which are at present aired within the Humanist group would be routed to the sublist even though these subscribers are in general recipients of the *nontechie* material. This, given the editorial practice of selective grouping of topics, would be detrimental to the growth of Humanist, and to some degree the growth of Humanities computing as a whole. After all, if we are not aware of methods and practices within other institutions, does it not negate one of the major pros of groups such as Humanist, and also, why should those amongst us who wish to further develop computing usage within the community while continuing to be active members of the community at large be relegated into a subset of Humanists. Humanist is at present highly commendable both in editorial policy, and content. I do not read all the items, but by simply locating the subject line of each group listing, read those in which I am interested. Generally a blend between subjects falling into both the *techie* & *nontechie* categories. I see no reason why Humanist should in any way change its present form, and feel that those who wish it to do so should perhaps contemplate on how the split within the Humanist community would affect both the nature of Humanist and the progress of unified Humanities progress in computing as the *techies* who contribute to other topics could, if they become a subset, merely continue with the present form of discussion leaving those who wish the changes made, with an incomplete discussion group made up of those who have little or no interest in the medium they are using to communicate. From: Randal Baier Subject: HUMANIST as Techno-wonder Date: Wed, 16 May 90 08:15:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 186 (199) I am glad that HUMANIST remains both a discussion for technical, computer related issues in the humanities as well as more traditional humanitistic concerns. The concept is iconic in that we use the tools to discuss and advance them within the discipline. In order to understand how to use, e.g. cross-national electronic concordances, we need a certain level of technical instruction and awareness. I think the headings that group messages together are adequate for browsing the list. One can then delete them if they are not relevant to one's interests. Randal Baier Cornell University Library From: Willard McCarty Subject: survival? Date: Wed, 16 May 90 08:37:39 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 187 (200) One question in my mind is, will Humanist and things like it survive their own success? If the New York Times were to get wind of this seminar, and if the editor of that section were to become interested enough to get a reporter to write a story, and this story were to make it into print, then I guess we would find out. Another question is, will such seminars survive improvements in the technology? What would happen if audio and video signals were to be added? Is more necessarily better? Willard McCarty From: "Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981" Subject: split this list? Date: 16 May 1990 10:05:16 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 188 (201) homo sum; nihil humanum mihi alienum puto. Split this list and I'm gone. Michael Sperberg-McQueen P.S. me too -Lou Burnard From: Skip Knox Subject: Humanist Structure [eds] Date: Wed, 16 May 90 11:28:20 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 189 (202) I would like to add my voice to those urging that HUMANIST stay in its present format. I agree that one special attraction of this list is the wide-ranging nature of the discussions, and that it is precisely this quality (along with a welcome and judicious moderation by the editors) that makes of this list a genuine community. When I tell professors about Bitnet, one pitch I use is that it is the closest thing we have to the faculty club or faculty lounge, and it is HUMANIST in particular that I have in mind when I say this. Were the list to be segregated it would lose that quality of community and become like so many other lists on Bitnet: a useful place in which to ask a specific question but otherwise arcane and uninteresting. Skip Knox Microcomputer Coordinator (cum) Medieval Historian Boise State University Boise, Idaho DUSKNOX@IDBSU From: Norman Hinton Subject: 1 tier, I hope: ... [eds] Date: Wed, 16 May 90 10:21:24 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 190 (203) 1) I hope HUMANIST will not try to distinguish discussions by tiers: I very much like the variety of notes, and I can dispose of those I don't want to read...I'm as interested in computer hardware questions as I am in etymologies, etc. It might be too much to claim that HUMANIST is as varied as life itself, but it comes close on occasion, and that's one of the best things about it. ... [eds] From: "Peter D. Junger" Subject: Subject of Humanist Date: Wed, 16 May 90 13:30 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 191 (204) Humanist would be worthless to me without the apparent digressions. Humanists are humanists (and human) while computers are computers; the intersection of interesting matters relating to the two very different types of critters is inherently fuzzy. Most of the interest, however, resides in the fuzz. Let those computers and their wetware imitations who cannot glom onto this fact subscribe to ADVISE-L. To have any understanding of the not wholly harmonious relations that exist between the Humanities and the Computer, one has to be eternally aware of all the issues that are not in practice--and perhaps not in theory--computible. I also believe that Willard was right in requesting us to identify ourselves in out signature lines, although moderation is in this area--as in most others--something to be desired. Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve Univ. Law School--Cleveland, Ohio From: Paul Brians Subject: Glom Date: Wed, 16 May 90 15:44:25 PLT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 192 (205) Scrooge McDuck has a rival named "Flintheart Glomgold." From: Robert Kirsner (213)825-3955 Subject: The Glom, Consolidated Interglom Date: Wed, 16 May 90 22:49 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 193 (206) With respect to 'glom', when used as a noun it is the name of the intelligent but shapeless beings who attempt to invade Earth in Robert Sheckley's classic short story 'Shape' in his volume Untouched by Human Hands.(1954) (The invasion fails because Earth offers the invaders unlimited Freedom of Shape; the various Glom turn into trees, dogs, and birds.) A local listener-sponsored station, KPFK, once had a commedian who referred to the generic huge corporation as 'Consolidated Interglom'. Those who were unfamiliar with these uses of the term 'glom' should enrol in Remedial Cultural Literacy 403A Next week, kiddies, we shall deal with the phrasal verb BLOB OUT, as in "The Ex-President spends many hours simply blobbing out in front of the TV." From: Subject: RE: 4.0056 Glom and Doddle (1); Nerds (7). (98) Date: Wed, 16 May 90 18:14 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 194 (207) I have a perpetually bewildered cat. His name is Uncle Nerdly. He keeps track of the other two feline friends, Babycakes and Twit. He seems preoccupied and confused most of the time. Professorish, but sweet. Melinda Swenson Indiana University School of Nursing From: "HALPORN,JAMES,CLAS" Subject: NERDS IN TRILLING Date: 16 May 90 19:32:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 195 (208) I must differ with Herb Donow. In the story "Of This Time, Of That Place," Tertan is crazy (in his thrice-woven circle). There are two possible nerds in the story (again not so named): my candidate is Joseph Howe (the archetypical HUMANIST), the other is Blackburn. Jim Halporn From: barry alpher Subject: nerd Date: Wed, 16 May 90 21:15:32 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 196 (209) /nerd/ is attested in its current meaning at least as early as 1968, hence before the TV show in question. I heard it in 1960 used to refer to a hardened droplet of glue squeezed out between two clamped boards: /a nerd of glue/. From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0056 Glom and Doddle (1); Nerds (7). (98) Date: Thursday, 17 May 1990 00:09:04 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 197 (210) Having contributed the earliest nerd in American lit so far (Ichabod Crane), I shall take the liberty to say more on the subject. Robert Amsler's reference to OED2 is exactly the right tactic for etymologizing a word, but I think the OED's wrong on this one. Seuss may have used the word NERD, but in the context of strange animals to be brought back to the zoo, I'd want some hard evidence that that's the origin of the current term. I'm almost certain that the word gained general currency from the TV show , which Fonzi would have said in real life. Surely the writers were inventive enough to come up with a word which the actor could deliver with pure contempt without having to check nonsense words from Dr. Seuss. Can anyone find a use of NERD denoting any sort of person which predates the TV show from the mid-seventies (or whenever it played)? Meanwhile, I shall have to check the variant etymology. It may be that NERD should have been lemmatized twice in the OED2, once under NERD, mythical animal; then under NERD, jerk or social dolt. --Pat Conner From: Elaine Riehm (ECF@McMaster.CA) Subject: Nerds Date: Thu, 17 May 90 09:09 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 198 (211) Nerds, I was once told, are also what you have left in your pocket when you have taken everything out. From: "Matthew B. Gilmore" Subject: form of address first/last name Date: Wed, 16 May 90 23:12:57 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 199 (212) Studenthood within recent memory, I recall amongst the students professors were referred to by their last name--Smith, Jones (pseudonyms to protect the guilty), usually Dr. Smith, Dr. Jones to their face. As a ubiquitous research assistant to two professors, I eventually got around to using John and Jane in conversation with them, for some of the faculty. It sometimes seemed awkward. But since towards the end of the program we are just about ready to be colleagues the first name basis seemed ok. But then I obviously had more contact. From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0058 Addressing Students and Others (100) Date: Wednesday, 16 May 1990 23:48:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 200 (213) I attended a very small high school (15 graduating seniors and it was literally high--it was on the second floor of the building which also contained the elementary school); I had been called by my middle name all my life because the town was so small that everyone knew that that's what I was called by at home. On my first day at the University, my instructor addressed me as Mr. Conner, and I remember thinking that finally I had some sort of status in the world, albeit very very small. Consequently, I call my undergraduates Mr./Ms. and I tell them that I do it because I think that they are now adults. Then I tell them how I was amazed to discover that I was entitled to be a Mr. Conner, and urge them to consider the value of relationships which do not assume an easy familiarity. I may use their first names (and I may not) in tutorial situations, and it's a mixed bag with graduate students, depending on many things, but usually I move to a first name basis with graduates very quickly, because I think of them as colleagues-in-training. I find that--more or less--the same thing is true reciprocally: under- grads call me Mr/Dr/Prof (I never explain professional titles unless asked) and graduates often call me Pat out of class and Dr. Conner in class. Being a medievalist, I find all of that just Bysantine enough to be enjoyable. From: Germaine Warkentin Subject: Students' names Date: Wed, 16 May 90 23:34:34 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 201 (214) When I entered first year university in 1951, the transition from high school to university was marked by the fact that we were now called "Miss" and Mr.", a change that gave us all shivers of pride. But then, the whole University of Toronto only had 8000 students, and no one felt lost or anonymous. Today the university is somewhere in the 40,000 range (I don't want to know the exact figure!), and the students I teach tell me my classes of 30-60 are sometimes the smallest they have. Instead of being rooted in the lives of their college and travelling year by year with a cohort of at most 150, they range all over the university, dropping in and dropping out as finances make it possible. I cannot, to save my life, call these dislocated kids "Miss" or "Mr." Indeed, they learn each others' first names from me, as I use them in class. They are deeply courteous to me, always addressing me as "Professor." Which is fine; I don't mind teen-agers being courteous to me. My grad students call me by my first name, and vice versa. My point is that all lot of these arrangements are and _have_ to be situational. My colleagues seem to follow the same procedure; "James" and "Alice" in the common room turn into "Professor ----" in the Department meeting, which is appropriate to that situation. Even more so if James and Alice are currently fighting over which of them is going to car-pool their kids to day-care! In effect, the practice appropriate to the situation is making it possible for everyone to engage in civil discourse. Which I hope hope is the result of first names in the classroom too. Germaine Warkentin From: Robert Hollander Subject: Re: 4.0058 Addressing Students and Others (100) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 01:00:16 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 202 (215) My favorite story about this rank-conscious business of naming goes back many years. I heard it when I was a graduate student at Columbia in the early sixties. Some many years before even then, it was told me on good authority, Andrew Chiappe, a person of exquisite sensibility, joined the Columbia College English faculty at the (then exalted) rank of Instructor. Lionel Trilling, himself not much olde than Chiappe (pron. "shap" on this side of the water) found himself introducing the new guy to the very distinguished Joseph Wood Krutch. Says Trilling, "Andrew, I would like you to meet Joseph Wood Krutch. He likes to be called 'Joe.'" Responds Chiappe: "How do you do, Joe. May I call you Professor Krutch." From: CATHERINE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: Glomming typefaces with Latex---a doddle? Date: Thu, 17 MAY 90 11:31:39 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 203 (216) Sebastian, I wish you would come here and install it on my machine... I agree with much of what you say. I wasn't trying to deal TeX/LaTeX a death-blow of any sort, just give a warning. It is of course possible to do superb documents with them, but you don't see many. Of course getting a designer is what everyone should do. But the fact reamins that most people don't, and I daily see a lot of documents which contain lots of ultra-tricky macros etc, but which look awful. On a typewriter they wouldn't have had quite the scope for looking awful... cheers, Catherine Glomming typefaces with LaTeX: a doddle? I received several responses to my caveat about TeX and LaTeX. Two main points were raised: 1. "It is a simple matter to attach use other typefaces with LaTeX". Perhaps. I believe the majority of TeX/LaTeX users at the moment cannot do this. It depends on the istitutional support they may or may not receive.But perhaps the picture is changing rapidly. Access to different fonts certainly constitutes a major improvement. 2. My criticism of TeX applies to all desk-top publishing systems (being so low-level puts the onus on the user to have the knowledge and discipline to create well-structured documents, with consistent treatment of headings etc) This is not quite right. Programs which impose a structure are better (although maybe less versatile) than those which don't, for the amateur. Certainly, authors are now producing documents (books, reports, etc) which look more professional than their previous typescript (or early word-processed documents). They now expect to deliver a more professional document, even for informal purposes. That seems to be the legacy of word processing. But most authors are not acquainted with the sets of rules and norms that used to be the purview of typographers and typesetters. So they now find themselves in the position of having the equipment to produce a more professional document, but not the know-how. (Again, it seems to me that this picture is rapidly changing; many authors are becoming more sophisticated, and more aware of the need for design and thought-out typography in documents.) Nonetheless, some desk-top publishing programs, namely those which use some form of generic tagging (each type of thing, e.g. a first-level heading, second-level heading, new section etc has its own specific name, with its own set of typesetting instructions) will at least be more likely to produce a more consistent document. It will not produce miracles: of course it is still possible to mis-handle the tags. But the documents which come out of this type of system on the whole 'work' better in that there has been a real attempt at consistency. These documents are easier to read, as the reader receives the right cues from the typography (inconsistencies often make reading more difficult; the reader is momentarily puzzled as to where he is in the logical structure). Thus, in this important respect, LaTeX is better than TeX, Ventura is better than PageMaker (whose tags are not enforced), etc. Perhaps doddle was originally Scotch, but it is certainly used liberally this far South of the border. We must have glommed it. Catherine Griffin Oxford University From: DEL2%phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: Re: [4.0051 TeX (89)] Date: Thu, 17 May 90 13:42:43 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 204 (217) How nice to read Sebastian Rahtz' dulcet tones once again! His defence and advocacy of TeX are spot on. TeX is also the only program I can see that has a chance of making sense of a SGML file, since all these silly WYSIWYG packages need irrelevances such as initial space or blank line to indicate a new para. Of course, one would need a front-end processor to change the SGML mark-up into TeX commands. Is anyone writing one? Douglas de Lacey From: Geoffrey Rockwell Subject: 4.0060 Responses- Maps; Date: Thu, 17 May 90 15:17:10 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 205 (218) In MacWorld, June 1990, there is a review of Azimuth 1.0. It "produces maps with a nearly infinite range of viewpoints; object-oriented drawing tools make customizing maps easy." This is a Mac product, it costs 395$ US, and I have no experience with it. I should add that there are collections of maps for the Mac in the public domain. We have some PICT files of countries around the world and states of the US. They can be scaled and adapted in any draw program for the Mac. If one looks in any PD software catalogue there should be disk sets of map clip art. There are also six map clip-art collections listed in the Kinko's courseware catalogue. (Does anyone know the status of the Courseware Exchange?) On the PC side there are maps that come with Corel Draw. There is also a company MicroMaps Software Inc., (609) 397-1611, that has disks of EPS format files. (These should be usable in any program that can import their brand of EPS files. Graphics programs like Corel Draw and Illustrator can import and manipulate compatible Encapsulated PostScript files.) Yours, Geoffrey Rockwell rockwell@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM> Subject: Computer maps Date: Thu, 17 May 90 08:18:51 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 206 (219) A note forwarded to Humanist asked about computer maps. Have you checked Simtel20 or the Bitnet servers for Simtel20? I remember a note passing in front of my eyes that listed a directory of 15-20 US and world maps. These would be free, but I have no idea of format except they would be compatible with MS/DOS. If there is any interest, I will look up the note when I get to another machine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM Journalism Dept. Internet: eparker@well.sf.ca.us Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 BIX: eparker USA UUCP: {psuvax1}!cmuvm.bitnet!3zlufur From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: Pastiche, Renaiss., AI Date: Wed, 16 May 90 15:07:35-020 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 12 (220) I am responding to: [deleted quotation] On linguistic pastiche in particular: My favorite is the Renaissance historian from Candia, Eliah Capsali (Hebrew spelling: qof, pe, sin, aleph, lamed, yod). He wrote, in Hebrew, a history of Spain, Venice, and Turkey. The Magnes Press of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has published it in three volumes. I first browsed the first volume, I am referring to in particular, at Ambrosiana in Milan (they got a complimentary copy, as one of their manuscripts had been used). Capsali was particularly fond of pasting quotations from the Bible and, occasionally, the Hebrew Tannaitic literature, sometimes "as is", and sometimes with small adaptations. His text abounds, of course, given his theme, of loanwords or adapted loanwords. Consider, in particular, the story of Djem or Djim, called Zizim by Westerners (as spelt by Larousse; I would have believed the spelling to be, rather, Zizyme, patterned after Didymus...). Djem (1459-1495) was son of Sultan Mehmet II, and fought against his brother, Sultan Bayazid II, who won him, but afterwards remained a very suspicious king, and an inclement one. Capsali calls Djem "Zamzummi" (Hebrew spelling: ºzmzwmyº and occasionally ºzwmzwmyº, if I recall properly, and with a dpouble quote inserted before the penultimate letter, as traditional for loanwords or foreign names in Hebrew texts up to Modern Hebrew excluded). Now, Zamzummi(m) was a name the Pentateuch ascribes to an ethnic group of Transjordan (extinguished by Moses' times), the name itself is related as having been in use in the language of another Transjordanian group. Djem fled to the coast, where he first tried to embark on a Venetian vessel. However, the captain refused to take him on, with the pretext "I have not [got] the commission". Capsali thus calls him "the stupid Venetian", as he feared the reaction of the authorities of Venice, whereas had he seized the opportunity, he would have enabled Venice to chant the Sultan and get back "Coron, Modon," etc. Capsali spells the name of the captain as ºpyrw dydwº. I read PYRW as Piero (a usual Venetian variant of Pietro) rather than as Pirro. As to SYSW, as far as I know both Dido` (Di Donato? Di Domenico?) abd Diedo are Venetian last names. Please let me know, if I err. When the Cavaliers of Rhodes learnt about the whereabouts of Djem, they sent a vessel and merrily welcomed him in their island, and even had a woman conceive a child from him. Afterwards, Djem moved to France, and ultimately met with a sorry end (as Capsali stated without specifying). When Capsali relates about what Zamzummi told PYRW DYDW, he uses the same utterance that Sarah maid Hagar used in addressing the angel, after her first evasion: "From Sarah, my lady, I am fleeing way." The point is, that Hebrew for "my lady" and "I am fleeing away" are in the morphological form selected for a female speaker! And by Capsali account, there is no doubt about Djem's maleness, given what happened in Rhodes... Not only: there is the story of Ahmed Pasha, killed by the Sultan. Machiavelli, in historical considerations in verses, called him "Acomatto Baiscia`" and states he was strangled (if I recall properly), whereas Capsali has the Sultan walk with his military commander in a garden, with the intention of killing him. Capsali has the Sultan ask the unaware victim: What should be done to the man who [commits evil deeds towards his King]? Which reuses Ahasuerus question to Haman, from the Book of Esther. And Ahmed Pasha replies with a Hebrew Midrash, a Jewish exegesis! "He shall died and shall not live: he shall die in this world, and shall not live in the next world." Then, the Sultan kills him. The whole of Capsaly history is a mosaic of such quotations, which the Jerusalemite editor (in the 1970: I have not here the exact reference) punctiliously trace back to the sources. Now, let us consider pastiche in Italian novels in the post-WW2 period. The most obvious novelist to mention is Carlo Emilio Gadda, which ranges -- from Roman-oriented pastiche (but with such lexical coins as "tanganicoreverenziale", that is, "Tanganikan-wise reverential"), in "Quer pasticciaccio brutto de Via Merulana", -- to Northern-Italian-cum-South-American in, if I am not mistaking it for another novel, "La cognizione del dolore". During the 1970s, another Italian novelist has written a pastiche novel, "Horcynus Orca". I can trace his name back at home, perhaps, by just now I am unable to do that. I, too, have employed a kind of Hebrew pastiche, including an Eblaite-like conjugation, and, Latin-wise, a new gerundive and a future participle, along with heavy alliteration and linguistic collage, in a recent literary essay: "`Whenever I measure:' The Lycian Key, the Immigration Key, and the Individual's Development Key." ( = "Midde' Muddi': The Lycian Key, the Key of the Loft, and the Opener of the Self-Opening of the Particular." Hebrew: mdy mdy: hmptH hlyqy, mptH h&lyh, wmptH htptHwt hprT.) Sections: 1. Introduction; 2. The poem; 3. The Lycian key; 4. The immigration key; 5. The dance of ordinal letters; 6. From the River Oft, our vicissitudes come; 7. The individual's development key; 8. Concealment and its interpretation. I am still completing it. From the content viewpoint, there is a kind of Baroque Conceptism, and indeed, for a reason explained in the last chapter, it is proposed as a kind of Israeli Baroque. There is also a relation to artificial intelligence: the concepts are organized as if along an associative network, a data structure from AI. As I state at the end, some smattering of matroid theory could also be made use of. The Lycian key refers to embedded references to lexical items drawn from recent attempts to decipher the Lycian language of Anatolia. However, the most clear key of the work commented about, is immigrants' experiences in Israel. Ephraim Nissan Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. BITNET address: onomata@bengus.bitnet From: Naama Zahavi-Ely Subject: Biblical sneaking into bedrooms Date: Thu, 17 May 90 11:58:45 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 207 (221) Hello! I can't believe nobody mentioned Jacob and Lea yet. Jacob worked for seven years for Laban, who was Lea and Rivka's father, for the hand of Rivka. On the wedding night, Laban substituted Lea (who was older) for Rivka. If I remember right, Jacob expressed some surprise and disappointment when he got up the next morning and found the wrong woman in his bed. I don't have the bible with me at work, but you can check Genesis, in the later part of the book. Best wishes, -Naama From: JackFruchtman_8302850 Subject: Re: 4.0063 Humanist Structure (189) Date: Wed, 16 May 90 19:50 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 208 (222) I can't tell at this point whether anyone is keeping a tally of whether HUMANIST ought or ought not be split into tiers. If there is such a poll, I want to add my name to those who wish the list to stay as is. I'm computer literate, which means I can do the basics, but it also means I wish to learn more about the technical ends of the business. Meantime, my interests are far-flung from most of you who seem to have joined this list -- which makes your chatter and banter all the more interesting to me. Don't split anything! You'll lose what Willard was able to bring to great heights and the new editors are continuing on into the future. And you'll lose me, too. Jack Fruchtman, Jr. Towson State University e7u4fru@towsonvm From: "HALPORN,JAMES,CLAS" Subject: Structure of Humanist Date: 16 May 90 19:42:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 209 (223) Is it worth mentioning that the line: "homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto" from Terence's Self Tormentor (77) is spoken by Chremes, the nosy busybody of the play? Jim Halporn From: edwards@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Jane Edwards) Subject: Humanist Structure - the vote is in Date: Wed, 16 May 90 18:57:56 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 210 (224) This topic has caused a great deal more fervor than I had expected, and for that I am sorry. Part of the fervor is the result of people misinterpreting my intent. I, TOO, WOULD OPPOSE A TECHIE VS. NON-TECHIE DIVISION of the group. I find fascinating the various scholarly discussions concerning topics outside of my own discipline which I would otherwise never have the opportunity to encounter. And to be privy to discussions on those topics by people who care about them and have specialists' knowledge about them is an extremely exciting and enriching experience. The diversity of topics and disciplines represented here is really spectacular and is one of the reasons why reading Humanist is such a fun and interesting thing to do. What I was objecting to is what looked like an ever increasing trend toward unsubstantiated opinion or pure chat since the Earth Day exchange. It is not really possible as some have suggested to screen articles for this on the basis of Subject line. They must be read for this, and here is where the commitments in time (in reading) and space (in disk space necessary for incoming mail) come in. I was never suggesting censorship, i.e., preventing anything from being circulated or archived. The Subject lines would have circulated to everyone, and everything would still have been archived, it's just that articles which the poster's marked as "social" or "political" would have been distributed _in full_ only to the sublist; all others would have been circulated in full to everyone. In this note, I hope I may have helped to re-balance the scales I unintentionally upset by my previous postings on this topic. The majority view is that the list stay unified, so I withdraw my proposal for any change. Sorry if my comments were the source of unneeded friction here. As I stated above, this was not my intention. -Jane Edwards From: Robert Hollander Subject: Re: 4.0063 Humanist Structure (189) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 01:10:24 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 211 (225) O my sister, o my brother Can't we put up with one another? If we cannot, let it be: Only tickle control-C. From: Ken Steele Subject: Re: 4.0063 Humanist Structure (189) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 06:50:47 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 212 (226) I was reluctant to enter the fray (yet again) over whether Humanist is a discussion group for humanities COMPUTING or computing HUMANISTS, and I rightly braced myself for the onslaught of replies (upholding my opinion six months ago, as now) objecting to the idea of suppression or division. If we are conducting a poll, by all means count me among those who wish to see no such dissection. I find it rather intriguing that techies and non-techies alike feel as though THEY will be relegated to the isolation of a sub-list -- I assumed it was the Humanities which would be so discarded, but others object to the compartmentalization of the Computing! This alone should be sufficient to demonstrate the perceived injustice of segregation. I admit, technical discussions occasionally attract my attention -- like the issue of modems, with which I have recently dealt, or airport security -- but generally my interest lies in the humanities. As a group we cannot predict what technical or non-technical subjects will interest us -- so let's not try. As I said, I was reluctant to join the fray, knowing that my opinion would appear in sufficient numbers to defend itself, but I am writing because I cannot allow Natalie Maynor's rather remarkable (and unsupportable) assertion to stand unchallenged, that an UNmoderated list would be easier on its members! Those now whining because they receive ten or eleven messages a day, neatly organized by topic and condensed together, would be astounded at the confusion which would result in unmoderation -- I would estimate 50-80 messages a day, randomly scattered over the techie and non-techie spectrum, often without subject lines and probably a good deal longer than those to which we have grown accustomed. HUMANIST is successful because it fuses the humanities and computing, and the massive effort which goes into moderation is what makes it both feasible and interesting to most of us. I trust that cooler judgements will prevail, and that HUMANIST will not consider either of these two most unfortunate suggestions for change. Ken Steele University of Toronto From: judith brugger Subject: Re: 4.0063 Humanist Structure (189) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 07:08:57 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 213 (227) I agree with Natalie Maynor. Let's get rid of the clumping. I want to be able to see a header in my mail file that relates to one incoming file. If I want to delete that file unread, good for me. If I want to see it, ditto. I hate reading 10 headers in a clump and then ten semi- connected messages. From: N_EITELJORG@cc.brynmawr.edu Subject: Re: 4.0049 Humanist Structure (179) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 08:27 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 214 (228) I agree with those who prefer to keep HUMANIST as it is. The variety of topics, the interdependence of those topics, and the divergences of views all provide just what the name *HUMANIST* imples. If we segregate one group of interests from another we are succumbing to the kind of departmentalization we should be fighting. Nick Eiteljorg (n_eiteljorg@brynmawr.bitnet) From: Douglas Greenberg Subject: Re: 4.0049 Humanist Structure (179) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 08:05:52 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 215 (229) I have been reading the various messages, notes, and other material on HUMANIST silently since subscribing several weeks ago. Like anyone who is a newcomer at a social gathering, I have been trying to get a sense of the conventions of the group and its styles of communicating. I confess to thinking that much of what I have been reading was of little interest to me (or at least too little to justify my spending so much time on it). More than that, although I am a a humanist with some knowledge of computing and an interest in the recent developments in th field, I remain disappointed with the intellectual quality of what I read on HUMANIST. It isn't that the sometimes boring debates over technical questions are trivial or of no interest that disturbs me. After all, that is true of some proportion of what we all do in our "normal" scholarly work too. It is, infact, one of the main signs of professionalism. Rather, it is the concentration on these quaetions to the exclusion of real interchange about scholarly issues (as opposed to trivia contests about etymologies and so on). I assume (perhaps wrongly) that almost everyone on HUMANIST has a life that is not, as it were, computer driven, a life that focusses on teaching and writing in those disciplines that we call the humanities. It was exchange on those sorts of questions that I had hoped to take part in when I subscribed to HUMANIST. I see now that I either misunderstood the purpose of HUMANIST or that I don't understand the social/cultural milieu that animates it. I will probably drop HUMANIST because I haven't got the time even to delete all the messages I get every day, but before I go, let me at least try to raise the sort of question that I expected to find at the center of your concerns. Much discussion in the humanities thes past few years has centered on texts and their nature. In at least three disciplines (literature, philosophy, and history), a huge theoretical discours on these questions as emerged. The lit. crits. have led the charge but the philosophers and the historians haven't been far behind (and the art historians are starting to get into the act too!). The sorts of questions raised n this discourse are complex of course, but they center around one big issue: What is a text and how should we define the limits of its contents? This may be an infelcitous way to phrase it, but the other issues of the discussion (representation, catachresis, intertextual- ity and so on) can usually be subsumed under this one large question. At the same time, humanities computing has been producing "electronic" texts, and not a little energy has been devoted (although not on HUMANIST so far as I can tell)to trying to define an electronic text and its contents. I haven't seen much evidence, however, that these two ongoing scholarly questions have been brought together in any way at all, either on HUMANIST or in the scholarly journals, in spite of the fact that they rasie precisely the same issues for two different groups of scholars . Moreover, these two groups are likely to get closer to one another and to overlap more than they do now. This is only one of the kinds of questions that serious scholars in the humanities might discuss on HUMANIST. I could easily come up with others, but from what I have observed( and I confess to limited exposure) it doesn't seem to me that most of the people who subscribe to HUMANIST would be any more interested in these questions than I am in most of what is now absorbing most of the discussion. I would be very pleased to discover that I am wrong. By the way, I find it offensive to see people threaten to leave the room if they don't get their way or because they don't want to discuss a question in which others are interested. No one is that important. Not even Sperberg- McQueen and Burnard! Douglas Greenberg(SDGLS@CUNYVM.BITNET American Council of Learned Societies Sorry for all the typos in this message! From: Jim Cahalan Subject: stay moderated! Date: 17 May 90 09:06 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 216 (230) Please do NOT go to an unmoderated format! I finally withdrew from the unmoderated MEGABYTE U list because I felt overwhelmed by the constant deluge of unmoderated junk mail--every time I logged on I had to spend undue time deleting their constant stream of most irrelevant postings before I could get to my "real" mail. Stay moderated! Thanks, Jim Cahalan, Graduate Literature English Dept., 111 Leonard, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA 15705-1094 Phone: (412) 357-2264 From: "GILES R. HOYT" Subject: Structure Date: Thu, 17 May 90 11:39:43 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 217 (231) There is no reason to change what appears to be working fine. From: Willard McCarty Subject: getting together in Siegen Date: Thu, 17 May 90 07:35:46 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 218 (232) I have had a message from Manfred Kammer, an organizer of the ALLC/ICCH conference in Siegen, that the initial get-together will be held at the "Queens Hotel", Kaisergarten, Siegen, Monday, 4 June at 6 p.m. The person to contact in Congress Partner is Cornelia Thiede, fax: 49 421 324344 (where 49 is the country-code, 421 the city-code, etc.). Willard McCarty From: Jim O'Donnell (Penn, Classics) Subject: Page Smith Date: 16 May 90 18:02:46 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 219 (233) I do, alas, have tenure (cf. Goethe, `und *leider* auch Theologie'), which may not be relevant, but I found Page Smith's book every bit as appalling in its leftish way as I found Allen Bloom in his rightish way, and for that matter, as I found Henry Rosovsky's *The University: An Owner's Manual*, in its centrist way. Smith in particular is ill-informed and querulous, having had senior administrative office when rather young (40ish), then having made enough money writing to get out of academe completely by the time he was about 50, and he writes now 20 years later. By my count, he hasn't had a department chairman to argue with (from below) since 1960, and the world has changed a bit since then. Plenty wrong with our institutions, but kvetching and whining are not specially apt remedies. I am coming to the conclusion that good books about universities are like good books about baseball: scarcer than hens' teeth. That doesn't keep from reading many too many of both. From: Willard McCarty Subject: XYMouse Date: Wed, 16 May 90 22:17:06 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 220 (234) Has anyone purchased and tried out XYMouse, the mouse-driver and enhancer made by Galactic Software? If so, a report would be appreciated. Willard McCarty From: DEL2%phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: Re: [4.0050 OCR Scanning Errors (197)] Date: Thu, 17 May 90 12:53:29 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 221 (235) John Koontz recently mentioned what looks like a fascinating package of tools from the SIL (in the context of auto-correction of scanned text, though the package looks as though it would have much wider application. My mailer doesn't recognise his address, and conceivably other HUMANISTs may also have been interested. So could I use the list please to ask for more details? Thanks, Douglas de Lacey From: FLANNAGA%OUACCVMB.BITNET@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu Subject: And now for something completely different: foreskins Date: Wed, 16 May 90 21:42:29 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 222 (236) In lines 144-45 of Milton's tragedy Samson Agonistes, the Chorus in describing one of Samson's famous victories uses an image that many editors and critics wish it hadn't: "...A thousand fore-skins fell, the flower of Palestin / In Ramath-lechi famous to this day ...." The subject is no doubt painful to most men reading it, and especially to the uncircumcised. I have been wondering about it for years, ever since, in the fourth grade of an Episcopalian prep-school, my religion teacher told an awe-inspired class of all-boys that the Israelites in battle enumerated their slain and bragged about their kill by cutting off the foreskins of their enemies and displaying them in their tents after battle. My suggestible pre-teen mind immediately formed an image that I have never forgotten, of the inside of an Israelite battle tent with its little clothesline of foreskins hanging up to dry and to brag about, a little like the lines of beads that count scores in a pool hall. I have to make a note on the passage in _Samson Agonistes_, for the edition I am working on. I am not embarrassed by the passage but I am confused. Do the foreskins stand for the fallen Philistines, by synecdoche, the (yuck!) part standing for the whole, as in Alastair Fowler's note (1968 Longman edition), in which he identifies "foreskins" as "uncircumcised Philistines" (1968)? Or are those foreskins *real* foreskins that Samson bothered to cut off, rather fastidiously, after the battle? Are there some biblical scholars or experts on ancient combat out there who might help us puzzle this one out? Roy Flannagan From: "Peter D. Junger" Subject: Archie, transmigration, and the Intel 80170 Date: Thu, 17 May 90 09:49 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 223 (237) Perry Willett's suggestion that his Kurzweil machine "contains the reincarnated soul of some dead poet" seems less than farfetched in light of Dvorak's column in the May 29, 1990 issue of PC Magazine proclaiming that "Intel's 80170 chip has the theoretical intelligence of a cockroach--no kidding." Toujours gai! Peter Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, Ohio From: psc90!jdg@dartvax.dartmouth.edu (Dr. Joel Goldfield) Subject: "Tzvee Zahavy's suggestion about the NYT" Date: Wed, 16 May 90 11:25:16 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 224 (238) I've just written a letter to Paul Lewis, United Nations Bureau Chief of the NYT. I met him on a bus ride from the Toronto Airport to the ACH-ALLC89 conference last year. Perhaps others could write to the editors about HUMANIST. Regards, Joel D. Goldfield Plymouth State College (NH) joelg@psc.bitnet From: Naama Zahavi-Ely Subject: foreskins Date: Thu, 17 May 90 21:33:57 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 225 (239) Hello! It seems that 11 years of non-religious biblical studies in an Israeli school are bearing fruit! In Samson's story (Judges 13-16, this episode in chapter 15) the philistines are often called "arelim", that is, those who have foreskins (arlot). There is no mention of collecting foreskins in Samson's stories, or anywhere else that I know of off hand, except for one: in the story of David and Saul. David at the time was a very popular officer of Saul, who was the king. Saul was jealous of David, and was looking for a way to get rid of him. David and Michal the daughter of Saul fell in love, and Saul's condition for their wedding was for David to bring him 100 foreskins of philistines. His intention was to get David killed by the philistines. It seems to be presented as an unusual request. For details, see Samuel I chapter 15. Best wishes, -Naama Zahavi-Ely elinze@yalevm.bitnet Zahavi-Ely-Naama@Yale.Edu From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: Re: 4.0071 Queries (53) Date: Fri, 18 May 90 05:26:43 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 226 (240) Dear Mr. Flannagan, the "foreskins" of milton is undoubtedly synechdoche. there was no custom whatsoever to scalp enemies. the bible generally refers to philistines as the "uncircumcised," a word that looks in hebrew something like the word for "foresckins", so i suspect that in some english bible, there was a mistranslation, but that has to be checked. in any case, this synechdoche is *not* used in hebrew. daniel boyarin From: Alan D Corre Subject: Philistines Date: Thu, 17 May 90 23:18:05 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 227 (241) In response to Roy Flannagan's question, in the first book of Samuel chapter 18 verse 25 Saul requires David to produce 100 Philistine foreskins in return for being allowed to marry his daughter. His intent was that David would be killed in carrying out this mission, but David completes it successfully and wins his bride. From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0071 Queries (53) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 17:22 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 228 (242) Well as professional synecdochist, what poet would think it logical to write th at foreskins that fell, rather to think it, were foreskins, and not a short han d way of saying in synecdoche, Philistines, ie, the uncircumcised enemy, the PH ilistines. Milton wrote it simply, it seems to me. and saved a syllable in th e line, for Philistine would ruined that pair of iambs, a thousand foreskins... Kessler. From: "Sheizaf.Rafaeli" <21898MGR@MSU> Subject: Foreskins Date: Friday, 18 May 1990 9:12am ET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 229 (243) I'm not a biblical scholar, nor an expert on ancient combat. I know even less about the subject matter. But: could it be that this is a confusion/allusion to the similarity of ORLA (Hebrew for foreskin) and AREL (Hebrew for 'uncircumcised', derived, I think, from ORLA, and by extension, a disparaging term for gentiles)? From: Yvonne Cederholm Subject: Old English fonts Date: 18 May 90 15:40:10 EDT (Fri) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 230 (244) I was asked by a collegue at the English departement if there is some font for Old English (for the Macintosh), including thorn, eth, yoch, and ash. Could anyone help me out? Yvonne Cederholm cederholm@hum.gu.se Faculty of Arts Computing Service Centre University of Gothenburg From: nye@UWYO.BITNET (Eric W Nye) Subject: Query for HUMANIST Date: Fri, 18 May 90 14:04:19 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 231 (245) I was reminded for the umpteenth time recently how the humanities endure poverty in the modern university. I needed to extract from Chadwyck- Healey's _British Library General Cat. of Printed Books to 1975_ (3 CD- ROMs) about 250 titles issued by a certain early 19th C publisher. Our most sympathetic librarian told me I could wait 'til the cows come home, but that $16,400 for the three disks would not be forthcoming. $16,400 is less than it costs to replace defunct lab equipment after the power mysteriously hiccups on a clear spring day. Vice Presidents may raise eyebrows at such costs in the sciences, but they won't leave those cows standing in the field. Thus, I am now finishing a gruelling episode of compiling by hand and eye a simulacram of the same list from Peddie's _English Catalogue of Books, 1801-1836_. It can be nowhere near as accurate, despite long hours of concentration. Let me weakly ask fellow HUMANISTs whether any of their libraries has managed to acquire the British Library Catalogue on CD, and if so, whether a search on a publisher field can be commissioned from afar. I'd like to compare mine with such a list. Most gratefully, Eric W. Nye, Dept. of English, Univ. of Wyoming (NYE@UWYO), 307-766-3244 From: Paul Brians Subject: Mapplethorpe Date: Fri, 18 May 90 15:04:14 PLT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 232 (246) For a research project on the NEA/Mapplethorpe controversy I need to know of any recent especially notable articles (say from the last three months) giving a good overview or more detail than is provided in the sort of harrumphing editorials everybody's been printing. I would be grateful for any suggestions, sent to me direct (I'm in rather a hurry). From: Willard McCarty Subject: Milton and Sylvester/Du Bartas? Date: Fri, 18 May 90 20:39:36 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 233 (247) The following query was sent to me. Can anyone help this person out? If so, please reply directly to the questioner, who is not on Humanist. Willard McCarty - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date Thu, 17 MAY 90 13:41:38 BST [deleted quotation] I am interested in links between Sylvester/Du Bartas and Milton. I would be very grateful if you could let me know of any texts available in this area (excluding those in the Oxford Text Archive). I particularly need to acquire versions of the Divine Weeks of Sylvester. Many thanks, (Dr) Noel HEATHER Arts Computing Officer Royal Holloway & Bedford New College University of London Egham Hill, Egham, UK e-mail: n.heather@uk.ac.rhbnc.vax From: GA0708@SIUCVMB Subject: spouse abuse Date: Fri, 18 May 90 15:27:35 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 234 (248) My wife has been collecting stories about spouse abuse. (Ever since she stoppe d abusing me, she wants to read about it.) If anyone has run across any short fiction dealing with that subject involving either sex abusing the other, she w ould appreciate some titles. One story in particular that she is trying to locate is one she thinks is entitled "Sweat," by Hurston (I'm not sure of the spelling. Herb Donow Southern Illinois University From: Michael Ossar Subject: sneaking into bedrooms and nerds Date: Fri, 18 May 90 10:48 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 235 (249) ... [eds] On nerds (albeit not in American lit.) we should not omit the arch nerd of all time, Casaubon in Middlemarch. From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0064 A Glom and some Nerds (98) Date: Friday, 18 May 1990 03:17:55 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 236 (250) NERD as in nerd of glue is a back-formation or clipping from nerdle, a dialect variant of nodule. This is great fun. Barry, where is NERD attested in 1968? From: GA0708@SIUCVMB Subject: dating of "nerds" Date: Fri, 18 May 90 09:30:39 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 237 (251) I am ashamed to add more to this incredibly idle chatter on the subject of nerds, but what the hell . . . . I cannot attest to when the word first came into usage, but I can declare with absolute certitude that it did not exist in our language (at least in the northeast U.S.) in 1954 or so. When I was an undergraduate at Cornell University, there was a fraternity whose only requirement for membership it would seem was "nerdiness." (They rushed me.) Being subject to the influence of others, I of course declined to join. However, what we called the members of this fraternity, and any like them, was "turkeys." Believe me, if the word "nerd" had been available, we would never have defamed the "bird." By the way, does anyone want to comment on the transformation of the word "dork"? One last comment on nerds in American literature. To Jim Halporn, on his observation about my candidate for nerds in literature. Whatever Tertan was in "Of this Time, Of that Place," the initial image we have of him as he enters Howe's class is, I believe, that of a nerd. Certainly, every student in the class, had the word been then available, would have thought "nerd." Herb Donow Southern Illinois University From: Richard Ristow Subject: Nerd: A citation c. 1960 Date: Fri, 18 May 90 14:19:03 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 238 (252) Let me date myself, betray my origins, and otherwise get into trouble. I recall the protagonist of a Hamburg Show (the annual student-produced burlesque) at Swarthmore College c. 1960 was named Millard Fillmore Nerd and was a 'nerd' in something resembling, but not identical to, the present colloquial sense. That is, he was an essentially harmless individual of no personality, "never getting below a C -- never getting above a C, either" (for a modern nerd, "A" is more likely); less self-important than Ichabod Crane, less frustrated than Walter Mitty, a harmless nothing. (The modern nerd is more likely to have developed the absence of personality into a particular kind of vivid personality.) If I'm right, this clearly antedates Happy Days; it is consistent with Suess as originator, but I join in doubting that. I do not believe the Swarthmore use could be the word's origin; it seems to have been used as a term already well understood for such persons. I know this show by hearsay only, and have no documentation. Any Humanists at Swarthmore who could check it out in the library's Swarthmoreana collection? It would almost have to have been in 1959, 1960 or 1961. From: DUSKNOX@IDBSU (Skip Knox) Subject: Electronic Atlas Date: Fri, 18 May 90 11:31:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 239 (253) The messages about the availability of computer maps are correct but don't tell the whole story. Yes there are collections of maps available (the ones that are free are generally not as good, but there are some commercial ones that are stinkers, too), but not one fits the needs of a historian. Many collections, for example, show political boundaries but not geographical features such as rivers. The better ones do, and the best ones treat the geographical features as objects separate from political boundaries and thus can be removed and added at will. All collections, of course, show _modern_ political boundaries, which is not much use to a European historian. This is why the best deal is a draw program that sells a supplemental library of clip art (I like Arts & Letters). But it's still many, many hours of adding handles and stretching or removing boundaries to make a map of 13thc France. And for real fun, try the Holy Roman Empire! Vector format is generally preferrable to paint, but even here problems arise. Take shading, for example. It's easy enough to shade the interior of an object, but very tedious to shade just portions of objects. With a paint program, it's not hard to indicate the progress of the Black Death across Europe. With a draw program that same map is extremely difficult. I have argued for some time that one reason humanists lag behind the scientists in the use of computers, both in teaching and research, is that what we do is so much more sophisticated that what scientists do. Historical maps are another case in point. All scientists and social scientists want to do is to display numbers graphically over a map. Historians, on the other hand, need to be able to do actual cartography. As yet I've found no product that meets the need satisfactorily. Skip Knox Microcomputer Coordinator (cum) Medieval Historian Boise State University Boise, Idaho DUSKNOX@IDBSU From: elli%ikaros@husc6.BITNET (Elli Mylonas) Subject: Electronic Atlas Date: Fri, 18 May 90 11:36:10 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 240 (254) There is a program from Strategic Mapping called Atlas*Mapmaker It runs on all Macs with 512K or more. This provides Map outlines of the US and the world along with tools for editing the maps. It also comes with a data analysis system, so one can add informatin to a chunk of a map. You can see that what the creators had in mind was a tool businesses which want to track their sales, etc over a geographical area. Data can be associated with regions or points. The program comes with boundary files of the US by state and by county, with cities. It also has Canada by province and the rest of the world by country with capitol cities. There are some data files as well containing things like census and population data. It is possible to buy other boundary and data files, but they are even more centered on the US, showing information like locations of major shopping areas, and congressional districts. I haven't used this program yet, but it seems to be the best available on the Mac. It apparently also exists on the PC with name of Atlas*Graphics. It costs about $290 from reputable mail-order houses. --Elli Mylonas, Managing Editor, Perseus Project Harvard University From: TEBRAKE@MAINE (William H. TeBrake) Subject: computer maps Date: Sat, 19 May 90 12:35:54 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 241 (255) I recently spent considerable time looking for an inexpensive yet versatile piece of software that might be used to make maps on an IBM compatible. It occurs to me that my experience may be useful to whoever first raised the question. My initial inquiries lead me to several people at the University of Maine involved in Geographic Information System (GIS) research. Though they taught me much about GIS research and about GIS packages designed for PCs, I decided in the end that was not what I needed. As a medieval historian I needed to have a draughting facility that would allow me to draw maps for which there is no mountain of digital information available and that paid absolutely no attention to modern political divisions: case in point, the county of Flanders in the early 14th century (today split between the states of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands). For some applications, a paint program may well be worth consideration. In the end, however, I decided that a Computer Assisted Design (CAD) package was what I needed, specifically because it allows one to draw descrete objects (stored as vectors and thus independent of screen resolution) and to scale and combine objects in the final product (paint programs, as I understand it, have less facility to do so). A number of reviews appeared in _Professional Geographer_ in recent years that provided the information I needed. I learned about AutoCAD (ca. $3,000) and its student version, AutoSketch ($99) -- both reviewed August 1989 -- as well as others. I decided to buy TurboCAD by IMSI and Pink Software ($99) because of a review in the May 1989 issue -- it allows 128 layers, five text fonts, many line thicknesses, cross-hatching; supports many digitizers, plotters, and dot-matrix printers; and runs on both my EGA screen at the University and on my Hercules monochrome at home. I was able to buy it through mail order from CAD and Graphics (San Francisco, 800-288-1611) for $69.95. I have not been disappointed by TurboCAD thus far. The biggest problem is to construct the base maps. Doubtless a digitizing tablet would be most efficient for this, but I have had reasonable success with the following: I make a transparency of the map I want to produce; tape the transparency to my monitor; and outline it (the drawback is that the program stores everything in exact deminsions and angles that work independently of the screen's aspect ratio -- I had to fiddle a bit with the printed output to get the same x-y ratios as I developed on my screen). It also reads .DXF files (AutoCAD) as well as Hewlett Packard HP7475A plotter files (HPGL). This last could be useful for those who want to use already-existing boundary files. For example, the Spring-Summer 1990 catalog from National Collegiate Software and Duke University Press lists "Mapsets", p. 11: outline maps of the US, Europe, and the world that can be plotted on an HP7475A -- it might be fairly simple to capture the plotter data to a disk file and load the outline maps in TurboCAD. One last suggestion: if you have either a 24-pin dot matrix printer or a laser printer, order the F-Plot utility ($29.95 from CAD and Graphics). The built-in printer driver in TurboCAD includes 9-pin printers and does only draft-quality printing (you would need to use a plotter for publication quality, I think), but F-Plot produces really nice quality on a 24-pin Panasonic 1124; I can only guess that laser output would be better yet. I am sorry that this began to sound a bit like a commercial. I am simply pleased that I was able to find something as versatile and affordable as I found. I have seen the same product offered by a number of vendors in _Computer Shopper_. If you decide to try another package, my advice is to buy a CAD product (stores info in vectors and not screen bits) that allows variable line thicknesses and type, cross-hatching, multiple layers, a selection of text fonts, and access to plotters, printers, digitizers, and other file formats. I hope whoever first posted the query about computer maps finds this useful. Because I saw the query on both HISTORY and HUMANIST, I have sent this to both. William H. TeBrake, History, U. of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0058 Addressing Students and Others (100) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 17:13 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 242 (256) I expect to be called Mr. Some call me Professor. Some call me Dr., a usage I f ound common out here when I came in 1961. My mother used to laugh and asked me for my Rx for what ailed her, an allusion to my opting out of medicine, for wha t? Poetry, believe it or not. I must have been mad. I was. Kessler From: Michael W Jennings Subject: Re: 4.0058 Addressing Students and Others (100) Date: Fri, 18 May 90 09:27:47 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 243 (257) In re: the student name game. I am faintly puzzled by the implication in many of the submissions on this topic that students begin and remain anonymous, distant entities. Mr. Clausing suggests that students are neither close acquaintances nor friends. Mr. Halporn implies that relation- ships with students are analogous to those with telephone solicitors. I certainly don't pretend that I'm buddies with my students, and a certain formal distance defines my relationship with many, if not most, of the students with whom I work; in a significant number of instances, though, I--and many of my colleagues--do form much oser bonds with undergraduates. I am surrounded this year by a talented and engaging group of seniors; several of them have become my friends by any definition (American, Canadian, or European bad habits aside). Oh, yeah. I call 'em by their first names and they call me whatever they're most comfortable with: mostly Professor, sometimes Mr. or first name, mercifully enough almost never Dr. From: DEL2%phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: Re: [4.0065 Forms of Address (81)] Date: Fri, 18 May 90 16:14:55 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 244 (258) It's interesting that all the contributors to the dscussion on forms of address have concentrated exclusively on their inferiors. Have they ever asked themselves how they would comfortably address (and be addressed by) those who in some sense are superior in some context--the Vice-Chancellor (or whatever the US equivalent is), the chairman of a grants application committee, their doctors? I'd frankly rather keep what others may think of as formality but what I prefer to offer as a courtesy of the title-and-surname approach; at least until on other levels we are close friends. I remember a book in which someone mused on the absurdities of social intercourse in rural England (perhaps no longer true) -- brought up to address his publican as Jones and his gardener as Mr Smith, he moved to anoher county and discovered that when he applied these conventions there both men felt highly insulted. But I regret that I have lost the details and the reference. Douglas de Lacey From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0069 Humanist Structure (210) Date: Friday, 18 May 1990 03:34:17 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 245 (259) A text is a system of signifiers. Now back to NERD! --Pat Conner (It's a joke, Mr. Douglas; really, a joke!) From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Dilemmas for HUMANISTs Date: Thursday, 17 May 1990 2048-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 246 (260) I found Douglas Greenberg's comments about the topics discussed and not discussed on HUMANIST to be very interesting, and to pose a typical dilemma met at various levels in life. I recall past discussions of many of the things he mentions (and I'm happy to have them past!), and persons interested in such matters could, if they took the time and energy, check through the HUMANIST FileServer for pertinent archived materials. Of course, it is unrealistic to expect every new member of HUMANIST to check the past discussions, and in any event, they have a different flavor as (dead) archived artifacts. Still, it is also somewhat unrealistic (and artificial) to expect those who have already debated such issues to encourage or even initiate them every few months! Many of the issues will reemerge in one form or another. Those who feel they have something to say will do so. The newer members, such as Douglas Greenberg himself, will finally feel comfortable enough or frustrated enough to speak up, thus reinitiating aspects of the cycle. This is healthy, I think, but I hope the newcomers will not think us "older hands" to be uninterested or tongue-tied if we don't participate enthusiastically. In another year, with another round of newcomers, and a new cycle of the "old" topics, you will probably understand better what I am saying! Meanwhile, as you rightly tweak at Sperberg-McQueen (and through his footnote, Burnard) about threats of abandoning the HUMANIST boat if it is severed, realize that the tone of your note was not that different! Be patient, and contribute, and it will all come around again!! Bob Kraft From: Willard McCarty Subject: old man of the bitstream Date: Thu, 17 May 90 20:50:07 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 247 (261) I'm not old yet, except to my children, but perhaps I may sound like one for a moment by looking back and reflecting. We have had this discussion about the irrelevance of what appears on Humanist, or its lack of intellectual quality, many times. In the early days, as some of you senior citizens will also remember, we were buffeted by the opposite complaint, namely that Humanist was far too controlled and should be allowed complete license. As the man in the middle, I put the two sorts of complaints together and asked how it could be that such opposite conclusions could be drawn from the identical phenomena. My own conclusion was that both groups of extremists were seeing some piece of the whole as accorded with their predispositions. Consider the problem: how do we understand what is new except by relating it to something we already know? What then happens if we are not very watchful and remind ourselves of what we are doing? Is it not reasonable to suppose that we'd begin to think that the new thing was actually somehow a deviant (perhaps also promising) form of the old thing? It seems to me that we are now struggling to understand the nature of e-mail in much the same way, for example, as those who tried to grasp the place Alexander Graham Bell's new gadget would play in daily life. Obviously, some people thought, it was a nifty replacement for the speaking tube or system of bells by which one summoned one's servants. (What they didn't see at first was that it would allow the servant to summon the master, or for total strangers -- imagine the impertinence -- to ring the master without even a by your leave.) To others it seemed just as obviously something meant for the factory owner, so that he could give orders from his home. The story of the telephone is much more complex than that, just as I suspect the story of e-mail will show itself to be someday. But the fascinating part for this discussion is how difficult it was for people to understand what Bell had done, and what it was good for. A related point to be made is that although we can spot several determinisms at work in the development of a new technology, there seems to be considerable room for individual human desire to push that development one way or the other. The value of this kind of discussion, at least to me, is that it forces people to think, and if we are fortunate say, what it is that they want Humanist to be. Humanist and its kind continue to represent in my mind a very great opportunity to realize the dream of humanism. Yes, I know, big dream, but why not? What other choices do we have? Occasionally we perhaps need to be told, "Shape up, shut up, stop being so silly !" -- ideally by ourselves, but if we won't, then by our colleagues. But let's also think very carefully about the nature of irrelevance in the context of the medium we are using, and not in the context of a peer-reviewed journal. Walter Ong's statement, to the effect that the medium of communication restructures the consciousness of the person using it, is somewhat one-sided, but there's much truth in it. Enough at least for me to feel like advocating that some of us should have our consciousness restructured. Humanist continues to be a fascinating experiment. The Confucius who had written on his bathtub "Renew it daily!" would be delighted. Willard McCarty From: Natalie Maynor Subject: Re: 4.0069 Humanist Structure (210) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 23:04:11 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 248 (262) To each his/her own. Jim Cahalan withdrew from MBU-L because it was unmoderated. I joined MBU-L, after becoming fed up with the digest of it (C&C), because I kept deleting the digests half read and thought that it would be easier to delete individual postings. It has been easier. Now I follow the parts of the discussion I want to follow. Re people who "threaten to leave the room if they don't get their way": I'm flattered if that was aimed at me! I didn't consider my mention of dropping HUMANIST a threat. I'm sure that HUMANIST will flounder horribly if I leave the room. :-) Seriously, I know from personal correspondence that some people subscribe to only one or two lists. In those cases, it probably doesn't matter whether they're moderated or unmoderated -- except that turn-around time is slower. But if you get 150-200 pieces of e-mail a day, you tend to save the "chunks" (i.e, digests like HUMANIST) until the end -- and then run out of time and delete most of the digests unread. If this were not an interim period (no classes tomorrow), I would almost certainly have deleted the posting I'm replying to right now unread. A colleague said to me today, "Remind me to tell the Computing Center to get me off of HUMANIST. [Our new system makes us group recipients rather than individual recipients.] The postings are too long to wade through." Ah, another "threat"! :-) From: Douglas Greenberg Subject: Re: 4.0069 Humanist Structure (210) Date: Fri, 18 May 90 07:45:51 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 249 (263) Just a datum that may be of some interest: I have received numerous messages outside of HUMANIST from subscribers who agreed with my plea for more intellectual substance. Most also said that they despaired of such a thing happening and that HUMANIST was dominated by a central group that has tended to dismiss postings outside their interest as unimportant. So much for the implicitly democratic potential of electronic communication! Why don't they feel it is worth their time to send intellectually substantial material to HUMANIST? By the way, the potential political consequences of electronic communication and information storage are extremely complex and of real interest in several disciplines. Just another scholarly issue that might merit some discussion. Douglas Greenberg SDGLS@CUNYVM.BITNET From: ZLSIISA%cms.manchester-computing-centre.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: re. the Topics discussed on Humanist Date: Fri, 18 May 90 13:12:31 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 250 (264) The American Council of Learned Societies sounds a very solemn body. Perhaps that is why Douglas Greenberg's note seemed rather humourless. Let me reassure him that although some of the specific Etext questions which he has raised may not have been discussed recently, other aspects of the subject have certainly been aired, enough in the past six months or so to have given me a file containing 0.5Mbyte of text. No doubt responses to his comments are already winging their way to the Editors. I have some sympathy with the recent complainants about the content of Humanist, but I suspect that they are seeing a transient not a permanent problem. Remember that Humanist has only recently changed site and Editor. Since the change, there has been, it seems to me, more duplication of information - the Golems discussion particularly - and this may be what makes the less serious/academic/technical (choose your own word) discussions appear more prominent than they are. This is surely a matter of editorial skill, and, presumably, as our new Editors become more practised and more confident, the balance will be, and be seen to be, restored. But to shift the less s/a/t elsewhere, as suggested - oh no! Where then would be the stimulus to imagination, the opening of new horizons as we take on board ideas which would never in a thousand years have crossed our minds otherwise? "Scarcer than hen's teeth" says Jim O'Donnell: I, a townie, would never have thought about such a thing otherwise, but don't chickens have teeth? Do any birds? And then there's Roy Flannagan's query (serious no doubt, though perhaps mischievous in its timing, given the recent comments) about early semitic warfare - I do look forward to the responses to that. I also think Douglas Greenberg misunderstood McQueen and Burnard. As I understood it, they were threatening to leave Humanist not if they read things they didn't like but if they didn't. Finally, was Kessler's anger about mocking students (about 2 weeks ago) directed towards those of us who enjoy student essay howlers? Only the mean and twisted among us would like them on the grounds that they somehow denigrate (if a thing can denigrate - possibly not) the perpetrator. The rest of us surely just rejoice in the linguistic incongruity, especially in those juxtopositions (like Drake and his clipper) so felicitous that they (as was once said of the great William McGonnagall) "back inadvertently into genious". Sarah Davnall (Davnall@Manchester.ac.uk) From: DUSKNOX@IDBSU (Skip Knox) Subject: 4.0069 Date: Fri, 18 May 90 11:31:35 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 251 (265) Douglas Greenberg has mentioned the debate about the definition of text. I've seen this dialogue elsewhere and confess to being utterly baffled. Perhaps Greenberg or others could explain what all the fuss is about. I know what a document is. I know what text is. Am I being simple-minded here? This seems a bit like trying to define what a car is. Everyone knows a car when they see one. Try to define one and you get into murky areas (four wheels and a motor but doesn't fly and is big enough for at least one adult). But you see it doesn't really matter if we can define a car precisely because there's no benefit to be had from such false clarity. One request to anyone kind enough to explain this debate: please explain in such a way that does not send me scrambling for my dictionary or require the reading of a book in order to acquaint myself with the vocabulary. I know what the word "representation" means, but I dimly suspect the literary critics have absconded with the poor dear and made it into something else. I'm sure "catachresis" is in a dictionary (though my spelling checker couldn't find it) and I shall go look it up. "Intertextuality" defeats me utterly. If I can explain computers in English, surely the literary folks can emerge from their webs long enough to speak in the common tongue. Skip Knox Microcomputer Coordinator (cum) Medieval Historian Boise State University Boise, Idaho DUSKNOX@IDBSU From: Gunhild Viden Subject: re. 4.0069, Douglas Greenberg's comments Date: 18 May 90 18:28:14 EDT (Fri) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 252 (266) HUMANIST is what we make it. So far, it has been a charming, interesting mixture of great and small, tech and non-tech. Raise a serious topic and you will be certain to find serious answers. But don't make the mistake of believing that serious scholars deal only with serious matters, or vice versa. The very vividness of HUMANIST ought to be an indication that it works very well in its present state. By all means keep it that way! Gunhild Viden, University of Gothenburg, Sweden From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0069 Humanist Structure (210) Date: Fri, 18 May 90 11:34:14 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 253 (267) [deleted quotation] "By the way, I find it offensive to see people threaten to leave the room if they don't get their way or because they don't want to discuss a question in which others are interested. No one is that important. Not even Sperberg- McQueen and Burnard!" But isn't that precisely what you state you will do in your note? As to the anti-intellectuality of the forum: I think you've misjudged its purpose. It is the electronic equivalent of the faculty coffee shop. I defy you to find the kind of discussion you would like to hear in that forum. I participate to pick up useful information and to keep in touch with what is going on. I do not use HUMANIST as a forum for my scholarly research, except insofar as it touches upon questions dealing with humanities computing. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: Naama Zahavi-Ely Subject: Re: 4.0057 Sneaking into Bedrooms (89) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 21:07:40 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 254 (268) Hello! Sorry for the slip of fingers in my previous posting: I meant, of course, the story of Lea and Rachel, not Rivka. See Genesis, ch.29, and especially verses 21-25. -Naama Zahavi-Ely elinze@yalevm.bitnet Zahavi-Ely-Naama@Yale.Edu From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Biblical Bedrooms Date: Thursday, 17 May 1990 2107-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 255 (269) Lest the HUMANIST biblical savants be condemned too quickly for inattention, it wasn't poor desirable Rachel who snuck her weak-eyed sister Leah into the honeymoon bed in Genesis 29.23, but scheming daddy Laban, who parlayed the move into another 7 year hitch for patient Jacob! Wasn't that the question? What females substituted another female in a conjugal situation? Sarah almost does it to Abraham by substuting her maid Hagar in Genesis 16.2, but it is presented as a preconceived situation (pun fully intended). Indeed, Rebekah substitutes one son for the other to gain Isaac's blessing in Genesis 27, but that is another sort of story. The Judah-Tamar story comes closer, with the seemingly anonymous harlot (Tamar in disguise) substituting Tamar herself so as to conceive by her fearful father-in-law as a protest against his inattention to social and legal conventions. Check it out in Genesis 38. Great story! Bob Kraft, U. Penn From: "Leslie Z. Morgan" Subject: sneaking into bedrooms, cont. Date: Fri, 18 May 90 07:17 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 256 (270) For a classic selection of lovers brought into bedrooms, see Poggio's *Facetiae*. One good one give an example) is V. A peasant discovered his wife had "two vaginas" and therefore offered one to the church (at his wife's suggestion). Thus she was able to bring the priest to bed with them, with her husband's full consent. There's an English translation- Hurwood is the translator's name. If you're interested in such materials, there's an excellent new book out, *Festum Voluptatis*, by David Frantz (Ohio STate University Press, 1989). The second half (which I haven't yet read, since it's about English materials- Italian is my field) might interest the poster of the original inquiry. Leslie Morgan (MORGAN@LOYVAX1) From: Michael Ossar Subject: sneaking into bedrooms and nerds Date: Fri, 18 May 90 10:48 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 257 (271) On sneaking into bedrooms, don't forget Helena and Diana in All's Well that Ends Well. ... [eds] From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 4.0071 Queries (53) Date: Fri, 18 May 90 08:55:36 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 258 (272) The SIL spelling checking package in which Douglas de Lacey was interested is distributed as a booklet with an accompanying software disk. The booklet is: Black, Andy; Kuhl, Fred; Kuhl, Kathy; Weber, David. 1987. Document preparation aids for non-major languages. Occasional Publications in Academic Publishing 7. 44 pp. It can be ordered from: International Academic Bookstore Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, Texas 75236 The price with disk is something like $4.00 or $5.00, with handling. I suppose that the handling fee would be more for overseas mailing. The Bookstore will quote you the price, if you write to them. Let me emphasize that you need to specify 5.25 vs. 3.5 inch disk format when ordering. I have gone through the documentation, but have not had occasion to use the tools, which consist of a series of compiled C programs. They are designed for doing spelling checking for non-major (e.g., minor and not so minor indigenous languages of South America and Indonesia, in the authors' case). he programs allow various combinations of checking words by linguistic canonical form (e.g., CVCCV, (CCVC)*, etc.) or by membership in a list of explicitly permitted exceptions. Interactive changes or batch editing are supported. The approach of canonical forms is not particularly effective with English, due to our spelling system, but can be useful with languages like Quechua, when spelled in a phonemic notation. The problems with checking the spelling of a Quechua document being, of course, that Quechua spelling lists for standard spelling checkers are hard to come by, and that Quechua is highly agglutinative (in something like the Turkish style). One nice feature of the tools is that they can be set to work only with particular fields in a file. So, if your interlinear file has \qch at the head of Quechua fields and \eng at the head of English fields, the checkers can be made to confine their attentions to the forms in the \qch fields. The field format employed is SIL's Standard Format. The authors suggest that users might want to modify the general framework of the code to produce new tools. The source code is available from JAARS, an SIL subsidiary, though I have not ordered it. From: Peter Shillingsburg Subject: Re: 4.0050 OCR Scanning Errors (197) Date: Thu, 17 May 90 21:03:56 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 259 (273) This is a reply to John Koontz on "correcting" OCR texts: You appear to think that a correctly scanned text is one that has all the words spelled correctly. Do you recognize that a correctly scanned text is one that has all the same errors as the text scanned from? I tried the fatal shortcut of a spell checker on texts scanned for use in collations for a scholarly edition. The result was dishonest--no, that is a moral term; it was just foolish. From: amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert A Amsler) Subject: TeXies Date: Thu, 17 May 90 23:40:44 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 81 (274) Excuse my not replying sooner to Sebastian's preemptive strike against TeX criticism in any form. In part it was due to my being a little upset when he took a message I sent him off-line to use as the source for extracting bits to use in his rebuttal. It wasn't so much that I'd said anything in that message that couldn't have been said to Humanist at large, but that I was myself replying to an off-line message he had sent me and frankly didn't think this type of TeX discussion was worth everyone's time on Humanist. His reply didn't convince me I was wrong. It seemed a little strange to have Sebastian lambasting Scribe while admitting he had never used it. Probably the appropriate stand for a religious warrior; ``Of course I don't know anything about THEIR system--do you think I want to be contaminated by infidels?'' There are a couple things I would like to say. I just finished a rather small Snobol4 program to convert a particular 150 page document from Waterloo GML (pretty much the closest working typesetting system to SGML from what I have seen) and it once again proved to me the rightness of the SGML-level of text description. The conversion was basically a set of simple substitutions with some bells and whistles thrown in for the attributes of some tags. I would attribute this in part to Scribe's high-level operators. It most certainly could also have been done in TeX, but that it exactly the whole point. From the higher level langauges one can translate downward easily into the lower level languages. The important principle is to believe in the worthiness of that translation step for the future of machine-readable text. It is really tempting to fall under the sway of a single typesetting system and come to believe that it has reached perfection itself because it lets you manipulate everything at the level of XXXX. I mean, Fat Bits on the Mac are wonderous to add that Incunabula look to a document to make sure each letter E is slightly different; simulating the wearing down of wooden type. (And Sebastian would add.... ``Yes, that's what I like about TeX, it has Metafont available to make it possible to do things like that more professionally than on the Mac'') The point is that it is very hard to climb back UP to the high-level description from the more specialized forms. You have to infer what the author intended by those little changes they invariably seem prone to make. As someone who spends time trying to UN-typeset documents to make their text usable for things like database extraction and extracting useable data, I can assure you it is worse to try and unravel TeX and troff than anything short of Postscript and Impress. (And for Sebastian: Scribe is indeed a system for designing document styles and does let you ``sink down into raw typesetter speak'' to specify things like character widths, select individual characters to make up your own alphabets and font families. It lacks Metafont capabilities though, if that makes you happy.) From: David.A.Bantz@mac.dartmouth.edu Subject: Job Posting Date: 18 May 90 13:01:05 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 82 (275) Software Designer/Programmer Dartmouth College is seeking a person for software design and development in an academic environment. This is an opportunity for someone with a background in programming and academic applications to take a lead role in the design and implementation of a substantial project to produce a flexible multimedia environment tailored to the needs of scholars, teachers, and students working with foreign language texts and video. A B.A. is required. Some experience in software development teams or project management is desirable. The position is available immediately. We are looking for a person with most of the following: 1. general familiarity with the Macintosh OS and Macintosh applications; 2. toolbox level programming experience; 3. extensive experience in C and/or Pascal (preferably in the Macintosh environment; 4. knowledge of Hypercard; 5. familiarity with the academic environment; 6. some knowledge of foreign languages. Inquiriues should be directed to: Search Committee for Software Programmer/Designer, 201 Bartlett Hall, Hanover, NH 03755-1870 e-mail: newmuse@Dartmouth.edu From: Willard McCarty Subject: Yearbook meeting in Siegen Date: Thu, 17 May 90 18:12:32 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 83 (276) The general editors of The Humanities Computing Yearbook (Clarendon Press, Oxford) are holding a public meeting on Thursday, 7 June, in Siegen during the ALLC/ICCH conference, to discuss volume III of the Yearbook. All interested individuals are invited. The editors would like to discuss the kind of collaboration that would ensure the timely publication of a book that truly represents the state of the field, and to solicit opinions and comments on a proposal concerning standards of submission, peer review, and division of labour among contributors and editors. We are very interested in meeting persons who would like to contribute to the effort. The time and place of the meeting will be announced at the conference. Ian Lancashire Willard McCarty General Editors, The Humanities Computing Yearbook From: Alan D Corre Subject: Poem Date: Thu, 17 May 90 23:23:08 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 84 (277) The following poem was written in 1977. At that time I was using an interactive SPITBOL program which had been prepared for me on the UNIVAC 1100. The system had timeouts; if you left the terminal idle for five minutes, you were thrown off, and had to wait a long time to get back on. My programmer explained that you could defeat the timeout with a wait program, of which there were several. You entered the command @FARBLE and everything was fine. He did not specify, or I failed to understand, that this had to be done at the operating system level. Entering an at-sign at the beginning of a line while a SPITBOL program was active could bring dire results, as I discovered. Late one evening I was running my program, and I decided to take a break. I typed in @FARBLE. The terminal seemed to tremble at the affront, and all hell broke loose. The screen was flooded with things I did not understand. I entered all the commands I knew which were supposed to stop things--@END, @@TERM, EXIT, ctrl-D--but nothing worked. I tried to phone my programmer without success. Eventually I gave up, switched off the terminal and went home. The next morning I returned at 8 a.m. and switched on the terminal. The program was still there. It apparently had run all night and finally stopped. I called the programmer, and this time I got him. I told him what had happened, and for some reason he found it quite amusing. He was giggling uncontrollably, when I innocently told him the final message on the screen. "It says MAX PAGES." His mirth vanished. I heard a gulp at the end of the line, followed by a pregnant silence. "MAX PAGES?" he exclaimed. "MAX PAGES?? Nobody EVER reaches MAX PAGES!!!" Well, almost nobody. I had reached that distant bourne, and in so doing spent almost $5,000 of computer time. The reason I got such a bargain was that that stupid loop had been executed a billion times in the wee hours at ten percent of normal cost; if it had been daytime, I should have spent $50,000. Two little addenda. Two weeks later, I was going through some CVs as a member of a committee awarding some grants. One candidate recorded that two years previously he had been granted $500 of computer time. He had it on his CV, and I had spent ten times that at one swell foop! A week after that I was again sitting at my terminal, chastened but persistent. A student sitting at the next terminal happened to key in by accident an unpublished code that caused his machine to start spitting out in excruciating detail a list of every single file on the system. He turned to me in horror. "What can I do?" he pleaded. With aplomb, I leaned over, pressed the break key, and typed on his keyboard the magic symbols which had been burned into my neural eprom the day after that fateful night: @@X TIO The unwanted output stopped, the machine reported EXECUTION TERMINATED and meekly awaited the next instruction. The student turned to me gratefully. "Thank you so much," he said, wiping the cold sweat from his brow. "Don't mention it," I replied. "It's easy when you know how." FARBLE I only meant to FARBLE As other users do, But you kept right on going And ran the whole night through! I only meant to FARBLE And take a spot of tea, But sure enough, you looped the loop, And almost spent five G. I didn't mean to garble Or set your bits awry. You really were not nice to me-- You SPITBOLed in my eye! No order could restrain you You laughed at @@TERM You wouldn't take an EXIT You really made me SQUIRM! And now the Dean is puzzled, Perhaps a bit impressed, "My, what a lot of lolly In *DICT to invest!" I've dreamed of living grandly And spending like a sheikh. How strange that I should do it When I was not awake! From: Subject: spouse abuse Date: Sun, 20 May 90 21:59 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 260 (278) Do you plan to include everything that goes on in the House of Atreus? Seriously, be sure to include the Clerk's Tale. You might also have a look at Norris's _McTeague_. John Burt From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: spouse abuse Date: Mon, 21 May 90 11:17 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 261 (279) Herb Donow, Does your wife know about Ring Lardner's "Haircut"? Spouse abuse is not the major issue of the story, but it certainly does figure in it. Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: More about Foreskins Date: Sun, 20 May 90 17:46 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 262 (280) After Saul's death, David sends messengers to "Saul's son Ishbosheth with the demand: 'Hand over to me my wife Michal for whom I gave a hundred Philistine foreskins as the bride-price'" (The Revised English Bible: 2 Samuel 3:14). From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: Re: 4.0057 Sneaking into Bedrooms (89) Date: Sun, 20 May 90 06:56:23 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 263 (281) thanks for all of the comments. uit seems that it was practically a topos in renaissance. great subject for a presidential after dinner speech some day. keep everybody awake. daniel From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0079 Sneaking into Bedrooms (59) Date: Sun, 20 May 90 21:46 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 264 (282) I think the finest retelling of the Judah -Tamar story is thomas Mann's version of it in JOSEPH & HIS BROTHERS. He brings out all sorts of powerful features, about women's stubborn foresightedness, should one say woman's...." Jascha Kessler From: cbf@faulhaber.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: TeX and LATeX Date: Mon, 21 May 90 08:24:43 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 265 (283) I am reposting this since I don't remember seeing it among recent messages: Can anyone give me any information about sources for TeX or LATeX, particularly for MS-DOS? Are there different varieties, and, if so, which is the best. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley ked@ucbgarn.bitnet From: David.A.Bantz@mac.dartmouth.edu Subject: Archaeological software Date: 21 May 90 10:36:47 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 266 (284) A colleague has promotional literature for "Minark" from Quantitative Systems. The software is said to be a database manager tailored to the needs of archaeology, but the promotional literature is vague on its capabilities, power, or user interface. As we have been using 4th Dimension to create a database of pottery fragments, including illustrations, automatic graphing of distributions of measurements from selected samples, bibliographic references, and a customized user interface, we wondered whether "Minark" might offer advantages to development in 4D. Descriptions of development experience with Minark, completed applications using the software, or pointers to detailed reviews in the literature would all be appreciated. Target platform is Macintosh. From: DEL2%phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: Re: [4.0074 Queries (84)] Date: Mon, 21 May 90 16:23:17 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 267 (285) Further to Eric Nye's comment about liibraries not being able to get funding for CDs. I rang the Cambridge University Library to see if we had the _British Library General Catalogue_ on CD. I was told that we did not, because on the demo disc(!) shown to the staff they had identified so many input errors that they felt the expenditure was not justified. Does anyone know about the quality of other CD-aids being advertised? Douglas de Lacey From: LINDYK@Vax2.Concordia.CA Subject: RE: 4.0069 Humanist Structure (210) Date: Sat, 19 May 90 11:36 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 268 (286) Hello, Please keep the list the way it is now. Personally, it fits a need that I don't find on other lists. Sincerely, Bogdan KARASEK lindyk@vax2.concordia.ca From: Natalie Maynor Subject: Re: 4.0078 Stucture of Humanist (263) Date: Sat, 19 May 90 19:58:16 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 269 (287) Oops. Obviously others had threatened to "leave the room." I guess that was in one of the chunks I deleted unread. I still vote for the unmoderated style. Natalie Maynor (nm1@ra.msstate.edu) From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Subject: Splitting Humanists Date: 20 May 1990, 13:50:08 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 270 (288) We might divide ourselves into those who think the term *humanist* includes having a sense of humor (although that quality may be difficult to define) or a sense of playfulness, and those who think that life is All Business. But splitting hairs or dividing people wouldn't seem to be the mission of humanists. We do work very hard on understanding our machines, our programs, our texts, all day long. Can we have a few cakes and ale at night? in between the discussions of collecting everything ever written by human beings in one database or the discussions of how to define catachresis, synecdoche *or* nerd (don't forget the Popular Culture people as well as the New Historicists)? Roy Flannagan From: Mary Massirer Subject: moderated lists Date: Mon, 21 May 90 12:55 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 271 (289) Another note in the discussion of what if anything to do with Humanist: leave her as is, and Please! keep it moderated. I got off Folklore because it is unmoderated and was driving me crazy. Humanist is sane and reasonable and much easier to manage than unmoderated lists. Whew! I feel better! Mary Massirer (massirerm@baylor) From: Subject: topics on humanist Date: Sun, 20 May 90 11:31 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 272 (290) In the five months since I subscribed to HUMANIST, the postings have ranged from the airily abstract to the immediately specific, from high seriousness to play; I cannot believe, as Mr. Greenberg seems to imply, that our editors past or present have censored postings to eliminate "intellectual substance." If he and those he speaks for bewail the lack of such intellectual substance, why don't they post such items rather than complain of their absence? If, as he implies, such postings are "unimportant" to other subscribers of HUMANIST, then he perceives, not the absence of "the implicitly democratic potential of electronic communication," but its working. Democratically active audiences may choose not to respond to messages uninteresting to them. Perhaps more broadly relevant, however, may be Greenberg's conception of "intellectually substantial material," since his examples seem to be all of a theoretical nature. Are we, in fact, in semantic difficulties with "intellectual substance" meaning "theoretical" and "trivia contests" meaning "applied" knowledge? Judy Boss University of Nebraska at Omaha From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0075 Nerds (59) Date: Sunday, 20 May 1990 01:40:10 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 273 (291) I accept Richard Ristow's etymology for NERD to a Swarthmore revue from about 1960, if that's verifiable. That would explain credibly where the Happy Days writers got the word. If we want to push it back further, we should look to Mad Magazine, a source during that period for a lot of amateur material, as Monty Python is now. I agree that this is all mostly a waste of time, except that the word is very common, threatens to become a part of our standard vocabulary, and is most under-documented in OED2. It's a good example to which students can relate when talking about the limitations of dictionaries to describe a language's vocabulary. But I solemnly promise not to comment nerdishly on NERD anymore. --Pat Conner From: barry alpher Subject: nerd Date: Sun, 20 May 90 17:15:37 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 274 (292) Patrick W Conner has queried me, or called my bluff, on the attestation /nerd/ in 1968. The utterer was myself. The referent was was ugly and stupid and had no style. This was, I believe, the original sense of the word before it acquired 'studious' (which, although clearly not synonymous with 'smart', seems to be associated with 'smart' in common usage). The addressee was Dr Melvin Firestone of Arizona State University. He asked me what /nerd/ meant and I referred him to the droplet of glue; he understood perfectly. I wondered at the time if this usage was my own coinage, but the rapidly accelerating popularity of /nerd/ during this period made me realize that I must have heard the word so used by someone else. So it seems to be a fine story of the collective unconscious and a term whose time had come. I suspect that 'studious' entered via TV; if so, we have a fine example of how power can bend the collective unconscious. Barry Alpher From: Robin Smith Subject: Nerds in the '60s Date: Sun, 20 May 90 08:39 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 275 (293) Sure, there are better things to talk about than the age of 'nerd,' but not at this time of the year. I can attest that it was in use in the South (east Tennessee, anyway) among high school students around 1962 as a term of abuse. The precise sense was never clear to me. (Webster's refers to certain uses of obscenities as 'meaningless intensifiers'; I would have to have called this a 'meaningless term of abuse.') I can also testify that by 1964, it was in use at some East Coast universities with a more precise sense: roughly, a socially inept, foolish, and probably physically unattractive person. My memories are that it was applied only to males and that it was more popular among fraternity types. It was definitely not a coinage of any TV show writers. --Robin Smith Philosophy, Kansas State University From: wtosh@cs.utexas.edu (Wayne Tosh) Subject: "doddle" Date: Sun, 20 May 90 10:51:59 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 276 (294) Lest we dawdle further with "doddle," may I suggest that it is merely the o-grade ablaut of "diddle." From: "[DCGQAL]MILLER16" Subject: [DCGQAL]MILLER16!Courseware Exchange Program Date: Fri, 18 May 90 06:10:57 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 277 (295) Comments-of: "Patrick W. Conner" Someone asked about Kinko's Software, and what happend to it. I received the following announcement from my Apple representative just the next day after I'd deleted that request. [deleted quotation] "[DCGQAL]MILLER16" [... eds] ---------------------------------------------------------------- APPLE ANNOUNCES INTERIM ACADEMIC COURSEWARE EXCHANGE DISTRIBUTOR ---------------------------------------------------------------- CUPERTINO, California--February 26, 1990--Apple Computer, Inc. announced today that Intellimation of Santa Barbara, California will provide Academic Courseware Exchange service on an interim basis to colleges and universities while final arrangements for an expanded program are being completed. Apple and Kinko's Copies announced last July their intention to replace the Academic Courseware Exchange program administered by Kinko's with more sophisticated software distribution, publishing and marketing. The Academic Courseware Exchange was originally established in 1986 by Apple and Kinko's to make software created by college faculty easily available to other faculty members and students at a reasonable cost. "During the past five years, curriculum software development has flourished well beyond our early expectations - in part because of the introduction of HyperCard software and other easy-to use Macintosh development tools as well as the growing interest in multimedia technologies," said Apple academic solutions manager Katie Povejsil. During this interim period, Academic Courseware materials may be obtained by calling 1-800-346-8355. Intellimation will also take inquiries from software developers interested in distributing materials through the Academic Courseware Exchange for the program's eventual administrator. Intellimation was founded in 1987 as a subsidiary to ABC-CLIO, a 37-year-old educational publisher. The company publishes and distributes multimedia materials and is best- known as marketer and distributor of The Annenberg/CPB Collection of video courses such as The Brain and The Mechanical Universe. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh and HyperCard are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Contacts: Janet Male Regis McKenna, Inc. 415-354-4427 or 408-974-4173 Becky Snyder Intellimation 805-968-2291 From: Subject: Thematic mapping for the Macintosh. Date: Sun, 20 May 90 11:55 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 278 (296) I have only given partial attention to the postings on mapping software, so I hope this does not repeat what has been covered. This is to partly address the original question and to include some observations that may be useful to others. This semester I taught a seminar in which we looked at the possibilities of making a thematic atlas using Macintosh desktop publishing hardware and software. (Even though I have used many kinds of computers for many years, and know how time-intensive these "labor saving" systems can be, I still GREATLY underestimated how much time it would take to produce a finished map, from data collection to final tweaking.) We did not buy any new software, but used the software the Geography Department already had licensed and which I had already used to varying degress. We had a Mac SE/30 and Mac II as our machines with ouput to Imagewriter II (for drafts) and Applie LaserWriter. The primary program we used was "MapMaker 4.0" by Select Micro Systems (tel. 408-985-7400). This allows you to make: * choropleths ("shading-by-area") * dot maps * propoertional point symbols (squares or circles) * cartograms (non-contiguous or "exploded" type) It comes with base map files for USA by states, each USA state by counties, and world by countries. You can order other areas or prepare your own base map files. It supports some digitizers, but not the particular Summagraphics model we had. To prepare our own bases we scanned a printed base map (Microtek scanner), then imported that to a general-purpose drawing program (SuperPaint) to retrace the outlines, then imported that to MapMaker for its own "autotracing." MapMaker lets you import Excel spreadsheets, so you can manage your data there. MapMaker is good as far as it goes and I don't know of another program that makes the same range of maps. Version 4.0 has substantial improvements over version 3.0. However, use it to make the maps and THEN move the maps to SuperPaint (or whatever) for annotation. MapMaker, naturally, is not as full-featured as those for adding text etc., and it is also substantially slower to redraw the screen (even on an SE/30 it got very slow as map complexity increased). Most annoying, and which I've suggested to them that they address in the next release, is the lack of a style-sheet or scripting option so the new map defaults to YOUR favored shading patterns (the default set is awful) and other display options. Overall, I'd say that MapMaker is capable of producing maps for a use or publication that is not too demanding, but lacks features (such as a a really good set of gray scale shades) I think many experienced cartographers would want to have to be satisfied. Both Mac and PC DOS users should be aware of RockWare Inc. (tel. 303-423-5645). As the name suggests, they emphasize software for geologic applications. I suspect they develop most programs in the DOS environment and then port them to the Mac. That is certainly true for MacGRIDZO for isarithmic (contour) mapping, which includes an impressive number of options, but lacks the usual Mac look-and-feel. Finally, I recently received demo disks from WTC Scientific in the UK (tel. 0625-20210) for WhizSurf, WhizMap, and Atlas, but have not tested them much. WhizMap looks like an alternative to MacGRIDZO. Jim Cerny, Computing and Information Services and Geography Department, University of New Hampshire. j_cerny@unhh From: Subject: Old English fonts Date: Sun, 20 May 90 17:47 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 279 (297) The font known as SuperFrench, available from Linguist's Software, Redmond, Washington, USA, for US$99.95 works very well with the Macintosh. Tom Bestul, Department of English University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588 (tbestul@unlvax1.bitnet or tbestul@crcvms.unl.edu) P.S. I have the exact address for Linguist's Software, for any one interested. From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 4.0074 Queries (84) Date: Mon, 21 May 90 08:45:29 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 280 (298) For those looking for exotic orthography Mac fonts ([real] Old English, phonetic, Sanskrit, Greek, Amharic, Cuneiform, Mayan, etc.): Here are the addresses of the first three Mac font companies that handle a variety of fonts. Neoscribe International, Inc. (Info here is older; may not be POB 633 current.) East Haven, CT 06512 203-467-9880 Ecological Linguistics Handles fonts and keying POB 15156 Washington, DC 20003 Linguist's Software Ditto POB 580 Edmonds, WA 98020-0580 206-775-1130 or Linguist's Software 925 Hindley Lane Edmonds, WA 98020 206-775-2173 Linguist's Software also distributes the Mac version of SIL's IT [Interlinear Text] program. I have no hands on experience with any of these fonts, but prices are O($100) or cheaper and examples in fliers I've seen look acceptable to my untutored, not very critical eye. You can get fliers and judge for yourself easily enough. Someone else's request on Mac fonts in USENET's comp.fonts produced the following, which I filed away: [deleted quotation] John E. Koontz All recommendations are my own, and do not express the views of my employers. From: AEB_BEVAN@VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK Subject: names, terms and attitudes Date: Fri, 18 MAY 90 10:53:32 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 281 (299) Name calling The discussion on what students/faculty call each other has highlighted a difference in terminology between North American and British university practices. We don't in general have classes for undergaduates. Lectures yes. Seminars certainly. And tutorials. Perhaps sessions in laboratories. But classes are for school. School; another difference. School is for pre-undergraduates. When you come to University you have left school. In our exams and assesments we dont have quizzes, or a least we dont call them quizzes. A quizz implies playing little games to tease people into revealing their knowledge and ignorance. Giving people quizzes tells them that they are not yet ready to look at real problems, an dthat they have to jump through hoops held by those with superior minds. The point I am making is that for me North American terms such as these have heavy connotations of regimented learning and attempts to control through manipulation. I am NOT saying that we avoid those attitudes in British universities, just that the language of American academic life suggests from my perspective that those attitudes have been internalised and accepted while British terms *appear* to challenge them and to offer students a more equitable and dignified relationship. How are these terms actually interpreted by North Americans (and how do they react to British terms). By the way calling someone just by their last name is a pretty heavy put-down over here. It definitely implies a master/servant, officer/ranker type of relationship. Edis Bevan From: "S. Thomson Moore" Subject: forms of address Date: Mon, 21 May 90 09:13:12 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 282 (300) Always implicit in forms of address is the question of power relationships. The members of the Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) felt, and many still feel, that it is unethical to make distinctions of rank, wherefore their adhesi n to plain dress and plain speech (using the familiar 2nd person singular to al ll, whether inside the family or out, whether "superior" or "inferior").The usu al form of address in a formal situation omits any statement of rank, including "Mister" or "Mrs.", using the first and last names only. When a Quaker needs to speak to someone whose name is unknown to her/him, she/he says "Dear Friend". From: Stephen Clausing Subject: addressing students Date: Sun, 20 May 90 17:16:34 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 283 (301) My opposition to using first names with students can be explained by an analogy. It is wrong to make a sexual advance towards a student, even when that advance is not coupled with a threat, because implicitly any such advance is always coupled with a threat, the threat that the teacher might retaliate against the student if he or she says no. Similarly, using a first name with a student implies an intimacy with the student which the student may not share, but which the student might be reluctant to reject. The better policy would be to assume that the student would prefer a certain distance, call it respect if you will, and address students only with last names. One could conceivably conduct an anonymous poll at the beginning of the class asking whether students would object to first names. There are, however, two problems with this. First, if only a single student objected, the teacher would be forced to abandon the use of first names, particularly since there would be no way of knowing which student objected. Second, students can sense the answer the teacher is hoping to receive (why pose the question unless the teacher wants to use first names?) and will probably again feel coerced into assenting. Ultimately it comes down to this: no lives will be lost if family names are used, and a certain formality is better than giving offense. Moreover, first names do not guarantee an atmosphere conducive to learning nor do family names prohibit this. As a graduate student, I found the teachers who were most chummy with the students, e.g. first name basis, were also the ones who were most disappointed when I did not share their political views. Was their use of first names merely an act of cordiality or an attempt to curry my favor? Conversely, I developed a deep respect for my dissertation advisor and consider him a good friend, but he will always be Prof. Seifert to me. This is enough intimacy. From: Willard McCarty Subject: Yearbook meeting in Siegen Date: Mon, 21 May 90 14:37:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 284 (302) The public meeting to discuss the future of The Humanities Computing Yearbook, announced on Humanist last week, will take place in Siegen at the conference site on Thursday, 7 June, at 7:00 p.m. All interested individuals are strongly encouraged to attend. Ian Lancashire Willard McCarty General Editors, The Humanities Computing Yearbook Oxford University Press From: "Stephen R. Reimer" Subject: e-text request Date: Fri, 18 May 1990 23:33:59 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 285 (303) I am in need of an electronic version of the complete poetry of the seventeenth-century English poet Ben Jonson, and I would appreciate any information which other HUMANISTs might offer to aid me in locating one. Stephen R. Reimer University of Alberta SREIMER@UALTAVM.BITNET From: "M. R. Sperberg-McQueen " Subject: Query: help with neo-Latin paleography? Date: 20 May 1990 14:05:15 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 286 (304) I'm editing a manuscript of neo-Latin poems (written by a German around 1630). My transcription is by and large complete, but I'm uncertain about how to render some of the diacritical markings (if at all). Is there anyone out there who is sufficiently familiar with neo-Latin paleography that they might be able to discuss some of the problems with me? Please write to me directly. Marian Sperberg-McQueen University of Illinois at Chicago U15440 at UICVM From: "Robin C. Cover" Subject: NEW READING ON TEXT Date: Mon, 21 May 90 10:34:02 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 287 (305) New Discussion on "Text" Skip Knox wrote (18-May-90, re: 4.0069 Douglas Greenberg's mention of "text"): "Perhaps Greenberg or others could explain what all the fuss is about. I know what a document is. I know what text is." "What text is" may prove to be a more interesting discussion than we think. Not as important as "nerds," of course. New reading is available for those who want to contemplate what text ("really") is, or should be, or could be, inside a computer. It's a contribution by some members of the Brown/Harvard/Brandeis "CHUG" unit. DeRose, Steven J.; Durand, David G.; Mylonas, Elli; Renear, Allen H. "What is Text, Really?" Journal of Computing in Higher Education 1/2 (Winter 1990) 3-26. [Abstract: "The way in which text is represented on a computer affects the kinds of uses to which it can be put by its creator and by subsequent users. The electronic document model currently in use is impoverished and restrictive. The authors agree that text is best represented as an ordered hierarchy of content object[s] (OHCO), because that is what text really is. This model conforms with emerging standards such as SGML and contains within it advantages for the writer, publisher, and researcher. The authors then describe how the hierarchical model can allow future use and reuse of the document as a database, hypertext or network."] For those like the article and want further reading on the SGML view of "text," here's a landmark piece (with earlier contributions by DeRose and Renear). Coombs, James; Renear, Allen; DeRose, Steven . "Markup Systems and the Future of Scholarly Text Processing." CACM 30/11 (1987) 933-947. [ISSN: 0001-0782; cf. CACM 31/7 (July 1988) 810-11)] [Abstract: The authors argue that many word processing systems distract authors from their tasks of research and composition, toward concern with typographic and other tasks. Emphasis on "WYSIWYG", while helpful for display, has ignored a more fundamental concern: representing document structure. Four main types of markup are analyzed: Punctuational (spaces, punctuation,...), presentational (layout, font choice,...), procedural (formatting commands), and descriptive (mnemonic labels for document elements). Only some ancient manuscripts have no markup. Any form of markup can be formatted for display, but descriptive markup is privileged because it reflects the underlying structure. ISO SGML is a descriptive markup standard, but most benefits are available even before a standard is widely accepted. A descriptively marked-up document is not tied to formatting or printing capabilities. It is maintainable, for the typographic realization of any type of element can be changed in a single operation, with guaranteed consistency. It can be understood even with no formatting software: compare "
" to ".sk 3 a; .in +10 -10; .ls 0; .cp 2". It is relatively portable across views, applications and systems. Descriptive markup also minimizes cognitive demands: the author need only recall (or recognize in a menu) a mnemonic for the desired element, rather than also deciding how it is currently to appear, and recalling how to obtain that appearance. Most of this extra work is thrown away before final copy; descriptive markup allows authors to focus on authorship. (abstract supplied by Steve DeRose)] Robin Cover 3909 Swiss Avenue Dallas, TX 75204 AT&T: (214) 296-1783/841-3657 FAX: 214-841-3540 BITNET: zrcc1001@smuvm1 INTERNET: robin@txsil.lonestar.org INTERNET: robin@utafll.lonestar.org UUCP: texbell!txsil.robin From: "Peter D. Junger" Subject: What is a text? Date: Mon, 21 May 90 12:19 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 288 (306) Since we were recently chided for not discussing such issues as `What is a text?', I will raise that issue since it actually relates to the writing that I should be doing this Summer. I am working with the "forms of actions"; formulas that used to be required--and still are often used--to start an action at law. They were originally incorporated into writs from the King to the Sheriff commanding the latter to do something--in the _praecepi_ writs that I am most concerned with, the sheriff was commanded to command that the defendant (or tenant) do something. I sort of have the suspicion that most people think of a text as a series of statements (propositional sentences) and not as commands. Am I wrong in this suspicion? I would suppose that my problem has something in common with the question as to whether a recipe, or a computer program, or a wiring diagram is a text. I have written computer programs of the small variety and I have even read some computer programs. I like to read recipes. But is the sort of interpretation that one does in reading a program or a recipe in any way related to the interpretation that one gives to a poem, a detective story, or a history? The original writs were not written to convey information--they were formulae which, when properly written down, resulted in mechanically predictable--if not purely physical-- consequences. Still another way of expressing my concern would be to say: "Is an illocutionary act a text?" I doubt that my question is well formed, but I suspect that it may stir up some discussion. Peter D. Junger--Case Westerrn Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, Ohio From: Daniel Boyarin Subject: Re: 4.0069 Humanist Structure (210) Date: Sun, 20 May 90 07:08:36 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 289 (307) in response to douglas greenberg: the questions that you raise are exactly the ones that keep me busy most of the time -- i am a talmudist trying to understand how texts work in culture. i am not sure that humanist is where i can discuss seriously such difficult issues. however, i am glad to have a forum for less weighty matters of scholarly and intellectual interest across a broad forum of disciplines, such as the opportunity for finding out recently that there are renaissance parallels to a theme in ancient jewish literature etc. i also find that the technical discussions are occasionally very useful and i am willing to spend the few minutes delteing the others in order to get at the ones i want. i think the answer is that each of us finds different parts of humanist worthwhile and that's why it has to remain a well organized buffet. sort of p.s. aren't you threatening to leave the room also? From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear Subject: Garbled Mail Date: Mon, 21 May 90 18:08:32 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 94 (308) Some subscribers at the University of Toronto received garbled mail last Thursday. If any other Humanists also had their mail garbagified in transit, please let us know and we'll send you copies of the relevant digests. (The problem was extensive -- if you wonder if your mail was garbled, it probably wasn't.) From: Subject: PROGRAMME ALLC-ACH 90 Date: Mon, 5 Mar 90 18:08 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 3 Num. 1129 (2986) namely: Friday, 8 June Main Topic: Methods and Applications 2:00-2:30pm Parallel Session (Chair: N.N.) l...] The Total of the Distances between the Languages as an Index of the Compactness of the Language Families (Yuri Tambovtsev, Lvov Lesotechnical Institute) Ideally I would like some comparative linguist (or whoever is interested) to tell me about this paper, and maybe acquire a copy of the paper from Tambovtsev if it is available, or at least find his postal address. Is there someone who will be attending the Siegen conference who is also interested in this paper and willing to communicate with me about it? David Nash Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIATSIS) | Dept Linguistics GPO Box 553 Fax: (06)2497310 | ANU Canberra ACT 2601 Telegraphic: ABINST | GPO Box 4 Phone: (06)2461166 | Canberra ACT 2601 From: Subject: ALLC-ACH 90 travel informations Date: Tue, 22 May 90 18:40 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 290 (309) ALLC-ACH 90 The New Medium 4 - 9 June 1990 Siegen To whom it may concern With the start of the conference approaching may I take this opportunity to briefly describe "How to reach Siegen?" Siegen is situated in the centre of the Federal Republic of Germany. By car you will reach Siegen: [deleted quotation]and turn west into A 45 (direction Dortmund) [deleted quotation]turn south into A 45 (direction Frankfurt) [deleted quotation]into A 45 (direction Frankfurt) Leave Autobahn A 45 at exit "Siegen/Netphen" By train you will reach Siegen: [deleted quotation]to Siegen-Weidenau Station. [deleted quotation]to Siegen-Weidenau Station. [deleted quotation]to Siegen Central Station. Transport from station to your hotel might be handled most conveniently by taxi. The same applies for your way to the Get-Together-Cocktail which will take place at "Queens Hotel", Kaisergarten, Siegen at 6:00pm on June, 4th. The Conference will take place at the University of Siegen in the building complex along Adolf Reichwein-Strasse. You can reach the university: by car: Follow the sign "Universitaet"; take either the city freeway (Huettentalstrasse) or B 54/62 from Siegen Centre to Weidenau (about 4 km), turn into B 62. Please, pay attention to the ALLC-ACH posters showing you the way. by bus: From Weidenau railway station take bus (lines 33 or 41) uphill to Haardter Berg (bus-stop "Robert Schumann-Strasse). Overseas participants who have not yet received (or will not receive in time) their documents through "Congress Partner", Bremen should not worry. These will be held for them and can be obtained at either the Queens Hotel (starting at 12:00am on June 4th or at the Get- Together-Cocktail) or at the Conference Information Desk during the following days. I hope you will have a pleasant journey and look forward to seeing you in Siegen soon. Yours sincerely Rolf Grossmann (Organization Assistant) From: "Lou (in Chicagoan exile) " Subject: Textual ontology Date: 21 May 1990 19:36:03 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 291 (310) I think that a text is a cultural object. This note is a text but there is also a sense in which the machine I am writing it on is a text, and another in which the textuality of this note is all in what happens when you peek (or whatever) at it. Being rather busy at present in trying to condense into some coherence what others have proposed as `essential textual features', I fear I must remain yours elliptically Lou From: "Michael Sperberg-McQueen 312 996-2477 -2981" Subject: what is a text Date: 21 May 1990 19:22:06 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 292 (311) In response to Peter Junger's questions: I don't know what most people think. Certainly I would have said that the writs he describes, and recipes, are texts in the strict sense. Nor can one limit the term 'text' to series of propositional statements without eliminating a great deal of literature (even in the traditional canon). Computer programs seem more text-like than otherwise to me. I'd call them texts, if only because the other position would cause problems for recipes. Like recipes and writs, they can be read, or they can be (read and) performed. It seems plausible that performance may be different from reading, since computers can perform programs, but that is a difference in the reader, not in the text. Wiring diagrams will clearly cause some people to cough a bit before deciding whether to call them texts. So will knitting patterns, and bell-ringing charts. I'd personally say that calling a wiring diagram a 'text' is at least a comprehensible metaphor. I suspect a lot of people (theorists at least) would say it's a normal usage and see no metaphor in it at all. Apart from the confusion unexplained metaphors wreak in unsuspecting listeners, I'm not sure there's a difference worth discussing here. Wiring patterns can presumably be nonsensical or garbled or impossible or inconsistent with themselves or just plain weird, which suggests that they have something which can be called, at least metaphorically, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Sounds more and more like a text to me. In haste, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET Subject: 4.0093 What is Text? (136) Date: Tuesday, 22 May 1990 9:56am CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 293 (312) The question "What is a text?" is enormously complicated. It's not enough to say that it's "a series of statements" (where did they come from?), nor will it do to speak of a series of document objects-- though both of those may be useful. In both cases, however, there are prior questions that have to be asked-- i.e., whose statements make up the series of document objects? what authorizes us to believe that those objects are the right ones? This question has animated (to put it mildly) recent debate over the 1984 "synoptic" edition of Joyce's _Ulysses_ prepared by Hans-Walter Gabler and published by Random House to supplant the 1961 edition with which most current readers are familiar. As Charles Rossman has pointed out in a series of articles in 1988 and 89 (see TLS, December 88, and NYRB, also December 88), decisions about what constituted the "text" of _Ulysses_ have been fraught with all sorts of considerations-- political, economic, and so forth-- that might seem at first glance to have nothing to do with Joyce or _Ulysses_ or anything else; and yet those decisions have real impact: I don't know how much Random House makes from sales of _Ulysses_ in any given year, but it's not peanuts. Or, to take a writer about whom I know more, there's the American poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972). What is probably her single most famous poem, called "Poetry" (it begins "I too dislike it"), was first published in July 1919, in a little magazine called _Others_. There are at least seven *different* published versions of the poem, three of which are so different from one another and from all the rest as to constitute different poems. There's the 1919 text already mentioned-- 30 lines, in 5 6-line stanzas and a complex, consistent pattern of rhyme and syllabification. The next major variant appeared in 1925, in the second edition (and only the second edition) of a volume called _Observations_ (NY: The Dial Press, 1925). This version is only 13 lines long, and is in free verse; it also suggests a different stance toward poetry than that taken in the 1919 text. In subsequent collections Moore reverted to a text resembling (though not precisely identical to) the 1919 "Poetry"-- that is, until her _Complete Poems_ appeared in 1967: there, "Poetry" has been sliced down to a mere *three* (3, yes) lines (these are in essence the first three lines of the 1919 version). A longer version, miscalled "Original Version," is preserved in the Notes at the back of the volume. Whew! Sorry for all that detail. Now: what is the text of Marianne Moore's "Poetry"? May we talk about "the" text, or must we talk about the *texts*? The problem becomes even more complicated because, in many cases, Moore entered, by hand, "corrections" to published texts (e.g., before presenting a copy to a friend, or when someone asked her to sign a copy for them, etc. Whoops, sorry about the etc. But not very!). How would Humanists recommend dealing with such things (this is not atypical for Moore, by the way)? John Slatin, University of Texas From: Germaine Warkentin Subject: "Classes" vs. "lectures" Date: Tue, 22 May 90 08:38:08 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 294 (313) I was fascinated by Edis Bevan's remarks about North American academic terminology. S/he is so clearly striving for an open, democratic, non-regimented terminology, but the terms cited resonate (to me) with precisely the opposite values. "Lecture" is a no-no here (though I still use it); it implies no interaction with the students. Mass learning is certainly a vice in North America (because of budgets; what the British call "the cuts") but it is by no means any one's ideal. And as for regimentation, I would like to see Bevan dealing with an argumentative class (yes, class) of American undergrads (Canadians are more passive; we need our energy for quarreling about the Constitution). Is the difference perhaps caused by the fact that so few British school-leavers go on to university in comparison with North America? The figures I have seen suggest about 12-15% in Britain, contrasted with nearly 60% in the US and nearly 50% in Canada. Our students enter much less well-prepared than the British entrant with his/her three glossy A-levels. But by fourth year they are quite the equal of their contemporaries abroad. Bevan seems to me (Open University or not) to be in a very privileged situation! Germaine Warkentin (Warkent@vm.epas.utoronto.ca) From: N.J.Morgan Subject: Classes Date: Tue, 22 May 90 09:38:40 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 295 (314) I'm sorry to contradict a British colleague, but some British Universities still have classes; most, if not all, are in Scotland. In our four year degree structure we have an Ordinary Class, a Higher Class, an Advanced Ordinary Class (for students taling an ordinary degree in three years) and then Junior and Senior Honours Classes. We have Class Essays, Class Exams, and (of course) Class Prizes. And, if a student completes the work of a Class, he or she receives a Class Ticket, without which a degree exam cannot be taken. It is not that long ago that Professors collected Class Fees from students at the start of each term as a supplement to their meagre salaries. Nicholas Morgan Department of Scottish History University of Glasgow Glasgow From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0091 Forms of Address (88) Date: Mon, 21 May 90 17:05 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 296 (315) Master/servant; officer/ranker. Well, GB is not a republic, nor a democracy, and we dont usually put people down by their accents in the USA, amusing as various ones are to various geographical areas, mutually. Americans always took delight in the wild variations, and dialectal jokes were the rage in the 1820's-1850's, as various humorous collections of stories and peices tells us, Mark Twain and Faulkner, etcetera. It began, I would say even before the Revolution. But, as far as first names go, if the professor doesnt want to be called by the first name, then what right, except that of master or boss,has the professor or teacher to use the first name, after the age of 13, say...? None, in the States. I wait till the student graduates, or is agraduate student, since the latter status deserves friendly intimacy, if it the same gender, that is, and if one likes and is liked. After all, who has the brains and energy? the graduate student. The graudate student is the person who catched the prof nodding, yawning and plagiarizing, usually. Kessler at UCLA From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: wordolitarianism; gender Date: Tue, 22 May 90 19:19:58-020 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 297 (316) Amsler's message was right to point out that the morphological gender has nothing to do with sex or psychological sexual characterization IN GENERAL: this is why I emphasized that "automobile" as masculine presupposes "veicolo", whereas as feminine it presupposes "macchina" or "vettura", as then the neologism just inherited their gender. The myth of virility invaded terminology, after D'Annunzio, with Mussolini: he claimed that "I fatti sono maschi, e le parole sono femmine" ("Facts are male, and words are female", as "fatto" is masculine whereas "parola" is feminine). The grotesque is evident to everybody, once somebody points it out. Totalitarianisms are very serious about themselves. When turning to terminology, they sometimes apply "wordolitarianism": repressive measures concerning terminology. (Such was the Fascist ban on loanwords. See Monelli's book republished by Hoepli of Milan in 1942.) In a liberal society, D'Annunzio had reason to fear his vulnerability to irony. Here is an anecdote. One play of his is titled "Isaotta Guttadauro". Literally translated, this proper name means: "Iseult Gold-Drop". Standard Italian has "Isotta" and "goccia d'oro". D'Annunzio selected Latinate forms ("gutta", "auro" from "aurum"), and the arbitrary "Isaotta" (perhaps as evocative of Isabella, Isaura, or Liselotte). One critic titled his review of the play, splendidly and caustically: "Risaotto al pomidauro". In standard Italian, "risotto al pomodoro" means "pilaf with tomato": a prosaic concept, as contrasted with D'Annunzio's aulicity. "Pomodoro" for tomato is "pomodori" or "pomidoro" in the plural, and, `wrongly', "pomidori". By calque on "Isaotta", the critic derived "Risaotto" from "risotto". "Risa otto" means "eight bursts of laughter". Indeed, "risa" is the collective plural for "riso" ("laughter"), whereas "risate" is the singulative plural: countable bursts of laughter. "Facciamoci quattro risate" means "Let's have four bursts of laughter", that is, "Let's have some fun [at X's expenses]". Here, the bursts of laughter are eight, the double of the four in the idiom. The message of "Risaotto al pomidauro" was: D'Annunzio's play is matter for laughter and deserves tomatos. Of course, D'Annunzio did not forgive this. More in general, the sublime and the ridiculous are very close neighbors. Best regards, Ephraim Nissan BITNET address: onomata@bengus.bitnet Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. From: Alan D Corre Subject: Queries about English Date: Mon, 21 May 90 16:41:26 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 298 (317) I have two queries about the pronunciation of English words, and one about syntax. I usually hear the plural of the word "process" pronounced as if it were a Greek word, that is to say the end sounds like the end of "hypotheses" (-EEZ). It is easy to see why this might occur; the word is often used in learned contexts, and has a sibilant at the end. I don't think "axes" (plural of "ax") and "axes" (plural of "axis") will ever merge because "ax" is so rarely used in a learned context. Is this "error" common outside the American midwest? Does it occur in UK? I know two words in English that have four acceptable pronunciations. "vase" may be pronounced vayz, vays, vahz or vawz. The herb "basil" may be bassil, bazil, bayssil or bayzil. Are there any words that have more than four? I realise that broad pronunciation differences from one area to another may complicate this question--and please excuse my unscientific transcriptions. Sentences of the type: "The problem is that he has no money" invariably come out in speech here with the word "is" repeated: "The problem is is that he has no money." I think this must be due to contamination by sentences like "What his opinion is, is nobody's business." Is this also midwestern usage, or does it have wider currency? From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: TeX sources Date: Tue, 22 May 90 10:21 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 299 (318) In Re: Charles Faulhaber's request for sources of TeX: Personal TeX, In. 12 Madrona Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 (415)-388-8853 ArborText Inc. 535 West William St. Suite 300 Ann Arbor, MI 48103 (313)-996-3566 There are probably other sources, but these are the ones I know. I've tried both and like the Personal TeX version best--it's easier to install and seems to require less memory. I'm not a TeX pro, though, so pay attention to what more experienced users have to say. Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: psc90!jdg@dartvax.dartmouth.edu (Dr. Joel Goldfield) Subject: "Queries on scanners & OCR" Date: Mon, 21 May 90 13:02:05 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 300 (319) Have any colleagues used the Xerox Datacopy GS Plus, the 730GS or any Siemens scanners? Opinions? As for software, we're thinking of OCR Plus for MS-DOS-based PC's and which comes with 19 pre-programmed typefaces and is also trainable. Has anyone tried AccuText (Mac-based OCR software) and Xerox' MacImage and PCImage desktop publishing software for image processing? From: Marc Bregman Subject: Computer Info to Non-US users Date: Tue, 22 May 1990 09:34 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 301 (320) Yesterday a (very human, but non-HUMANIST) friend and I were talking about the following curious phenomenon. Though we have faithfully registered all the hard and software we have purchased from companies most of whom are based in the US we sometimes receive no mailings from them about updates, further developments, etc. This is true even of very well established companies such as Hercules, Lotus, Microsoft, Dragonfly. Does this happen to other non-US computer users? Is there a general policy in come companies not to send mailings outside of the US? If so, is there any way to see that we non-US users are placed on mailing lists? Any wisdom on the subject will be greatly appreciated. Marc Bregman (Hebrew Union College) Jerusalem, Israel (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0086 Qs: TeX; Archaeology Software; CD Quality (47) Date: Mon, 21 May 90 17:09 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 302 (321) for #2 query, re arch. software. Have you looked into Business Filevision, for the Mac? that with Endnote might work too. You can do pictures and lots of toher database arrangements with FileVision, I think, and it is a tested program of some years now. Kessler at UCLA. It was to have been handy for my son, in Chinese arch., but he was much too busy on his dissertation, and no one can write Chinese yet on the Mac or anywhere else. Real problem there! From: dgn612@csc2.anu.OZ.AU (David Nash) Subject: Minark Date: Tue, 22 May 90 18:21:59 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 303 (322) Following the inquiry of David.A.Bantz@mac.dartmouth.edu, 21 May 90 10:36:47 about Minark... I saw a demo of the CP/M version about five years ago, have heard it is available for MS-DOS, but am surprised if it is available for the Macintosh. I think there was a review of Minark (and other similar software) in a 1989 issue of the newsletter of the Australian Anthropological Society. (I don't have a copy to hand.) David Nash Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIATSIS) | Dept Linguistics GPO Box 553 Fax: (06)2497310 | ANU Canberra ACT 2601 Telegraphic: ABINST | GPO Box 4 Phone: (06)2461166 | Canberra ACT 2601 From: Ken Steele Subject: Errors & CD-ROMs Date: Tue, 22 May 90 10:32:18 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 101 (323) Douglas de Lacey inquires about the general reliability of commercially-available CD-ROM databases, like the British Library General Catalogue. I don't yet have the luxury of a CD-ROM drive, but I would like to approach the matter in a somewhat oblique way which will, I hope, stimulate further discussion. Last year I ordered the ETC WordCruncher electronic Shakespeare (based on the Riverside edition by G. Blakemore Evans). Naturally (naively?) I expected a reliable research tool, but I was alarmed to discover a high frequency of errors and inaccuracies -- also reported by others who have used the software. WordCruncher invites corrections by mail, but does not announce or identify upgrade releases, nor does its proprietary encryption permit the user to (legally) correct his or her own copy, so one is quite permanently stuck with these errors. Likewise, in my work with the old-spelling transcriptions of the quarto and folio texts of Shakespeare (available through the Oxford Text Archive), I have been alarmed to discover errors even in those texts which T.H. Howard-Hill proofread repeatedly before preparing his Shakespeare concordances (and also in those texts I myself have proofread letter-by-letter more than once!). Similar errors were reported by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, who used these files in preparation of the text for the Oxford edition of the Complete Works (which many argue also includes errors, both intentional and unintentional). If such errors can proliferate in commercial and academic texts of about 10-15 megabytes, it is not surprising that a 500 megabyte CD-ROM should contain fifty times the errors. Even one error per megabyte becomes considerable as technology develops and databases grow. It seems to me that accuracy has long been the rallying cry of those who distrust computing technology -- whether for searching a card catalogue, preparing a collated edition, or simply looking up a reference. I used to counter vehemently that the ease of correction in electronic texts made perfection (eventually) attainable, but I have become less vehement of late. Reading a recently-published collection of short stories (in paperback) I was struck by the number of typographical errors even there. In reading the book, of course, I consciously and unconsciously made allowances for the errors, as would any human reader. Perhaps electronic texts prepared from paper texts are inevitably going to contain higher error rates (because most people seem to find proof-reading on-screen so difficult?), but even conventional printed publications are error-prone (and not only in Renaissance England). Perhaps we should concentrate our efforts on producing software which can accommodate human imperfection in all its permutations, rather than attempting to produce error-free information resources, adapting man in the image of the machine? Error becomes particularly undeniable when projects become more ambitious, such as scanning the entire Library of Congress, providing access to newspapers on-line, or even filling a CD-ROM with literary texts. Can anyone offer more theoretical insights on error rates or human fallibility? Has any careful research been published on the subject? (My apologies for the length of this note). Ken Steele University of Toronto From: "Patrick W. Conner" Subject: 4.0090 Fonts Date: Monday, 21 May 1990 22:30:45 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 102 (324) The questions and answers about Old English fonts suggest that it's time to advertise ANSAXNET again on HUMANIST. ANSAXNET is a Special Interest Group using BITNET and associated university and research networks telecommunications systems for scholars and teachers of the culture and history of England before 1100 C.E. Persons interested in the later English Middle Ages and those interested in the early Medieval period throughout Europe are also encouraged to join the list. Currently, we have over 100 members in nine nations. Members receive a directory of all our members in order to facilitate dialogues among small groups of member; access to ANSAX-L, a LISTSERV list which provides each member with the ability to communicate simultaneously with all other members of ANSAXNET; and a monthly electronic report to which members are encouraged to contribute announcements and information. This report often provides our members with new information about the use of computers in some aspect of their disciplines, as well as news of more conventional developments in the field. We also have projects underway to encode databases which members may use in their own work, we provide access to the Dictionary of Old English at Toronto, the Fontes Anglo-Saxonici project at Manchester, SASLC ("Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture"), the Old English Newsletter, and Medieval Studies published by the Pontifical Institute at Toronto. We would be glad to add your name to our directory and thus to make you a member of ANSAXNET. Membership is free to everyone with access to a BITNET node. Either send an e-mail note to Patrick Conner, U47C2@WVNVM.BITNET or, as a command or mail-message, SUB ANSAX-L YOUR NAME. The full command form is TELL (CMS; use SEND for VAX) LISTSERV AT WVNVM SUB ANSAX-L YOUR NAME. Patrick Conner ANSAXNET sysop Department of English West Virginia University Morgantown, WV U47C2@WVNVM.BITNET From: Clarence Brown Subject: nerds and humstruc Date: Tue, 22 May 90 10:48:33 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 304 (325) I am interested in forming a support group for Humanists in the Princeton area who compulsively read all submissions on nerds and hate themselves in the morning. Clarence Brown, Comp Lit, Princeton. CB@PUCC. From: Tom Nimick <0632281@PUCC> Subject: Trivia: Confucius didn't say it Date: Tue, 22 May 90 08:31:16 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 305 (326) I know that Willard's knowledge is broad, but I can't resist correcting an incorrect attribution in his comments on the structure of Humanist. He said that Confucius had written on his bathtub "Renew it daily". That phrase is actually one quoted in the _Great Learning_ (Ta-hsueh) and was interpreted by the Sung figure Chu Hsi as meaning "renew yourself everyday". I am unable to put my hands on my copy of the _Great Learning_, but I believe that the quote was of the very early (perhaps legendary) emperor T'ang and appears in the _Book of History_, which predates Confucius. The phrase was a subject of much debate because Chu Hsi used it to justify emending the text of the first lines of the _Great Learning_ from "hold the people close to your heart" (ch'in min) to "renew (or remold) the people" (hsin min), which he understood as teaching the people so that their original good nature would emerge from what obscured it, much as one would polish the dirt off a brass mirror. The "bathtub" was probably a basin and the phrase was intended to tell the emperor to continually polish the mirror of his heart so that its original virtue would appropriately reflect the objects around it (he would respond correctly to all occasions). Perhaps Willard intended all of that, but it would have passed most of us by. Tom Nimick, Graduate Student in Chinese History, Princeton Univ. From: "Michael S. Hart" Subject: Re: 4.0087 Humanist Structure Date: Tue, 22 May 90 14:50:20 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 104 (327) I can handle Humanist as either moderated or unmoderated, and even could stand a change from time to time as long as it was announced well ahead. The only moderation I recall being discussed lately was that of signing: i.e. whether note writers should be required to identify themselves. As a result I have created the signature block as seen below. I thought an interest in knowing who wrote something was valid, and even though I was properly identified in the headers, I added the signature block for that set of readers who received my mail through systems which "ate" headers. I don't really mind the signature block, other than a waste of bytes. I don't even mind if Humanist doesn't require that we all sign our notes as I am willing to find out who did and post it for others. These cases are usually few and far between, and most Humanists know I am willing to toss a few barbs between the ribs of overinflated types who need it. mh Thank you for your interest, Michael S. Hart, Director, Project Gutenberg National Clearinghouse for Machine Readable Texts THESE NOTES ARE USUALLY WRITTEN AT A LIVE TERMINAL, AND THE CHOICE OF WORDS IS OFTEN MEANT TO BE SUCH AS TO PROVOKE THE GREATEST POSSIBLE RESPONSE SHORT OF BEING OFFENSIVE. TRUTH IN THESE NOTES IS OF GREAT CONCERN, THE FORM IS SECONDARY - OTHER THAN THE TOKEN EFFORT OF JUSTIFIED RIGHT MARGINATION. BITNET: HART@UIUCVMD INTERNET: HART@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU (*ADDRESS CHANGE FROM *VME* TO *VMD* AS OF DECEMBER 18!!**) (THE GUTNBERG SERVER IS LOCATED AT GUTNBERG@UIUCVMD.BITNET) NEITHER THE ABOVE NAMED INDIVIDUALS NOR ORGANIZATIONS ARE A AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF ANY OTHER INSTITUTION NOR ARE THE ABOVE COMMENTS MEANT TO IMPLY THE POLICIES OF ANY OTHER PERSONS OR INSTITUTIONS, THOUGH OF COURSE WE WISH THEY DID. From: KESSLER Subject: RE HALIO REDUX Date: Tue, 22 May 90 18:06 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 105 (328) I know that Halio thing has died down, of its own weighty inanition, perhaps, but I must send you this letter I received from a colleague at UCLA, a Biochemist, who wrote it to the Editors of ACADEMIC COMPUTING on 10 February and never received the courtesy of a reply. Miffed, he sent it to me, saying that writer likes to be read by at least one person. I answered that with his permission I would send it out to over 600 readers on the Humanist network, which naturally is unknown to the biochemist. His arguments against the article are not only clear and cogent and objective, but have that unmmistakeable ring of the scientifically trained intellect, as contrasted to the various socio-metaphorical Humanist arguments that surged back and forth for some weeks on this network. So what follows is Professor Daniel Atkinson's criticism of the Halio piece. Enjoy it, all! (Jascha Kessler) -------------------- This is in response to the article in the January issue of Academic Computing by Marcia Peoples Halio entitled "Student Writing: Can the machine maim the image?" Ms. Halio's thesis, condensed and slightly simplified, is that students consider Macintosh computers to be toys, and use them to produce sloppy treatments of inane topics, while their peers who use IBM machines turn in papers at an altogether superior level of content, spelling, grammar, and style. In support of that thesis, Ms. Halio quotes approvingly the suggestion of a TA that an IBM is a superior writing instrument for students because it is difficult; the Macintosh is too easy. By a logical extension of this austere viewpoint, Ms. Halio's students would be better writers if they ground their own pigments, compounded their own ink, and sharpened their own goose quills. Fortunately older writers may not need to resort to such draconian measures. Ms. Halio suggests that students' use of a Macintosh may "arrest their writing at a less mature stage of development." That is comforting for faculty members; presumably use of a Macintosh will not jeopardize whatever skills we have already developed. Of course we cannot hope for any improvement. Academic Computing is not a scientific or professional journal, and does not publish results of scholarly studies. But it circulates in the academic community, and its articles should be intellectually respectable. Recognition of the elementary principle that if the effect of some factor on two groups is to be compared the groups must be similar in other respects should not require any scientific or statistical background. No comparison should be taken seriously unless there has been a serious attempt at random assignment of individuals to the groups; comparisons between self-selected groups are meaningless. Ms. Halio's groups were totally self-selected; students chose to use Macintosh or IBM machines. The questions that she says she is asking are not answerable by the observations that she reports, and her conclusions are not self-consistent. She wants to know, she says, whether the products produced (by which she means the writings written or the essays essayed) by students using a Macintosh are different from those produced by students using an IBM. More specifically and more importantly, "does the choice of hardware and word processing software in any way influence the stages in the writing process as well as the content and style of the finished products?" She seems convinced that it does, and she suggests that teachers in schools that offer only Macintoshes to their students should be alerted to the corrosive effect of those machines on students' writing. Ms. Halio's own observations refute her concern. She contrasts the shallow and inane topics chosen by students using Macintoshes with the deep and significant choices of IBM users; the two groups of topics, she says, were "very different in a fundamental way." The malign effect that she ascribes to the Macintosh is now seen to be parapsychological in nature; even before the first key has been touched or the first word committed to the screen, the Macintosh has already affected for the worse those students who will use it in the future. It is clear that Ms. Halio's observations have no bearing on whatever effect the use of a convenient and "friendly" machine might have on the quality of writing. What they suggest is that among freshmen at Delaware there is a perception that a Macintosh is a toy and an IBM is somehow more respectable, and that this perception causes those students who are predisposed to select more challenging topics and to take more care in their writing to choose IBM's. The quality of the finished product seems much more likely to be correlated with the type of topics chosen than with the ease of use of the machines the papers were composed on. At a school where all students use Macintoshes, there will be no such self selection. Students who take writing seriously are likely to take it just as seriously if they use a machine that makes the mechanics of writing easy, and students whose attitude is frivolous or shallow can be expected to produce frivolous or shallow papers even if they use an IBM or a goose quill. Faculty members of my acquaintance overwhelmingly prefer Macintoshes to IBM's. Like the conclusions in Ms. Halio's article, that comment is based on uncontrolled observation, but I suspect that it is more generally valid. My perception that the Macintosh is strongly preferred by those who do serious scholarly writing, if true, raises the question of how Ms. Halio's students acquired such a different view of its capabilities. However interesting that question may be in a sociological sense, it has no bearing on the teaching of writing. Ms. Halio finds herself unable to resist comment on a recent column in the New York Times in which a Macintosh IIcx was described as perhaps the nearest available approach to the ideal writing machine. The author mentions the monitor and keyboard that he would include in his ideal system. Ms. Halio seizes on those stipulations as a basis for further denigration of the Macintosh. He had to add the monitor, she says, "to surmount the problems with the small screen," and the keyboard because of the deficiencies of the Macintosh keyboard. Actually, no members of the Macintosh II family come with either a screen or a keyboard, and no "small screen" is available for use with them. The author was merely listing the components necessary for a complete system. At a time when most students are woefully deficient in the most elementary writing skills, when all too many, using ball point pens rather than either IBM's or Macintoshes, cannot pursue an idea consistently and cogently across even two sentences when writing an answer to an examination question, it seems strangely ingenuous for an instructor of writing to devote her time and concern to the characteristics of the writing instruments used by students in her classes. To mix metaphors in a way that Ms. Halio doubtless would gleefully jot down for citation as an example of her thesis if it were perpetrated by one of her Macintosh users (and to confirm her suspicion that I am using a Macintosh to write this), I suggest that it would be difficult to conceive of a more striking example of tilting at windmills while Rome burns. Daniel E. Atkinson Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of California Los Angeles, CA 90024 From: cb%kcp.UUCP@XAIT.Xerox.COM (Christopher Bader) Subject: fonts Date: Tue, 22 May 90 18:06:55 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 306 (329) I have compared many Greek fonts, both PC and Macintosh. MacGreek, from Linguist's Software, is the most complete I have found. It includes all possible combinations of accents, macrons, subscripts, and breathings. It does this by backing up the cursor when necessary, both on the screen and on paper. One of the reasons linguists should prefer Mac's to PC's is that you can't do this on a PC. The screen cursor on a PC cannot back up. From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 4.0100 Software: Info to non-US buyers; Archaeology (2) Date: Wed, 23 May 90 08:45:40 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 307 (330) Two Chinese word processors: TianMa2 for DOS systems from: Asia Communications Inc. 2761 McColl Place Victoria, BC V8N 5Y8 Canada 604-477-7829 FeiMa (Mac, DOS): Wu Corportation PO Box 699 195 West Main Street Avon, CT 06001 US of America 203-677-1528 I have heard of a Chinese TeX, but didn't retain any information on it. The current issue of Communications of the ACM has an article on encoding Chinese characters. Sorry - I don't have it at hand to provide the citation. From: JUDYK@LIB.TECHNION.AC.IL Subject: 4.0099 TeX answer Date: Wed, 23 May 1990 8:45:41 EET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 308 (331) Re: Charles Faulhaber's request for sources of TeX: A free (shareware) version recommended to me as very good is available for the PC from: Eberhard Mattes, D-7141 Moglingen, West Germany. Send six 3.5" diskettes (it runs in 512K, the rest is for fonts). The only hitch is that the documentation's in German... currently being translated by from whom I also got Mattes' address. Sorry I can't comment on the version, mine didn't arrive yet. From: JUDYK@LIB.TECHNION.AC.IL Subject: RM-COBOL for PC Date: Wed, 23 May 1990 8:50:52 EET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 309 (332) Does anyone have the address of AUSETEC, makers of RM-COBOL for the IBM-PC? The 1989 software directory said 1740 Technology Drive, San Jose CA, but our letter to that address spent 6 months in limbo before returning, shaken but unopened. If anyone knows of a program by that name from someone else, that's fine too. From: JUDYK@LIB.TECHNION.AC.IL Subject: "Queries on scanners & OCR" and related software Date: Wed, 23 May 1990 8:58:20 EET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 310 (333) Does anyone know of any software that'll take a line drawing input by a scanner and convert it to vectors for manipulation by AutoCad? You can do it really well for $40,000 but our pockets are empty (meaning shareware would be real nice and anything over around $1000 is probably out. IBM-PC compat. please. From: Skip Knox Subject: What is text? Date: 22 May 90 16:24:25 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 311 (334) John Slatin gives a detailed example of a question about text, but the question seems pretty easy to me. When I write something and then revise it, I don't have one text, I have two. I have the first draft, and a revision. Simple. Your poet, John, has several versions of her poem. The versions probably reflect various stages of her artistic life and I would study them in that light. I would be hard put to imagine any other approach. The _Ulysses_ debate seems to me to have more to do with the notion of "authorized edition", an ancient battle between publishers and writers. Is this really all there is to this debate? Of course there are different versions to any literary work. There are different versions to interoffice memos, for pity's sake. This is scarcely grounds for philosophical arguments in academic journals. The good historian will collect everything possible and make sense of it as best she or he can. I agree with Sperberg-McQueen that a text can include computer programs and recipies and the like; I have some misgivings over wiring diagrams. If we allow that, why should we not call the drawings in an artist's sketchbook "text"? In the Middle Ages artists worked from highly standardized sketchbooks which they were expected to use as a kind of template for their own work. They had more room to make changes than does an electrician, but the function was pretty much the same. I would stick at words -- a text has words. Skip Knox Microcomputer Coordinator (cum) Medieval Historian Boise State University Boise, Idaho DUSKNOX@IDBSU From: Skip Knox Subject: What is text, again? Date: 22 May 90 16:24:25 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 312 (335) Humph. I asked folks to explain the debate over textuality without referring me to books and Robin Cover pulls a fast one and refers me to articles instead. No fair! And, in the abstract of the first article, I'm informed that "text is best represented as an ordered hierarchy of content object[s]. . . ." Huh? An ordered hierarchy as distinguished from one the lacks order, I suppose. Why can't anyone involved in this subject speak in layman's terms? The issue seems to have something to do with how we draw conclusions from what we read - a subject of some interest to a historian - but I'll be blasted if I can puzzle out the jargon. Still waiting and hoping . . . Skip Knox Microcomputer Coordinator (cum) Medieval Historian Boise State University Boise, Idaho DUSKNOX@IDBSU From: O.B. Hardison, Jr. Subject: RE: 4.0096 What is Text? (103) Date: 22 May 90 23:36:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 313 (336) I recall a lively paper on just this subject by Jim Thorpe in PMLA a couple of decades ago. It was a modestly witty reply to those textual critics, especially followers of Fredson Bowers, who claimed to have reduced textual criticism to exact (or almost exact) science. As I recall, Thorpe was discussing the problems of editing Emily Dickinson and pointed out that often the variants in the text of a single poem were so great that it was ludicrous to try to establish a single definitive "text." This problem is exactly the one that led to the celebrated recent controversy about the true "text of KING LEAR and resulted in the decision of the Oxford editors that there are really two plays and any attempt to conflate them falsifies both. But before leaving this topic, I'd like to add that a "text" is also something that is supposed to have - and to be able to accomplish - its cultural mission. I am haunted by the history of classical texts between the late 15th century - when the object was to produce texts that could be used by what you might think of as the "general reading public" (whatever that phrase or its equivalent might have meant in the 15th century) because "reading the classics" was considered by humanists to be culturally beneficial - and the style of textual editing of the 17th and later centuries, when ancient authors were all but walled off behind barriers of complex apparatus. Point is, a text that has been so "edited" that people are put off by it is maybe quite different from the text that the author might have wanted to produce. I don't mean to be anti-intellectual, merely to point out that the ifdea of "text" includes the idea of what the text is to be used for, how it is to be read and by whom, etc. Having written this, I wonder if the problems of producing "texts" of older authors aren't analogous to the problems of translation - what is one really after? From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0096 What is Text? (103) Date: Wed, 23 May 90 11:57 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 314 (337) Offhand, off the top of the hand, so to say, one might opine that all the versions are of course texts by Miss Moore. What each version IS, is another question. In #1 the poet says one thing; in another the poet says another. None of them constitute THE poem. It is significant that she herself kept refashioning her text for THE POEM. If you look at a lithograph by Picasso or Matisse that has several stages of redoing, or better yet his successive linocuts, to change the image by substracting surfaces and colors, you get an image, or "poem," as it were, that is different because the form that constitutes it is materially altered. All artists who work in materials have usually a pleothora of versions of a particular image. We who work in words tend, perhaps, to work as if the texct is an ocon that represents an ideal image or idea, in the mind of BEING itself...? As for the versions of ULYSSES, it is erhaps not Random House to look at, casuistically and marxistly, but the conditions under which it was produced in France. FINNEGANS W. is a hairier case, because fo the constant rewritings and scrfawling of the almost sandblind JAJ. Taken loosely, all the printed versions of a poem are poems, each different. Events that occur differently, though they may have common reference in the title. Since poetry is so slippery a godling, perhaps that is what troubled M Moore herself. Or did she simply decide that new versions vere superior foul papers, a most cynically subversive thought, no? I take it back, just kidding. Kessler at UCLA From: MERIZ@pittvms Subject: Accents and Forms of Address Date: Tue, 22 May 90 23:51 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 315 (338) It may very well be that "we don't usually put people down by their accents in the USA". Still, our claims to egalitarianism notwithstanding, some accents remain more acceptable than others (in corporate boardrooms, for example, or on network newscasts). As far as forms of address are concerned, might not the widespread practice of addressing secretaries by their first name be viewed as a variation on the master/servant relationship? -Diana Meriz meriz@pittvms.bitnet From: stephen clark Subject: Accents and Democracy Date: Wed, 23 May 90 10:00:26 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 316 (339) I haven't been following the discussion about how to address students, staff and vice-chancellors, so I don't know what lies behind Kessler's sudden declaration that Great Britain is not a republic (true) nor yet a democracy (he/she must have a different definition of democracy than mine). It's true that - in England (which is not the whole of Britain) - accents tend to identify class and locality, and that this can cause problems. But so what? Most of us like hearing different accents, and do our best to imitate at least a few of them because we like them. My own natural accent carries Staffordshire/Teeside vowels inside an Oxford matrix: the Oxford bit gets despised at times, but not the vowel sounds. Stephen Clark Liverpool University From: DENNIS CINTRA LEITE Subject: RE: 4.0097 Classes and Lectures; Forms of Address (64) Date: Wed, 23 May 90 15:16 -0300 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 317 (340) I would like o take issue with KESSLER at UCLA on his statement: "Well, GB is not a republic, nor a democracy, and we dont usually put people down by their accents in the USA....." First, I don't know kessler's definition of a democracy, but having lived quite a few years in a military dictatorship in Brazil, and 5 odd years in the UK, I can assure him that GB, as he calls it, is most certainly a democracy by anyones definition (except, it seems, by his). As to not putting people down by their accents, it does not seems that Mr. Kessler has had any contact with East Coast prep schools and the Ivy League brigade (I did both) where accents are very much taken as a marker of a person's social standing. Standard disclaimers apply, (I am neither american or british) Dennis From: "Dr. Ruth Mazo Karras" Subject: addressing students Date: 23 May 90 10:29:40 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 318 (341) Apropos of addressing students, Kessler writes that graduate students deserve friendly intimacy if they are of the same gender. I am certainly glad that the male professors with whom I worked closely in graduate school didn't share that attitude. This view would deny a great many female (and some male) graduate students the sort of working relationships that can make the difference between a worthwhile educational experience and a miserable slog. Obviously his caveat stems from a concern about accusations of sexual harassment. This is a real problem (both the existence of actual harassment, and the possibility of innocently meant comments being taken as harassment). It can, of course, exist between members of the same gender as well. And I would be very surprised if female students ever feel harassed when a male professor is treating them exactly as he treats his male students--the problem of misinterpretation arises when a professor thinks that friendly collegial intimacy with women requires different behavior from that with men. If we (faculty) don't know how to be friends with graduate students (or colleagues) of the opposite sex without creating an impression of impropriety, it's about time we learned. Ruth Mazo Karras University of Pennsylvania From: djb@harvunxw.BITNET (David J. Birnbaum) Subject: Re: 4.0099 TeX answer; Scanner query (35) Date: Tue, 22 May 90 17:48:23 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 319 (342) Concerning Joel Goldfield's inquiry about the Datacopy OCR-Plus software, be warned that this software is not fully trainable. Specifically, it is hardwired for look-alike checking, so that if you train foreign characters that look nothing alike to '1' and 'l' (for example), it will not bother to look at the bitmaps, but will instead use its "intelligence" to decide whether you mean a letter or numeral. I made the mistake of purchasing such a package after calls to tech support assured me that it was well suited for the project I had planned using various Cyrillic materials. When I discovered these limitations and protested, technical support first insisted that I was mistaken. They then admitted that I was correct and insisted that this was not a bug or a design flaw and that their system was perfectly trainable and ideally suited for foreign languages because "we sell lots of them in Germany." My dealer took it back and sold me a Panasonic scanner and SPOT, which I have been very happy with. Datacopy burned him by refusing to take back the hardware or software, which meant he had to tie up his funds until he could find another buyer who didn't need real foreign-alphabet trainability. I conclude that the Datacopy OCR-plus program is a bomb for foreign alphabet work, although it may work acceptably with Latin alphabet languages other than English. I also find Datacopy's treatment of their customers and dealers unacceptable, exploitative, and abusive. Caveat emptor. --David djb@wjh12.harvard.edu [Internet] djb@harvunxw.bitnet [Bitnet] From: David.A.Bantz@mac.dartmouth.edu Subject: Re: scanner Date: 23 May 90 11:28:47 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 320 (343) --- Forwarded Message from Otmar K. E. Foelsche --- We have tested the Siemens Scanner (400) with Omnipage and with Textpert. The US Version of Omnipage does not include drivers for the Siemens scanner at this point. We have been using the German version. The results have been satisfactory. The scanner appears to be faster than the Apple Scanner. We have also been using Textpert on the Siemens Scanner. The results, after training, are acceptable. Accutext does not include the Siemens driver. A phone call about two weeks ago informed us that Accutext could not get the driver from Siemens. MacWorld, on the other hand, mentioned that the latest update to Accutext contains the Siemens driver. We have not received the latest update... Otmar Foelsche From: cb%kcp.UUCP@XAIT.Xerox.COM (Christopher Bader) Subject: Scanners and OCR Date: Wed, 23 May 90 13:16:34 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 321 (344) I am one of the authors of Accutext, so of course I recommend it. Caere's Omnipage is also good. You should not consider any OCR software for the Mac other than those two, however. The Xerox Datacopy GS Plus, which my company sells, is a pretty good scanner. You may also want to consider the HP Scan Jet Plus. From: "Robin C. Cover" Subject: PC-KIMMO: a two-level processor for morphological analysis Date: Tue, 22 May 90 20:32:17 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 111 (345) Keywords: KIMMO, two-level model, morphological parsing, finite state morphology PC-KIMMO is a new implementation for microcomputers of a program dubbed KIMMO after its inventor Kimmo Koskenniemi. It is of interest to computational linguists, descriptive linguists, and those developing natural language processing systems. The program is designed to generate (produce) and/or recognize (parse) words using a two-level model of word structure in which a word is represented as a correspondence between its lexical level form and its surface level form. PC-KIMMO is language-independant. For each language description the user prepares two input files: (1) a set of rules that govern phonological/orthographic alternations and (2) a lexicon that lists all words (morphemes) in their lexical form and specifies constraints on their order. The rules and lexicon are implemented computationally using finite state machines. The purpose of developing PC-KIMMO is to provide a version of the two-level processor that runs on an IBM PC compatible computer. The PC-KIMMO program is actually a shell program that serves as an interactive user interface to the primitive PC-KIMMO functions. It provides an environment for developing, testing, and debugging two-level descriptions. The primitive PC-KIMMO functions are also available as a C-language source code library that can be included in a program written by the user. This means that the user can develop and debug a two-level description using the PC-KIMMO shell and then link PC-KIMMO's functions into his own program. For example, a syntactic parsing program could use PC-KIMMO as a morphological preprocessor. PC-KIMMO will run on the following systems: MS-DOS or PC-DOS (any IBM PC compatible) UNIX System V (SCO UNIX V/386 and A/UX) and 4.2 BSD UNIX Apple Macintosh The PC-KIMMO software is packaged with the book that describes how to use it: Antworth, Evan L. 1990. PC-KIMMO: a two-level processor for morphological analysis. Occasional Publications in Academic Computing No. 16. Dallas, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics. ISBN 0-88312-639-7, 273pp., $23.00. The book is a full-length tutorial on writing two-level linguistic descriptions with PC-KIMMO. It also fully documents the PC-KIMMO user interface and the source code function library. The book with release diskette(s) is available from: International Academic Bookstore 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas TX, 75236 phone 214/709-2404 There are two versions of the PC-KIMMO release diskette(s), one for IBM PC compatibles and one for the Macintosh. Each contains the executable PC-KIMMO program, examples of language descriptions, and the source code library for the primitive PC-KIMMO functions. The PC-KIMMO executable program and the source code library are copyrighted but are made freely available to the general public under the condition that they not be resold or used for commercial purposes. For those who wish to compile PC-KIMMO for their UNIX system, it is necessary to first obtain either the DOS or Macintosh version and then contact us at the address given at the end of this message. In addition to the book and full software release, a demo copy of PC-KIMMO is also available for downloading from various network sites. The package contains the executable PC-KIMMO program (the full program), some basic documentation to get you started, and a couple of sample descriptions to run. The IBM PC version is contained in an archive that must be restored using the PKUNZIP program available on many bulletin boards. In order to preserve the directory structure, be sure to use the -d option; that is, type "pkunzip -d pckimmo". The Macintosh version is contained in an archive that must be restored with the UnStuffIt program available on many bulletin boards. PC-KIMMO is a research project in progress, not a finished commercial product. In this spirit, we invite your response to the software and the book. Please direct your comments to: Academic Computing Department PC-KIMMO project 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 phone: 214/709-2418 Internet: evan@txsil.lonestar.org (Evan Antworth) (via Compuserve: >Internet evan@txsil.lonestar.org) From: Mark Rooks Subject: P-text errors; Clean e-text algorithm Date: Tue, 22 May 90 23:17:53 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 112 (346) Ken Steele writes that "even conventional printed publications" sometimes have a large number of errors. We looked at a 250K work by J. S. Mill, published in the late 1980's by one of the two leading British university presses; we found over 50 word errors in the work. We looked at a different 280K work by Mill published in 1978 by a U.S. commercial press, and found over 60 word and 1200 punctuation errors. Both editions purported to be the last edition published in Mill's lifetime; hence the errors were deviations from the last edition (which we had in hand). (None of the errors were corrections in Mill; these numbers ignore spelling discrepancies.) (We handed the U.S. press their errors; they promised corrections in a later edition.) We are now working with 5 different editions posing as "reprints" of Bentham's 1823 edition of Intro. to the Princ. of Morals and Legislation. Unfortunately all five occasionally disagree with one another, although 3-2 disagreements are more common. (Interlibrary loan has yet to gainsay us a copy of the actual 1823. Interlibrary loan: "But we have reprints of the 1823.") Not all print is bad (though all is suspect): we found 5 word discrepancies between a ~1900 Oxford reprint of the 1651 Leviathan, and the Mcpherson Penguin 1651 reprint, none terribly important (e.g. 'these' vs. 'those'). The Mcpherson differed by 1 word from the actual 1651, the Oxford by 4. By contrast the 1843 Molesworth Leviathan differed by over 350 words and 2000 punctuation marks from the 1651, ignoring orthography and spelling modernization. Assuming the availability of multiple editions (not based on one another) with multiple typefaces, scanning should produce nearly flawless text. Double or triple scan and file compare. On different typefaces the scanner will rarely make the same errors. We usu. follow this procedure: scan 1 edition, proofread it onscreen, electronically proofread it; scan a 2nd edition; print out a file comparison and arbitrate with a 3rd edition. For the 3rd edition we usu. use the last edition published in the author's lifetime, unless it itself is scannable. (We thereby generate the last edition in the author's lifetime (though there are complications of course).) Cleanup of the first scan is the bottleneck, assuming decent scanning equipment. We are more likely to introduce an error by an inadvertent keystroke during our markup phase, than miss one with the above procedure. Too many discrepancies warrant a third scan (of a 3rd edition). The second scan sometimes requires cleanup, but no guessing is permitted (since the same wrong guess might be made in the cleanup of the first scan). At 1 error per megabyte (Ken Steele's figure), the notion of error itself becomes problematic. Though I'm sure these issues have been discussed in this forum: does one duplicate missing periods in the author's last edition? Misspelled (?) words? (Critical editions sometimes address these concerns.) How does one discover (assuming realistic economic constraints) that a database contains only 1 error per megabyte? Or fewer than 1 per megabyte? (If I observe the error, it no longer is (a variant on Heisenberg?) (the Textual Uncertainty Principle?).) Mark Rooks From: Gordon Dixon, Institute of Advanced Studies Subject: 4.0095 Siegen: Comparative linguistics Date: Wed, 23 May 90 08:51:12 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 113 (347) (Tuesday, 22nd May, 1990) Information for David Nash dgn612@csc2.anu.OZ.AU THE NEW MEDIUM ALLC/ICCH International Siegen Conference Federal Republic of Germany June 4-9, 1990 Friday, 8 June Main Topic: Methods and Applications 2:00-2:30pm Parallel Session (Chair: N.N.) The Total of the Distances between the Languages as an Index of the Compactness of the Language Families (Yuri Tambovtsev, Lvov Lesotechnical Institute) Yuri Tambovtsev is the Slavonic and USSR representative for the ALLC Literary and Linguistic Computing Journal published by Oxford University Press. His address is: Professor Dr. Y. A. Tambovtsev, Chairman Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Lvov Lesotechnical Institute, 290044 Lvov-44, P.O. Box 8834, USSR. Yuri wishes to attend the conference but says that as the rouble is not convertible he would need to seek financial assistance. He can pay for his return travel to the conference but not for expenditure in the West. Gordon Dixon G.DIXON@UK.AC.MANCHESTER Editor L&LC From: Malcolm Hayward Subject: A Danish Address? Date: 22 May 90 17:13 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 322 (348) I'd like a contact at the University of Copenhagen, particularly the Center for Translation studies, to transmit a file. Any connections? Thanks. Malcolm Hayward MHayward@IUP Department of English Phone: 412-357-2322 or IUP 412-357-2261 Indiana, PA 15705 From: arb1%ukc.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK Subject: Swift,satire,etc. Date: Wed, 23 May 90 09:20:30 +0100 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 323 (349) I remember reading somewhere in the late sixties that someone - and it is that vague - rewrote Swift's Modest Proposal in modern English and published it in a West Coast local paper. The reaction was outrage. Readers assumed that the writer really was advocating cannibalism. Can anybody help me trace the reference, and does anybody know of other occasions where parody or satire have been taken at their face value, particularly when the satire (or parody) has suggested forms of activity so outrageous that no reasonable (! sic) person could take them seriously? I would find it helpful to receive personal replies. As much as I enjoy reading some of the crazier contributions (and even some of the heavy intellectual theoretical discussions), I don't always find the time to go through everything. Tony Bex arb1@ukc.ac.uk From: Mary Dee Harris Subject: Misplaced Particles ( and such) Date: 22 May 90 22:04:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 324 (350) I've been out of town (and off HUMANIST) for about 10 days and am just now catching up, so my comments may seem quite delayed. But I couldn't resist -- Charles Young referred to the graduate student who wrote "Hester Prynne had to leave the town that branded her behind." When I was a graduate English major at UT Austin, we had a select society of those who had read all seven books of "The Faerie Queen" -- not at all a large group, but one which I belonged to. I recall at one of our society meetings (invariably over some sort of spirited beverages) that I was the only one to remember the scene in the 5th or 6th book, when Spenser describes Una and her donkey after their long trek through the woods, as (and I paraphrase) "And Una lay down with her ass in the moonlight." Who says that grad. students have a monopoly on the pseudo-scatological! Mary Dee Harris mdharris@guvax.bitnet mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0098 Words: Wordolitarianism; Pronounciation & Syntax (79) Date: Tue, 22 May 90 22:10 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 325 (351) Nissim: your d'annunzio anecdote is delicious. Many thanks! There is I think a freudian sexological symbolism in Mussolini's formulation, too obvious to explicate, I should think. Kessler @ucla From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0088 3 Nerds and a Doddle (69) Date: Wed, 23 May 90 12:02 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 326 (352) Before the NERD there was the turkey, no? I was surprised by it in an essay in the year 1958, and asked what turkey was doing in the closet of the frat house? They laughed at me. It wasnt part of my vocabulary for jerk and the like. Now a nerd is also an asshole, a term of opprobrium I dislike, but which, heavens! came yesterday in the synonym list for Micrfsoft's Thesaurus Desk Accessory called WORD FINDER! Was I surprised! The talking asshole first appeared in an extended joke, to my first reading that is, in Burroughs' NAKED LUNCH, but it must have been around much earlier, given his fascination with that orifice and its vicissitudes. Kessler cleaning up his email From: BML@PSUARCH.Bitnet Subject: belated response re midrash and collage Date: Tue, 22 May 90 23:06 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 327 (353) Marc Bregman a couple weeks ago posted a query about collage as a model for the structure of midrash. There has already been some invoking of an analagous model for such redaction according to non-diachronic criteria. The model bases itself on cinematic montage, however, rather than pla stic arts and has been applied to inner-biblical problematic editing (rather than to post-biblical work). Eisenstein's (Sergei) THE FILM SENSE about the synergy achieved in splicing divergent shots together is particularly appropriate. For use of this model, see: R. Alter, THE ART OF BIBLICAL NARRATIVE (New York: Basic Books, 1981) 140. Also, Mr. Bregman, your colleague Alan Cooper at HUC (Cincinnati) has also invoked such a model in his work, I believe several years ago in a review in the journal STUDIES IN RELIGION; you might check with him directly. Hope this is of use, Bernie Levinson, Penn State From: Subject: CYBERMARS Date: Wed, 23 May 90 11:32 MST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 328 (354) Have been informed about your recent Cyberspace Conference in msg. fm MHEIM forwarded to me. Colleague Mel Neville and I "taught" a Mars Colony simulation this last spring: 24 students role-playing and "MUD-gaming" in "Tiny Mars" address "telenet naucse.cse.nau.edu 5678 (for TinyMars), 4201 (for Dragon) JOPSY (John Phillip Crane) keeps house there. Colony was linked over BIXNET to other communities in same Solar System. We plan to do a better job in Spring semester 91 with teams/ classes on several other campuses, each smulating a "viable community" somewhere ~2040; we get Mars again! Intent to use BITNET, sharing syllabi among instructors, etc. All this sounds pertinent to how your Conference was focused; we remain open to innovations and alternatives. From: George Aichele <73760.1176@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Still more on Humanist structure Date: 22 May 90 19:30:51 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 117 (355) I would urge D. Greenberg to spend more time with HUMANIST before making the judgments which he does in his recent posting. It seems to me that "we" (and what this "we" is, is still very problematic!) have been discussing these topics (what is a text? what is an e-text?) off and on for quite some time. Granted one does not find here the rigor and thoroughness expected from a (good) scholarly paper or monograph; but we need to remember that this is a new thing--so new that even its newness is yet undefined--and we're still finding our way, establishing the protocols, and all that. At least, that's how I feel about it. HUMANIST may often sound more like informal conversation in the hallway or at the lunch table--but where I work, that is often far more productive and stimulating than what goes on in the lecture hall! George Aichele 73760,1176@compuserve.com From: Bob Boynton Subject: Sony electronic books Date: Wed, 23 May 90 08:12 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 118 (356) Forwarded by: Michael Hart Cross-Posted to: GUTNBERG; MBU-L; OBI; PACS-L The Washington Post had a story a week ago on Sony's "electronic book." That is the only place I have seen it mentioned. It is not a whole lot of information -- Bob Boynton Sony to Make Electronic Books 'Data Discman' Player Will Use 3-Inch CDs David Thurber Tokyo, May 15--Sony Corp., the brains behind the ubiquitous Walkman stereo, said today it will introduce an "electronic book" system that uses a palm-size player for reading books recorded on 3-inch compact discs. Sony's "Data Discman" player has a screen that displays text recorded on CDs called Electronic Books that each can store about 100,000 pages of text--more than 300 paperback books, Sony officials said. "The purpose of this product is to create an entirely new market. Instead of having to go to a library or bookshelf for information, people can have access to it anytime and anywhere," said Sunobu Horigome, head of Sony's General Audio Group. If successful, Sony's reward could be big. In two years, the Japanese market alone for CD information discs, including the new CD books, is expected to grow to about $2.6 billion, according to Hideo Nishikawa, general manager of new media development for the publishing house Iwanami Shoten. Sony said it plans to begin marketing the machine in Japan on July 1 for about $380. Overseas sales are expected to begin in less than a year, after arrangements with local publishers are made, officials said. The Data Discman comes with a CD containing five different English and Japanese language dictionaries and can be plugged into a regular television screen to create a larger display. Users also can listen to regular 3-inch audio CDs with an earphone. A small typewriter-like keyboard allows a user to select particular entries or portions of the text. Twenty-eight Japanese publishing companies have formed an Electronic Book committee that cooperated with Sony in developing the format, said Nishikawa. Eighteen CD Electronic Book titles will be released at the same time as the Data Discman. Titles will include reference books and guides to medicine, movies, travel and entertainment, he said. Electronic Books are likely to cost an average $20 to $33, Nishikawa said. "Novels are certainly possible, but the question is how successful they will be because of the small screen," a Sony official said. The screen can display only 10 lines at a time, but can be "scrolled" up or down. Both the CDs and player will be sold through regular bookstores. The player's built-in software allows it to display indexes and quickly find particular portions of the text. Compact discs use digital codes to record information ranging from music to computer programs or databases. Those that contain data used by computers are called CD-ROM--CD read only memory--because they generally cannot be altered or re-recorded. Washington Post May 16, 1990 pp. D9,D13 From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear Subject: mail distribution options Date: Thu, 24 May 90 15:43:25 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 119 (357) If you would like your Humanist mail discontinued temporarily we recommend that rather than 'unsubscribing' you instead set your listserv distribution option to NOMAIL by sending email to listserv@brownvm or listserv@brownvm.brown.edu with this line for the body set humanist nomail If you at a Bitnet/Netnorth/Earn node, you can try to set this option interactively by sending listserv@brownvm the message "set humanist nomail". From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Subject: What is text? Date: 24 May 1990, 07:01:46 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 329 (358) O.B. Hardison brings up a difficult but interesting point that Humanist has touched on in the past: when should an editor translate an old or difficult text into modern English and when should he or she leave it in its original form? Even seventeenth-century spelling, pointing, italics can be confusing to a modern reader, but a poet like George Herbert, in a poem like "Easter Wings," meant something by phonetic spelling, by the varying degrees of pauses indicated by the different marks of punctuation and not only by italicised words or phrases but also by the shape of the poem on the page. So what does a modern editor do with that? The text in this case might be a printed version as compared with the manuscript prepared from the author's by a careful and devoted scribe. Shouldn't the editor of Herbert, basing his or her decisions on a careful study of all of the printed and manuscript versions of the text, arrange the versions in a chronological tree and then select the text that seems to represent the author's final intentions (or in some rare cases his best intentions?)? In the case of the versions of _King Lear_ with something like equal authority, both texts might be published together. For a scholar, and especially for the scholar who uses electronic texts, the more authoritative or even "bad quarto" texts, the better. To come back to the question above, should we modernize, say, Wyatt, and not modernize Spenser, because Spenser's spelling seems to be more important to his phonetic system and hence the sound and meaning of his poems? And should we modernize Shakespeare because if we don't modern American students might not read him? We obviously need to translate Chaucer for someone who cannot bother to learn the English of London in 1400, but we realize there is a loss in that translation. Comments? Roy Flannagan From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: Re: 4.0101 Errors and CD-ROMs Date: Thu, 24 May 90 09:05:37 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 330 (359) In response to both John Slatin's comments on variations in Marianne Moore's poetry and Ken Steele's comments in errors in electronic texts: There are several ways in which the current model of electronic text is impoverished when compared to printed text. One important one is that there is no agreement about conveying variations or critical apparatus as part of the text. Obviously it can be done, and I would argue that it can be done more effectively in electronic form than it is currently done on the printed page. But it is missing from most of what I see today. Likewise, we have no way currently to update and correct electronic texts in a timely manner. Once again, it can be done, but it will take some infrastructure. One example from the sciences that comes to mind is the Online Mandelian Inheritance of Man (OMIM), a catalog of genetic mapping produced by a professor at Johns Hopkins Univ. This is published as a book once a year, but it is also maintained as an online database that can be accessed over various networks. The professor in charge takes corrections and amendations via e-mail and updates the database on a weekly basis. The result is a very useful resource to the participating community. From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET Subject: 4.0108 What is Text? (4/123) Date: Thursday, 24 May 1990 9:28am CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 331 (360) A quick reply to Skip Knox: Of course you're right when you say that there are umpteen versions of Moore's poem "Poetry," as well as several versions of Joyce's _Ulysses_. And you're right, too, in pointing out that much of the problem has to do with "authorized editions" and what *text* they include. But this isn't such a simple matter, at least not when we're talking about print. The "Definitive Edition" of Moore's _Complete Poems_, for instance, includes only the three-line (1967) text of "Poetry" and the "Longer Version" that appears in the notes; there's no reference at all to the 13-line version of 1925. A variorum edition could of course handle this problem; so could a hypertext or other on-line version. As for _Ulysses_, things get a bit more complex: the "reading text" published by Random House after Gabler's massive project is very odd: every word in it was at some point written by Joyce during the preparation of _Ulysses_, and yet the text published by Random House had never existed before-- it cannot be traced back to any single extant text of _Ulysses_. So what is the text of _Ulysses_? And if a text is something that "has words," what becomes of Blake-- to say nothing of more recent forms like interactive fiction? John Slatin From: Willard McCarty Subject: collage, biblical narrative structure, and e-mail Date: Wed, 23 May 1990 21:44:57 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 332 (361) Bernie Levinson's reference to Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative is a useful one. Alter's book is interesting but not, in my view, as good as it could have been if the author had not fought so hard to avoid the idea of typology, especially as developed by Erich Auerbach and studied by such people as Jean Danielou. (Alter actually detours to Homeric criticism to pick up the notion of "type scenes" rather than to get what he needs from the biblical tradition itself.) The question of structure in a work constructed out of fragmentary sources is a particularly relevant one for scholars of electronic communication to consider, since the proceedings of an electronic seminar are radically discontinuous. Is it too much, too wild to suppose that exegetical skills honed on the Bible and other patchwork texts would prove effective in dealing with such radically discontinuous sources as e-seminars or other multidimensional conversations? By "patchwork" I imply no disrespect of the texts in question. As Auerbach showed masterfully for the Bible, a collage of disjunct, contradictory, or repetitive segments can be more powerful by far than any smooth, logical sequence of prose could ever manage. Breathtaking, in fact. Of course, the collected works of Humanist ain't no Bible. I'm thinking merely of certain rudimentary, yet strikingly unknown, techniques for dealing with text that comes in seemingly undigested lumps. Willard McCarty From: Tzvee Zahavy Subject: Midrash and collage Date: Thu, 24 May 90 09:10:07 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 333 (362) I do hope Mr. Bregman will read the penetrating critiques of Jacob Neusner regarding recent work on midrash. Neusner insists that each collection of midrashic comments has an agendum reacting to specific historical, social and economic circumstances. Each midrashic collection has its own view of the world embedded in the various comments to individual verses. The notion of midrash as collage appears to me at first glance to defy this systematic conclusion and offer in its stead a rather vague and listless substitute. I suggest for a summary of Neusner's method and conclusions _Canon and Connection: Intertextuality in Judaism_, UPA:1987. The author summarizes his studies of Mishnah, Talmud and major midrashic works such as Leviticus Rabbah, Sifra, Sifre, Pesiqta deRab Kahana, analyzing the relation to scripture in each case, the logic and rhetoric of each document, the topic and proposition in each program. He concludes with a vigorous critique of Cohen, Schiffman and Handelman and a discussion of intertextuality. Anyone who has gone through this material would be forced to agree that the notion of collage has little value in the study of midrash. (Unfortunately many Israeli scholars refuse to read Neusner. The Hebrew Union College library in Jerusalem cancelled their order for one of his translation series on the basis of a vindictive review in JAOS several years ago. Thus I suspect that Mr. Bregman may not have the research tools available to pursue the subject in light of the most current publications in the discipline. Please correct me if I am wrong.) E-MAIL:MAIC@VM1.SPCS.UMN.EDU BITNET:MAIC@UMINN1________Telephone:(612)920-4263 US-MAIL:UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, CLASSICAL AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES, 310 FOLWELL HALL, MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55455 From: LSXLSLS@UCHIMVS1 Subject: SGML Date: Wed, 23 May 90 21:17 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 334 (363) Am I correct in understanding that SGML is a{ standard set of ASCII codes for non-ASCII language symbols? If so, how do I obtain a list of these codes? Thanks Tim Bryson (lsxlsls@uchimvs1) From: Knut Hofland +47 5 212954/55/56 FAFKH at NOBERGEN Subject: Concordancing/text retrieval on Unix Date: 24 May 90, 19:05:32 EMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 335 (364) On Macintosh and MS-DOS there exists several freeware text retrieval programs like "Free Text Browser" on Macintosh and TACT on MS-DOS. Does anybody know of similar programs for Unix? It could be a simple command driven program or preferably a program that index the text and display the word list, concordance and text in separate windows. Knut Hofland The Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities Street adr: Harald Haarfagres gt. 31 Post adr: P.O. Box 53, University N-5027 Bergen Norway Tel: +47 5 212954/5/6 Fax: +47 5 322656 From: John Morris Subject: CALI request Date: Wed, 23 May 90 20:17:52 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 336 (365) The Alberta Research Council is currently preparing a database of PC-based interactive Computer-Assisted Learning and Instruction packages in the following general subject areas related to the construction industry: Trades training Health and safety New materials, designs, techniques and technology Project management General business practices Although the project may only be of peripheral interest to humanists, I would be grateful for any assistance in tracking down packages or software manufacturers who specialize in interactive learning software. Information on a more appropriate forum, such as a civil engineering list similar to Humanist, or a reposting of this request to such a list, would also be greatly appreciated. Private responses are requested, but if any interest is expressed, I will post a digest to Humanist. John Morris JMORRIS@UALTAVM.BITNET From: Subject: RE: TeX sources Date: Thu, 24 May 90 08:38 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 337 (366) TeX for MS-DOS, along with a collection of macros (along with a huge collection of other free- and shareware) is available through anonymous FTP from WSMR20-SIMTEL.ARMY.MIL (This is the White Sands Missle Range). There is a file called PD1:SIMIBM.ARC that lists all files available. Perry Willett SUNY-Binghamton PWILLETT@BINGVAXC From: "Robin C. Cover" Subject: HELP ON TOPOS: WHAT IS MAN? Date: Thu, 24 May 90 07:00:47 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 338 (367) HELP WANTED: Rhetorical Irony on "What is man...?" Can fellow HUMANISTS supply some classical/medieval/modern literary parallels to the memorable biblical passage (in sexist RSV language): What is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou dost care for him? (Psalm 8:4 - Heb 8:5) These lines have several fascinating twists already in the biblical corpus, with evidence that the "original" lines were misunderstood or deliberately mis-represented quite early. The most celebrated example is Job's complaint ("bug off, God"): What is man, that thou dost make so much of him And that thou dost set thy mind upon him (That thou dost) visit him every morning And test him every moment. (Job 7:17-18, RSV) Paul Dion in SR 16/2 cites two passages in Kipling which are reflexes of this "what is man...?" topos. One is from the first Jungle Book, where "Bagheera the black panther recites to Mowgli, 'What is Man that we should care for him...'" and the second is from Kipling's "Harp Song of the Dane Women" in Puck of Pook's Hill, "What is a woman that you forsake her?" I'd appreciate any other literary reflexes known to HUMANISTS, especially usages embodying irony. More generally: how does one go about finding such kinds of parallels? Were I to have access to all world literature on computer, I can think of some queries on patterns in various languages... but failing that (or Lou Burnard's offer to run a few queries against the entire Oxford Archive), how does one find such things? The Stith Thompson motif index (haven't checked) is too much focused on folklore, I imagine. Your specific or general help will be gratefully received (in support of a very noble cause -- unmentionable, but known disdainfully in our family as "the D-thing"). Willard -- you seem to have some interest and expertise in studying literary topoi? Dredging up quotations and allusions? Robin Cover BITNET: zrcc1001@smuvm1 INTERNET: robin@txsil.lonestar.org UUCP: attctc!utafll!robin UUCP: attctc!cdword!cover UUCP: texbell!txsil.robin From: vincent b.y. OOI Subject: Re: Classes & Lectures Date: Thu, 24 May 90 20:01:30 -0100 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 339 (368) I'm interested in reading the report that Germaine Warkentin (Hi!) cites for the figures of school-leavers going on to university in Canada, the States, and Britain: could I have the reference please? Also, does anyone else have similar figures? Regards, Vincent From: Ed Haupt Subject: query Date: Thu, 24 May 90 12:59:39 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 340 (369) Does anyone know 1) who is the source, 2) what is the most commonly accepted English translation of Wie die Leber die Galle, so erzeugt das Gehirn das Denken. Any recent sources on the history of materialism in 19th-century German/continental science would be welcome Ed Haupt Department of Psychology Montclair State College Upper Montclair NJ 07043 haupt@pilot.njin.net From: KESSLER Subject: Re: 4.0103 Nerds; Confucius didn't say it (36) Date: Tue, 22 May 90 22:04 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 341 (370) INTERESTING THAT YOU SHOULD THINK TANG LEGENDARY. NOT AT ALL. READ MY SON'S DISS. 1989, ON MICROFILM NOW, THE ERLITOU SITE ETC., BY ADAM T. KESSLER, UCLA 1989. YOU MAY BE IN FOR A SURPRISE. J KESSLER From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: Faerie Queene Date: Thu, 24 May 90 09:07 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 342 (371) If Mary Dee Harris actually read SEVEN books of "The Faerie Queene" she must indeed have been indulging in some "spirited beverages". :-) :-) :-) A standard joke among my class of grad students was "If you found the lost 6 books of FQ would you tell anyone?" Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: Satire Date: Thu, 24 May 90 09:20 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 343 (372) Tony Bex, In reply to your request for instances of parody being taken seriously-- In Sinclair Lewis's "Babbitt" there is a scene in which George Babbitt delivers a speech to his realtor's association convention. It is full of the usual Babbitt chauvinism, patriotism, and illogic. Some years ago (maybe 10?) an American actor (can't remember his name--recognizable, but not a big star) delivered the same speech verbatim to a group (Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions?) in Duluth, Minnesota. Members of the audience were interviewed later and commented that the speech was stirring, inspirational, etc. None recognized its source. This was all televised as part of a special on midwest attitudes or some such thing. Sorry to be so fuzzy about all of this but it was quite a while ago and although it was pretty funny I had no reason to remember the details of it. I'm sending this to both you and HUMANIST; maybe someone else on the list will have a better recollection of the show. Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: PRIMER@DRACO.BITNET Subject: Swift,satire,etc. Date: Thu, 24 May 90 10:28 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 344 (373) Tony Bex asks for "other occasions where parody or satire have been taken at their face value [etc.]." The best example by far is Defoe's "The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters" (1702), which gained instant notoriety and did not long remain a work by "anonymous." Irwin Primer, English Dept., Rutgers University, Newark NJ 07102 From: DENNIS CINTRA LEITE Subject: RE: 4.0106 Greek fonts; Chinese word processors (42) Date: Thu, 24 May 90 10:32 -0300 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 345 (374) Christopher Bader claims that: "One of the reasons linguists should prefer Mac's to PC's is that you can't do this on a PC. The screen cursor on a PC cannot back up." I think Mr Bader is slightly misinformed. What actually happens is that the Mac works full time in a graphics screen (what this means is that each pixel - picture element on the screen is controled by software). IBM and clones work in two modes, text and graphics. Text mode works with a predefined character set; this resides in ROM (Read Only Memory) and makes for much faster screen updates. Some of the newer display devices (EGA, VGA, 8514 and other variants) permit redefining the ROM characer set, you can substitute the "factory" character set for any 256 or less characters of your own design. This still leaves the problem of proportional spacing (the predefined character set has fixed spacing between characters). The other mode PC and clones work under is the graphic mode (of which there are several, but let's keep things simple). Under graphics mode, the PC family can do anything a q Mac can do. When a program takes advantage of graphics mode in the pc anything that can be programed into a Mac can also be programed into a pc. In point of fact, since the Mac has some inbuilt drawing tools (the so called Toolbox built into the machine) it is easier to program the mac for some applications which involve a lot of screen redrawing details, thus the richer offerings of desktop publishing software for the Mac. But inherently the PC has all the capabilities of a Mac, it is just that programers are a bit lazy in taking advantage of them. Regards Dennis From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM> Subject: Chinese WP Date: Thu, 24 May 90 08:19:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 346 (375) I seem to have missed the original question, so this is a comment on the answer about Chinese word processing. One of the best sources is CCNET-L@UGA (std. listserv cmds., so to subscribe send mail to LISTSERV@UGA with SUB CCNET-L in the body. They discuss both commercial and PD/shareware Chinese WP software, where to get it, development, and WP in general. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM Journalism Dept. Internet: eparker@well.sf.ca.us Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 BIX: eparker USA UUCP: {psuvax1}!cmuvm.bitnet!3zlufur From: "Sheizaf.Rafaeli" <21898MGR@MSU> Subject: Not really Halio, Disintermediation, Direct Manipulation Date: Wednesday, 23 May 1990 11:36pm ET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 127 (376) Blame Kessler for reigniting this one. I'm just here for the ride... I'd like to share some (experimental) results and run a short argument with those HUMANISTS not too blinded with infatuation with their own preferred machine... I've been interested in a concept system designers call "Direct Manipulation". In essence, this is a suggested guideline for those engaged in making software products. It intends to indicate how best to make computerized interfaces. Following is an abstract of a research report, titled "SEMANTICS OVER SYNTAX". "Direct Manipulation" is a theoretical construct used in explaining the quality of human-computer interaction. DM is often invoked to explain the appeal and diffusion of emerging hypermedia and other computerized communication applications. Building DM interfaces, it is claimed, should make interfaces as intuitive as the steering wheel. But DM, as a theoretical construct, lacks formal explication and validation. Here, I suggest one element: an interface is "direct manipulation" when it elevates semantics over syntax. Allow the contents of the task through, even at the cost of ceding the structure so dear to you. DM as transparency. I conducted two experiments. Each started with an some conventions about how the "syntax" of computerized tasks ought to be. In each, the conventional "syntax" imposes some structure on the semantics. In one, 101 subjects performed information retrieval tasks, using combinations of selection mechanisms and menu depth structures. In the second experiment, 56 subjects queried a database using different access methods: natural language, menu hierarchies, or complete content schemas. In both experiments, the DM-based access method proved superior, contradicting empirically-based extrapolations or conventional expectations, and supporting the construct validity of DM. Dependent measures include user confidence as well as the productivity measures of speed and accuracy. Direct manipulation or the transparency ideal should receive more attention in theory and research of computerized communication, as it is not just a convenient design principle. As a dimension of describing mediating systems, DM may have profound use in communication theory. Now, assuming my methods ARE kosher, (please let's spare the network), I'd like to pose a couple of questions: 1) My thinking is social-science, communication theory based. I'm sure this business of battling syntax and semantics has some treatment in the humanities as well. Could you show me? 2) Several disciplines have discussions of something called "disintermediation". For example, The Reformation is said to have disintermediate between people and God. I wish to claim that a "Direct manipulation" policy is a recipe for "disintermediation" (remove or reduce the syntax, or mediation. Highlight the semantics, or mediated). Has "disintermediation" appeared in any Humanities disciplines? 3) "Direct manipulation" was actually championed first by Macintosh supporters. Some may claim the Mac interface is DM, what with all the garbage cans on screen, mice in hands and all. But it seems that Halio is making the argument that these icons are all syntax that gets in the way of semantics. IBM, on the other hand, allows the sheer glory of the semantics to shine, disintermediatedly. Comments? Sheizaf Rafaeli Michigan State University, University of Michigan, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, (currently 21898MGR@MSU) From: Germaine Warkentin Subject: Faerie Queene Date: Fri, 25 May 90 10:12:22 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 347 (377) A pedantic note in support of Mary Dee Harris: Spenserians tend to divide on whether to count the "Two Cantoes of Mutabilitie" as the seventh book or not, and she must have studied with the one of the "yeas" rather than the "noes". With respect to longer works: when I was a grad student studying for the infamous U. of T. "Generals" we tended to award each other imaginary buttons when we knocked off one of the biggies, as in "Have you got you _Clarissa_ button yet?" Before I get into my famed variation on the "Ubi sunt" topos I think I better sign off. Germaine. From: "Hardy M. Cook" Subject: What is man? Date: Fri, 25 May 90 15:45 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 348 (378) In response to Robin C. Cover's inquiry about parallels to the biblical "What is man," let me offer two from Shakespeare. The first occurs in the following exchange between Lafew and Parolles in ALL'S WELL ENDS WELL, 2.3.192-195: Are you companion to the Count Rossillion? To any count, to all counts: to what is man. To what is count's man. Count's master is of another style. The second, surely better known, occurs in Hamlet's soliloquy from 4.4.32-35: How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. The first seems ironic; the second might echo Job's complaint. Hardy M. Cook Bowie State University From: O MH KATA MHXANHN Subject: wie die Leber die Galle... Date: Thu, 24 May 90 23:10 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 349 (379) Just happened to be browsing through Ludwig Buechner's _Kraft und Stoff_ during vacation last summer, and recall that, in a chapter entitled "Der Gedanke," that author refers to the materialist in question, Niklas Vogt (1755-1836). Buechner quotes Vogt thus: "Die Gedanken stehen in demselben Verhaeltnis zu dem Gehirn, wie die Galle zur Leber oder der Urin zu den Nieren." Hope this much is of help. W, McCarthy Washington, D.C. From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Language Permutations Date: Tuesday, 22 May 1990 2208-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 350 (380) A brochure announcing the availability to educators of a discount on Bernoulli Boxes contains the following description of Bernoulli Technology: "When not spinning, the stationary media falls away from the read/write head, preventing head-crash." The accompanying diagram shows something called "Media" adjacent to the "Bernoulli Plate." I see at work here a linguistic process that takes a much used (sort of collective) plural word "media" (here specifically computer media; but also relevant in relation to "the media" and "mass media") and treats it as a singular, similar to "data" as a collective singular, I suppose. I suppose it is an unconscious process among persons not attuned to the quirks of Latinisms. Have other HUMANISTs noticed this development? Is there yet a tend to talk of "medias," for example, or to say things like "my favorite media is TV"? And are there OED "spies" on HUMANIST taking note of these discussions, to include the most accurate possible information in the next OED? I hope so. It changes before our very eyes. Isn't it fascinating data, in whatever medias?!" (1990) Bob Kraft, U Penn From: Julie Falsetti Subject: processes Date: Thu, 24 May 90 15:11:58 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 351 (381) I don't know if this bears any relevance to the question raised about the pronunciation of 'processes', but I recently completed a course in operating systems and the word process (a program in execution) was used frequently in both singular and plural. It was always pronounced in the plural as '-eez'. The professor began the course using the standard pronunciation, but after about two days he switched to the -eez form when students were unable to distinguish between 'processes' and 'processors'. Julie in New York City From: John Lavagnino Subject: What is a text? Date: Fri, 25 May 90 11:07 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 352 (382) The notion of hypertext as a form for critical editions of literary works has recently appeared even in the TLS: Jerome McGann, in the issue of May 11-17, 1990, comments on its particular value ``for writers who exhibit not merely an extreme interest in finished forms (unities of being), but who obsessively rework their texts in an effort to arrive at their impossible (and changing) dreams''---such as Yeats. John Lavagnino, Brandeis From: Jim O'Donnell (Penn, Classics) Subject: Error Date: 22 May 90 21:34:55 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 353 (383) `Accuracy is a duty, not a virtue' was A.E. Housman's view, characteristically acerbic, of the responsibility of editors of classical texts for reporting the readings of medieval manuscripts. `Zero defects' was the motto of the moment around military engineering facilities I knew twenty years ago. We panic at the thought that the risk of cancer may be doubled by ingesting some chemical without asking what the risk was before it was doubled: if 0.00000001, perhaps not a *dire* threat, but we seek assurance. We want out investments insured against all possibility of peculation and natural disaster. And all this in spite of the undeniable fact that most of us, even HUMANISTs, were actually born and raised as human beings. The best advice from the *long* tradition of copying and editing classical texts is to remember that every attempt to correct an error is itself a fallible human act. I suppose you could construct a curve to show the possible improvement in texts through mass proofreading through the ages, but 0 is only the asymptote, not the goal. Is it time again for the old legend about the Septuagint Greek translation of the Bible? How seventy scholars went into separate booths and each translated the whole of the Hebrew scripture and came out with miraculously identical and perfect texts (including, unaccountably, some texts for which Hebrew originals were not forthcoming). An old dream, the infallible, eternal, impeccable Word. From: Alan D Corre Subject: Direct Manipulation Date: Fri, 25 May 90 12:29:44 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 131 (384) I have tried hard to follow Sheizaf's contribution, because it seems important for my work with computers and also for my understanding of the world. I majored in Linguistics for my Ph.D but have little knowledge of communication, which is perhaps a comment on how compartmentalized we get these days, and how this group can help to broaden horizons painlessly. Let me comment first on the religious comparison to see if I have it right. Does this mean that Catholicism by its priests and ritual interposes something between God and man which Protestantism abolished? In that case it would seem to me that a similar thing happened in Judaism by historical circumstance rather than by the intervention of a Luther. The destruction of the Temple in the year 70 caused prayer to replace the Temple service and personal confession and repentance to replace the sacrifice of bulls. The Rabbis understood Hosea 14.3 "take with you words..and we shall pay our lips as bulls" to mean that prayer can replace the sacrificial service. The traditional daily Jewish service contains descriptions of the sacrifices which claim to replace the actual Temple service. Might one say then (and I am not trying to be flippant) that pre-70 Judaism and Catholicism are IBM and post-70 Judaism and Protestantism are Mac--but not according to Halio? Now something from my own computer experience. For the past half year I have been constantly involved with the Mac computer, using ProIcon and HyperCard, not because I was dissatisfied with my Zenith PC, which is a good friend, but because I have the impression that students prefer the Mac, and since what I am doing is for their benefit, I felt I should cater to their desires. I remain unreconciled to the Mac. I don't care for its icons, I dont care for its pull-down menus. When I have the option of "keyboard shortcuts" I find myself wasting time wondering which to go with. The result is that in preparing data files for programs I have written for the Mac, I prepare them on the Zenith where I feel comfortable, and carry them over to the Mac. Thank God for ASCII. My feeling is though that this is because I am essentially a words person. I prefer poetry to paintings, cheap novels to soap operas and classics to Public TV. I enjoy rock and roll (sorry) but many people are surprised to find that I actually listen to the lyrics. (Some of them are not bad, yeah, yeah, yeah.) I feel that the majority of people like pictures more than words, hence they like the Mac more than IBM. Or in other words it's visual v. verbal. I think I should find it helpful if Sheizaf would give us just a few samples from his experiments, so that I could grasp better just what the subjects were doing. From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: TACT Date: Thu, 24 May 90 14:57:25 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 354 (385) In respone to Knut Hofland's queries on concordance programs, I would be interested to learn more about TACT, the DOS program that he mentions in passing. I am afraid I have no leads on Unix concordance programs. There are basic Unix utilities to (a) build word lists and (b) find examples of words in particular files. From: "N. MILLER" Subject: The actor in the Babbitt suit Date: Thu, 24 May 90 17:25 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 355 (386) Phil Rider asks: who was that masked man? Can there be any doubt in the surreal sense that it was a former governor of California (understandable) and president of the United States (unbelievable)? Norman Miller From: John Morris Subject: More CALI Date: Thu, 24 May 90 18:45:27 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 356 (387) Further to my request for CALI information yesterday, does anyone know of a Humanist-like list specializing in interactive computer-assisted learning and instruction, or a list dealing with interactive video-disk software. John Morris, JMORRIS@UALTAVM.BITNET From: psc90!jdg@dartvax.dartmouth.edu (Dr. Joel Goldfield) Subject: "Thanks for OCR & scanner info" Date: Thu, 24 May 90 11:43:02 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 357 (388) Thanks to colleagues who answered my query about OCR software and scanners. Regards, Joel D. Goldfield joelg@psc.bitnet From: "Steven J. DeRose" Subject: SGML Date: Thu, 24 May 90 18:40:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 358 (389) In response to Tim Bryson's query (and in quest of the briefest clear description): SGML = "Standard Generalized Markup Language", ISO 8879: 1986(E). SGML defines a standard means of providing markup for the structure of documents. With it you can declare names for whatever units you wish to divide a document into, and then mark the divisions. For example, you can declare that a consists of a and any number of <chapter>s, that chapters consist of certain other things, and on down to character data. An SGML-supporting application can then unambiguously parse documents, and apply whatever semantics are appropriate to the current use. SGML itself says *nothing* about those semantics. A word-processor might interpret the element <title> to mean: 18-point bold Helvetica, with page break before. But an information retrieval system might give this meaning instead: Counts double for the importance of contained words. SGML's treatment of character encoding issues is basically limited to declaring reference names for many, many characters, for use when those characters are not part of the standard character set. They are intended for use in interchange, or for encoding occasional uses of the characters, not primarily for encoding non-Latinate texts. See section D.4 of the standard. Other International standards relevant to character encoding include ISO 646, 2022, 8859, and 10646. From: cb%kcp.UUCP@XAIT.Xerox.COM (Christopher Bader) Subject: 4.0126 Greek Fonts Date: Thu, 24 May 90 18:56:07 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 359 (390) Dennis Cintra Leite is quite correct about PC's in graphics mode. I should have said that the screen cursor on a PC cannot back up in text mode. Text mode is the mode that matters, however, to users of e.g. Nota Bene. The Greek screen fonts of Nota Bene are necessarily incomplete because each combination of vowels, accents, breathings, macrons, and subscripts must be represented by its own one-byte code, and there just aren't enough one-byte codes to represent all the possibilities and still accommodate the rest of the Greek alphabet. From: Stephen Clausing <SCLAUS@YALEVM> Subject: Siegen help Date: Fri, 25 May 90 12:49:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 134 (391) I have a problem. I am scheduled to give a talk at the Siegen conference on Tuesday, June 5, 4 pm but I will be unable to attend because my funding fell through. I asked a colleague who was going if he could give the talk for me but his funding didn't pan out either. Another colleague may be able to help but he may not be able to attend my session. Is there anyone out there who can do this for me? I intend to tape the talk and I have a demo disk for the Macintosh. You would only need to turn on the Macintosh, start the tape, and then press various macro keys as instructed by the tape. Stephen Clausing Yale University SClaus@Yalevm From: Mark Olsen <mark@gide.uchicago.edu> Subject: Center for the Study of Language and Information Calendar Date: Wed, 23 May 90 18:43:24 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 135 (392) C S L I C A L E N D A R O F P U B L I C E V E N T S ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 May 1990 Stanford Vol. 5, No. 29 _____________________________________________________________________________ A weekly publication of the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Ventura Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4115 ____________ [A complete version of this announcement is now available through the fileserver, s.v. CSLI ANNOUNCE. You may obtain a copy by issuing the command -- GET filename filetype HUMANIST -- either interactively or as a batch-job, addressed to ListServ@Brownvm. Thus on a VM/CMS system, you say interactively: TELL LISTSERV AT BROWNVM GET filename filetype HUMANIST; if you are not on a VM/CMS system, send mail to ListServ@Brownvm with the GET command as the first and only line. For more details see the "Guide to Humanist". Problems should be reported to David Sitman, A79@TAUNIVM, after you have consulted the Guide and tried all appropriate alternatives.] From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear <EDITORS@BROWNVM> Subject: from no-mail to mail Date: Fri, 25 May 90 17:25:35 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 360 (393) As an addendum to yesterday's announcement on how to put your Humanist subscription on vacation: When you would like discontinued Humanist mail restarted you can set your listserv distribution option to MAIL by sending email to listserv@brownvm or listserv@brownvm.brown.edu with this line for the body set humanist mail If you at a Bitnet/Netnorth/Earn node, you can try to set this option interactively by sending listserv@brownvm the message "set humanist mail". From: "DOV - DR. ART ST. GEORGE" <STGEORGE@UNMB> Subject: RE: 4.0118 Sony Electronic Books (Cross-posting) Date: Wed, 23 May 90 21:07 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 361 (394) This question was raised when Willard was in charge of the Humanist list and I'm afraid I have to raise it again. Isn't there some way to reduce the amount of mail I receive from the list? Would it be possible to aggregate the messages? I'm getting 10-15 a day sometimes and although my interest in the subject is high, my current position means that there is no way I have the time to read these. I have to believe others share this feeling. Dr. Art St. George Network Services Officer U of New Mexico From: janus@ux.acs.umn.edu Subject: UNIX concording programs Date: Fri, 25 May 90 22:34:52 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 362 (395) In answer to Knut Hofland's request for cheap concording programs on UNIX, I recommend HUM-- A CONCORDANCE AND TEXT ANALYSIS PROGRAM. It is available from ftp host uunet.uu.net where you will find three files in the directory comp.sources.unix/volume10/hum . This package is a set of C source code programs that will, among other things, produce kwic, kwal (for poetry), cross- references, frequency counts of words and characters, produce word length histograms. It also finds sentences with specified patterns (a grep that gives humanistically relevant results, not just single lines of texts). There are a number of other programs that come in the HUM package. The three compressed files that you can download also contain manual pages for the programs. The beauty (or drawback -- depending on your viewpoint) is that these programs fit into the general UNIX scheme: each program is a module that you manipulate the way you want. A finished printed concordance will have to be massaged with a number of sorts, and a formatting program. HUM was written by William Tuthill at U of California Berkeley, and the version I have used is 3.7, from the early 80's. It will be reviewed in CHum in the future. --Louis Janus U of Minnesota Scandinavian Dept From: edwards@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Jane Edwards) Subject: Re: 4.0132 Notes and Queries (4/43) Date: Sun, 27 May 90 01:33:37 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 363 (396) Regarding UNIX concordance programs, we use one which was written by William Tuthill (now at SUN microsystems in Mountain View), called the HUM package (for computer analysis of texts in the Humanities). It includes the following programs: 1. freq - generates frequency distribution and total count of types and tokens, with options which include mapping upper to lower case, redefinition of punctuation set, listing in order of alphabetical or numerical halves of the frequency - type pairs. 2. kwal - key word in line concordance 3. kwic - key word in context concordance 4. wheel - rolls through the text a word cluster at a time 5. wdlen - counts the length of the longest line in the text 6. sfind - retrieves a record surrounding a pattern (word or tag) with options for specifying the record either by explicit delimiters or (by default) up to a standard end-of-sentence punctuation mark (period, question, exclamation mark). His email address: tut@sun.com -Jane Edwards From: Ivy Anderson <ANDERSON@brandeis.bitnet> Subject: RE: 4.0129 Permutations in Language and Pronounciation (2/41) Date: Fri, 25 May 90 17:34 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 364 (397) Re: Bob Kraft's query about the singular use of plural nouns: I have a colleague who insists on using the word "consortia" to refer to a consortium of which we are a member, as in "The Consortia has decided...," despite the fact that the singular form is used in the organization's title. I have never had the heart to correct her, though it drives me crazy. Ivy Anderson Brandeis University From: MERIZ@pittvms Subject: Media: From Plural to Singular Date: Sat, 26 May 90 10:52 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 365 (398) Alas, _media_'s "gentle passage" from collective plural to singular, referred to by Bob Kraft, is not echoed in French, which treats the word as a singular (masculine). As one might expect, the plural form is _medias_ (with e acute). -Diana Meriz meriz@pittvms.bitnet From: Brian Whittaker <BRIANW@YORKVM2> Subject: Plural of Medium [eds] Date: Sat, 26 May 90 17:32:53 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 366 (399) To quote an acquaintance of mine, "Media is different from books," echoing McLuhan's ideas but not his Latinity. (In response to Bob Kaft's query on language permutations, this one item comprises my total datumbase on the subject.) Brian Whittaker Department of English, Atkinson College, York University From: "Ian M. Richmond" <42100_1156@uwovax.uwo.ca> Subject: Re: 4.0129 Permutations in Language and Pronounciation (2/41) Date: Sun, 27 May 90 11:13:27 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 367 (400) Bob Kraft inquires about the use of "media" as a singular noun. In 1984 I began working on a bilingual microcomputing glossary, which I completed in 1986 (French/English). In 1984 already "media" was commonly used as a singular noun in the North American computing press. My first encounter with this usage dates back to several years before that, however, to about 1977 or 1978, when I first began hearing it from my students, who would make statements like, "Television is the most effective advertising media." This usage on their part may have been encouraged by the fact that the French term "me<eacute>dia" has long been used as a singular (since at least 1965, according to the _Petit Robert_ dictionary) with the plural form "me<eacute>dias" being in common use. Indeed, "mass media" is commonly translated into French by "les me<eacute>dias". I have rarely encountered the plural, "medias", in English, except in computing terminology, where it now appears to be used exclusively, except by academics. In other areas, "media" seems to me to be used as both a singular and a plural, a situation fraught with ambiguity. Ian M. Richmond, Department of French, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7. 519-661-2163 Ext 5703 also IMR@UWOVAX.BITNET From: CHAA006@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk Subject: RE: 4.0129 Permutations in Language and Pronounciation Date: Tue, 29 MAY 90 14:26:11 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 368 (401) [deleted quotation] How interesting. The only place that I have encountered the `long plural' of `process' is on a DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) training course; could Julie enlighten us as to whether it was a DEC course that she attended ? Is this an example of the evolution of `DECspeak' ? When I verbalise `processors' and `processes' in unstressed <Br.E>, the distinction sounds obvious; the former ends in <schwa zed-ess>, while the latter ends in <short-i zed-ess>. Could an <Am.E> correspondent comment on the N. American pronunciation ? Philip Taylor Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, ``The University of London at Windsor'' From: Judi Moline <moline@asl.ncsl.nist.gov> Subject: Request for help from Humanists Date: Fri, 25 May 90 17:43:55 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 369 (402) I'm developing a model of how a numismatist (coin person) does his/her research. Specifically I'm looking for references to studies of numismatists and to studies of parallel type work, maybe art history. I'm looking for content, ie tasks, methods, and all used by numismatists, and also I'm looking for an accepted methodology for obtaining and processing the data. Please write to me directly. Judi Moline moline@asl.ncsl.nist.gov From: Michel LENOBLE <LENOBLEM@UMTLVR.BITNET> Subject: Reference for the CURSOR program. Date: Fri, 25 May 90 20:03 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 370 (403) I wish I could find the complete reference of a program developed at the University of Waterloo called CURSOR. It is a critical edition package. I would be glad if anyone could help me. Michel Lenoble Litterature Comparee Universite de Montreal C.P. 6128, Succ. "A" MONTREAL (Quebec) Canada - H3C 3J7 E-MAIL: lenoblem@cc.umontreal.ca From: JONATHAN KANDELL <KANDELL@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu> Subject: bulletin boards [eds] Date: Sat, 26 May 90 01:25 MST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 371 (404) Does anyone have references regarding the effects of bbs chat? I am interested in psychological aspects; e.g. detached intimacy, sublimation of human contact, use by teenagers, etc. Jonathan Kandell, kandell@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu From: Ronen Shapira <RONEN1@TAUNIVM> Subject: rambam Date: Sat, 26 May 90 21:11:52 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 372 (405) A friend of mine is preparing a term paperon the subject "RAMBAM (MAIMONIDES) ATTITUDE TO THE OLD AGE". He will appreciate any help in finding biblioraphy, since he couldn't find any. He would also like to know if there is something about the influence of the RAMBAM as a physician on non jews. Any ideas where to start looking will be accepted with gratitude. Ronen Shapira From: "HALPORN,JAMES,CLAS" <halpornj@ucs.indiana.edu> Subject: MICRO OCP Date: 29 May 90 09:36:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 373 (406) I recently received a brochure from the Oxford UP on Micro OCP (cost: $350 for individual use; site license [viz. one campus] $1750). Has anyone had experience with this program? How does it compare with WordCruncher? I am asking because the brochure does not make reference to any published reviews of the program. James W. Halporn (HALPORNJ@UCS.INDIANA.EDU or HALPORNJ@IUBACS). From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM> Subject: Re: 4.0131 Direct Manipulation: A Query (1/40) Date: Mon, 28 May 90 06:36:19 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 374 (407) i am also very interested in what sheizaf had to say anbd could not quite follow it. however, on the question of macs vs ibms, actually these days gui's versus word- based interfaced, why don;t we assume that these are differences of tasted and personal style as allen corre suggests and get on with making sure that there is equivalent software for doing jobs with both types of interface. right now for most scholarly work, in the humanities, i still think nota-bene is the best tool around and that's a reason to go the ibm route. daniel From: "Adam C. Engst" <PV9Y@CORNELLA> Subject: Re: 4.0131 Direct Manipulation: A Query (1/40) Date: Sun, 27 May 90 22:17:11 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 375 (408) Alan Corre talks about not liking the Mac because he is a word person, as opposed to a picture person. However, a more apt difference might be the one between people who learn visually and those who learn by hearing. I am very much a word person and have far more appreciation for the written and spoken language than for the graphic representation. A picture is never worth more than half a dozen words for me. Yet in my consulting practice as in my own work I concentrate on the Mac. I am fluent with both and learned to use the PC first. However, I find the Mac a much more expressive environment within which to record my words in part, I think, because I can more easily visualize the flow and the action that lead to the finished product. When I use a PC I find myself repeating the commands under my breath (Alt-F4 - cursor - Cntl-F4 - 1) whereas on the Mac I can see the process before I perform the actions. I realize my words are failing me in my attempt to elucidate a possible difference between Mac and PC users, but consider the method with which you learn a foreign language. Do you hear the words or see them in your mind? And does that correlate in any way to your preference of computers? Perhaps I'm well out in left field on this one, but it's worth thinking about for a moment. -Adam Engst As an aside, I agree that Halio's research was shoddy and should never have been published in anything approaching a respectable academic journal. Peer review would never have let anything so loose and non-scientific slip by. Adam C. Engst pv9y@cornella.bitnet ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "I ain't worried and I ain't scurried and I'm having a good time" -Paul Simon From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: [...] Philistine synecdoche? Date: Mon, 28 May 90 18:41:42 -0200 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 141 (409) Dear Humanists, dear Roy Flannagan, eureka. Concerning Humanist 4.0071 (17 May 1990), here is what I found on p. 196, note 66 of the Hebrew book "The Sea Peoples in the Bible" by Othniel Margalith (Dvir, Tel-Aviv, 1988). The point is: the Egyptians used to gather the foreskins of dead enemies, but if they were circumcised, seemingly this motivated them to gather cut hands, instead. In particular, this applies to the invasion of the Sea Peoples, who included, it seems, uncircumcised groups (like the Philistines from the Bible) and circumcised groups. I disagree with Margalith's book on several accounts. Its estimation of the Aegean cultural survival in the Land of Canaan reacts to its underestimation in mainstream research, due to the absence of deciphered inscriptions, but Margalith's enthusiasm leads him to an overestimate, based on arguments that often are weak, albeit the book is a mine of interesting details, data or sometimes more convincing intuitions. Here is what we need. The text refers to the Egyptians defeating the invading Sea Peoples. We quote from Margalith's note (as translated from Hebrew): Breadstead, Records, III, p. 247, note h, brought my attention to the fact that from inscriptions it is unclear what were the countries of origin of the invaders. Moreover, from the inscription in Karnak it is not clear any more what is the connection between the hands cut off and the uncircumcised male organ: line 54 states "Ekwesh who had no foreskin [=i.e, were circumcised] whose hands were carried off [for] they had no foreskin." By the way, "[for]" is reconstructed hypothetically. Then, the causal link "their hands were cut [because] they were circumcised" is just based on a hypothetical reconstruction. If the context is correct, then according to line 53 also the Shekelesh and the Teresh were also circumcised, and their hands, too, were cut, and then we would have to accept the conclusion that many of the Sea Peoples, not just the Ekwesh were circumcised. Then, in his note, Margalith quotes definite or tentative opinions of some authors about certain peoples involved being uncircumcised. Margalith's book, in the passage that refers to the note, tries to identify the _ Hiwwi . of Genesis with the Achaeans. Elsewhere, he identifies the Israelite tribe of Dan with the... Danaoi from Homer (!!!), claiming they had assimilated to the Philistines, and moreover could have taken part to the War of Troy along with other Sea Peoples; Samson, the hero of the Danites, would have been... Heracles. (Relata refero!) Of course, Milton, whom Flannagan's query mainly concerned, was unaware of anything which is not explicitly stated in the (translated) Bible, and he may well have used a synecdoche. Ephraim Nissan onomata@bengus [...] eds From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: last names Date: Mon, 28 May 90 18:41:42 -0200 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 142 (410) [...] Concerning the discussion about the use of last names vs. first names. In Italy, the use of the first name in the workplace or at school is expanding from the upper-middle class. Small bourgeois and especially proletarians stick to the last name. There are still some proletarian wives, or wives in couples with a proletarian background, who call, or refer to, their husband by his last name. At the Jewish school in Milan, the first name was and is usual for pupils (from the kindergarten to high school), whereas teachers are referred to by their last names. Instead, at state-run schools, the last name is the rule (except at the kindergarten), albeit the use of the first name is expanding in high schools. I remember that the wive of the owner of the firm that moved my belongings from Italy to Israel (and kept some valuables) used to refer to her husband by his last name: they were people from Verona (thus, in the North-East), with an evident lower-class background, and were non-Jews. I also remember this use among Jews: in an interview with the widow of Leone Efrati ['e-fra-ti: the stress is on the first syllable, whereas in Hebrew it would be on the last], broadcasted in a Jewish program on the state-run TV, she referred to him as "Efrati". During the 1930, this boxer represented the pride of the proletarians and small bourgeois from the Jewish ghetto in Rome, in front of the racist campaign; anyway, the fans of his opponents used to consider the fight as between Aryans and Semites. It ended when the Fascist authorities forbade him to fight (and win) any longer. An illiterate, he left for the United States, but then went back to Rome. Of his American gains, the last thing left to him was an impermeable skin jacket; once he saw a man throw himself into the River Tiber. After he saved him, he covered the man with his jacket, and asked him to bring it back to his home address, but he never got it back. Then, once under the German occupation (the Jews were deported in phases, but the city was not held long enough to deport all of them), two local Fascists saw him in the street while he was walking with his child, threatened them with a revolver, and brought them to the Gestapo headquarters in Via Tasso. The boy (who survived the extermination camp where they were deported, whereas his father didn't), later recalled having seen there also some belongings of an uncle. Anyway, I related this to point out that in places as far and disparate as the Trastevere ghetto of Rome and Catholic Verona, proletarians used the last name even when wives addressed their husband. There are still people around that stick to that use. In Israel, instead, the first name is usual at school, and at primary school pupils are used to refer to their teacher by her (usually it is she) first name. Undergraduates refer to docents by their last name, with exceptions in addressing instructors, or an advisor (even of undergraduate projects). The singular of the second person is usual, in Hebrew and Israeli Hebrew, to address interlocutors, but in court, "kvod ha-shofet" (literally: "the honor of the Judge", that agrees with the 3rd person) is usual. Ultra-orthodox people, both Ashkenazic and Sephardi, refer by "kvodo" (his honor) to people they are unfamiliar with, or (often) to superiors. Some people for whom Hebrew is a second language used to reproduce the addressing forms of their first language in Hebrew. This use was found among some Europeans, but also among speakers of Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), as in Ladino the 3rd person is used both as a form of respect, and as a form of contempt. Ephraim Nissan onomata@bengus From: Rorschach@edinburgh.ac.uk Subject: Re: 4.0053 Cyberspace -- Conference Report (92) Date: 28 May 90 12:24:32 bst X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 376 (411) Would you care to the following statement you mad about cyberspace... [deleted quotation] It is as regards the metaphysical bit that I am interested. Rorschach From: J J Higgins <Higgins@np1a.bristol.ac.uk> Subject: Re: 4.0045 Doddle (24) Date: Tue, 29 May 90 10:32:25 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 377 (412) I don't think "doddle" is particularly recent or unusual. I think the origin is a comic mispronunciation of if your horse can win it without hurrying, so by extension any task that requires no effort is a doddle. From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM> Subject: Re: 4.0125 Parody (2/38) Date: Mon, 28 May 90 06:08:15 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 378 (413) i would like to contribute a case of misread satire from *real* -- too real-- life. two years ago traveling in a jitney cab in israel, we passed a site of a settlement on the west bank where there had been demonstrations by peace people. some babbit in the car said that those traitors should be put in jail, to which i replied that they should be put in concentration camps. he said he thought i was too extreme and that jail was enough. daniel From: Don Fowler <DPF@vax.oxford.ac.uk> Subject: RE: 4.0123 General Notes and Queries (3/73) Date: Sat, 26 May 90 10:56 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 379 (414) What is a man? The most obvious formal parallel in classical literature is Pindar Pythian 8. 95-6, epameroi: ti de tis; ti de ou tis; skias onar anthropos, translated by Bowra as Man's life is a day. What is he? What is he not? A shadow in a dream is man (but the indefinite tis and the word anthropos are not gender specific. [...]) The question about resources for Toposforschung is a good one. Classicists would go in the first instance to certain well-known and very comprehensive commentaries (Pease on Vergil and Cicero, headlam on Herodas etc). It would be nice to have a collection of tips for the various disciplines that HUMANIST covers. Don Fowler From: Stephen Clausing <SCLAUS@YALEVM> Subject: Siegen needs help Date: Mon, 28 May 90 17:51:54 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 145 (415) You may have seen the help request I posted on Humanist a few days ago. My thanks to those who responded. Another problem has arisen which affects me and probably a few other people. The organizers in Siegen have promised a Mac IIcx (color) for my demonstration but apparently they could not get hold of a projection device. Could someone bring one of those portable Kodak projection devices and loan it to the Siegen group for the duration of the conference? Let's face it, these people need help. From: Richard Giordano <rich@welchlab.welch.jhu.EDU> Subject: NY-SPEAK Date: Wed, 30 May 90 11:27:31 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 380 (416) Regarding Philip Taylor's comments on 'processors' and 'processes,' you should keep in mind that the two words sound alike in New York City, not generally in the United States. In general, final R's are hardly ever pronounced in New York. As far as I can tell, many folks don't pronounce *any* R's at all. When I first started graduate school there (coming from Boston), I went to registration and the secretary asked me "What's your depAWment?" It took a few seconds before I realized what she was saying. The general Northeast urban dialect in the US is also characterized by front dentals. Thus, 'th' is pronounced a lot like 'd'. When you're on the subway, you can be sure to hear the conductor announce 'Watch da closing daws' as the doors as closing. Anyway, as soon as I pronounced 'processors' and 'processes' the way Julie mentioned, I realized that I heard that a thousand times in New York. I should point out, also, that there are slight dialect differences from one borough of New York to another. For instance, in Brooklyn you might pronounce 'cold' to be 'co-old', while in Queens this is elongated to 'co-wold'. I've heard 'milk' in Brooklyn pronounced something like 'meelk' while in northern Manhattan it's 'mulk'. All over the place, folks there say, 'On line' for 'in line'. Thus, you stand 'awn loin' to buy a ticket to the movie. In my hometown of Newark, New Jersey, I grew up hearing 'azz' for 'ass'; (In fact, all 'ss' is pronounced as 'z' there) 'shtrike' for 'strike' (common for 'st' to be pronounced 'sht'); and 'egg' and 'leg' to be pronounced 'ayg' and 'layg' (as in hay or lay). I don't know if this characterizes Newark or just second and third generation Italian immigrants there. Richard Giordano The Johns Hopkins University From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0109 Address: Accents, Power, Democracy, Gender (4/79) Date: Tue, 29 May 90 22:23 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 381 (417) I DONT KNOW WHAT BRAZIL HAS TO DO WITH IT AT ALL. I know about the East Coast Prep schools: but that is snobbery and breaking down even there over the past 25 years. They knock regions at east coast prep schools, and especially anything west of Mass or shenandoah, or the Hudson. But that is all merest nonsense today. As for GB, I must be mixing all my life with the wrong clahws of pipple. I meant it only that GB is anomalous in having a royal house and titles, though it has one person/one vote rough and tumble hustings all right. Democratic it may be in politics, though one wonders about schooling and schools, etc. I am sorry if I shot from the lip. Two pounds on the heart, colpo mio, etc. I do know about snobbery at them places, having been there, and had the kids there, and all that. But most of it is the usual derivative pseudo-AngloSaxon, mostly plutocratic racism and snobbery and foolishness iwth a capital R and S, and A and S. So, okay it went out afterOrwellridiculed the BBC sound? Or was it sour grapes on his part too? 2000 apologies. Insularity, perhaps? Every time I had a choice, instinctively I headed for the Meditteranean countries, where a bad accent in an acquired tongue costs one nothing in the way of the unmerited sneer, etc. You know what I mean, I expect. Kessler at UCLA From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0109 Address: Accents, Power, Democracy, Gender (4/79) Date: Tue, 29 May 90 22:27 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 382 (418) I mean, to continue, the very term, "one's social standing" is my point. In a democracy there isnt anything like that, or should I say, in the pulverized socieites of GB and say the US in the 20th Century. Where does one stand socially in this world? Where is society? Palm Beach? San Marino? Clubs? the Lab? Markers of social standing based on accent are subject to ridicule, as poor GBS, who had no real social standing tried to explain in PYGMALION, I take it? Etc. Let us not go into that. I stick with Dame Alisoun's definition: Gentle is as gentle does. The rest is rather done with cash, laws, and mirrors. Not so? From: HUMM@PENNDRLS (Alan Humm Religious Studies U. of Penn) Subject: query: C programming on the Mac Date: Tuesday, 29 May 1990 1348-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 383 (419) I am looking for a good but inexpensive C compiler for the MacIntosh. I am also (or perhaps instead) interested in a C++ compiler (also for the Mac). My priorities are 1. Price 2. ANSI compatability 3. Advanced debugging capabilities. Can anyone help with their knowledge/experience? Thanks, Alan Humm (Humm@PENNdrls) CCAT/CATSS From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0132 Notes and Queries (4/43) Date: Wed, 30 May 90 12:05:41 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 384 (420) For UNIX there is a package of concordance routines which is available from Berkeley, called HUM. Claire LeDonne of the Berkeley Campus Software Office cld-cso@cmsa.berkeley.edu cld-cso@ucbcmsa.bitnet should be able to provide information on how to get access to the package. It was written in the early '80's and has not been modified since, so it talks a reasonably skilled UNIX user. Charles B. Faulhaber From: KLCOPE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: Electronic Style Date: Wed, 30 May 90 9:42 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 385 (421) Mr. Kendall asks for information concerning the effect of BBS chat on various persons. One of the foremost authorities on this subject is Natalie Maynor of Mississippi State University (MAYNOR@MSSTATE), who is an avid e-mailer and always happy to respond to inquiries. KLC. From: DENNIS CINTRA LEITE <FGVSP@BRFapesp.BITNET> Subject: RE: 4.0136 Mail/Nomail; Less Mail? (2/35) Date: Sat, 26 May 90 22:17 -0300 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 386 (422) It suprises me that Dr. Art St, George hasn't figured out a way to keep his reading time dedicated t HUAMANIST to a reasonable level. Ask for a listing of your mail files, look at the subject headers, and just delete, unread, the files that hold no interest dor you. That is what the editors do thir work for. They group mailings as per subject matter, describe, succintly the contents of what is included (they even go to the trouble of counting the number of lines in each mailing and including that number in the subject heading) and let you decide whether it is worth your while reading the contents or not. I think this sort of complaint is really a matter of misinformation. Regards Dennis From: Philip Taylor (RHBNC) <P.Taylor@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk> Subject: Is there an alternative to GUIs Date: Wed, 30 MAY 90 16:07:25 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 148 (423) The `Mac vs IBM' debate, of which the latest incarnation is the discussion resulting from the `Direct Manipulation' submission, is possibly the only unifying theme between all the mailing lists to which I subscribe, and is therefore, I suggest, an important debate, in the sense that it arouses strong feelings in persons from a very wide range of disciplines. What worries me slightly is that while we (on HUMANIST) seem able to debate it dispassionately and objectively, its manifestation elsewhere is undoubtedly the late twentieth-century equivalent of religious wars, and arouses deeper feelings and stronger reactions than any comparable topic (I suspect that the `Unix vs VMS' debate comes a very poor second). However, my worries concerning the quasi-religious fervour which it arouses are nothing compared to my worry that despite the continuance of the debate on countless mailing lists, both the learned journals and the computer industry seem agreed that the war is already won: the future human-computer interface will be graphically oriented. Yet if the issue were that cut-and-dried, would the debate still rage ? Would thousands of man-hours be wasted in continuing to argue the relative merits of the two systems ? I think not; I believe that there is most certainly a case for the perpetuation of the `traditional' interface (imperative verb + parameter[s] + qualifier[s]), which is, I believe, the `natural' way of working for [many of] those who are language- or word-oriented. What the Macintosh (and its predecessor, the Lisa) have undoubtedly done is to shew that there is an {\it alternative} to the `traditional' interface --- an alternative which is readily acceptable by, and accepted by, a significant proportion of potential and actual computer users; what they have {\it not} done is to shew that this alternative is so superior that it will, by a process of natural selection, become the only viable interface for the forseeable future. If my assertion is true --- that the `traditional' (or command-line) interface will remain the interface of choice for [many] computer users who are language or word-oriented --- then should we not also be discussing how that interface should evolve ? CP/M (with its arcane `PIP' syntax) mutated into MS/DOS; RT-11 and RSX-11 mutated into VMS (again with the loss of the `PIP' syntax); Unix, although apparently a descendent of Multics, appears to have mutated to such an extent in becoming a new species that most traces of its Multics ancestry have completely disappeared in its command-line interface --- indeed, Unix interfaces in general appear to be characterised by terseness and lack of mnemonic significance, and I suspect that if interface-acceptability were the only criterion of significance in the natural selection of operating systems, the only trace of Unix today would be an occasional skeleton buried deep in the fossil records ... So, to start the ball rolling, let me offer some thoughts on what I believe to be the essential features of a {\it good} command-line interface: [1] The use of natural language --- verbs and qualifiers should, as far as possible be words which occur in [either English or] the natural language of the user; [2] The use of `intuitive semantics' --- words used in the interface shall have a meaning as close as possible to their meaning in [either English or] the natural language of the user; [3] Consistent semantics --- when the same qualifier is used in conjunction with two or more verbs, that qualifier shall have the same meaning independent of the verb. [4] Natural language ordering --- for example, one searches a list of places for a thing, or copies a thing from a place to a place; one does not search for a thing in a list of places, or copy to a place from a place. This last is presumably debatable --- while I find the suggested order natural, and the deprecated order unnatural, there must be others who find the reverse the case (otherwise MS/DOS and Unix wouldn't be as they are). But then that must be true for all the other suggestions as well ... [5] Order independence --- where parameters and qualifiers occur in a single command, it shall not matter whether the qualifiers precede or follow the parameter, unless the qualifiers have only local significance, in which case they shall follow the parameter to which they refer. [6] Case insensitivity --- it shall not matter whether a verb, parameter or qualifier be entered in upper, lower or mixed- case: the meaning shall remain the same. [7] Context-sensitive help --- the command-line parser must be able to offer guidance on appropriate completions for a partially entered command, and to explain the syntax and semantics of all the components of the command, including optional or alternative components not [yet] entered. The parser must backtrack as the user makes interative corrections, using <delete previous <thing>> or <overstrike/replace> editing. Why these features above all else ? Because I believe that they are intuitive, and therefore not only easily grasped but easily guessed. When faced with a new operating system, a user {\it has} to make a guess at the probable effect of any action --- I believe the Macintosh interface is just as counter- intuitive in this respect as CP/M, or TSO. The strength of the Macintosh interface (and I accept that it has strengths, as well as weaknesses) is its uniformity --- to achieve a particular aim, one always carries out the same operation(s), regardless of the program in use. But this consistency need not be absent from `traditional' (command-line) user interfaces; it is simply that the need for unformity had not been adequately perceived at the time when [the majority of] [programs for] `traditional' user interfaces were evolving. Surely with hindsight we can see that consistency and intuitive semantics are paramount, yet are not implictly tied to the graphical user interface of the Macintosh world; the deterministic behaviour of the command-line interface (`when I type <foo>, it always does <foo>') has much to commend it when compared to the probabilistic behaviour of the graphical interface (`if I can manoeuvre the cursor within the confines of an icon that I believe represents the concept <foo>, and if I press a particular button exactly the right number of times within a fixed period of time, then [there is a distinct probability that] the system will do <foo>'). The time has come for the command-line users of the world to unite: we have everything to lose, including the chains of our preferred style of working, if we allow the `GUIs rule OK' dogma to remain unchallenged. Philip Taylor Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, ``The University of London at Windsor'' From: rodprep%pollux.ucdavis.edu@ucdavis.BITNET (Earl H. Kinmonth) Subject: Books to Review May 29, 1990 Date: Tue, 29 May 90 14:05:23 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 149 (424) The following books have come into my hands for review in *Computers and the Humanities*: Edward Barrett, ed. *The Society of Text: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Information.* (MIT Press). Alan Biermann. *Great Ideas in Computer Science: A Gentle Introduction.* (MIT Press). G.R. Ledger. *Re-counting Plato: A Computer Analysis of Plato's Style.* (Clarendon Press). Philip Leith. *Formalism in AI and Computer Science.* (Ellis Horwood). Whitman Richards, ed. *Natural Computation.* (MIT Press). E. Talstra, ed. *Computer Assisted Analysis of Biblical Texts.* (Free University Press). Nico Weber. *Maschinelle Lexikographie und Wortbildungsstrukturen.* Niemeyer). If you are interested in reviewing any of these books, and can do so by July 31, please contact me for the appropriate protocol. [...] Kevin Roddy, Book Review Editor, CHum Medieval Studies, UCD Davis, California, 95616 USA kproddy@ucdavis.BITNET From: Elaine Brennan and Allen Renear <EDITORS@BROWNVM> Subject: Humanist Editors Hit the Road Date: Wed, 30 May 90 17:55:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 150 (425) If both of us will be away from Brown for longer than a few days we generally expect that Humanist mailing will be handled by one of the local members of the Humanist editorial board. Substitute editors, however, are not yet ready to deal with some of our still unstandardized procedures. Therefore, Humanist will probably be irregular, at best, from June 4 to June 12, while we're in Siegen at the ALLC/ACH conference. We will try to make a telnet connection from Siegen to run Humanist remotely from Germany, but please don't be surprised if Humanist is quiet for ten days. From: Geoffrey Rockwell <Geoffrey_Rockwell@poczta.utcs.utoronto.ca> Subject: 4.0145 Siegen (1/11) Date: Wed, 30 May 90 13:26:08 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 387 (426) I have the same problem of needing a projection panel at Seigen. If someone does bring one I would appreciate being told. Geoffrey Rockwell rockwell@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca From: Jim O'Donnell (Penn, Classics) Subject: OTHERNET LIBRARIES? Date: 30 May 90 23:48:39 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 388 (427) At Bob Kraft's request, I'm writing a short how-to piece on the mechanics of using INTERNET to access remote academic libraries, a subject we've discussed before on HUMANIST. He wonders, and I have no idea, whether there are other networks that can be used to gain access to those libraries by people who don't have university connections to INTERNET. Is it possible to dial your way into INTERNET through CompuServe, for example? Put simply, if you're just sitting at home with a computer and a modem and no powerful friends in the world, is there a network you can access that will let you call Berkeley and Michigan and Colorado and Penn without long-distance charges? I know one solution is to find a university that let's you get on to internet without having to go through a cybername/password gate (I know of at least one), but that is (a) useful only if you live close enough to such a university to minimize long distance charges, and (b) dishonest -- sort of, I guess, in most cases (though there might be exceptions). Anyway, any advice will be very helpful and much appreciated. From: Stig Johansson <h_johansson%use.uio.uninett@nac.no> Subject: singular plurals Date: 31 May 90 11:33:19+0100 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 389 (428) On nouns like 'data' and 'media', see the article by Randolph Quirk, 'Grammatical and pragmatic aspects of countability', in his book: Style and Communication in the English Language (Edward Arnold 1982). First printed in: Die Neueren Sprachen 77 (1978). There is an example of 'media' with the indefinite article in the LOB Corpus: ... this is an ideal media... (text E35, referring to press advertising, in an article on advertising). Note the comment in the OED on the 'erroneous' use of 'media' in the singular. (The LOB Corpus text was published in 1961.) An indication of the special status of nouns like 'data' and 'media' is that they are quite regularly used as the first element in noun + noun compounds (data base, media campaign, etc), while ordinary plural nouns only appear in this position under very special circumstances. So this is a singular group indeed! Stig Johansson University of Oslo From: Michael Ossar <MLO@KSUVM> Subject: plural nouns as singulars Date: Wed, 30 May 90 23:18 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 390 (429) How long is this discussion of "media" going to remain on the agendum? From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Standing on line Date: Wednesday, 30 May 1990 2318-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 391 (430) As a Connecticut Yankee who always stood "in line," I had never thought that Philadelphians (via NY ?) who insisted on standing "on line" were simply pronouncing "in" as "on" -- rather, I supposed that they had a different (and, yes, to me strange!) concept of "line," of which I was part (by being in it) but with which they were only in contact (by being on it). Any light from other HUMANISTs? Do Britishers stand "on queue"? Another strangeness of idiom that struck me when I arrived in Philadelphia nearly 3 decades ago was the use of "babysit" as a transitive verb -- "Do you want me to babysit him tonight?" for example. Where I came from we would "babysit for him." Bob Kraft, U. Penn. From: Linc Kesler <KESLERL@ORSTVM> Subject: disintermediation Date: Wed, 30 May 90 19:37:01 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 392 (431) Re: Sheizaf Rafaeli and "disintermediation" Hey Sheizaf, thanks. Your note on "disintermediation" arrived just in time: tomorrow's the last day of class in my history of the english language course, and naturally I'd like to track on all the current trends. And for years I've been trying to think of a simple, direct, and "transparent" or is that "disintermediated" term to describe what the Reformation did for all them poor and hopelessly buffered Medieval catholics. Now "mis-statement" and "disinformation" I can understand, since there are obvious legal implications to terms such as "lie" and "cheat" and nobody wants to pull the president's pants down in public (and have to look at the unappetizing result). But "disintermediation" really sounds more like one of those truly sick defense department confections designed to describe the terminal state of relations between a B-52, its cargo, and the hapless earthbound geeks watching from below. But if I tell this story in my class, which is mostly made up of Kiwanis Klub members, are they likely to get the joke? Nah, they'll probably just take notes. -- Linc Kesler, Oregon State U. From: PETERR@vax.oxford.ac.uk Subject: RE: 4.0147 Q: Mac C; Rs: HUM; Social effects of BBS; Mail Date: Thu, 31 May 90 10:08 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 393 (432) I can *strongly* recommend Think C for C programming on the Mac. This used to be Lightspeed C, is now published by Symantec (they advertise everywhere) and has advanced to version 4.0. I have been using it for nine months now, writing ever-more complex collation programs and - it works. Very reliably too: I have not found a single bug in the program. I have thought at times I have got one, but every time I have (eventually) traced it to my own folly or (occasionally) to something Apple haven't quite finished in the Toolbox, and that is another story. Very fast too: on a IICX 30,000 lines of program in twenty five files compiles and links in about ninety seconds. You can get in, edit a single file, recompile and relink, run it over again, within seconds. Advanced debugging? I can't imagine a neater, smoother, easier to use implementation than the debugger included in the ThinkC package. You can set a conditional breakpoint, then just click your way merrily through handles, pointers, structures, arrays, arrays of handles to structures, etc etc. Hardware needs? It runs very well - debugger and all - on a bog standard SE, with 2M of memory. A hard disc is essential, or minimum two floppies: it will run on a basic Plus, but you will get die of MacElbow from disc swopping before anything useful is done. At around #130 academic price here, including full ANSI libraries, various specimen apps, etc, this is cheap. Incidentally, there is a neat "console" library included: with this you can make your Mac emulate a TTY terminal or (gasp) an IBM, and run vanilla C programs. There are also various "class" libraries thrown in, and much talk in the manual about Objects - according to a Byte review a few months ago these are well done. I haven't tried any of these, so can't comment. And, of course, you can get at all 900 plus Mac toolbox functions, use resource files, write INITs, CDEVs, anything you like. Here follows LARGE WORD OF WARNING. C programming affords plentiful opportunity for self-immolation at the best of times. The legend that the Mac is hard to program is no legend. Put the two together and it is like walking barefoot in a snakepit. If you want to use the tool-box, with multiple resizable scrollable windows, cut and paste, nice icons, multifinder compatibility etc etc, allow SIX MONTHS FULLTIME to write your first simplest application. And that is for something you could do in a few days on a PC. Of course the PC app wouldn't be a patch on the Mac one for elegance etc but good looks don't come cheap. As for "dressing up" a PC program for the Mac, forget it. It's better to start all over, and be prepared for some very nasty shocks while you learn the amazing things the Mac can do with memory while you aren't looking (surely I put that variable down just there a minute ago .. what's the operating system doing there .. bomb). The good side of it is that when you finally get on top of the toolbox and C, the machine will sing for you (I write this out of hope - sometimes it does, for me). Now why has the screen gone all funny on me again.. Peter Robinson, Computers and Manuscripts Project, Oxford University Computing Service. From: "M. R. Sperberg-McQueen " <U15440@UICVM> Subject: Micro-OCP Date: 30 May 1990 17:48:52 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 394 (433) I'm sure to be far less familiar with Micro-Ocp and Word Cruncher than other Humanists, but I can say at least say a little in response to Halporn's inquiry. The main difference between the two is that Word Cruncher is interactive while Micro-Ocp is not: you tell Micro-OCP what you want it to look for and, depending on how complicated the search is, you get a cup of coffee, and you come back to a file containing your results. For some of my work I've preferred using Micro-OCP because it is easy to print the results of searches generated by it--the version of W-Cruncher I have (things may have changed) was so much oriented toward being interactive, that it was very difficult to get a printed, permanent record of what one had found. --What I was asking it to do was relatively simple: I had it generate frequency lists for German texts that I was going to present to students: I was interested in finding out what words came up often enough to merit being put into a separate glossary, and which came up infrequently and could be glossed on an ad hoc basis. That's a very simple sort of thing to do in Micro-OCP--it can do things that are vastly more complicated. I should also mention that it can deal with all the usual languages, including transliterated Greek and Russian. I was favorably impressed with the OCP manual and with the command language. I'm not one of those people who have a whole lot of of patience with computer manuals, and my computing skills are quite basic. I found the Micro-OCP manual easy to get along with, i.e., I was able to find out how to do what I wanted fairly quickly. The commands make sense and are fairly easy to learn. The only caveat, as I'm sure many of us on this side of the Atlantic are aware, is that Micro-OCP insists one use British spelling. --Marian Sperberg-McQueen Univ. of Illinois at Chicago U15440@UICVM From: FLANNAGA.at.OUACCVMB Subject: Foreskins Date: 28 May 1990, 17:40:08 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 395 (434) Dear Ephraim, Eureka indeed! I thought the story was more than a rumor, and I suspect Milton knows more about the Israelite army practices than most modern commentary might provide, mainly because he had access to incredibly thorough medieval and Renaissance commentary on Judges. I have read many of the commentaries on Genesis, some few on Revelation and Job, but none on Judges. Perhaps it is not synechdoche at all but an almost superhuman (i.e. Samson-like) achievement--1000 Philistines, 1000 foreskins! If you want to post this to Humanist as well, fine. Thanks very much for the help. Roy Flannagan From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: Foreskins Date: Thu, 31 May 90 14:09:00-020 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 396 (435) To: Prof. Roy Flannagan <FLANNAGA@OUACCVMB.bitnet> May 31, 1990 Dear Roy, Thank you for your message. I have the suspect the ancient Egyptian army had the interest of making it seem as if a greater share of the Sea Peoples soldiers were circumcised than true: indeed, let us suppose that X of the fallen enemies were, and Y were not. Then, honest boasts would claim X+Y "relics" in all. Then, by cutting one hand of up to Z of the uncircumcised (where Z is an integer number equal to the minimum between X and Y), the Egyptian army could make believe that the enemy lost up to X+Y+Z men, not just X+Y. Therefore, one should be cautious about deriving ethnographic information concerning circumcision among the Sea Peoples from the Egyptian data. Ephraim Nissan From: "PATANJALI S. VENKATACHARYA" <VENKAT@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: Asian/North African Conference needs multilingual wp information Date: Thu, 31 May 90 14:25:20 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 155 (436) Dear Members of HUMANIST, The International Congress of Asian and North African Studies is a triennial/quadrennial gathering of scholars in the humanities and social sciences dealing with East and Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. It has been compared to the Olympic Games in the Asian-studies field, in that for a century (formerly known as the International Congress of Orientalists) it has met once every three or four years somewhere in the world, attracting top-level talent. The next Congress will be in Toronto, on the campus of the University of Toronto, during the third week of this coming August. The program theme of the Congress will be "Contacts between Cultures". This will be the first time ever for the Congress in Canada, and only the third time in the Western Hemisphere; it was in the United States in 1967 and in Mexico in 1976, and will not likely return to the Americas until the next century. On the basis of responses received so far, we expect an attendance of at least one thousand scholars from around the world : half from the Western Hemisphere and half from Europe and Asia. As part of the Congress proceedings a special seminar and presentation on "Multilingual Word Processing" is being organised. As well, a publication is being developed that will contain detailed descriptions of present multilingual software for IBM and Macintosh PC-based systems. As members of HUMANIST, I am sure that many of you currently use some form of multilingual word processing package. The package(s) you currently use may be those that assist in implementing english diacritical marks (especially for transliterated text), and/or create and edit foreign-language text documents (such as transliterated Sanskrit, or Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese word processors; just to name a few) I am a new member to this discussion group, and from people such as Willard McCarty and John Bradley (UofT) I am told that many of you could be of some help to me in this situation. As you may know, there are a growing number of multilingual word processors and similar packages that go unheard of among even the most up-to-date computer groups. I am currently looking for more software developers/distributors to contact to obtain more information on such software, and also request submissions for this publication. I am also looking for comments on software packages from people who have been using word processing packages of this type (noted above). I also understand many of you are currently conducting research or have conducted some research in the area of foreign-language word processing, and your comments would be very helpful as well. I would be very grateful if those of you who use multilingual word processing packages (for IBM PC and Macintosh computers) could "flood" me with some helpful information at this address : VENKAT@UTOREPAS If you would like more information on the Congress, or on this particular event in the Congress, please also be free to contact me at : (416) 494-2933 or (416) 585-4578, or FAX at : (416) 585-4584. Thanks, and hope other HUMANIST members can be of some help !!!!! Patanjali S. Venkatacharya, Multilingual Computing Consultant, 33rd International Congress of Asian & North African Studies, The University of Toronto, Canada E-Mail : VENKAT@UTOREPAS From: leblanc@cosy.uoguelph.ca Subject: Interfaces (1/1 Date: Wed, 30 May 90 19:32:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 397 (437) Philip Taylor makes a very good point-- that is, that he regards the idea of the 'natural selection' process of the GUI over command-line has yet to be proven. But the power of the GUI can best be expressed when you need to do something that is much more difficult to do using words, for example, if you need to describe a "spiral staircase", without using your hands or drawing a picture. You end up spinning lines and lines of rter of an hour, before you can adequately complete the description. But with a simple gesture and a few words you cam make the point. But pictures work great ONLY if the information is not particularly specific. Words then act as modifiers, strengthening the pictures, while the pictures strengthen the words. Written language has evolved from pictograms to alphabets because these forms allow us to be much more specific about our ideas. It must be remembered, however, that the GUI is not purely graphic but contains words AND pictures. I believe that the perfect interface will not end at the GUI, but will provide the same level of richness that the world outside the computer provides. That is, 3D, pictures, sound AND text, perhaps even feelies. So the GUI is only a step towards perfection, but that's only because it provides reinforcing information to the computer operator. Michael From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0148 Interfaces (1/125) Date: Wed, 30 May 90 17:06:45 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 398 (438) I use mostly UNIX and MS-DOS. My only foray into the Mac world was to organize a specific product; so I can't speak to its strengths and weaknesses with any authority. My one basic problem with the interface was that I was never sure where I was. The tree structure imposed by DOS and UNIX is apparently so deeply ingrained into the way I do things, that I kept getting lost on the desktop. I know that files are in folders which can be in other folders; so in essense it's the same-- but it wasn't. The ability to move things around on the desktop was too powerful. I had the uneasy feeling that I was moving folders recursively; and I kept losing things. The Mac offers the user so much flexibility that one of its major advantages--the fact that everything works the same way--is undermined by the fact that no user organizes the desktop in the same fashion; which means that when you come into a public machine (or at least one which is used by a number of different people), you never know what you're going to find. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: Clarence Brown <CB@PUCC> Subject: windows 3.0 Date: Thu, 31 May 90 09:41:59 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 399 (439) After a week of using the new WINDOWS 3.0 I wonder whether others with the same or greater experience feel that the debate over the relative merits of the Mac and the PC should now be consigned to the ashbin of history. Yours for global fenestration, Clarence Brown. Comp Lit. Princeton. From: Geoffrey Rockwell <Geoffrey_Rockwell@poczta.utcs.utoronto.ca> Subject: 4.0148 Interfaces (1/125) Date: Thu, 31 May 90 20:31:26 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 400 (440) I think this point has been made before, but I will make it again. The interfaces that are "winning" in the market place allow one to work both from a command line and by pointing and clicking. Take the NeXT, one can open within the GUI a window where one can type commands just like the good old days. In Windows 3.0 one do this, as one can on the Mac if you get MPW. If one is to believe the rumours about the upcoming Mac OS, the Mac will get even more tools for traditional commanding. The success of the GUI is its ability to give commanding personalities their screen space too. One need not loose functionality with a GUI. There is nothing inherent in the notion of a graphical user interface that prevents one from typing text, and asking the system to execute ones commands. The trend I see is towards interfaces that can be used in different ways, with different views for different folks. This I think is an improvement over the "traditional" environments. Geoffrey Rockwell rockwell@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca From: Tzvee Zahavy Subject: Windows 3.0 Date: Fri, 01 Jun 90 01:11:41 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 401 (441) I second the sentiments of Clarence Brown. Windows 3.0 brings the GUI to the PC in a big way. It will have a place in user interface options. But do take heed. There is no final word on this. Just when I was sure that the Mac had that graphical advantage and that it appealed to the masses, my son came home from tenth grade and informed me with great enthusiasm that he discovered how to transform Mac directories from icons to lists and that he was now going to go into our SE's hard disk and "improve" all the folders. What I am sure of is that we need competition to grease the wheels of progress. E-MAIL:MAIC@VM1.SPCS.UMN.EDU BITNET:MAIC@UMINN1________Telephone:(612)920-4263 US-MAIL:UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, CLASSICAL AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES, 310 FOLWELL HALL, MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55455 From: "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM> Subject: 4.0148 Interfaces (1/125) Date: Saturday, 2 Jun 1990 01:03:58 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 402 (442) Philip Taylor's logic is faulty; he asserts the following: - What the Macintosh (and its predecessor, the Lisa) have undoubtedly done is to shew that there is an {\it alternative} to the `traditional' interface --- an alternative which is readily acceptable by, and accepted by, a significant proportion of potential and actual computer users; what they have {\it not} done is to shew that this alternative is so superior that it will, by a process of natural selection, become the only viable interface for the forseeable future. - But he has already said: - However, my worries concerning the quasi-religious fervour which it arouses are nothing compared to my worry that despite the continuance of the debate on countless mailing lists, both the learned journals and the computer industry seem agreed that the war is already won: the future human-computer interface will be graphically oriented. - - Does that premise not, in fact, contradict his assertion? If if the learned journals AND the industry have indeed agreed that the war is won, then someone, somewhere has shown them the value of GUI. I, for one, don't see such homogenization of interfaces of either kind. It would be, quite simply, contrary to the immense flexibility which has come to characterize computer use. Is it still common in GB to use the verb TO SHEW? --Pat Conner --West Virginia University From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0148 Interfaces (1/125) Date: Thu, 31 May 90 22:07 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 403 (443) As a Mac user from 1984, may one offer a suggestion to this command line homily that comes with all its very heavy language? I have found that those who rely always on the icons give me a pain in the brain, that is: everytime a computer support helper gets into my office to fix up a problem with the new system, I find that he/she ahs turned everything to icons, and it is a jungle of unorganized, even chaotic images. But--the Mac also ahs all the features the word folk like, alphabetical listings, dates by sequence, times, etc., all available by menu choice. The mixture of choices makes for a flexible habitat, and one finds that there are mouse and key commands both available after a little acculturation to the machine if that is the correct word? It is the either/or logic that is discomfiting. And the natural selection process shows that icons mixed with the logic of numeration, alphabetization and so forth is coming on the market. The early IBM things were made by engineers to fit the needs of the keyboards and transmission schemes, and had nothing to do wth words or images. It has taken a decade and htings are not yet sorted out. Pazienza, all, please. Kessler at UCLA. From: John Unsworth <JMUEG@NCSUVM> Subject: Re: 4.0151 Qs: Siegen Projector; Net Access to Libraries (2/33) Date: Thu, 31 May 90 18:55:39 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 404 (444) In response to James O'Donnell's question about getting to Internet from other networks, there are at least two commercial gateways. Compuserve provides one (their node address is compuserve.com) and MCI mail provides another (their node is mci.com, I think). I believe that Fidonet also provides access to Internet, and Fidonet is not an institutional network. Of course, in all of these cases, transactions are limited to mail: I don't think you can run any- thing interactive (like Telnet) from any of these nodes. By the way, I'd like to hear more from anyone who has further information--this is a question of in- terest to me as well. John Unsworth <jmueg@ncsuvm> From: John Unsworth <JMUEG@NCSUVM> Subject: network interfaces Date: Fri, 01 Jun 90 19:04:32 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 405 (445) To follow up on my comments of yesterday about inter-connections between the Internet and other networks, I received a newsletter called _The Electronic Web_ which has information about electronic journals, networks, and resources for network information. It is put out by Robert Weber (weber@world.std.com) and it has a nice graphic representation of the network connections. It also has information about _The Matrix_, which is a book (Digital Press, $39.50: 1-800-343-8321) documenting the connections between various networks, and providing information about computer conferencing. John Unsworth jmueg@ncsuvm (bitnet) jmueg@ncsuvm.ncsu.edu (internet) From: Ramon <J_IRIZARRY@UPR1.UPR.CUN.EDU> Subject: Compuserve to Internet Access Date: Sat, 2 Jun 90 13:16 AST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 406 (446) Regarding the question of how to access public libraries through the INTERNET if you do not have a connection in a university, I can offer the following information : You can send messages from Compuserve to anyone on the INTERNET, but it's not interactive so the person could not use it to access the libraries by himself. But if he knows someone with an account on interactive INTERNET he can pass along his request. There are other consumer networks like TYMNET or TELENET, but I doubt that interactive INTERNET access is provided ( maybe someone could check that. ). Some commercial or military installations also have access to the INTERNET and could "give you a lift" if you know someone with an account there. This is done regularly in the UNIX to UNIX networks so I don't see anything wrong or dishonest in it. Ramon Lopez Dept. of Physical Sciences Univ. of Puerto Rico From: CHAA006@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk Subject: RE: 4.0152 Plurals; Idioms; Disintermediation (4/68) Date: Fri, 1 JUN 90 12:17:58 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 407 (447) [deleted quotation] No. At least in South-East England, we stand "in a queue", or "form a queue". The term "a line-up", which I have heard used in <Am.E> for what I would term a "queue", I have only ever encountered once in <Br.E>, and that is in a context where a (well educated) man thought he was going to have to tackle a whole group of youths who were bent on trouble (he had studied the martial arts to 4th Dan level in Japan, so he wasn't entirely intimidated by this thought); he reported the event as "I thought I was going to have to take on a line-up". As to babysitting, although I have never taken part in this activity, I believe thhat we would neither "babysit him" not "babysit for him", assuming that "him" was the baby in question. We might "babysit with him", but if we "babysat {\it for}" anyone, that person would have to be the parent or guardian, not the infant. Which brings me to my own question: in <Am.E>, I have frequently encountered the expression "to visit with", which so far as I know does not occur in <Br.E>; it seems from my experience of "visiting with" that it has connotations far beyond those which are concommitant with the <Br.E> concept of simply "visiting"; when a British person "visit"s someone, they go to that person's house, chat, perhaps have a cup of tea or a snack, and then depart (I wouldn't like to place an upper bound on the length of time that they might stay, but I think that an ordinary "visit" is probably less than a day, whereas an "extended visit" might be several days). However, the time length isn't important, any more than is the tea and snacks: what seems to come across from the <Am.E> usage of "visit with" is that the resulting conversation will be close and intimate, and that the discussion will be about the family and friends, and that there will be lots of reminiscing and so on and so forth ... I realise that this is all very waffly, but am I right: that there is an implicit closeness and intimacy associated with "visit with" that is totally foreign to the British concept of simply "visiting" ? Philip Taylor Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, ``The University of London at Windsor'' From: Julie Falsetti <JEFHC@CUNYVM> Subject: NY speak Date: Thu, 31 May 90 23:54:45 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 408 (448) First of all, I am not a New Yorker and secondly, being a teacher of ESL I have no accent :-). Seriously, I think the change in pronunciation of 'processes' had nothing to do with the fact that this classroom happened to be in New York City. At least 3/4 of the students in the class were not native speakers of English. In most cases if a word is mispronounced, context and intonation will be enough to clarify the meaning. Since the 'processors process the processes' the meaning of the two is so close that a change in pronunciation was necessary. Multi processes are fairly common, whereas multiple CPU's are another story. Julie in Noo Yawk From: J J Higgins <Higgins@np1a.bristol.ac.uk> Subject: Re: 4.0139 Queries (5/60) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 90 16:57:23 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 409 (449) Micro OCP A survey review of concordancers including Micro OCP and WordCruncher will appear in System (Pergamon Press) either Vol 18, 3 or 19, 1. Micro OCP incorporates COCOA formatting (a metalanguage for embedding codes) which allows sophisticated sorting, eg separating citations according to which character is speaking in a play. On most direct comparisons WordCruncher comes out ahead. [ ... ] From: Knut Hofland +47 5 212954/55/56 FAFKH at NOBERGEN Subject: Micro OCP (re: 4.0139 .0153) Date: 1 June 90, 23:35:33 EMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 410 (450) Micro OCP (and the main frame OCP) is very slow so you will need a rather fast machine if you don't want to drink a lot of coffee... I have use "A Dolls House" (155Kb) by Ibsen to test several indexing and concordance programs. On a 16 Mhz 386 machine, Micro OCP used 3:00 minutes to pick out the context of two words (43 occurences). On a standard 4.77 MHz PC, OCP used 25:18 minutes and would have used more than 17 hours if I wanted to search in all of Ibsens plays (about 670.000 running words). WordCruncher and TACT used 2:30 to index "A Dolls House" and then the context of any word could be searched in a matter of seconds. Mark Zimmermanns "Free Text Browser" on a MAC SE/30 (also a 16 Mhz 32 bit machine) index the text in 23 seconds. (This program is available via mail or msg from MACSERVE at PUCC/IRLEARN or ftp from sumex-aim). Other stand alone KWIC programs are 5-6 times as fast as Micro OCP. Micro OCP has a general and powerful command language, but it does not seem to be optimised for speed. The command generator is an interactive part (and a good help for the novice compared to working with OCP on a main frame), but the rest of the program is a batch program. It should be possible to run several jobs in one run, but this is only possible if you makes your own copies of the control file, renames these on after another and run only the search program in between. (This is not mentioned in the manual). My experience with the program is with the first version for PC. WordCruncher is mainly for retriving contexts to words, pattern of words or combinations of words. In the later versions (4.2 or 4.3) it is easy to save the results to a printer or file (F6). It has no option to make a word list sorted by frequency or in reverse order, this has to be done outside WordCruncher (with your own program or a standard program), but the alphabetic word list made by WordCruncher could be a starting point. As a rival to WordCruncher I would recommend TACT from University of Toronto, which has several features not found in WordCruncher, like general pattern match, better possibilities for having references in the text and using them in a search, collocations (in version 1.2). For information about TACT send a note to CCH@UTOREPAS.BITNET. TACT is freeware, for version 1.1 they only charged CDN $30 for printed manual and handling. Knut Hofland The Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities Street adr: Harald Haarfagres gt. 31 Post adr: P.O. Box 53, University, N-5027 Bergen, Norway Tel: +47 5 212954/5/6 Fax: +47 5 322656 From: "Matthew B. Gilmore" <GY945C@GWUVM> Subject: computing/alphabets/language--Comm. of the ACM Date: Fri, 01 Jun 90 15:46:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 411 (451) In the May 1990 Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) [CACM] has a whole section: _Special Section on Alphabets and Language_ * Introduction by Edgar H. Sibley * Six Digit Coding Method by Jinan Qiao, Yizheng Qiao, Sanzheng Qiao =coding Chinese= * Building bilingual microcomputer systems by Murat Tayli and Abdallah Al-Salamah =the Integrated Arabic System (IAS) on IBM PC-based machines= * Typographic style is more than cosmetic by Paul W. Oman and Curtis R. Cook =empirical study on effect of typographic style= * An AI-Based approach to machine translation in Indian Languages by S. Raman and N. Alwar From: Z00WYR01@AWIUNI11 Subject: Re: 4.0155 Asian/N.African Conference Info/Request (1/80) Date: Fri, 01 Jun 90 09:35:42 MEZ X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 412 (452) On Thu, 31 May 90 17:47:01 EDT you said: [deleted quotation] ... [eds] [deleted quotation] Perhaps it would be also of value to include information for those poor people using SCRIPT/DCF. We here in Vienna use it even for most exotic projects like diacritics in early German texts, Sanskrit romanization, early orthodox hymns of East Europe. SCRIPT-L is more concerned with technical matters independent of applications in the humanities. R. Wytek, Computer Center, Univ. of Vienna. From: N_EITELJORG@cc.brynmawr.edu Subject: Re: 4.0107 TeX; RM-Cobol; Autocad (33) Date: Sat, 2 Jun 90 01:45 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 413 (453) A request for information about converting raster images to vector (specifically AutoCAD) images was recently posted. An article in the July, 1989, issue of CADalyst magazine ("Converting Paper to CAD" by David Cohn) compared 5 programs to do that. In addition, David Cohn can be reached on CompuServe for further comment. He is an editor (I think) at CADalyst and an architect. Nick Eiteljorg (n_eiteljorg@brynmawr) From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0154 Foreskins Date: Thu, 31 May 90 21:49 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 162 (454) Dear Nissim, I may have misunderstood the whole discussion; but -- it seems to me that the foreskins claimed (of the Sea Peoples, of the enemy Philistines) were not the corpses of soldiers who were circumcised, but the corpses of the fallen whose foreskins were cut off as trophies. NOt so? YOu count the dea by the number of scalps (if you are an Indian in the American plains, called by teh French word "coups") or the number of phalluses cut off, or foreskins cut off, but the battlefield spoliators, usually old women picking up armor and bracelets, and such, a practice that has continued, one reads, up through the Wars of the Roses and the 100 Years' War. Not so? Kessler at UCLA From: cbf@faulhaber.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Lemmatization programs Date: Thu, 31 May 90 14:53:58 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 414 (455) Are there any automatic or (more realistically) semi-automatic lemmatization programs out there? The latter, for example, might take a machine-readable text and systematically highlight each word (with extremely common words skipped via a stopword list), then allow the user to assign either to assign it to a lemma manually by typing the lemma on a command line or, if one were adding lemmata and forms to an existing corpus, bring up a set of existing lemmata, from which the user could pick the correct one or to which the user could add a new one manually. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: Arther Ferrill <ferrill@blake.acs.washington.edu> Subject: stamps Date: Fri, 1 Jun 90 23:22:45 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 415 (456) I am writing a book on the Roman Emperor Caligula. One problem is the interpretation of the coins of the reign, whether the legends and designs represent Caligula's personal policies. A modern analogy is American commemorative stamps. ... [combined mail, eds] does the President of the U.S. personally approve all commemorative issues? Did some issues under Nixon, e.g., always reflect his own personal views and policies? Stamp collectors out there, help me. . From: IN%"Read@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU" 26-MAY-1990 15:59 Subject: Anthropology Software Request Date: Sat, 2 Jun 90 11:10 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 416 (457) I have been asked to write a review article on the use of computer software in anthropology for the Social Science Computer Review. For this review I want to concentrate on new directions that are being explored with software written by anthropologists. The software need not be finished--I'm interested in work in progress as well. "New directions" should be taken broadly--it can include novel use of application software, courseware, hypercard type programs, hypertext, programs written in any of the standard and not so standard languages, etc. The common theme should be how the software allows one to address problems in anthropology that otherwise would have been difficult to deal with without the software, or how the software has opened up new avenues of research. Finding out about software is very much a word-of-mouth affair, so please reply not only in terms of any software you may be using/writing, but let me know about software you have heard about as well. Please reply by June 15, if possible, to READ@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU. Dwight Read From: Mark Olsen <mark@gide.uchicago.edu> Subject: Brain dead mailer Date: Thu, 31 May 90 22:48:29 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 417 (458) I am trying to send mail to University of Southhampton, but my mailer rejects all attempts to send mail to HII013@IBM.SOTON.AC.UK.BITNET. This form of address works for all the other sites in the UK that I send mail to save for several addresses at Southhampton. Is my mailer brain dead or is Southhampton an exception that proves the rule? The target of my e-mail is the HiDES Project. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Mark From: Jim O'Donnell (Classics, Penn) Subject: 4.0163 Email Date: 02 Jun 90 16:16:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 418 (459) For brain-dead mailers to foreign addresses, always try this form: cybername % address @cunyvm.cuny.edu That will route the message via CUNY, whose machine seems to be much the best informed about overseas addresses (and, if I recall, it is through CUNY that virtually all messages to Europe go anyway). From: INNWN@vm2.uni-c.dk Subject: Danish contacts [eds.] Date: Sat, 02 Jun 90 21:50:59 DST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 419 (460) I have received the request for Danish contacts. There is no translation center at the University of Copenhagen and I found nobody to contact at English Department. However, you may try to get in contact with Bjarne Christoffersen, at Humanist EDB Department, University of Copenhagen, and he might provide you with some information, or adresses for future contact. Personally, I am in Hebrew Bible studies; discourse analysis of the Hebrew Bible and linguistics, and thus of no help. Adress for further possible contacts: BCH at ANNE.IHI.KU.DK From: djb@harvunxw.BITNET (David J. Birnbaum) Subject: Re: 4.0158 Connections between Networks (3/90) Date: Sun, 3 Jun 90 10:14:54 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 420 (461) One of the usenet groups (comp.mail.misc) posts a guide to network gateways several times a year. Those interested in sending mail across gateways may wish to monitor this group to keep up with most up-to-date connections. --David David J. Birnbaum djb@wjh12.harvard.edu [Internet] djb@harvunxw.bitnet [Bitnet] From: George Aichele <73760.1176@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Networks Date: 07 Jun 90 20:07:33 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 421 (462) I have been accessing [is that ok?] Internet, Bitnet, and the rest for several months now via CompuServe. As my college is too cheap/poor to establish a network connection, it's that or nothing for me. It is complicated and expensive, and email only, but it does work quite well. I have to be very conscious of how long I'm online (my software helps there)--I turn "autosave" on, scroll through the entire list of letters as fast as I can (deleting only when I'm _sure_ I'm not interested) and then read at my leisure once offline. If you're getting started on a modem on your own phone, I suggest you do some practice runs on a "free" local number (perhaps your college computer has a phone connection, or there are many local bulletin boards) before you get very involved with a commercial service. That way you can explore the hard- and software without running up a gigantic bill. If you're trying to reach someone on CompuServe, I'll be happy to look up an ID#/mailbox for you. George Aichele 73760,1176@compuserve.com From: "N. MILLER" <NMILLER@TRINCC> Subject: Windows 3.0 Date: Sun, 3 Jun 90 19:09 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 422 (463) Clarence Brown's note is somewhat ambiguous. Should the PC/Mac debate be relegated to history's dustbin because there's now a clear winner or because it's a dumb question? And what exactly is included in the act of global (de)fenestration? The baby together with the bath water? My own opinion of Windows 3.0 (having been suckered into it by the tons of hype that appeared in the NY Times) is that it remains a video-arcade toy. Aside from being s l o w and taking up some 4 mb., what does it do for _adult_ users that trusty Desqview doesn't do more swiftly and more elegantly? The question that intrigues me is how Microsoft can go on getting richer while producing one bomb after another. Perhaps this is what Mr. Brown had in mind, in which case I would certainly agree that mashing the delete button is in order. N. Miller From: CHAA006@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk Subject: RE: 4.0157 Interfaces Date: Mon, 4 JUN 90 18:50:05 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 423 (464) "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM> wrote: [deleted quotation] [Sorry about the long extract, but I can't see how to answer Patrick's assertion without repeating his/my premises ...] I don't think that the facts and my assertion are inconsistent. Yes, industry and the learned journals seem agreed that GUIs rule ok (to use a slightly dated UK idiom), but there's a hell of a lot of people --- real users --- who seem unconvinced. There is a directly analogous situation w.r.t. Unix; industry and the l-js seem convinced that Unix is {\it the} operating system of the future, yet there are hundreds and thousands (hundreds of thousands ?) of users who continue to use (and prefer) VMS, or MS/DOS, or even `Macintosh' (what is the correct name for the Macintosh's operating system ?). The fact that command-line users, and VMS users, still exist in such numbers, and are prepared to continue to argue their case (albeit on bulletin boards rather than in academic journals) suggests to me that natural selection has not yet occurred; it is taking place, and there is a distinct possibility that GUIs and Unix may yet win, but I do not believe that the war is won. If I were, I probably wouldn't have wasted my time writing my original submission. Perhaps as one whose motor-visual skills [and visuo-mental skills: am I the only one in the world to whom airline safety procedures are a totally meaningless set of pictographs ?] are very poorly developed, I never will grow to accept the mouse as anything but a pain in the @rse [<Br.E>, = `pain in the b@tt' <Am.E>], but I can certainly accept that pop-up windows have a great deal to offer. Indeed, in an off-line discussion with David Benfield <Benfield@Apollo.Montclair.Edu>, I think we converged on agreement that the single most beneficial enhancement to the present command-line interface would be a pop-up window, available at any point in the command, which would allow the user to (a) see what productions are valid at this point; (b) see what other productions would have been valid if the command had been entered differently; (c) investigate other topics from the `Help' system, and (d) enter another, perhaps quite different command, while retaining the partially-entered command in its entirety [David suggested that this could also be a pseudo- command entry, which would allow commands to be checked for their syntax (and perhaps for their semantics) without actually performing the command.] Of these, (a) already exists in a remarkable program written by Stan Rabinowitz called WHAT [and probably elsewhere as well], and point [7] of the original desiderata was intended to suggest some of these ideas. From: MFZXREP@cms.manchester-computing-centre.ac.uk Subject: Wordprocessing query Date: Mon, 11 Jun 90 11:56:33 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 424 (465) This is a message that I have been asked to pass on by a working party who are to report on wordprocessing facilities within the Humanities and to make a reccomendation for future use encompassing as wide a spectrum of humanities needs as possible. Guy Percival, computing officer, Arts, University of Manchester. We are at present investigating the capabilities of various word- processing systems with the view of recommending the system(s) to the relevant departments within the faculty. We would be interested to hear from others who have carried out similar studies, and who have practical knowlegde of the systems. Our criteria for rating a system covers several main areas; Right to left wordprocessing for Aramaic and Hebrew. Good diacritics/character sets for a wide range of languages. A wide range of fonts and printer drivers supporting them. Ability to present parrallel texts/translations. Bibliographic capabilities. Indexing and tabulation. WYSIWYG-iness. General user-friendliness, good interface. Good on-line help facilities. Footnote and endnote creation/automatic numbering/renumbering. As there are areas not included above which are neccessary for some applications, we would also like to hear from users of systems in various disciplines who have found certain systems to be most desirable in their area. We would like to hear from both MAC and PC users as we intend to include a recommendation as to the preferred o/s in our report. Replies to. Mr Gordon Neal - mffgkgn@uk.ac.mcc.cms (g.neal@uk.ac.manchester) Mr Guy Percival - mfzxrep@uk.ac.mcc.cms (g.percival@uk.ac.manchester). Arts Faculty. University of Manchester. U.K. From: ZLSIISA@cms.manchester-computing-centre.ac.uk Subject: Bibliographic software query Date: Fri, 08 Jun 90 09:22:41 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 425 (466) I am writing on behalf of a working party which has been set up here at the University of Manchester to review bibliographic software. We have identified 18 different products, but for two of them we have very little information. Does anyone out there use, or know about, DMS4CITE or Papyrus? We would be glad to hear from you, especially any specific comments about good and bad points. Thank you. Sarah Davnall (Davnall@Manchester.ac.uk) From: "Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius" <KEHANDLEY@AMHERST> Subject: WordPerfect and Greek Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 09:20 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 426 (467) I have a Greek Language Module for WP 5.1. Installation is easy, as is using it. Problems: Sometimes printing did not work. Once I tried printing on an Epson LX-800, and it worked fine (except for the problem with some characters being struck 6 or 7 times (the ones that WP has to make graphically), while others are only struck once). Currently, the output is not acceptable on an LX-800, and all 9-pins, I imagine (unless they have a Greek font built in). BUT, sometimes I could not get it to print "correctly" at all. I would get extraneous characters, and not get the right ones. There seemed to be no problems printing to a PostScript printer, though, as far as the mechanics go. There is a problem with diacriticals printed on a PostScript printer: they are not good representations of printed diacriticals (for instance, there is often no separation between the diacritic and the letter, and it appears that WP just uses ' and ` for acute and grave accents, which makes them difficult to tell apart sometimes). I also am not certain that the complete Greek WP character set is really a complete Greek character set, that is, some possible character/dia- critic combinations may be missing. Also, I believe that (at least with a VGA, maybe not with a Herc+) you can only have two languages installed at one time (English and something else) so that multi-lingual documents that aren't mostly Western European are still out. What does all this say? To me, it means that WP is still way behind Nota Bene in foreign alphabet word processing, but you all already knew that. (based upon Humanists' comments on NB: I will get NB when the new year comes in July) (Also, a coworker tried the Cyrillic Module and really hated it, seeing no reason to switch from Turbofonts, a third-party add in that makes WP print and display Cyrillic characters.) Keith Handley Amherst College Academic Computer Center From: Louis Janus <janus@ux.acs.umn.edu> Subject: grammar checking for foreign lang pedagogy Date: Sun, 3 Jun 90 16:13:22 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 427 (468) Does anyone know of a grammar checking program (or better a shell for a program) that could be used for foreign language teaching. I picture a system in which students type in their papers and get not just corrections on bad grammar or poor usage, but a good explanation of the grammar points that were used poorly? By a shell for this system, I propose that any teacher or group of teachers could list the type of mistakes that their students make, and call up the appropriate screens of explanation. If no one knows of such a system, what do you think? Would it be a useful way to help students? Would it be more complicated to program than the results would warrant? I'd appreciate ideas and information. Louis Janus Scandinavian Dept U of Minn From: Charles Ess <DRU001D@SMSVMA> Subject: MACSERV address Date: Sat, 02 Jun 90 23:21:06 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 428 (469) I was intrigued by a recent mention of "MACSERV at PUCC/IRLEARN" as a source for a Macintosh indexing program. Can someone please provide me with the correct BITNET address so that I can get the Mac program? Thanks in advance, Charles Ess Drury College P.S. Although I use a Mac, I also wish to irrefutably demonstrate that one can do perfectly adequate graphics on the IBM. To wit: __ / 0_____ | .\ | )----' / | \ \ | | | \ | |__/ | \_____/ |____) -- P. Opus, distinguished flightless water fowl From: Jane Andrew <ST402834@BROWNVM> Subject: telephones and e-mail Date: Mon, 04 Jun 90 23:09:34 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 429 (470) As a new subscriber browsing through last month's postings, I was struck by someone's comparison of the current state of e-mail to the early days of telephone use. This connected up with something I've become curious about...does anyone have a recommendation for a good book on the history of the telephone? I'd like a look at either the dynamics of the industry (the interplay of research and commercial pressures) or the effect of phones on society at large. I was told that our basic 7-digit numbers were the direct result of George Miller's famous paper, The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two. True or not? Also, three cheers for the person who described these lists as the electronic equivalent of the faculty coffeeshop! I think that captures it perfectly, except that it's a coffeeshop where students are also welcome. Jane Andrew Brown University From: JONATHAN KANDELL <KANDELL@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu> Subject: Re: 4.0146 Pronunciation (3/72) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 16:21 MST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 430 (471) Can anyone out there familiar with secular biblical studies tell me what are generally considered the best english translations of the Old Testament? kandell@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu From: Brian Minsk <BMINSK@EMUBUS> Subject: Query: Color Projection Panel Date: Wed, 6 Jun 90 16:05 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 431 (472) I am looking for a color LCD projection panel that can work with VGA and Mac II (also, potentially, Mac SE). Any recommendations from HUMANISTs? Brian From: U245 at ITOCSIVM Subject: Date: 8 June 90, 17:27:27 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 432 (473) subject: 3270 emulation without hardware Does anyone know if it is possible to emulate a 3270 terminal only with communication software, without any dedicate card? Thank you. Please, if you can help, write directly to me at my email address. Maurizio Lana From: A_ARISTAR@vaxa.uwa.OZ.AU Subject: List of Bboards Date: Mon, 11 Jun 90 16:22:16 wst X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 433 (474) Someone here asked me recently whether there was any list of bboards available via Internet or Bitnet. I admit I blenched--there must surely be dozens--and I was even further taken aback when I realized that the person didn't just mean academic bboards and er mailing lists either, but anything and everything known to man or woman. The upshot of it was that I said I would at least post this to Humanist, to see whether anyone can give an answer to this dangerous question. Any takers? Anthony Aristar From: Jan Eveleth <EVELETH@YALEVM> Subject: To Visit Date: Mon, 04 Jun 90 10:50:55 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 434 (475) In Maine where I grew up, "visiting" was something you did with people out of town and usually involved an overnight stay and at least 1/2 hour in the car to get there. We visited with people we didn't routinely have an opportunity to see. After moving to Indiana, the word took on new meaning--particularly after hiring a native Kentuckian. In Indiana, "visiting" was usually done in your neighbors' kitchen or on their porch and frequently included something to drink and munch on. My Kentuckian however would use the word synonymously for any type of conversation--including business meetings. An appointment with his manager to discuss job evaluations was "a visit"; a conversation in the hall with another staff member was recounted as "I was just visiting with Sam Hill..."; a request to talk about pay was made by asking "I'd like to talk about my wages. Do you have time to visit tomorrow?" Appointments were visits, parties were visits, conversations were visits. Certainly, not everyone from Kentucky "visits" so liberally. Nonetheless, I'm glad to be back in New England where an appointment is business and I can visit my family in Maine after sitting in the car for 9 hours. --Jan Eveleth eveleth@yalevm Yale University From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0159 Idioms; Pronunciation (2/42) Date: Mon, 04 Jun 90 12:11 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 435 (476) for Philip Taylor: I think a lineup in the US is the few people in the police identification room, the suspects, from which the witness are to choose the one they think committed whatever. I have been to one. The lineup is also the team 's ordering for baseball, the order in which they come to bat. Otherwise, it is a line that you stand in, or line up in for tickets, entry, etc. We stand in l ine and on line, which is what queuing is. Visit with is perhaps a rural Midwesternism, one or both. I never heard it in the East, or West. Maybe it is Southern or Swestern. It probably also hearkens back to before the automobile. Yrs Kessler at UCLA From: Clarence Brown <CB@PUCC> Subject: visit with Date: Tue, 05 Jun 90 08:41:41 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 436 (477) The phrase "visit with," discussed in a recent submission, is a Southernism and could often be heard in the speech of Lyndon Baines Johnson. In South Carolina we used to "visit with" neighbors wherever they were encountered-- at the grocery store or the country club--and not necessarily at home. Yall come. Clarence Brown. Comp Lit. Princeton. From: Sarah Jones <SAAJONES@IUBACS> Subject: Re: 4.0159 ("visit with") Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 09:52 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 437 (478) Regarding the connotations associated with "to visit with" in American English..... Where I come from (a small town in east central Iowa), there isn't a particular sense of intimacy or closeness connected with "visiting with" someone. Friendliness, neighborliness, yes, but no special intimacy. Actually, "to visit" has two meanings back home. One refers to the physical act of going to another person's house in order to see them on a social basis. The other names the chit-chat that goes on while you're there. This second sense can occur without the preposition "with"; alternatively, the expression including "with" has only one meaning--that of the chit-chat. While this chatting occurs between people who may have a dimension of closeness or intimacy in their relationship, the content of the chatting is not intimate. That is, matters of special personal or political importance, or matters touching on anything remotely controversial, are actively avoided. Sarah Jones Indiana University SAAJONES@IUBACS.BITNET From: MHEIM@CALSTATE Subject: Halio Date: Mon, 04 Jun 90 22:54:59 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 438 (479) Since Marcia Halio's article continues to provoke strong reactions, we need as much information as possible about the conditions under which her observations were made. Unfortunately, the original article in AC failed to provide important details. I don't think Marcia realized how sensitive a nerve her article would strike. But some of her critics continue to expound views based on the assumption that Halio's students chose to go into a Mac section or an IBM section of English comp. That's not correct. In a letter from March 4, 1990, Marcia wrote me the following: "Some letters have attacked my article because the students 'freely chose' either IBMs or Macs. In the survey I did last fall, 75% of the students said they had not even noticed they were signing up for computer sections; they simply chose a section of freshman comp because of the time of the day or some other factor unrelated to computers. So the students really were a random sample of the population of mid-range freshmen at our university -- a state-supported school that attracts neither Ivy Leaguers nor sub-literate dingbats." She goes on to say: "I am now in the midst of a controlled experiment with six classes of freshmen English and three classes of junior and senior business writing. I should be spending the summer working with five other teachers evaluating the data obtained." I submit this not out of a desire to defend her thesis but because I like to see criticism hitting the mark rather than puncturing straw men. Mike Heim Cal State Long Beach From: "GILES R. HOYT" <IPIF100@INDYCMS> Subject: More on IBM vs. Mac for writing Date: Sat, 09 Jun 90 15:21:48 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 439 (480) Jim Seymour, a columnist for PC Week, has picked up on the controversy involving the recent article in Acadmic Computing. He intimates that there is indeed something to the accusation that writers using the Mac tend not to write as persuasively as those using DOS machines. He picks up on the argument from the point of view of the corporate world. He states: "I thought back over the mail I get, over drafts of corporate proposals I read. I recalled many conversations with corporate PC managers about the kinds of people in their companies who ask for Macs and those who ask for DOS machines. And I have to agree: Despite its undeniable advantages, the Mac does lull some users into producing shallow work. Why? My guess is that using a DOS machine forces us to confront working at the computer in a much more structured and rigorous way. . . . Even more powerfully, a plain-looking page of PC-produced text forces us to look at the words and sentences, think about the ideas. Grammatical mistakes and flimsy arguments stand out more sharply than on those more handsome pages that roll out of Mac users' LaserWriters." He wishes to hear from readers regarding their opinions on the matter. Now the corporate community can sharpen their rhetoric if not their logic and observation skills, on the issue. As a PC user, i.e., DOS-user, I am now worried about what Windows 3 is going to do to my writing talents, sharpened to a razor's edge by years of work with CP/M and DOS text oriented computers. Only time will tell. Fellow HUMANISTs will please keep a critical eye on the style and precision of the occasional pieces I may contribute to this LIST. If decline is observed, please warn me immediately. Giles R. Hoyt, IUPUI, Indpls IN From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear <EDITORS@BROWNVM> Subject: Conference at Siegen and Jet-Lagged Editors Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 16:40:57 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 170 (481) For Humanists who may have missed our note of June 1, the editors were not simply pulling a bunk and disappearing off the face of the earth for 10 days; we were in Siegen, West Germany, attending the 1990 ALLC/ACH conference. Entitled "The New Medium," the conference brought together approximately 220 scholars and staff from colleges, universities and research institutes. It was a pleasure for us to meet in person many Humanists we'd previously known only as user ids, to re-meet some old friends, and to be reminded again that electronic personae are often very different from the virtual reality! Our thanks go out to the conference organizers, and especially to Helmut Schanze, Susan Hockey, and Nancy Ide. Dan Brink, you've got your work cut out for you! We spent mornings in plenary meetings that discussed many questions of vital interest to computing humanists, and afternoons in more specialized sessions. We hope to report more about the conference on Humanist, and we'd also like to re-open some of the questions that arose at Siegen for broader discussion here. We're hereby encouraging all conference participants to share their impressions with other Humanists -- we know there are several unfinished discussions out there. Right now, unfortunately, we're both still exhibiting the mind-numbing effects of jet-lag and are struggling to remember exactly what time zone we're in! Please bear with us as we re-orient ourselves; you'll hear from us -- and even more from the other conference attendees -- over the next several days and weeks. Elaine & Allen From: "Robin C. Cover" <ZRCC1001@SMUVM1> Subject: LEMMATIZATION Date: Sat, 02 Jun 90 16:36:00 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 440 (482) Re: 4.0163, Faulhaber's query on lemmatization programs I'm sure lemmatization programs must be available for English (beyond those that may be mentioned in the <cit>Humanities Computing Yearbook</cit>). For a more generalized approach (other natural languages), you might examine the interlinear text (IT) processing program developed at SIL. It's not a dedicated lemmatizer, but a tool for developing a corpus of annotated interlinear text. Among other things, it maintains lexical mappings between multi-line interlinear aligned fields, two of which could certainly be your base test and lemma. Much of the annotation process is done automatically. They also have a related program (something like ITF, "interlinear text formatter"), a (La)TeX based tool that supports typesetting of texts in interesting interlinear text formats -- though this package may not be complete yet. The IT program does just about what you asked for, though a lot more. The IT program (quoting an older brochure): * keeps word and morpheme annotations aligned vertically with base form * saves word and morpheme annotations in on-line lexical database * retrieves previous annotations to ensure consistency * inserts annotations automatically when unambiguous * asks for user input when annotation is unknown or has multiple options * adds new annotations automatically to lexical database * allows user to specify organization and type of annotations * up to 22 kinds of annotations per analyzed text Word or morpheme annotations might include: phonetic transcription, traditional orthography, allomorphic transcription, morphemic representation, lexemic representation, morpheme glosses, word glosses, grammatical categories, syntactic bracketing, functional labels, semantic case roles, semantic subcategorization, participant indexing, intonation, and so forth. In addition to word- and morpheme-level glosses, freeform (clause, sentence) annotations are also possible. There might be a description of IT in the 1988 HCY, but it would be out-of-date by now. You want the description of the Mac program. The earliest DOS versions of IT were (in my judgment) a bit hard to use. With the improved documentation and interactive interface in the Macintosh incarnation, I think IT is quite a usable tool. The Mac version is quite superior to the IBM version, especially in guiding the user through the process of creating a text model. The program currently has only minimal facilities for database manipulation (though it can generate dictionaries and mappings of various kinds). For full database handling of these interlinear text databases, one can use LBase, a PC-based program mentioned previously on this forum. For availability of IT, contact: The Academic Book Center Summer Institute of Linguistics 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Road Dallas, TX 75236 USA (214) 709-2404 Robin Cover BITNET: zrcc1001@smuvm1 INTERNET: robin@txsil.lonestar.org From: Subject: Date: X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 441 (483) DATE: 13 JUN 90 16:40 CET FROM: A400101@DM0LRZ01 SUBJECT: 4.163 lemmatization As regards Charles Faulhaber's query on lemmatization, I know of no generally available, _language-independent_ programs. But I am doubtful about lemmatizing interactively at all. It really is preferable, in our experience (we have just produced a lemmatized concordance to Gratian's Decretum, which is a text of about 4 MB with 420000 words), to be able to look at a whole set of lexical forms with information about whether the system thinks they are unambiguous or not. If you arrange your text into a table of forms (case-insensitive) and a table of instances giving information about position in text, how to convert back for upper/lower-case, etc., then you only need to lemmatize the _forms_ in a text (in medieval Latin, the ratio of forms to occurences is about 1:10 in a large text - I don't know how this compares with other languages and much would probably depend on whether the orthography is standardized or not). Most forms a good morphological analyser will be able to tell you are unambiguous and you can look at its decision and then in most cases can forget about hand intervention at all; for the seemingly ambiguous ones you can in a lot of cases (again, generalising here from medieval Latin) say that the ambiguousness is only theoretical - and that leaves you with only a very small number of forms which need to be disambiguated by hand. If you let things come by you interactively and do them on the fly, the risk of mistakes is much greater, and it's hard, in a large text, to stay consistent. None of this answers the question of what programs will do this for you - but if your preferred system has a relational DBMS and you have a reasonably helpfully organized machine-readable dictionary in the language of your choice it ought to be possible to set something up without too much difficulty ... Timothy Reuter, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Munich From: <PWILLETT@BINGVAXC> Subject: Software of the Future Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 09:45 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 442 (484) The members of HUMANIST have in the past discussed the scholar's workstation of the future. I'd like to turn the discussion to musings about the software of the future, particularly software for text analysis. At a recent conference (IASSIST--mostly social scientists, but this year's conference included consideration of electronic texts, images and sounds) I heard several presentations about text analysis software. It seems to me, without having a good grasp of the nature of research using this software, that most of the software is based on one of two types: a concordance model, or a mark-up scheme. Using concordance-type software like WordCruncher requires, it seems to me, a fairly thorough familiarity with the text under analysis, searching for evidence of occurences the researcher already knows to be there. The second type, using mark-up schemes, requires that one painstakingly plan what we wish the computer to tell us. If *only* syntactic elements are marked, then searching by structural elements is still impossible. These two types of software strike me to be somewhat first- generational. I've looked briefly through the _Humanities Computing Yearbook_ for evidence of other kinds, but do not see anything. Perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps the complexities of language and literature will not allow for any more sophistication than this. Perhaps the development necessary isn't equivalent to the expected financial or career payoff. Still, I would like to hear from other HUMANISTs the kinds of software they would like to see developed for text analysis, either taking into consideration the limits of humankind and machinery, or not, whatever one's preference. I think both pragmatists and dreamers can contribute to this discussion. What will the literary software of the future do, what will it look like, and who will develop it? Perry Willett Main Library SUNY-Binghamton PWILLETT@BINGVAXC From: Richard Goerwitz <goer@sophist.uchicago.edu> Subject: programming these silly micros - a relevant concern Date: Tue, 12 Jun 90 22:55:59 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 443 (485) Every few months we seem to get into a pretty senseless debate over GUIs. We know that GUIs are good for some things, and not good for others. Likewise, good command-line interfaces can be very good for some things, and not so good for others. Some combina- tion of both is probably ideal. Certainly the Mac errs on the one side, and MS-DOS errs on the other. Maybe Microsoft Windows is okay for some people. Maybe the OS/2 presentation manager is okay for others. For many (me included) we let our kids play games on Macs and PCs and do our real work under Unix :-). One thing I would point out is that people seem to be forgetting an important point about computing: Programming. If an architecture or an operating system does not permit easy programming, software is going to be expensive and not as easy to come by. Conversely, if a machine or an OS is easy to program, software will be cheap and plentiful. What Mac fanatics don't seem to be able to get through their heads is that their machine was trend-breaking and innovative in only ONE respect: The GUI. As a programming environment, the Mac was, if anything, a setback. This doesn't mean that MS-DOS, or specifically IBM, people should jump with glee. This isn't a soccer game and we aren't fans. We are just a bunch of cold observers looking over long-term market trends, and trying to assess the relative advantages and disadvan- tages of various bits of hardware and software. For multilingual work, the Mac wins hands down. MS-DOS users are in the dark ages. Nota Bene is cute, but is fundamentally limited by its operating environment. For programming ease, MS-DOS wins hands down. And besides, just pick up a trade journal some time and it will become obvious that there is FAR more MS-DOS software that runs faster on cheaper hardware than you'll get for a Mac. It's a tradeoff, and there's no sense getting all up in arms about this or that cute GUI. GUIs are important. The Mac, however, does not represent a quantum step beyond its competetion in this respect anymore. If you don't want to program it, don't care about the cost of peripherals and what not, and are happy with the software base, then buy one. It's still a very nice machine. I'd love to have a Mac II on my desk here at home, especially if Apple gets its act together and offers us a Unix version that will be a breeze to port things to. -Richard L. Goerwitz goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer From: John McRae <JRM@CORNELLA> Subject: Conference announcement Date: Fri, 08 Jun 90 14:42:49 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 444 (486) CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS "Buddhism in the Modern World" FKS International Buddhist Conference December 25-29, 1990 Fo Kuang Shan Kao-hsiung, Taiwan The North American coordinators for the FKS International Buddhist Conference, to be held December 25-29, 1990 at Fo Kuang Shan, Kao-hsiung, Taiwan, on the subject of "Buddhism in the Modern World," are issuing a call for paper proposals. Topics may involve any aspect, country, or tradition of contemporary Buddhism (i.e., doctrine, recent history, social issues; Thailand, CHINA, UNITED STATES, ETC.; THERAVADA, MAHAYANA, VAJRAYANA) BUT SHOULD REPRESENT original research. Papers will be selected on the basis of originality and significance; graduate students, independent scholars, and junior and senior faculty are encouraged to apply. Please send a statement of intent and a brief description of the proposed paper as soon as possible; an information packet including a description of paper format, reply form, and personal data form will be provided. Abstracts of 500-1000 words are due September 10, 1990, and initial paper drafts by November 1; requests for extensions of these deadlines will be considered on an individual basis. This is the third in a series of major conferences sponsored by Fo Kuang Shan, THE EARLIER TWO BEING ON SUTRIC AND TANTRIC BUDDHISM (DECEMBER 1986) AND THE PLATFORM SUTRA AND CH'AN BUDDHISM (JANUARY 1988). IN ADDITION, THE 1990 conference will be followed by a FKS Buddhist Youth Conference on "The Modernization of Buddhism," January 1-5, 1991, which participants will be invited to attend. All participants will be responsible for their travelling expenses to Fo Kuang Shan and back, but the Fo Kuang Shan Cultural and Educational Foundation will be responsible for food, lodging, and local sightseeing during the conference. All papers recommended by the Program Committee and presented in the conference will be rewarded $700.00. After panel discussion and any necessary revisions by the author (to be done within one month after the conference) all papers will be collected and published by the Fo Kuang Shan Cultural and Educational Foundation. Send paper proposals, abstracts, and any requests for further information to: John R. McRae, Asst. Professor (607) 255-1328 Department of Asian Studies, RF 389 BITNET: JRM@CORNELLA Cornell University ITHACA, NY 14853-2502 From: Hedy McGarrell <alfmcgarrell@brocku.ca> Subject: FREINET CONFERENCE Date: 13 Jun 90 9:54 -0600 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 445 (487) One of my colleagues asked me to submit the following announcement: FREINET PEDAGOGY/COOPERATIVE LEARNING CONFERENCE Plenary sessions and workshops on the Celestin Freinet approach to cooperative learning, with attention to Language Arts, Arithmetic, Social Studies, and Community Projects. Sessions by presenters from Canada, the USA and France. October 11-13, 1990, at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, CANADA, L2S 3A1 Full schedule and registration details by return post or fax from John Sivell, Department of Applied Language Studies (416-688-5550 x3374; Fax 416-682-9020), Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1 (or use e-mail ALFMCGARRELL@BrockU.CA) From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Top Level Professional Opportunity Date: Tuesday, 12 June 1990 2310-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 174 (488) The following is the official notice for a (resumed) search for a top-level academic/administrative position at Penn. Obviously it is a key position, replete with ambiguities and challenges, in an ambiguous and challenging University environment. I will be happy to provide further, less official information and insights if desired. The "right" humanistically oriented person in this position would be a godsend! Bob Kraft (Prof of Religious Studies, U Penn) ----- VICE PROVOST FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND COMPUTING University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania invites applications and nominations for the position of Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing. The Vice Provost will provide vision and leadership for all computing activities at the University. Specific duties include: strategic planning in connection with both academic and administrative computing; responsibility for development and management of adminsitrative information systems, including all mainframe administrative applications (both financial/resource- management and academic/recordkeeping) and decentralized information collection and dissemination strategies; responsibility for the maintenance, logical development and expansion of a campus-wide network for both academic and administrative data communications; negotiations and contracting with external vendors and suppliers; development of policies and procedures for coordination, resource sharing, and long range planning in connection with all academic computing activities in the individual Schools and developing, in conjunction with the libraries, plans for the scholarly information environment of the University. We seek a proven leader in the field. Qualifications include an advanced degree and substantial experience in a leadership position in an information systems environment at or similar to that of a large research university. Creative vision, technical competence, and sensitivity to the multi-faceted and decentralized nature of computing in a university environment are essential. A faculty appointment would be avaialble for a suitably qualified candidate. Nominations and applications should be directed to: Search Committee Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing 106 College Hall University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia PA 19104-6381 The University of Pennsylvania is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. //end of formal announcement// Nominations and applications can also be made through Michael Luskin 200 Lake Drive East, Suite 101 Cherry Hill NJ 08002 609-482-7890 [That might actually be a more efficient route. RAK] From: <PWILLETT@BINGVAXC> Subject: RE: list of bboards Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 08:37 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 446 (489) This probably doesn't answer the question about a list of bboards, but I recently found out about a guide to Internet resources. This 200-page guide lists many of the resources, like library catalogs, supercomputing centers, databases like the Dartmouth Dante project, that are available through the Internet. This list, like all lists, is not complete; there are for instance only about 15 or so libraries included. Still, it seems to be a good source of info. It is available through anonymous FTP from the NSF Network Service Center (Internet address: nnsc.nsf.net), and is available in either Postscript or ASCII format in subdirectory "resource-guide". It is fairly large, and the easiest way to get it is in a compressed file with the *.tar.z extension. Perry Willett SUNY-Binghamton PWILLETT@BINGVAXC From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM> Subject: Connections between networks Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 07:48:49 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 447 (490) David Birnbaum mentions a internetwork mail guide posted on Usenet. This may be John Chew's guide--a monthly compilation of how to get from one network to another. Art St. George has been kind enough to keep the current copy on a server available to Bitnet users. For the most recent copy, send mail to LISTSERV@UNMVM with GET NETWORK GUIDE in the body. Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM Journalism Dept. Internet: eparker@well.sf.ca.us Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 USA UUCP: {psuvax1}!cmuvm.bitnet!3zlufur From: "Tony Roder" <TONY@SLACVM> Subject: Re: List of Bboards Date: Wed, 13 Jun 1990 08:39 PST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 448 (491) SIMTEL20 lists several BBoard lists in its <msdos.bboard> (I think) directory. Very comprehensive and updated. How to reach SIMTEL is an arcane science known best by you local wizzzzzzard. Good luck. From: CHAA006@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk Subject: Re: `Brain dead mailer' Date: Fri, 8 JUN 90 18:44:59 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 449 (492) Mark Olsen <mark@gide.uchicago.edu> asked: [deleted quotation] There is probably some confusion at your site. Both `Bitnet' and `Uk' are top-level domains; an address should not end with both. I would recommend HII013@IBM.SOTON.AC.UK or HII013%IBM.SOTON.AC.UK@UKACRL.BITNET Philip Taylor Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, ``The University of London at Windsor'' From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Re: 4.0139 Queries -- RAMBAM (MAIMONIDES) Date: Sun, 3 Jun 1990 09:14 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 450 (493) In reply to Ronen Shapira's query about "Maimonides' Attitude to Old Age", see Harry Fox, "Maimonides on Aging and the Aged in Light of the Esotericist-Harmonist Debate", in *The Master as Exemplar: Studies in Maimonides*, ed. Ira Robinson *et al*, Edwin Mellon Press, Spring/Summer 1990, pp. 317-381. Fortunately, Prof. Fox (of the University of Toronto) is in Jerusalem; you can reach him by phone 02-225076 if you have further questions. He is not sure whether the book has already appeared or not. He also told me that in the above article he deals with the sources about Rambam's influence as a physician on non-Jews and that this article is part of a book-length study of the subject which he is preparing. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: Steve Mason <SHLOMO@YORKVM1> Subject: English OT Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 14:53:51 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 451 (494) What one considers the best English translation of the OT will depend, of course, on one's criteria. I suggest the following: (a) the Revised Standard Version has been, for some time now, as close as we come to a standard for university work in biblical studies. It is generally considered to be a solid, "critical" translation. It is widely used in scholarly monographs and, in my experience, in undergraduate teaching. It is available cheaply, in numerous formats, and several derivative study aids (of a secular sort, including electronic and paper concordances) also use it. Finally, the RSV is subject to continual revision, to keep pace with changes in the language; a new version has been released this summer. So, for a combination of accuracy and versatility, the RSV is hard to beat. (b) None of this means that the RSV is the *best* translation. The New English Bible, New American Bible, and New International Version all have their advocates and constituencies. But (i) the ancillary study tools available for these versions are relatively meagre -- although the (evangelical Protestant) NIV crowd are trying very hard to change that -- and (ii) none of these has been able to capture a significant share of the N. American university market. (c) There is, however, another possibility. The translation of the Hebrew Bible done by the Jewish Publication Society, called _Tanakh: the Holy Scriptures_ is, in my view, the very best alternative for university work. It does not have the versatility of the RSV (by a long shot), BUT: (i) it is an original translation of the Hebrew text, fully critical, and free of the influence of the Christian translation tradition; (ii) it is indeed not the "Old Testament", but the Hebrew Bible -- a self- contained collection whose integrity is not conditioned by a Christian interpretive appendix (the "New Testament"); (iii) the proper, original order of the text (Torah, Prophets, Writings) is preserved, rather than the Christian arrangement; (iv) the translation itself draws upon quite recent insights into the development of the language from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ugaritic, Akkadian, and other sources; and (v) it is an elegant translation, attractively laid out. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to studying the Bible in university is the very familiarity (or perceived familiarity) of the text. Whatever you recommend that they buy, a good portion of your students will roll up with the old family Bible -- dog-eared, perhaps annotated, black-covered, and probably in what one student called "the King James Virgin". I have found that using the Tanakh in class helps to avoid this problem. Students usually decide that the Tanakh is sufficiently different from their familiar Bibles, in both translation and layout, as to warrant the purchase of the new text. And that's where the real fun of learning begins. Like the Corn Flakes ads say, they can "taste it again for the first time". Steve Mason Humaniites, York U. From: Steve Mason <SHLOMO@YORKVM1> Subject: JUDAICA FELLOWSHIPS Date: Sun, 03 Jun 90 11:13:18 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 452 (495) Isaiah Gafni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has asked me to post the following announcement. Visiting Fellowships in Jewish Studies Yad Hanadiv and the Barecha Foundation have established a Visiting Fellowship program in Jewish Studies. Fellowships are awarded to teachers of Jewish Studies who hold non-tenured university positions. Fellows will spend a year in Israel, participating in a structured program together with a senior scholar in their field of study, while concurrently working on their own research projects. Fellowships for the 1991-92 academic year are in the amount of $20,000. Candidates involved in the teaching of Jewish studies at the university level, as well as other interested parties, such as chairs of Jewish Studies departments, may write to the following address for further information and application forms: Yad Hanadiv/Barecha Foundation Fellowships 16 Ibn Gvirol St. Jerusalem, Israel 92430 Requests for information can also be sent to Prof. Isaiah Gafni by bitnet: HNUGI@HUJIVM1 From: Alan D Corre <corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> Subject: ICANAS August 19-25 Date: Fri, 8 Jun 90 17:28:52 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 453 (496) If you are attending the ICANAS meeting in Toronto, and would like to get together with other subscribers to this group, let me know and I shall see if something can be arranged. Include your hotel and preferred time of meeting. Alan D. Corre Department of Hebrew Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (414) 229-4245 PO Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201 corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu From: Mary Massirer <MASSIRERM@BAYLOR.BITNET> Subject: latin-amer. studies Date: Fri, 1 Jun 90 15:32 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 454 (497) I have a friend, not yet on BITNET, who directs a program in Latin-American Studies. Since he will be hooked up soon, he would lik to exchange info. with others who are interested in or involved in LAS programs. Send info. to me, and I will forward to him until his machine becomes part of the network. Thanks, Mary Massirer (MASSIRERM@BAYLOR) From: Germaine Warkentin <WARKENT@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: Vesta Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 08:02:58 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 455 (498) I am searching for secondary materials on Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth (the Greek Hestia). I know Jean-Joseph Goux's article in Representations 1 (1983) and the sources cited there, and of course a good range of classical citations. But I would like to know of anything important neglected by Goux, anything more recent, and in particular feminist readings of the Vesta material. Material in French and Italian welcome, Spanish too, and German at a pinch. Can any Humanist help? With thanks, Germaine <Warkent@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> From: <BURT@BRANDEIS> Subject: Hershey Script Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 13:58 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 456 (499) Does anybody know what Hershey Script Fonts are? John Burt Brandeis University From: MHEIM@CALSTATE Subject: Metaphysics of Cyberspace Date: Wed, 06 Jun 90 22:25:58 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 179 (500) Rorschach at Edinburgh would like more on the statement I made about the conference on cyberspace. In describing the First Conference on Cyberspace (May 4-5 in Austin, Texas), I said there was a spontaneous combustion of metaphysical problems raised by the plans for cyberspace. First a little about cyberspace. What is it? The fiction of William Gibson depicts a full-featured cyberspace as a hybrid between an international data network for business and a three-dimensional videogame. Users access cyberspace through a computer console, a deck with electrodes feeding directly into the brain. The user's body is "the meat" that stays behind to punch the deck and give the coordinates, while the user's mind roams the computer matrix. Gibson's novel *Neuromancer* describes cyberspace as "a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data." Several research and commercial projects are producing cyberspace prototypes. (See Howard Rheingold's article in Whole Earth Review #67 summer 1990.) The cyberspace prototypes resemble the fictional models to some extent. The prototypes reach for a total sensory environment constituted by information. The information arrives in holograms and other multi-dimensional structures, all modelling the phenomena of the corporeal world. To enter the holographic data environment, the users don headsets and data suits that transmit retinal images and sensory stimuli. Multiple users perceive the same holographic objects and communicate with reference to the same locus points. Instead of moving physically back and forth in the world, users deal with informational objects constructed by data. The informational objects include representations of the users' physical selves. When speaking of cyberspace as a total environment for manipulating data structures, the developers refer to a "computer-simulated virtual reality." While they work out the details of this virtual reality, cyberspace developers find their language turning strange and their thoughts getting metaphysical. How, for instance, should the users appear to themselves? Should they appear in cyberspace as one set of objects among others, as third-person bodies they can inspect with detachment? Or should the users appear to themselves as headless fields of awareness attached to bodies, similar to our phenomenological experience? Does causality underpin the cyberworld so that an injury inflicted on the user's cyber body likewise befalls the user's physical body? And what about the process of creating the cyberspace world? What determines its qualities and dimensions? Should a free aesthetic imagination draw and paint cyberspace? Should artists create unique hyper-real worlds, like cinema, which surpass the mundane tasks of the extracyber world? Or does poetry cease where the economics of the virtual workplace begin? (At the conference, American Express and IBM showed a strong interest in a cyberspace that mimics the contemporary office workplace.) But why be satisfied with a single cyberspace? Why not several? Must we pledge allegiance to any single reality? Perhaps reality will be layered like onion skins, realities within realities, permitting free aesthetic pleasure to coexist alongside the more task-oriented business world? Does the notion of multiple systems make the notion of reality obsolete? Has the word reality lost reliable meaning, really? These were some of the questions thrown around at the First Conference on Cyberspace -- at least as far as I can remember and could discern. Someone else might get a different set of questions from reading the papers by the programmers and architects at the Conference. The papers are forthcoming with MIT Press in Fall of 1990 under the title <Cyberspace> edited by Michael Benedikt. Hope this fills in what you are asking for. Mike Heim Cal State Long Beach From: N_EITELJORG@cc.brynmawr.edu Subject: history maps Date: Mon, 4 Jun 90 10:05 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 457 (501) A writer recently requested information about U.S. history maps for PCs. The April, 1989, issue of _Cadence_ magazine has an article entitled "AutoCAD and the Historian" by T. Lloyd Benson which describes a complex project involving maps and data bases. It might be of interest. Nick Eiteljorg From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM> Subject: Color Projection Panel Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 07:30:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 458 (502) Although I can't recommend a particular panel, PC Magazine had a review of these panels in late February, I believe. It did include at least one color. Audio Visual Communications (Feb. 1990; pp. 40-7) also had a review and included addresses for most of the manufacturers. Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM Journalism Dept. Internet: eparker@well.sf.ca.us Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 USA UUCP: {psuvax1}!cmuvm.bitnet!3zlufur From: MHEIM@CALSTATE Subject: Text (God & Law) Date: Mon, 04 Jun 90 22:59:30 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 459 (503) In our recent discussions of what constitutes a text, and why at all look for THE text, I haven't noticed anyone as yet mention the theological-legal connotations of textuality in our Western culture. Western religious and Western legal systems base their legitimacy on an authoritative word, whether the word of God or the lawmakers' statutes on the books. Our religious and legal traditions deem essential the search for the original meaning and hence the original text. The author's original meaning (found in the word) establishes the rule of moral and legal life, and these together constitute the code of conduct. The nature of other texts, literary or philosophical, seem determined to a large extent by the theological-legal concerning text. Even when a new philosophical text seeks, in the Niezschean fashion, to destroy the theological remnant, such a text itself achieves a quasi-hallowed status. Witness the paradoxically chic and academically successful Deconstructive and postmodernist criticism. Even these efforts to create "radical" texts devolve into fashionable authorities cited by name and treated as demigods. Might electronic texts change our respect for THE word? Will they perhaps undo what books have proved powerless to accomplish? Mike Heim Cal State Long Beach From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: misread satire Date: Sun, 3 Jun 90 16:09:54-020 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 460 (504) Re: Humanist, 4.0125, 4.0144. In Arabic, the noun "hajw" means both "satira" and "spelling". You got both ambiguity, and spelling-misreading... Ephraim Nissan onomata@bengus.bitnet From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM> Subject: Re: 4.1065 Windows 3.0; GUI (2/84) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 90 05:26:24 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 461 (505) on the gui. i am quite in agreement. i prefer a command line interface with a good system of menus like nota-bene's. i don't have any problem with other people who like to work with icons or whatever, but i would be very unhappy if computer hardware etc were desgined in the future to make it impossible to talk to my computer in words. daniel From: Geoffrey Rockwell <Geoffrey_Rockwell@poczta.utcs.utoronto.ca> Subject: 4.1065 Windows 3.0; GUI Date: Thu, 14 Jun 90 11:35:18 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 462 (506) One thing that intrigues me about the GUI - Command line issue is the possibility that the two can enhance each other. MPW has Commando where one can use dialogue-boxes to build commands one is unfamiliar with. You see the command emerge as you select options. Once you understand the parameters of the command you can skip the dialogue-box and issue it directly. Commando (what a terrible name!) is only one side of the equation. I would like to see an interface where you could ask the system to walk you through the gestures that correspond to a command and show you the commands that correspond to your gestures. One could then create larger eventa that are combinations of gestures and commands. Yours, Geoffrey Rockwell rockwell@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca From: Jeffrey Perry <JEFF@PUCC> Subject: Machine-readable English idioms Date: Thu, 14 Jun 90 15:25:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 463 (507) I have a customer who is looking for a dictionary or glossary of English idioms. It doesn't matter whether it runs on a DOS machine, a Mac, or a mainframe. Does anyone know of any such product? Please mail all replies to me; I'll summarize to the group if anything interesting turns up. Thanks, Jeff Perry Humanities Specialist C.I.T. / Princeton University JEFF@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU From: DEL2@PHOENIX.CAMBRIDGE.AC.UK Subject: Query: PostScript font Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 22:17:14 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 464 (508) Does anyone know of sources for PostScript fonts (vector, not bitmaps) of Old Church Slavonic; Ethiopic; Syriac or Coptic? Last time I asked, Linguists' Software didn't. Thanks for any help or leads. Douglas de Lacey <DEL2@PHX.CAM.AC.UK> From: ACOOPER@UCBEH Subject: Re: 4.0176 Responses on Maimonides and on OT Translations Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 20:54 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 465 (509) This is merely to second Dr. Mason's remarks about English translations of the Hebrew Bible. Some ancillary aids are becoming available that make use of the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations has produced an elegant commentary on the Pentateuch, edited by Gunther Plaut, that uses JPS as its base text. And JPS itself is pro- ducing a commentary on the Pentateuch based on the translation; one hopes that they will be encouraged to move on to the rest of the Bible. Three volumes have appeared to date (Genesis, by Nahum Sarna; Leviticus, by Baruch Levine; Numbers, by Jacob Milgrom--the latter two are unquestionably the finest commentaries in English on their respective books). One of the great virtues of using JPS with undergraduates (as I did for many years at McMaster University) is that it stimulates them to appreciate the integrity of the Hebrew/Jewish Bible; it is not merely an "Old" Testament, requiring the New in order to be made whole. Alan Cooper, ACOOPER@UCBEH, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0176 Responses on Maimonides and on OT Translations Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 16:32 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 466 (510) And for the professor's resource: the ongoing, volume by volume critical edition called the Anchor Bible, with nearly thirty volumes out. Not cheap: I have subscribed since the beginning, and the volumes run about 16.95$ now, but line by line with current annotation from all the best sources, archaeology and so forth. Two shelves now available, each colume done by a separate editor or editors. For your LIbrary to buy? or you to subscribe? Kessler at UCLA From: JONATHAN KANDELL <KANDELL@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu> Subject: Best old testament translations? Date: Wed, 13 Jun 90 22:58 MST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 467 (511) Can anyone out there familiar with secular biblical studies tell me what are generally considered the best english translations of the Old Testament? From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU> Subject: It ain't the law's fault Date: Thu, 14 Jun 90 10:58 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 185 (512) Mike Heim of Cal State Long Beach writes that: Western religious and Western legal systems base their legitimacy on an authoritative word, whether the word of God or the lawmakers' statutes on the books. Our religious and legal traditions deem essential the search for the original meaning and hence the original text. The author's original meaning (found in the word) establishes the rule of moral and legal life, and these together constitute the code of conduct. As a law teacher this seems to me a very questionable proposition. Our tradition in the United States (with the exception of Louisiana) is that of the English Common Law, which is most definitely _not_ based on statutes. Although it is traditional to say that the Common Law is not written law, it is as a matter of fact incorporated in written texts--the reports (aka stories) of earlier law cases which are _interpreted_ by the oracles of the law (in Blackstone's wonderful phrase) the judges (whose predecessors wrote--or, in the case of English judges, perhaps only told--the stories that they are interpreting). Mike Heim's statement reeks--though perhaps I have sensitive nostrils--of `legal positivism', the nasty idea that law is (nothing but) the command of the sovereign. In particular, the dogma that the `original intent' of the framers of the United States Constitution should govern today's interpretation of our fundamental law, a doctrine that was subscribed to by the Reagan administration, represents a political effort to turn the clock back to a time when there were minimal protections of civil rights rather than an intellectually defensible legal interpretation. (There are arguments for paying respect the to original intent--and stronger arguments that, in any interesting case, there is no original intent to refer to--but these are arguments, not givens.) I raised the question of the interpretation of those texts or formulae that are used to start the wheels of the law agrinding--which struck me much like the problem of interpreting those texts, if they are texts, which serve as computer programs. The interpretation of the Sibyline books containing the reports of law cases is another matter. That type of interpretation undoubtedly has much in common with the interpretation of stories in the Bible--or the Sutras--but, though those texts may be treated as being `authoritative', they do _not_ (with the exception of the Ten Commandments and some other thou-shalt-not's) consist of rules that are to be obeyed. I do not believe that it is fair to blame the law--as to the issue of blaming God I take no position--for the Western tendency to think that _the Answer_ is lurking in a text. A lot of lawyers and some law teachers are afflicted with this sort of naivety, but I think that that is a disease that they acquired from other elements of our society--like philosophers and Sunday school teachers. Peter D. Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, Ohio From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET Subject: 4.0179 Metaphysics of Cyberspace Date: Thursday, 14 June 1990 9:10am CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 186 (513) Mike Heim's lovely account of cyberspace and the strange turns it gives to designers' language dovetails nicely (as I expect he knows very well) with his ostensbily more mundane question (in a previous message) about what the literary-analytical software of the future will look like (and about who will design that software). Richard Lanham has made the argument ("The Electronic Word," _NLH 20 (1989) that the digitalization not only of text but of work in other media, both visual and auditory-- and now tactile as well-- will work precisely to undo what books have not been able to do: the fixity of THE text. Lanham argues that it has been the central endeavor of humanistic scholarship since the Renaissance to establish the text; but the electronic text is malleable, mutable, to a degree unrivalled and impossible to print. My guess is that there's an inextricable connection between what the literary-analystical software of the future will look like and what the software for "literary" *production* will look like, not only because some of the analytical software will be designed to address the problems posed by the "production" software, but also because the production software, or the material it produces, will retroactively transform our conception of older and more narrowly literary forms. That transformation (those transformations?) is/are of course going forward already: witness the arguments of Heim and others about the problematic status of "the" text. We'll need software that knows about such problems, software that avails itself of new means for representing the complexities of what happens "in" a text as well as the complexities of locating/constructing the object(s) of study. If interactive, multimedia fictions become paradigmatic, as I think they will in the not terribly distant future, and if the composers of such extravaganzas start to employ the technology of cyberspace (expensive, yes, to be sure-- but already down from the $300,000 range to something in the neighborhood of $20-$30,000 for the "low-end" systems AutoDesk is now working on), nothing we have now will be adequate to the task of describing, tracking, analyzing what's "going on"-- not least because nothing we have now is adequate to the task of tracking the "reader's" experience of the material, or the reader's construction of the material. (Another thing such scholarship will have to take into account, I think, are "objects" like button scripts in, e.g., interactive fictions composed using tools like HyperCard: Stuart Moulthrop, at the recent Computers & Writing Conference in Austin (May 17-20), did a brilliant demonstration showing that at least one of the button scripts in John McDaid's _Uncle Buddy's Funhouse_ can and should be understood as a poem capable of enacting itself.) And of course we'll need to continue finding ways to examine the status of connections between the virtual reality of the works under study and the virtual reality of the work in the world... Oh, it's gonna be confusing! And a hell of a lot of fun. John Slatin, Univ of Texas at Austin From: David Miall <DMIALL@UALTAVM> Subject: Text Analysis Date: Wed, 6 13 22:29:45 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 187 (514) One step beyond either concordances or marked-up text is to use the Z-score: this does give some help in the case of a text that may be not too familiar. The latest version of TACT (1.2), just released by the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at Toronto, now includes a neat Z-score facility. TACT, in case you haven't yet seen it, offers standard concordancing (interactively) plus several related features, and now in my view outdoes WordCruncher by some distance. In looking at an unfamiliar text, assuming you have it indexed in TACT, you might start by looking for substantive words that occur with a high frequency (TACT provides a frequency command), then run the Z-score on each of the words. This will bring up a list of words occurring within a span of (say) 5 words on each side of the target word, ordered by Z-score, ie., showing the degree of significance of each word as a collocate. Such a list begins to get from the level of words up to that of themes and ideas, and is a useful discovery tool for mapping the semantic shape of a text. If you then want to follow up a given collocation, TACT lets you jump direct from the Z-score list to the text itself. With this facility and some other features, TACT seems to me provide a good tool for use in the classroom as well as for research, and it is of course very cheap: currently $30 CAN for disk and manual (and you can make as many copies as you like). It runs on IBMs and clones. Texts with COCOA or WordCruncher codes already in them can be indexed by TACT with no problem, by the way: it's remarkably flexible. Regards, David Miall University of Alberta From: Stephen Clausing <SCLAUS@YALEVM> Subject: Visit Date: Tue, 12 Jun 90 23:06:19 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 468 (515) I can attest to "visit" in the sense of "chat" from relatives of mine in Kansas and Missouri. I try to keep it quiet about these relatives, particularly at a place like Yale, but for once they prove useful. From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: Sea Peoples apud Karnak Date: Sun, 3 Jun 90 15:59:11-020 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 469 (516) CORRIGENDUM ----------- The formula I gave should have been X + 2 Y , where X may be even zero. The original formula, X + Y + Z , where Z = min ( X , Y ) , assumes a self-imposed fraud-circumscription constraint, on the part of the Pharaonic army, that is unwarranted. Ephraim Nissan BITNET: onomata@bengus From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0074 Queries (84) Date: Sun, 03 Jun 90 22:43 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 470 (517) Depends what is meant by abuse. Faulkner is full of it, say in THE HAMLET, not to speak of the SANCTUARY redux novel about Temple Drake. What about CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, poor Maggie, etc. And then there is the recently revived STrindberg, DANCE OF DEATH, which is on a BBC video too, with Olivier. Or must itbe tawdry uptodate abuse? Kessler at UCLA From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: stamps Date: Mon, 04 Jun 90 10:48 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 471 (518) Arther Ferrill, I am only a fringe philatelist, so someone else can probably answer your question better, but in case no one else responds.... Subjects for American commemorative stamps are approved by a panel appointed (I think) by the Postmaster General. I don't think that, as a matter of course, the president has a say in what is or is not approved. But I'm sure that if he wanted to he could. If you don't get a more informed answer I would suggest that you send your question to "Linn's Weekly Stamp News" the authoritative stamp publication. Someone on the staff or among the readership will certainly know the answer. Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0074 Queries Date: Sun, 03 Jun 90 22:40 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 472 (519) Brians: today the LA Times Calendary had a longish essay by its art critic,Knight, on Mapplethorpe/Warhol/Pollock/and his teacher Benton. 6/3/90. If the NY Times or LA times publish my op ed essay on the controversy, I will upload it. Meanwhile, it is on a disk whose directory was smashed today, ten years' of essay on it. Have to get it rebuilt somehow by an expert at the U this week. Kessler From: Nick Eiteljorg <N_EITELJ@BRYNMAWR> Subject: GUI and Command Line Interface [eds] Date: June 15, 1990 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 473 (520) There are a few programs which illustrate the possibility of having both the gui and the command line. A particularly interesting one, for me at least, is AutoCAD. Having been developed in the DOS world, it retains the command line in the MAC version. I use both, but I use the command line in the MAC version at least as much as I use the pull-down menus. A new data base manager which is actually an intermediary between a relational data base and Cad systems also illustrates the potential of using both forms of input. GEO/Sql helps the user construct sql queries from with a CAD environment and can create a pull-down menu name for the request. But the user can also see the actual structure of the sql command if he wishes. Some would argue that Hypercard (and other oops tools) also combine the direct text input with icon-based input, since programming with Hypercard permits one to create one's own mechanisms - and, as Geoffrey Rockwell wanted, to take existing commands/icons and modify them to meet new needs. Nick Eiteljorg From: N.J.Morgan@vme.glasgow.ac.uk Subject: Re: 4.0172 Text-Analysis Software; Programming Micros (2/89) Date: Fri,15 Jun 90 12:31:38 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 474 (521) I'm sure Richrad Goerwitz's remarks about the ease of Dos programming compared with the Mac are true, but be warned anyone who has pc hardware and wants to program for a GUI (ie Microsoft Windows). THis is not easy, and the tools are poorly developed and badly documented (this is a statement of truth from the heart !). Whatever its benefits I can't imagine that Windows 3 will resolve this drawback. Nicholas Morgan Department of Scottish History University of Glasgow From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM> Subject: Re: 4.0182 GUI (2/24) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 90 04:39:18 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 475 (522) again on nota-bene's interface. it has no icons of course, but as you work with menu options it builds the command-line syntax on the command line thus providing exactly the sort of learning device interace called for. From: CTILIT@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: Guide applications for Mac & PC Date: Fri, 15 Jun 90 15:43 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 191 (523) The recently set-up Oxford University Centre for Humanities Computing is looking for applications written in Guide for either Mac or PC for demonstration purposes. Does anyone out there have anything particularly relevant to teaching and research in literature or linguistic studies that they would be willing to share with us? We would be very grateful. We would also like to announce that we have just produced a brief update sheet to the newsletter *Computers in Literature* published by the Computers in Teaching Initiative Centre for Literature and Linguistic Studies. If anyone would like a copy of this, or indeed of the first issue of *Computers in Literature* which came out in January, send me a note. I am looking for contributions for the next issue which is to be published in the autumn. I am particularly keen to hear about software and projects to do with teaching literary and linguistic subjects. If anyone would like more details about the Centre for Humanities Computing or the CTI Centre for Literature and Linguistic Studies, or would like to receive our publications free of charge, contact me: Marilyn Deegan CTI Centre for Literature and Linguistic Studies Oxford University Computing Service 13, Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6NN e-mail: CTILIT@VAX.OX.AC.UK From: cbf@faulhaber.Berkeley.Edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0171 Lemmatization (2/99) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 90 12:51:57 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 476 (524) My thanks to Robin Cover and Timothy Reuter. Both of you may be right. The specific problem I'm trying to solve is doing normalized searches on unnormalized text. In most medieval languages spelling variations are so great, especially if more than one dialect is concerned, that trying to recover all tokens of a given type through soundex procedures, unix-type wild-cards, or algorithms is unlikely to be successful (e.g., in Spanish 'to talk' can be fablar, hablar, ablar, favlar, avlar, havlar; the past participle of 'to do' can be echo, fecho, hecho, feito, feyto, fejto). In the latter instance, the echo, hecho forms can also belong to the verb echar 'to throw' (and these are trivial examples off the top of my head). Thus the need to lemmatize the corpus. Reuter's approach sounds useful, but there would need to be a good deal of manual intervention in any case; and, again, it would require a morphological analyzer for each language used (I think; I don't know enough about computational linguistics to have an informed opinion). Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Search/Browse Program for HP 110 Laptop Date: Thursday, 14 June 1990 2319-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 477 (525) I have resuscitated a few of the old sturdy HP 110 Laptops that were given us to play with some years back (getting and installing new battery packs is cheap and easy), and want to use them occasionally to show off flat file data (e.g. genealogical). There is no search/browse feature in the built-in software, so I tried to load a recent version of LIST, but was told there was insufficient memory. Programmers here have suggested that they could write a quick solution, but before I agree to that, is there any light from the HUMANIST world? CHKDSK tells me that the machine has 71K bytes free of internal memory (and 176K bytes of available disk space). I want to be able to search for at least simple matches (multiples, etc., would be nice but not essential) and have them display in context on the 16 line 80 column screen. The LIST model is adequate for my purposes -- LIST allows a simple search, and puts the hit line about 5 lines below the top of the screen which is filled with the complete context of the hit. Note that the limited screen depth (16 lines) precludes direct use of any program that assumes a 24 line screen and needs to write to that entire space. Possibly an early version of LIST would work, but are there any other suggestions? Thanks for any help offered! Bob Kraft (KRAFT@PENNDRLS.bitnet) From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET Subject: 4.0187 Text Analysis (1/30) Date: Friday, 15 June 1990 7:48am CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 478 (526) Thanks to David Miall for his useful account of TACT and the uses of the Z-score. I know it's come up here a number of times, but would someone be kind enough to repeat information on how to obtain a copy of the program? Thanks. John Slatin, University of Texas at Austin, EIEB360@UTXVM. From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Technology, Tendenz, and Bible Translations Date: Friday, 15 June 1990 0020-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 193 (527) In his interesting and useful note on translations of Jewish scriptures, Steve Mason correctly points out that a valuable pedagogical advantage of using the Jewish Publication Society TaNaKh translation is that it is "free of the influence of the Christian translation tradition" (for most practical purposes, at least) and that its "integrety is not conditioned by a Christian interpretive appendix (the 'New Testament')." I could not let his next point pass, however, since it is both misleading and itself illustrates that simply by avoiding one traditional trajectory ("Christian") one does not automatically move into territory that is free of analogous interests (in this instance, "Jewish"). I don't mean this to be a polemical observation, but a descriptive "fact." I have no solution, except to recommend that NO SINGLE TRANSLATION be used to the exclusion of others. In any event, the point made by Steve that serves as my illustrative focus is his #3: that in the JPS translation "the proper, original order of the text (Torah, Prophets, Writings) is preserved, rather than the Christian arrangement." As I'm sure Steve knows, the question of the order of Jewish scriptural books is extremely complex. How one can determine what is "proper" or "original" or for that matter "Christian" (or even "Jewish") goes far beyond academic historical description! Before the advent of the codex form of gathering texts together under one cover (a technological revolution in the 2nd through 4th centuries of the common era!), there was no simple or obvious way of assigning order to the scriptural books that were being collected and organized into groupings -- there might have been lists (Sirach and Luke-Acts and Josephus provide some evidence for ways of ordering subsections and/or giving some sort of table of contents), or possibly ordered bins in a segmented scroll box, but even the concept of "proper and original order" seems improbable in this scroll technology period. These are later issues that probably grew with the technology that made it possible to create a "Bible" under one cover, requiring a specific order. Much diversity of specific order is attested before either "Jews" or "Christians" developed what came to be traditional in the classical forms of those perspectives. Yes, use the JPS TaNaKh; and also use RSV, NRSV, NIV, etc. And alert your students to the influences, both overt and more subtle, that the surviving traditions continue to have on how we look at these matters. And don't forget that technological developments have often, sometimes in almost forgotten ways, played important roles in changing how things were viewed and what matters were considered important. I would argue that the order of the books of Jewish scriptures is one of the least important things to consider in choosing a translation for academic purposes! Bob Kraft (Religious Studies, Penn) From: DGEDALECIA@WOOSTER.BITNET Subject: TAIWAN ADDRESSES Date: Thu, 14 Jun 90 00:50:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 479 (528) Forwarded by: Kevin Berland <BCJ@PSUVM> Herewith is a mail query humanist may be able to help with (from XCULT-L@PSUVM). Does anyone know how to contact academic institutions in Taiwan? I am interested in exchanging information with scholars at institutions like Academia Sinica or National Taiwan University, or even with scholars working at the National Central Library. Any information or lists will be much appreciated. Thanks: David Gedalecia College of Wooster Wooster, Ohio 44691 U.S.A. DGEDALEC@WOOSTER.BITNET From: "Robin C. Cover" <ZRCC1001@SMUVM1> Subject: ARABIC/FARSI FOR WORDPERFECT 5.1 ? Date: Thu, 14 Jun 90 19:46:01 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 480 (529) On behalf of a friend, I'd like to ask if anyone knows of Laser printer support for Arabic/Farsi with WordPerfect 5.1. I don't mean a sophisticated solution with right-to-left screen wrap and full program knowledge of contextual forms -- just the bare necessities for printing. Proper screen rendition is not even necessary -- just correct laser printout. Replies may be sent to me directly. Robin Cover BITNET: zrcc1001@smuvm1 Internet: robin@txsil.lonestar.org From: pds@mx.csun.edu Subject: Re: 4.0160 Concording: Micro OCP, WordCruncher, TACT (2/70) Date: Fri, 15 Jun 90 12:10:31 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 481 (530) Our library doesn't carry System. I would be grateful for a complete citation to the forthcoming comparison of concordancers so that the library can get a copy through the loan system. Peter Smith pds@mx.csun.edu From: cbf@faulhaber.Berkeley.Edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: 2400-baud modems Date: Fri, 15 Jun 90 12:39:07 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 482 (531) Any recommendations on the subject? Price is important, but so is ease of use and functionality. For an IBM PS/2, and preferably external. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: Erik Carvalhal Miller <ERCMILLE@IUBACS> Subject: New Baltic republics list ("BALT-L") Date: Thu, 14 Jun 90 17:06 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 483 (532) The following is a mailing distributed on the ESPER-L Esperanto list regarding a new LISTSERV list for the newly emerging Baltic republics. This may be of general interest to fellow HUMANISTS. --Erik Carvalhal Miller ERCMILLE@IUBACS Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana USA BALT-L on LISTSERV@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Baltic Republics news and development list BALT-L is an online forum devoted to communications to, and about, the Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It aims to further networking with those countries, in two senses of that word: the technical one of establishing the basic links to permit electronic communications; and the softer definition of a network of people building up people-to-people contacts and working together on matters of common interest. A core aim of this list is to foster practical projects. Subscription to this list is welcomed from anyone with skills or interests relevant to the Baltics, or who just wants to know whats going on. We hope in particular to bring together :- Participants living in the Baltic Republics. :- People around the world with origins in the Baltic Republics, or who have connections with those countries. :- Anyone with technical skills in electronic networking who may want to contribute to developing electronic links to the Baltic Republics. :- Anyone needing to research on developments in the Baltics. :- Anyone around the world with a need to contact, visit and/or work with College staff or students living and working in Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. Although English is likely to be the lingua franca, ALL languages of communication are WELCOME: but especially in Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian. NOTE: all COMMANDS described below should be sent to LISTSERV@UBVM ; [...] To subscribe, send the following command to LISTSERV@UBVM via mail or interactive message: SUB BALT-L your full name where "your full name" is your name. (NOT your network userID ). For example SUB BALT-L Joan Doe ---------------------- BALT-L will be peered on two hosts. Please subscribe to UBVM for now, even if you are in Europe. Archives of messages already sent through BALT-L can be obtained by interactive LDBASE or by sending an "INDEX BALT-L" command to LISTSERV@UBVM. These files can then be retrieved by means of a "GET BALT-L filetype" command. Owner (UKACRL): Edis Bevan <AEB_BEVAN@UK.AC.OPEN.ACS.VAX> Owner (UBVM): Jean-Michel Thizy <jmyhg@acadvm1.uottawa.ca> Initially mailings to BALT-L will be distributed 'as sent'. Eventually we hope to develop a system where packages of messages bring together specific themes. Examples could include: electronic linking; visits; agriculture; Industrial development; opportunities and pitfalls of a free market economy; discussions of History; armed forces or disarmament; Lithuanian Language items.. From: Henning M|rk <slavhenn@aau.dk> Subject: Polish Connection Date: Sat, 16 Jun 90 16:15:44 +0200 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 484 (533) This is an attempt to speed up the efforts being done to establish communication possibilities with Poland. A friend and colleague of mine - Jan Nowak, a Polish humanist temporarily employed at the University of Aarhus - is prepared to spend this summer promoting e-mail facilities in Poland. We have been thinking of possible ways to put a mild pressure on the relevant authorities. Here is where you HUMANISTs come in. We should like to ask those of you who have friends and colleagues in Poland to send those people's names to us. Just write their (title) name & institution - and we shall make a complete list of all mentioned persons. Rich Mitchell refers (in HUMANIST, May 4) to Anna Wyka and Andrzej Scinski of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology. This is just the beginning. In this way we hope to be able to put together a list of several hundreds of Polish intellectuals with whom colleagues from abroad want to have e-mail contact. A long list of Polish university people who need e-mail contact with people from Western Europe and the American continent might - at least we hope so - accellerate the whole process. Henning Moerk Slavisk Institut Aarhus Universitet SLAVHENN@AAU.DK From: John Unsworth <JMUEG@NCSUVM> Subject: Taiwan connections Date: Sat, 16 Jun 90 09:31:35 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 485 (534) I'd like to add my query to that of David Gedalecia; does anyone know of a node address at National Tsing Hua University in Hsingchu, Taiwan? John Unsworth jmueg@ncsuvm jmueg@ncsuvm.ncsu.edu From: G.R.Hart@durham.ac.uk Subject: Re: 4.0183 Queries: Machine Readable Idioms; Fonts (2/25) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 90 12:03:05 +0100 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 486 (535) I don't know the answer to your query, but someone who might know is David Pollard (David Pollard Associates), Folly Bridge Workshops, Abingdon Road, Oxford (0865-240048), whom I have found very helpful concerning font problems. Jill Hart. From: David Mighetto <mighetto@hum.gu.se> Subject: The text of "Don Quijote" Date: 17 Jun 90 16:33:40 EDT (Sun) X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 487 (536) Are you hispanist? I am interested in finding a machine-readable version of Cervantes' Don Quijote, Part 1 (preferably via E-Mail). Do you have it? Please, contact me! David Mighetto, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. From: janus@ux.acs.umn.edu Subject: names of computers Date: Sun, 17 Jun 90 10:49:15 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 488 (537) Does anyone know of a study or collection of names of computers? Here I mean network names (e.g. the Vax at St. Olaf College called "THOR.") rather than brand names. If no such study exists, how would you propose collecting and analyzing the names? Ideas? What is the cleverest name you know of? How did the computers get their names? At St. Olaf, there was a sort of a contest, but I don't remember the details. Louis Janus Scandinavian Dept U of Minnesota From: Steve Mason <SHLOMO@YORKVM1> Subject: Back to the Bible Date: Fri, 15 Jun 90 18:27:51 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 489 (538) I'm a great fan of Bob Kraft's, so if HUMANIST will tolerate a brief rejoinder to his remarks on Bible translations, I hope that it will be understood to be free of ad hominem. Bob argues, in part, that canonical order is not a key criterion for selecting Bible translations and that, in any case, the "proper order" of the biblical text is problematic. First, two clarifications: (a) I agree that order is not the most important criterion -- didn't mean to say that it was; (b) I was thinking of macro-order -- Torah, Prophets, and Writings, not of arrangements within the last of these categories. Now the polemical point. It is not at all clear that the question of order only became significant with the development of the codex, in the second to fourth centuries. Indeed, the crucial shift, surely, is not from scroll to codex but from oral culture to written. Scrolls and codices were, it seems to me, merely symptoms of these larger conditions. Scrolls, with all the difficulties that they posed for reading, worked tolerably well in oral culture because they weren't read all that often: they functioned more as textual repositories that could be consulted for clarification, but that were not read on a routine basis. When it became important to consult the written text more often (for proof-texting among other things), necessity invented the codex. My point: all of our evidence (Ben Sira, Paul, Matthew, Luke, Josephus - 1 cent CE) attests that the order Torah, Prophets, and Writings, was deeply ingrained in the consciousness of both Jews and early Christians, long before the appearance of the codex. Jews did not get this schema from physically consulting the scrolls; it was a traditional category that reflected the descending order of importance of these texts, corresponding to the order in which each section of the Bible was "closed". This powerful construct seems even to have overridden the physical fact of the Septuagint's different arrangement. It would be difficult to maintain, I think, that this matter of order was not important to pre-codex Jews and Christians. And if it was important to them, it should be important to their interpreters, on the Enlightenment principle of recovering the first readers' situations, nu? Anyway, what I meant to say was that the JPS Tanakh, in preserving the traditional order (of both Jews and first-century Christians), has a certain shock value that might prove pedagogically advantageous -- that in addition to its other virtues. Steve Mason Humanities, York U. From: ACOOPER@UCBEH Subject: Re: 4.0193 Technology and Bible Translations (1/48) Date: Sun, 17 Jun 90 21:37 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 490 (539) Dr. Kraft's interesting reply to Steve Mason goes far beyond the original query (about which English translation of the Bible is "best"), and gets to a fundamental problem of Bible instruction in the secular university. Mason had suggested (and I agreed) that one of the virtues of the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh is that it does not presuppose the unity of the Old and New Testaments, and thus stimulates students to reflect on the integrity of the Hebrew/Jewish Bible in its own right. To that suggestion, Kraft replied that "simply by avoiding one trajectory ('Christian') one does not automatically move into territory that is free of analogous interests (in this instance, 'Jewish')." Kraft appends some well-taken cautionary remarks against assuming the integrity of any collection of biblical books, since such collections were the products of complex historical processes. I do not think, however, that the discussion ought to focus on which ordering of biblical books is more or less authentic. Surely Mason's point was not that re-describing "Old Testament" as "Tanakh" would replace a value-laden, anachronistic designation with one that was value-free, or more correct from an historical point of view. The idea, rather, is to promote good teaching by defamiliarizing a text that is, in our society, unreflectively taken to be the "Old Testament," with the theological underpinnings of that label simply taken for granted (even by many non-Christian students, in my experience). Now historical-critical, literary-critical, and social-scientific approaches to the Bible--no more value-free in my view than the theological ones--are also good ways of defamiliarizing, and of getting students to question their presuppositions. (Is the problem uniquely acute for teachers of Bible?) In the first instance, however, I think that Kraft is absolutely right when he says that we need to "alert [our] students to the influence, both overt and more subtle, that the surviving traditions continue to have on how we look at these matters." A good way of doing that, even before immersing students in the more overtly "secular" methodologies, is to confront the "Old Testament" with the "Tanakh." It helps, of course, that the JPS translation is such a fine piece of work from a purely philological standpoint. Alan Cooper <ACOOPER@UCBEH> Hebrew Union College From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU> Subject: Effect of surviving traditions on the interpretation of Date: Sat, 16 Jun 90 13:19 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 491 (540) Bob Kraft mentioned in the context of biblical translations that one should be alert "to the influences, both overt and more subtle, that the surviving traditions continue to have on how we look at these matters." I believe that I am confronted by a similar problem--the influence of current legal interpretations on our reading of texts from the thirteenth or the sixteenth or the seventeenth centuries. I would be very interested in any references to works by biblical or historical scholars in how one can spot and counteract such influences on one's own readings of the earlier texts. Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH From: <DMIALL@UALTAVM> Subject: TACT distribution Date: Sat, 6 16 10:23:54 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 492 (541) To obtain a copy of TACT you should contact the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, Robarts Library 14th Floor, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A1. (Tel: 416-978-8656) The Centre is currently charging $30 CAN or $25 US, for which you get a disk and a bound copy of the manual. The program is described as "essentially shareware", and can be freely copied provided the copyright is preserved, etc. Seems a great bargain to me! Regards, David Miall University of Alberta From: SA_RAE@VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK Subject: Interactive Fiction? Date: Mon, 18 JUN 90 16:36:54 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 493 (542) Recent mailings (incl. 4.0179 etc. Metaphysics of Cyberspace) have refered to INTERACTIVE FICTION. Although familiar with the term I would like to know more - could anyone give some pointers or references to it's practitioners please? The concept of a "button script(s) in John McDaid's _Uncle Buddy's Funhouse_" being understood as a "poem capable of enacting itself" carries with it so many unresolved links as to be criminally teasing! I look forward to your responses - thank you in anticipation. Simon Rae: Research Adviser, Academic Computing Service, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom. SA_RAE@VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK From: J.Wexler@edinburgh.ac.uk Subject: Re: 4.0157 Interfaces (4/108) Date: 18 Jun 90 14:21:00 bst X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 494 (543) May I butt in, as a non-subscriber to HUMANIST who just happens to have seen some of the discussion on graphics-vs-text interfaces? Unless somebody has disposed of it in earlier correspondence which I haven't seen, an important point is being missed: text interfaces are (or should be) good for batch work and complicated "programmed" jobs, with conditional flow of control and elaborate parameterisation of commands. It shouldn't surprise or offend anyone if a majority of users prefer graphics interfaces; that is what suits their style of working. Anybody who has heavy repetitive work to do, though, will not want to spend his/her days directing a computer through the tasks with a mouse and windows, and will be glad to be able to write his/her own programmed, parameterisable commands and/or batch jobs. The facility to do this inevitably affects the design of a command language in ways which make it less attractive for interactive use. In fact, the better the interface is for "batch" or "pre-programmed" working, the further it is likely to be from an ideal interactive interface. Batch mode users often expect the operating system also to do elaborate scheduling to optimise throughput, meet deadlines, avoid deadly embrace in resource allocation, and achieve some kind of "fairness" between multiple users. That means that it should be possible to look at a job in advance and to know quite a lot about it - whose it is, what resources it will use, how urgent it is, and so on. This imposes another set of complications and constraints on the command interface. User interfaces which allow for all of this are hardly likely to be intuitive. It is possible to provide a much simpler and more natural interface for straightforward interactive use. However, there's not much point in implementing "simple use" as a text interface; people don't want to have two different command languages (one simple and one powerful) for a single system. In any case, a graphical interface can do the job much better for simple easy intuitive interactive use. Anyway, why worry about it? Both interfaces can co-exist on a single system, and can usefully interact: for a couple of simple examples, you can call up a shell command from an icon, or control windows from shell commands. John Wexler Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre From: PETERR@vax.oxford.ac.uk Subject: RE: 4.0190 Interfaces (3/46) Date: Mon, 18 Jun 90 9:26 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 495 (544) Further to Goerwitz's remarks concerning the relative difficulty of programming a Mac compared to a PC. It is facile and misleading to say that it is easier to write programs for the PC than for the Mac. What sort of programs? Sure, if you want ot write a simple one-off utility for your own use this is probably correct - though there are lots of programs around for the Mac (eg Microsoft Basic, Turbo Pascal or Catspaw's excellent Mac Spitbol) which allow you to implement such a program on the mac very easily. You can even use the "console" environment in Think C to write vanilla C programs that use command lines and write printf to the screen just as they would on any Dossbox. But if you want to write a "GUI" program with multiple windows etc, all those menus, dialogue boxes, unlimited fancy fonts - there just ain't any contest. As Morgan's reply suggests, the Mac is far ahead. This is where six years lead with WIMPS shows right out. There are shelves full of literature - starting with the superb Inside Macintosh series, for my money the real reason for the Mac's success, and extending to Howto guides of every sort - and masses of fancy third party programming environments that will give you a flying start in the prickly business of programming for a GUI. The real point here is that programming for *any* GUI is several orders of magnitude more difficult than programming for a command line (and also, I think, several more orders worth-while, which is why some of us do it). You need the best possible tools, and lots of them, to help you on the way. Such tools exist for the Mac - I don't see them for the PC. If you want to compare like with like compare (as Morgan does) programming the Mac with programming for Windows.Then come back and have your say. Peter Robinson Computers and Manuscripts Project, Oxford University Computing Service. From: "Bill Ball" <C476721@UMCVMB> Subject: 2400 baud modems Date: Sat, 16 Jun 90 13:38:49 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 496 (545) I highly recommend the ATI 2400 etc modem. I and several of my collegues have the AT bus internal model but it is available in an external model. Compared to others i have used it is much more up to date technology with a suprisingly low number of chips--indicating higher reliability (ATI seems pretty cutting edge in general). Its a MNP level 5 --which is absolutely great if you have another MNP 5 to connect to (data compression giving about 4800 baud rates + NO LINE NOISE!). It is very competitive pricewise: the external can be had for around $170 from mail order houses. BTW the company just came out with a 2400 MNP 5 + Group 3 fax card in the $400 range. (I have no connection with ATI) ((( Bill Ball c476721@UMCVMB ) Dept. Pol. Sci. ) U. Mo.-Columbia ) From: ACOOPER@UCBEH Subject: Re: 4.0194 Notes and Queries (5/136) Date: Sat, 16 Jun 90 15:24 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 497 (546) Re: Charles Faulhaber's query about 2400-baud external modems. I am very happy with my low-end Everex 24E+, which includes MNP error correction Class 2-5, and comes with Bitcom communication software. I paid $179 for it at the local Compdd outlet. For a telecommunications tyro such as myself, it has proven to be economical, easy to use (I even understand the manual!), and trouble-free in operation. Bitcom, too, was easy for a beginner to use, but I quickly grew tired of its limitations and acquired Procomm Plus. Alan Cooper, Hebrew Union College. From: MERIZ@pittvms Subject: 2400 baud modems Date: Sat, 16 Jun 90 16:45 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 498 (547) In answer to Charles Faulhaber's question regarding 2400 baud external modems, I would strongly recommend the Practical Peripherals unit, as I did in a recent message. It is 100% Hayes compatible, but sells for a fraction of the price of a Hayes unit (currently $179 from PC Connections). It is very easy to set up, performs flawlessly, and is warranted for five years. I purchased my unit almost two years ago, together with PROCOMM PLUS, and have had no cause to regret my choice. - Diana Meriz meriz@pittvms From: Deian Hopkin <DRH@ABERYSTWYTH.AC.UK> Subject: Conference on Information Transfer in the Historical Sciences Date: 17-JUN-1990 21:18:37 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 200 (548) The Association for History and Computing announces a one day session at the 17th International Historical Congress: 17TH CISH , MADRID 1990 ROUND TABLE Thursday, 30 August 1990 Methodological and Technical Information Transfer in the Historical Sciences. ________________________________________ The Round Table will consist of two linked half-day sessions. Part 1 is coordinated by Dean Lawrence McCrank of Ferris State University, the President of the Association for the Bibliography of History, while Part 2 is jointly coordinated by Dr Deian Hopkin of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and Professor Konrad Jarausch of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Associated with the Round Table there will be demonstrations and an exhibition dealing with the use of computers in history. PART 1: - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND ARCHIVAL RESOURCES AND CONTROLS. ... [see below to obtain complete schedule] PART 2: THE CHALLENGE FOR HISTORICAL INQUIRY Fresh Perspective and New Methods ... The purpose of this afternoon session will be to explore the implications of changing methodological approaches and the oportunities of novel techiques for the historical use of computers, since both subjects are closely interrelated. On one level, the issues which ought to be addressed concern the dichotomy between the old "new social history" and the new "new social history" (terms of Natalie Davies) such as the tension between analysis and narrative, sociological and anthropological approaches, generalization and individuation and so on. On a second plane, the subject should involve the results of rapid developments in data bank methods as well as advances in quantitative procedures (such as categorical modelling). ... [see below to obtain complete schedule] ASSOCIATED ORGANISATIONS Association for the Bibliography of History American Historical Association Association for History and Computing International Commission on Bibliography International Commission on Quantitative Methods Canadian Historical Association -------------------- [A complete version of this announcement is now available through the fileserver, s.v. AHC90 CONFRNCE. You may obtain a copy by issuing the command -- GET filename filetype HUMANIST -- either interactively or as a batch-job, addressed to ListServ@Brownvm. Thus on a VM/CMS system, you say interactively: TELL LISTSERV AT BROWNVM GET filename filetype HUMANIST; if you are not on a VM/CMS system, send mail to ListServ@Brownvm with the GET command as the first and only line. For more details see the "Guide to Humanist". Problems should be reported to David Sitman, A79@TAUNIVM, after you have consulted the Guide and tried all appropriate alternatives.] From: Tom Crone <CRONE@CUA> Subject: Re: Hershey Script Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 12:16 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 499 (549) John Burt (BURT@BRANDEIS) asks: [deleted quotation] Dr A V Hershey[1] digitized (designed?) a set of a couple thousand characters for use on pen plotters. These included everything from simple, uppercase only block characters to script, old English, German, Greek, and Cyrillic fonts and musical, mathematical and map symbols and even astrological signs. These were put into the public domain, and are used in SPSSGraphics, SASGraph, VAX GKS, and many (most?) other graphics packages. There were at least 2 script fonts, one single stroke and one double stroke, to simulate the effect of a pen with a point that is not round. Some of this information was taken from a 1978 National Bureau of Standards publication, 'Computer Science and Technology: FORTRAN IV Enhanced Character Graphics', that included 15 pages of DATA statements to define the characters! If anyone wants a copy of the Hershey fonts, I still have (I think) a set that were optimized somewhat for pen movement. Tom Crone CRONE@CUA or CRONE%CUAVAX.DNET@NETCON.CUA.EDU Sr User Consultant/Programmer The Catholic University of America Washington DC [1] 'A Computer System for Scientific Typography' Computer Graphics and Image Processing, Vol 1 pp 373-385, (1972) From: J J Higgins <Higgins@np1a.bristol.ac.uk> Subject: System [eds] Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 16:08:19 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 500 (550) System is published by Pergamon Press, Oxford, three issues per year. ISSN 0346-251X. The review of concordancers is by John Higgins and will probably be in Vol 19, No 1, March 1991. From: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum) Subject: Re: interactive fiction Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 13:09:13 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 501 (551) The Winter 1989 issue of _New Literary History_ has an article on interactive fiction by Richard Ziegfield, which attempts a comprehensive look at the possibilities and includes a good listing of examples up through about 1987 or so. Gary Lee Stonum Society for Critical Exchange Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH 44106 Internet: gxs11@po.cwru.edu From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: American Imago Date: Tue, 19 Jun 1990 15:22 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 502 (552) A little help for a Humanist here in Israel where current US periodicals arrive only many months after their publication. A "very close friend", Etti Golomb-Bregman, would like to know if her article "No Rose without Thorns -- Ambivalence in Kafka's 'A Country Doctor'" has appeared in the most recent issue of American Imago (that was supposed to be out in March, 1990), published by Wayne State University Press (I believe). Many thanks to anyone who happens to be close to the Current Periodicals section of a library. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJVM1) From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Collage Date: Tue, 19 Jun 1990 13:45 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 503 (553) Now that Humanist is back on the air, I would like to thank all of those who responded to my query about Collage (May 8). I have hardly begun to digest the vast and varigated bibliographical information I received. I would like to repond to just one comment. Prof. Tzvee Zahavy referred me to Jacob Neusner's Canon and Connection -- Intertextuality in Judaism Lanham: UPA, 1987. This was indeed yet another very useful reference and for that I thank him. He concluded his communication with the following remarks: "Anyone who has gone through this material would be forced to agree that the notion of collage has little value in the study of Midrash. (Unfortunately many Israeli scholars refuse to read Neusner. The Hebrew Union College library in Jerusalem cancelled their order for one of his translation series on the basis of a vindictive review in JAOS serveral years ago. Thus I suspect that Mr. Bregman may not have the research tools available to pursue the subject in light of the most current publications in the discipline. Please correct me if I am wrong)." To set the record straight, it should be noted that the Hebrew Union College (Jerusalem Campus) Library is a relatively small collection of approximately 30,000 volumes. Of these over 180 are works by Prof. Neusner, including many new works published this year. While this does not represent a complete collection of his very large and significant ouvre; I feel it would be misleading to leave the impression that this important scholar's views on Rabbinic Literature have been intentionally slighted by my institution. In perusing those works by Neusner which are available in our Library -- at Prof. Zahavy's suggestion, I did discover that he is also misinformed about Neusner's own views on the value of the notion of collage in the study of Midrash. In his discussion of the first homily in Pesiqta Rabbati, Neusner (From Tradition to Imitation -- The Plan and Program of Pesiqta Rabbati and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, Atlanta, 1987, p. 108) states: "We may now ask whether our *pisqa* forms a highly cogent syllogism, with a proposition systematically proven by each of the components; whether it forms a collage, in which diverse materials seen all together form a cogent statement; or whether it constitutes a scrapbook in which thematically continuous materials make essentially individual statements of their own. Among these three choices, the second seems to me, in balance, to apply to *Pisqa* One...So we may judge our *pisqa* to be an imperfectly executed collage, one that, in the aggregate, really does make its point (see also Neusner's concluding remarks on page 226). I am in basic agreement with the description of this passage as a collage, but with this reservation. From the other replies to my original query about how the term collage might be applied to Midrash, I have learned how this term is presently being employed in the broader Humanities. Not as a pejorative evaluation (i.e. worse than a syllogism, but better than a "scrapbook"), but rather as a critically neutral term describing a particular type of artistic composition. In this sense, I do believe "collage" is a very helpful notion in describing the composition of many of Midrashic compilations. Once again, I would like to thank the many Humanists who have helped me clarify, in my own mind at least, this admittedly "parochial" issue. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: "STEVEN D. FRAADE" <FRASTED@YALEVM> Subject: re. 4.0196. The ancient ordering of biblical texts. Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 00:09:23 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 504 (554) In addition to the writings listed by Steve Mason for the ordering Torah, Prophets, and Writings in pre-codex times may now be added the following line from the soon (?) to be published text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Miqtsat Ma'aseh Torah (4QMMT C10) (1-2 century BCE): "We have written to you so that you might discern (the correct interpretations) of the Book of Moses, and the words of the prophets, and (the words of) David." Note that the three divisions are denoted by their inspired "authors." Steven D. Fraade Religious Studies Yale University at Prof. Zahavy's suggestion, I did discover that he is also misinformed about Neusner's own views on the value of the notion of collage in the study of Midrash. In his discussion of the first homily in Pesiqta Rabbati, Neusner (From Tradition to Imitation -- The Plan and Program of Pesiqta Rabbati and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, Atlanta, 1987, p. 108) states: "We may now ask whether our *pisqa* forms a highly cogent syllogism, with a proposition systematically proven by each of the components; whether it forms a collage, in which diverse materials seen all together form a cogent statement; or whether it constitutes a scrapbook in which thematically continuous materials make essentially individual statements of their own. Among these three choices, the second seems to me, in balance, to apply to *Pisqa* One...So we may judge our *pisqa* to be an imperfectly executed collage, one that, in the aggregate, really does make its point (see also Neusner's concluding remarks on page 226). I am in basic agreement with the description of this passage as a collage, but with this reservation. From the other replies to my original query about how the term collage might be applied to Midrash, I have learned how this term is presently being employed in the broader Humanities. Not as a pejorative evaluation (i.e. worse than a syllogism, but better than a "scrapbook"), but rather as a critically neutral term describing a particular type of artistic composition. In this sense, I do believe "collage" is a very helpful notion in describing the composition of many of Midrashic compilations. Once again, I would like to thank the many Humanists who have helped me clarify, in my own mind at least, this admittedly "parochial" issue. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Collage Date: Tue, 19 Jun 1990 13:45 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 505 (555) Now that Humanist is back on the air, I would like to thank all of those who responded to my query about Collage (May 8). I have hardly begun to digest the vast and varigated bibliographical information I received. I would like to repond to just one comment. Prof. Tzvee Zahavy referred me to Jacob Neusner's Canon and Connection -- Intertextuality in Judaism Lanham: UPA, 1987. This was indeed yet another very useful reference and for that I thank him. He concluded his communication with the following remarks: "Anyone who has gone through this material would be forced to agree that the notion of collage has little value in the study of Midrash. (Unfortunately many Israeli scholars refuse to read Neusner. The Hebrew Union College library in Jerusalem cancelled their order for one of his translation series on the basis of a vindictive review in JAOS serveral years ago. Thus I suspect that Mr. Bregman may not have the research tools available to pursue the subject in light of the most current publications in the discipline. Please correct me if I am wrong)." To set the record straight, it should be noted that the Hebrew Union College (Jerusalem Campus) Library is a relatively small collection of approximately 30,000 volumes. Of these over 180 are works by Prof. Neusner, including many new works published this year. While this does not represent a complete collection of his very large and significant ouvre; I feel it would be misleading to leave the impression that this important scholar's views on Rabbinic Literature have been intentionally slighted by my institution. In perusing those works by Neusner which are available in our Library -- at Prof. Zahavy's suggestion, I did discover that he is also misinformed about Neusner's own views on the value of the notion of collage in the study of Midrash. In his discussion of the first homily in Pesiqta Rabbati, Neusner (From Tradition to Imitation -- The Plan and Program of Pesiqta Rabbati and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, Atlanta, 1987, p. 108) states: "We may now ask whether our *pisqa* forms a highly cogent syllogism, with a proposition systematically proven by each of the components; whether it forms a collage, in which diverse materials seen all together form a cogent statement; or whether it constitutes a scrapbook in which thematically continuous materials make essentially individual statements of their own. Among these three choices, the second seems to me, in balance, to apply to *Pisqa* One...So we may judge our *pisqa* to be an imperfectly executed collage, one that, in the aggregate, really does make its point (see also Neusner's concluding remarks on page 226). I am in basic agreement with the description of this passage as a collage, but with this reservation. From the other replies to my original query about how the term collage might be applied to Midrash, I have learned how this term is presently being employed in the broader Humanities. Not as a pejorative evaluation (i.e. worse than a syllogism, but better than a "scrapbook"), but rather as a critically neutral term describing a particular type of artistic composition. In this sense, I do believe "collage" is a very helpful notion in describing the composition of many of Midrashic compilations. Once again, I would like to thank the many Humanists who have helped me clarify, in my own mind at least, this admittedly "parochial" issue. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: "STEVEN D. FRAADE" <FRASTED@YALEVM> Subject: re. 4.0196. The ancient ordering of biblical texts. Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 00:09:23 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 506 (556) In addition to the writings listed by Steve Mason for the ordering Torah, Prophets, and Writings in pre-codex times may now be added the following line from the soon (?) to be published text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Miqtsat Ma'aseh Torah (4QMMT C10) (1-2 century BCE): "We have written to you so that you might discern (the correct interpretations) of the Book of Moses, and the words of the prophets, and (the words of) David." Note that the three divisions are denoted by their inspired "authors." Steven D. Fraade Religious Studies Yale University From: Richard Goerwitz <goer@sophist.uchicago.edu> Subject: GUIs and lunar lander games gotten out of control Date: Mon, 18 Jun 90 20:06:54 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 203 (557) I quote: Further to Goerwitz's remarks concerning the relative difficulty of programming a Mac compared to a PC. It is facile and misleading to say that it is easier to write programs for the PC than for the Mac. What sort of programs? A good question. Each computer is good at a specific range of tasks. I admit that it's easier to put a lot of cute windows into a Mac pro- gram than into something designed for a vanilla PC. If I didn't make this clear, then let me reinforce it now: The Mac has a nice user in- terface, and some nice tools to back it up. We here at the University of Chicago are pretty much a Mac/Sun institution, with Macs being the machine of choice for naive users. There's nothing wrong with the Mac. Sure, if you want ot write a simple one-off utility for your own use this is probably correct... You are now beginning to become somewhat misleading yourself :-). Just because a program doesn't have lots of pop-up windows and "fancy" fonts doesn't mean that it is a simple one-off utility. Do you know what lex or yacc are? Have you ever used a regex library? Let's be serious now. Extremely powerful and useful software exists which assumes very little in the way of a graphical user interface. Let's not give people who don't write their own software that the Mac is better than "the PC" (i.e. an ISA machine running MS-DOS) for everything but "simple one-off utilities." Disclaimer: I emphasize that there are many, many good points to the Mac. The reason I make these sorts of postings regarding both it and its com- petitors is to encourage people to think of their computers more as com- modities than as children, husbands, or wives. All too often I see peo- ple who make major commitments of both time and money to a machine and/or operating environment get kind of feverish about defending it. It's a natural tendency, I'll admit. The fact that it's natural, though, doesn't make it very smart. If someone wants to take me to task, don't write in about how I've over- looked this or that feature or convenience of your pet GUI or OS. Take me to task about all my snide remarks about leaving the Macs and PCs for my four year-old to play with, and tell me how my favored Unix environ- ment is hardly more than a lunar lander game gotten out of control.... -Richard L. Goerwitz goer%sophist@uchicago.bitnet goer@sophist.uchicago.edu rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer From: Stephen Clausing <SCLAUS@YALEVM> Subject: free language software Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 09:58:03 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 507 (558) My university (Yale) has just completed the IBM version of Private Tutor, the well-known language authoring system for the Macintosh. The IBM version will soon go on sale through Wisc-Ware for $60, however, we would like to offer the program free to anyone on Humanist interested. The IBM version requires Microsoft Windows and is equivalent in function and appearance to the Macintosh version. Files created with the IBM version are compatible with the Macintosh version. To obtain a copy of the IBM version, send me your name, university affiliation, and languages taught, over the network. I will send the program to you by Bitnet. Indicate whether your system can accept and download binary files or text files or both. Sorry, but I cannot send the program over regular mail, since that involves buying disks, stamps, etc, and we want to do this at no expense to you and to us. Bear in mind that the program has not yet been formally tested, so you should expect bugs. Incidentally, I did not write the IBM version. This was done by Igor Popovic, also of Yale University, and it was a monumental task to create an IBM program which had the same look and feel of the original Macintosh program. From: djb@harvunxw.BITNET (David J. Birnbaum) Subject: Re: 4.0197 TACT Address; Interactive Fiction Query (2/31) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 07:55:23 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 197 (559) [deleted quotation] If this is true, is it possible to make it available on the Humanist ListServ? Thanks, David -------- David J. Birnbaum djb@wjh12.harvard.edu [Internet] djb@harvunxw.bitnet [Bitnet] -------- From: A0234@AppleLink.Apple.COM (UC Berkeley, Grycz,AUC) Subject: Polish Institute Forming Date: 19 Jun 90 17:39 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 205 (560) Henning, Thank you for your posting to the Humanist list concerning e-mail links to Polish intellectuals. The University of California is sponsoring an outreach program, called "Cooperative Assistance" in which we are expecting to establish an international "Institute for Regional Development," centrally-located in Wroclaw, Poland, as a demonstration project and facility for Eastern European connections to the West. We are having an initial joint meeting of the delegates during the week of 2 July 1990 in Wroclaw (two weeks from now). One of our principal collaborators from the Polish side, is Dr. Daniel J. Bem, director of the Polish Academic Computing Network, KASK. The information you gather will be very useful. Perhaps UC can help channel it to the appropriate authorities in Poland. Cordially, Chet Grycz Scholarship and Technology Study Project ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Czeslaw Jan Grycz | BITNET: A0234@AppleLink.Apple.Com University of California | - or - CJGUR@UCCMVSA Kaiser Center, Eighth Floor | AppleLink: A0234 300 Lakeside Drive | MCI Mail: 262-7719 Oakland, California | Phone: (415) 987-0561 94612-3550 | FAX: (415) 839-3573 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Collage Date: Tue, 19 Jun 1990 13:45 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 508 (561) Now that Humanist is back on the air, I would like to thank all of those who responded to my query about Collage (May 8). I have hardly begun to digest the vast and varigated bibliographical information I received. I would like to repond to just one comment. Prof. Tzvee Zahavy referred me to Jacob Neusner's Canon and Connection -- Intertextuality in Judaism Lanham: UPA, 1987. This was indeed yet another very useful reference and for that I thank him. He concluded his communication with the following remarks: "Anyone who has gone through this material would be forced to agree that the notion of collage has little value in the study of Midrash. (Unfortunately many Israeli scholars refuse to read Neusner. The Hebrew Union College library in Jerusalem cancelled their order for one of his translation series on the basis of a vindictive review in JAOS serveral years ago. Thus I suspect that Mr. Bregman may not have the research tools available to pursue the subject in light of the most current publications in the discipline. Please correct me if I am wrong)." To set the record straight, it should be noted that the Hebrew Union College (Jerusalem Campus) Library is a relatively small collection of approximately 30,000 volumes. Of these over 180 are works by Prof. Neusner, including many new works published this year. While this does not represent a complete collection of his very large and significant ouvre; I feel it would be misleading to leave the impression that this important scholar's views on Rabbinic Literature have been intentionally slighted by my institution. In perusing those works by Neusner which are available in our Library -- at Prof. Zahavy's suggestion, I did discover that he is also misinformed about Neusner's own views on the value of the notion of collage in the study of Midrash. In his discussion of the first homily in Pesiqta Rabbati, Neusner (From Tradition to Imitation -- The Plan and Program of Pesiqta Rabbati and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, Atlanta, 1987, p. 108) states: "We may now ask whether our *pisqa* forms a highly cogent syllogism, with a proposition systematically proven by each of the components; whether it forms a collage, in which diverse materials seen all together form a cogent statement; or whether it constitutes a scrapbook in which thematically continuous materials make essentially individual statements of their own. Among these three choices, the second seems to me, in balance, to apply to *Pisqa* One...So we may judge our *pisqa* to be an imperfectly executed collage, one that, in the aggregate, really does make its point (see also Neusner's concluding remarks on page 226). I am in basic agreement with the description of this passage as a collage, but with this reservation. From the other replies to my original query about how the term collage might be applied to Midrash, I have learned how this term is presently being employed in the broader Humanities. Not as a pejorative evaluation (i.e. worse than a syllogism, but better than a "scrapbook"), but rather as a critically neutral term describing a particular type of artistic composition. In this sense, I do believe "collage" is a very helpful notion in describing the composition of many of Midrashic compilations. Once again, I would like to thank the many Humanists who have helped me clarify, in my own mind at least, this admittedly "parochial" issue. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: "STEVEN D. FRAADE" <FRASTED@YALEVM> Subject: re. 4.0196. The ancient ordering of biblical texts. Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 00:09:23 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 509 (562) In addition to the writings listed by Steve Mason for the ordering Torah, Prophets, and Writings in pre-codex times may now be added the following line from the soon (?) to be published text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Miqtsat Ma'aseh Torah (4QMMT C10) (1-2 century BCE): "We have written to you so that you might discern (the correct interpretations) of the Book of Moses, and the words of the prophets, and (the words of) David." Note that the three divisions are denoted by their inspired "authors." Steven D. Fraade Religious Studies Yale University From: Knut Hofland +47 5 212954/55/56 FAFKH at NOBERGEN Subject: Re: Nodes in Taiwan Date: 19 June 90, 23:19:47 EMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 510 (563) I enclose a list of BITNET nodes in Taiwan. It is taken from a file that lists all nodes. On a BITNET node running VM/CMS try FILEL BIT* * * to locate this file or contact your system admin. TWNAS886 1079 TW Academic Sinica (JNET) VMS Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont (C.C. Hsieh) HSIEH@TWNAS886 ((882) 278-9924) TWNCTUCS 2590 TW Nat'l Chiao-Tung Univ (JNET) VMS Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont (C.H. Lin) CHLIN@TWNCTUCS ((886) 357-1212) TWNCTU01 0087 TW National Chiao-Tung Univ (JNET) VMS Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont (D.C. Liu) LIU@TWNCTU01 ((886) 357-1130) TWNITRI1 2652 TW Industrial Tech Res Ins (JNET) VMS 4.7 Con. to TWNCTU01 87 via NORUNIT (11 interm.nodes) Cont (Johnson Lee) BITADM@TWNITRI1 ((886) 359-6610) TWNMOE10 1906 TW Ministry of Ed Taiwan (RSCS) VM/SP HPO Con. to JPNSUT00 1116 via NORUNIT ( 9 interm.nodes) Cont (Wen-Sung Chen) ZCHEN@TWNMOE10 ((027) 377-0110) TWNMOE20 2378 TW Ministry of Ed Taiwan (RSCS) VM/SP Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont (Wen-Sung Chen) ZCHEN@TWNMOE10 ((027) 377-0110) TWNNTIT 2739 TW Nat'l Taiwan Inst of Tech (RSCS) VM/SP Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont TWNSCU10 2053 TW Soochow Univ (RSCS) VM/SP Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont (Whei-ju Hwang) SCU004@TWNSCU10 ((023) 111-5310) TWNSRRC1 2203 TW (JNET) VMS 5.0 Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont (K. T. Hsu) KUOTUNG@TWNSRRC1 ((886) 023-6399) TWNTTIT 2945 TW Tatung Inst of Tech (RSCS) VM/SP 5.0 Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont (Chia-Lin Tan) TTITBIT@TWNTTIT ((886) 02-5925252) TWNTUCC1 2735 TW Nat'l Taiwan Univ (JNET) VMS Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont TWNTUCC2 2726 TW Nat'l Taiwan Univ (NJE ) NOS 2.5.3 Con. to TWNMOE10 1906 via NORUNIT (10 interm.nodes) Cont Knut Hofland The Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities Street adr: Harald Haarfagres gt. 31 Post adr: P.O. Box 53, University, N-5027 Bergen, Norway Tel: +47 5 212954/5/6 Fax: +47 5 322656 From: DAVID REIMER <REIMER@WLUCP6.BITNET> Subject: Finding BITNET addresse- Date: 20 Jun 90 10:0:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 511 (564) I have only recently gained access to the networking side of the academic world. I have been doing what I can to discover ways and means of doing things locally, but some things prove elusive. Does anyone know how to use BITNET in a manner analogous to a telephone directory? Put another way, how do I find someone's BITNET address? People are so cheery when on-line (it seems!), and the cost and speed are certainly right. Electronic mail *has to be* the "mode of choice" for communicating with colleagues. Still, some jealously guard their email addresses in a way in which they would never (be able to) guard their phone numbers. (So, e.g., the HUMANIST membership list is "restricted"....) John Hughes's _Bits Bytes and Biblical Studies_ (1987) makes reference to some utilities available from NICSERVE that would seem to be helpful, but I have not been able to access these. Any help would be appreciated. David Reimer; BITNET: REIMER@WLUCP6 From: "Richard W. Unger" <USERPVIF@UBCMTSG.BITNET> Subject: Phillipine Address Date: Tue, 19 Jun 90 14:22:30 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 512 (565) Does anyone have an e-mail address in the Phillipines? The internal network, I am told, is AUSEA, but I know of no gateway. Specifically I need a contact for De La Salle University in Manila. Richard W. Unger History University of British Columbia From: Deian Hopkin <DRH@ABERYSTWYTH.AC.UK> Subject: Association for History and Computing Date: 20-JUN-1990 11:00:57 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 207 (566) ASSOCIATION FOR HISTORY AND COMPUTING Aims and Activities The Association for History and Computing is an international organisation which aims to promote and develop interest in the use of computers in all types of historical study at every level, in both teaching and research. The Association was proposed at a large conference at Westfield College, University of London, in March 1986. At a second conference at Westfield, in March 1987, it was founded and its constitution approved. A central co-ordinating body, the Council, organises the Association's international activities, including an Annual Conference (in 1988 this was in Cologne, in 1989 in Bordeaux), and supervises publications. Branches of the Association have been formed for countries or groups of countries where a large membership exists and organise activities at branch level. Sub-groups dealing with specific aspects of computing (such as the standardisation and exchange of historical data) have already been formed, and others will follow. Publications A magazine, History and Computing, published by Oxford University Press, is issued free to members. Proceedings of conferences are published and are available to members at a discount on the published price. A series of Research Reports is being inaugurated and the publication of introductory material is also planned. The Association also participates in the journal Historical Social Research/ Historische Sozialforschung, and members are able to subscribe to this at a reduced price. Training The Association has a particular commitment to the dissemination of computing techniques among history teachers. Courses and summer schools are being organised at both international and branch level Officers President: M.Jean-Philippe Genet, Paris University I Sec-General: Dr Peter Denley, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London University Denley@UK.AC.Westfield Treasurer: Dr Deian Hopkin, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth DRH@UK.AC.Aber How to Join It is possible to become a member of the Association either directly or through a branch. Subscription is per calendar year. The annual subscription is 10 pounds (7 pounds for students and the unwaged). It is possible to pay by cheque, Eurocheque, Bankers' Order or Post Office Giro. If you would like to join the Association, please send this application to the Membership Secretary: Dr Veronica Lawrence, 4 Nunnery Close, Blackbird Leys, Oxford OX4 5EG. e-mail (JANET): LAWRENCE@UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX From: CTILIT@ VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: Computers in Literature Date: Wed, 20 Jun 90 9:21 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 513 (567) *Computers in Literature* To all of you who requested the first issue of *Computers in Literature* as well as the update sheet, and details about the new Oxford University Centre for Humanities Computing. We are just printing the brochures for the Humanities Computing Centre and will send all who requested information an information pack about our activities as soon as we get the brochures back from the printers. If any of you are in Oxford anytime, do call in and see us. Marilyn Deegan CTI Centre for Literature and Linguistic Studies Oxford University Computing Service 13, Banbury Road Oxford OX2 6NN UK 0865-273221 e-mail CTILIT@UK.AC.OX.VAX From: KLCOPE@ VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: Conference Seminar Announcement and Invitation Date: Wed, 20 Jun 90 15:43 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 514 (568) KEVIN L. COPE wishes to invite proposals for a seminar newly added to the program for the 1991 SCSECS (South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) convention, scheduled for College Station, Texas, next spring. Entitled "PRAISE ¤X‡: PANEGYRIC, DEDICATION, AND COMMEMORATION AS LITERARY MODES, ARTISTIC FORMS, AND PHILOSOPHICAL POSSIBILITIES," the seminar will explore any and all acts of approbation, from the most constructive to the most sycophantic, from pious veneration of authority to impudent grubbing after money, and from straightforward panegyrical verse to marginal forms of applause (for example, Elsum's or Shaftesbury's solitary conversations with approved painting and sculptures). With a mode like panegyric, the sky's the limit! Send proposals to: Prof. Kevin L. Cope Department of English Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803-5001 U. S. A. From: Tzvee Zahavy <MAIC@UMINN1> Subject: Midrash as Collage Date: 06/20/90 11:58:52 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 209 (569) I thank Mr. Bregman for his response to my note. I must apologize for assuming that Neusner's books were deliberately excluded from the library collection of the Hebrew Union College. I assumed that the College attempted to order all new titles in the fields of Jewish Studies. I did not realize that the Jerusalem collection was so small and limited. I hope they will have the resources to catch up and fill in the gaps in the library. I also stand corrected in assuming that Mr. Bregman meant to use "collage" as a term to define the entire phenomenon of "midrash". Surely we must agree that each document of early rabbinism be subjected to critical scrutiny on its own merits. Some sections of individual midrash-collections will resemble a "collage". I see now that Mr. Bregman means to use the term to describe literary components within specific volumes. That would constitute a valid approach under the prevailing paradigm for research. Global application of "collage" to "midrash" would still be meaningless. E-MAIL: MAIC@VM1.SPCS.UMN.EDU BITNET: MAIC@UMINN1________Telephone:(612)920-4263 US-MAIL: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, CLASSICAL AND NEAR EASTERN STUDIES, 310 FOLWELL HALL, MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55455 From: TBESTUL@UNLVAX1.BITNET Subject: Electronic text of Byron Date: Wed, 20 Jun 90 12:08 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 515 (570) Does anyone know of an electronic text of Byron's Don Juan? The Oxford Text Archive doesn't record one. A graduate student in English here would be grateful to learn if one exists. Tom Bestul Department of English, University of Nebraska, Lincoln tbestul@crcvms.unl.edu or tbestul@unlvax1.bitnet From: Jose Igartua <R12270@UQAM> Subject: INGRES Date: Wed, 20 Jun 90 16:27:40 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 516 (571) Does anyone know of any electronic discussion group (LISTSERV or otherwise, on BITNET or on INTERNET) of the INGRES relational database product? I am part of a large research project that uses INGRES as its database software and would like to converse with other research users. I met only two or three at the North American Ingres Users Assocation meeting in Salt Lake City last month. For those using ORACLE (which I also do), there is a list called L-ORACLE at UQAM <L-ORACLE on the UQAM Listserv>. We would welcome additional participants. This list is public. From: Robert Kraft <KRAFT@PENNDRLS> Subject: OFFLINE 29 Date: Wednesday, 20 June 1990 1114-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 211 (572) ---------------------- <<O F F L I N E 2 9>> by guest columnist James O'Donnell, for Robert Kraft [HUMANIST 20 June 1990] [Religious Studies News 5.4 (Aug)] [CSSR Bulletin 19.3 (September)] ---------------------- <Accessing Remote Libraries> One of the topics of special interest to a number of readers who responded to the invitation in OFFLINE 28 is how to access remote libraries. Since everything I know about that topic has come from my colleague in Classical Studies, Jim O'Donnell, it seemed sensible to ask him if he would write a guest column for OFFLINE on that subject. He agreed, to the benefit of us all, and the results follow. The directions work for me, but then, I am on the same computer system that Jim uses. You may need to put a bit more energy into making them work, but keep at it -- the results are well worth it! Thanks, Jim, for sharing your expertise. <La bibliothe/que imaginaire d'INTERNET> "Ad hoc, ad loc, quid pro quo, so little time, so much to know" was the complaint of the Nowhere Man in the animated film _Yellow Submarine_. The paradox of the computer age is that it makes it possible to learn more things in less time, while at the same time making many more things for us to know. At Bob Kraft's request, I am going to sketch here one advance that has been revolutionary for me and for others. Any working scholar with experience in e-mail will find it all rather transparent; the scholar who has not yet gone on-line with the world will find it rather less transparent at first, but should be assured that in fact it is all a piece of cake. If you can do _anything_ on an IBM or Macintosh, you can summon the wisdom of the world down the wires into your machine: it's easier than learning to use a word processor. The first principle is that the great research libraries of the world have been and are continuing to make their collections more accessible through computer cataloguing. Most major university collections now have at least part of their collection in an on-line catalogue and most users are now accustomed to looking not only in a card catalogue but also in one of a row of terminals usually found standing in the entrance hall of the library. The second principle, specific to the world of computers, is that any information in any computer anywhere in the world is theoretically available to any other computer anywhere in the world, including the one on your desk. In practice, there are often obstacles, but happily librarians genuinely enjoy minimizing those obstacles. Many exciting developments remain, but much has already been done. What can you do? From any modem equipped telephone anywhere, you can now reach a huge variety of library catalogues. Now catalogues are not the same thing as books, and it is certainly frustrating to learn that a book is on a shelf someplace where you can't go; but it may be useful to know that anyway. Among the uses of the kind of library searching that I will describe below are these: browsing specialized collections in remote libraries, confirming the existence of and locating relatively uncommon volumes, searching in catalogues better equipped than that of your home institution (this can be useful in several ways), and the exhilarating sense of intellectual play that comes from nosing through any collection of books anywhere. Some examples. I grew up in New Mexico and Texas. The University of Pennsylvania library is not specially strong in southwest regional history and sociology; but the collections of the Universities of New Mexico, Colorado, and California (to name the ones I've had access to) are much stronger. I can learn of the existence of materials, get confirmed bibliographical records, and (if it came to that) decide which collection(s) might be so strong as to be worth a visit sometime. Often I find myself in possession of a defective and obscure bibliographical reference: title, author, date, with perhaps the title slightly garbled. The Penn library doesn't have it on-line. A little intelligent snooping, and I find it in the University of California system: I get a confirmed title/author/place/date record and take that the next day to our Interlibrary Loan office, where they do a much better job of getting the book quickly than they ever could have with the defective record with which I started. But, you might wonder, wouldn't the National Union Catalogues have the same information? Probably, but: (1) I just finished rearranging all my books at home and I've confirmed that I _don't_ have room on my shelves for all the NUC volumes, not even merely (sic) the pre-'56 imprints; and (2) the computer databases can be searched in ways more cunning than the printed volumes or a card catalogue. If your reference is really defective as regards author or title, the computer lets you do searches by parts of words, keywords, subject, and in some cases even call-number: it's much easier to turn a bad reference into a good one from a keyboard than by walking up and down helplessly in front of a row of NUC volumes. You also need to know less about library cataloguing and filing conventions than you used to, and that can be a great time-saver in obscure cases. Perhaps the most important use, however, is for gaining access to catalogues better than that which your home institution can offer. At Penn, for example, the full computerized catalogue covers items received and catalogued since about 1968/70. That means there's an awful lot of older material just not on line; some recent additions have put defective and partial records of a lot of older stuff on-line, but those additions, while they may help me locate a book that is in the collection, are no substitute for the full catalogue information that a regular catalogue record can allow. My most idiosyncratic use of the catalogues is not for everyone: I use them as a grand intellectual toy. I have always found it an important part of the life of the mind to browse, rummage, snoop, and generally prowl the libraries. On a leave a few years ago, I devoted some time to reading through the shelves of the Bryn Mawr College library collection: I got through all the philosophy/religion, history, and literature shelves over the course of a year. Just walking along looking at things, pulling off whatever struck my fancy, and sitting down to sort them as often as my arms were full. A richly useful intellectual experience. With the computer, it is possible to do half of that: you can't pull books out and look at them, but you can browse and snoop much more widely, in much bigger collections. But no description of possibilities can be prescriptive, only suggestive. Whatever you can do with a library catalogue, you can do better and faster from your computer: if that means something to you, read on for directions. <HOW TO USE INTERNET FOR LIBRARIES> _First_, you need a PC (Mac or IBM are identical for these purposes) with modem and modem software. _Second_, you need a connection to the great world. Characteristically, this will be furnished by your home academic institution. You will probably have gotten that connection in order to do e-mail of some kind, or perhaps to have access to on-line student records for registration or the like. Some institutional connection is apparently essential: inquiries have failed to find a commercial service that offers the right kind of interactive link to INTERNET. There may be an easier way: snoop around academic institutions close to you. See if any of them allow outsiders to reach the level of access necessary to get to INTERNET without a formal account or password; institutional policies will vary widely. _Third_, you will need to find out from your local computer gurus how to get on to INTERNET, the nationwide computer network that links the libraries (and many other facilities). Usually this is easy. For me, it means giving a single command on first logging on to the local computer (I merely type "TELNET" and hit a carriage return <CR>), then I get a new prompt at which I type the letter T and the "address" (either names or numbers: example below) I seek. In a matter of seconds, I am linked to the computer I seek and can begin logging on there. BUT YOU MUST FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF WHAT THE EXACT PROTOCOLS ARE AT YOUR HOME INSTITUTION: NO TWO SYSTEMS ARE EXACTLY ALIKE. Now _fourth_, you need more information. The easiest way to get the information you need is through e-mail. Ask you local e- mail gurus how to acquire files from remote list-servers. On many systems, this is as simple as issuing a one-line command from the basic system prompt; others require you to send a short mail message. On the common VM/VMS systems, the message you need to send is: TELL LISTSERV AT UNMVM GET INTERNET LIBRARY The crucial elements are the address (UNMVM: a computer at the University of New Mexico) and the filename (INTERNET LIBRARY). This file is a collection of very specific and explicit instructions for gaining access to libraries all over the country. (If you have had a copy of this file around for some time and done nothing with it, now would be a good time to get a new copy: it is updated regularly, with new facilities being added all the time.) Read this file. (Dr. Art St. George of UNM deserves at least a medal for his patient work in gathering and updating this material: it is really the browser's bible.) At this point, you want to follow your nose and your inclinations. Which libraries are of most interest to you will be a matter of taste, and trial and error will confirm them. For each library discussed in the file, there will be good instructions how to log on to the individual facility. Here's where an example helps, so I'll walk you through the University of Maryland, which is a very easy system to approach. First on my machine, I have given the link-to-internet command: TELNET Then the call-Maryland command T 128.8.161.199 The number 128.8.161.199 I learned from the INTERNET LIBRARY file. Some places have also alphabetical addresses like those familiar from e-mail addresses (e.g., PENNLIB.UPENN.EDU); if you have addresses in both forms and one doesn't work, try the other; for Maryland, you would use UMCAT.UMD.EDU. Anyway, after you connect you get a rather austere prompt, but from INTERNET LIBRARY, you know to answer: CAT <CR> At this point, you can stop reading this article and start looking at the help screens you get on the computer. These will be the same screens you would get if you were in the catalogue department of the library itself. You will want to experiment with what you can get. One thing I like (and don't have at home at Penn) is the capacity to do keyword searches, e.g., k=water buffalo That is a command that will get you many more "hits" than a subject search: subject searches are restricted to the kinds of things that librarians have explicitly selected and ratified, the kinds of things that were formally listed on the card in the old card file; but keyword searches look at the whole record, and so if there is a book with "water buffalo" in the title, you will get it (even if it's a novel); and if somebody wrote a book under the pseudonym "Clem Water Buffalo," by golly, you'll hit it. You may well get therefore more dross with such a search, but also more gold. (I've also noticed that SUBJECT headings in these catalogues are the ones most prone to typographical errors: in the old days, the subject heading typed on the original author card was not a crucial piece of information: it would be retyped correctly on the actual subject card. But in the computer record, _that's_ the place the computer looks for the subject heading. Curtailing your search target is a good idea here.) And always remember, a search that doesn't work out takes a second; you can usually think of a way to improve your question to get more effective results. A=JONES is going to get thousands of "hits"; think about how to reduce the range. When in doubt, of course, always use the shortest possible search target: don't ask for "water buffaloes" because you'll _only_ get the plural (and even then somebody might have spelled it "buffalos" and you'd miss that); ask for the singular and the plural will come along at no extra charge; and in fact "water buf" is likely to get you everything you want, and the fewer characters you type, the fewer chances to make a typing mistake and have to start over. So, go ahead, play. Browse, snoop, take notes. When you're done, hang up the modem or disconnect (sometimes systems will have explicit logoff instructions; if you know them it's polite to use them, but in an emergency or if you simply don't know them, just breaking the connection will suffice). Start again. Go back to INTERNET LIBRARY and look for someplace else to call. <ON NOTE-TAKING, AND ON OTHER LIBRARY FACILITIES> Note-taking. Depending on your software, your hardware, and the characteristics of the individual library you are calling, you may be able to "LOG" your call and keep a record of your results on disk. Sometimes this takes a little practice (at Penn, for example, there's an undocumented alternate "terminal type" you need to tell it to emulate in order for most communications software packages to be able to log successfully). Once you do that, whatever you see on screen will be recorded on disk for later editing and manipulation. But almost every computer, modem software, and printer combination will allow you to PRINT SCREEN, and that is in fact the way I usually handle it. Get a screen with interesting information, hit the PRINT SCREEN button, and nudge my laser printer to eject the paper and I have a printed record. 99% of the time, this is fine, even wonderful. Other facilities: There are two main proprietary systems that enrich the possibilities of on-line library work, OCLC and RLIN. Both of these systems, which report the holdings of many libraries, require special access codes and, at least indirectly, payment of fees. Practices vary sharply from institution to institution, but at Penn, we may get access to RLIN and our own account number on request, but the library administration periodically reviews the costs and benefits and reserves the right at some point to pass the charges on to users. We do not have access to OCLC. Consult your local institution (usually somebody in the library) for information about these systems. These systems have their own special strengths, special databases, etc., and RLIN, for example, is the best source I have for information about very new books --sometimes even finding out about books before they are actually published, as the Library of Congress posts information registered by the publishers. <THE FUTURE> As you play around with INTERNET LIBRARY, you will find that some institutions have already begun putting other services on- line: I would like to have a good on-line encyclopedia, and would be happy to have as many reference databases as possible handy. At some institutions, you can already check circulation status of a book and leave, by computer, a request that a book be recalled or merely paged from the stacks and held for you at the circulation desk. Similarly, at Penn there is talk of allowing faculty to initiate their own Interlibrary Loan requests by machine from home, with the existing ILL staff freed up to concentrate on the really tough cases and on the management of the flow of books in and out of the building. Somewhere beyond INTERNET lies a Borgesian fantasy library, where all the texts are themselves on-line, and where you may flit from text to text without budging from your desk in your study, perhaps miles away from the library. A pretty fantasy, but not all _that_ unrealistic and worth keeping in mind as the goal towards which all the interim developments reach. <FOR FURTHER INFORMATION> In the first instance, consult your local computer gurus about INTERNET access and your local library people about things like RLIN and OCLC. The INTERNET LIBRARY file gives addresses for queries directed to other libraries. For queries about this article, the author may be reached as JODONNEL@PENNSAS.UPENN.EDU (and would be particularly glad to hear of any corrections or improvements that might be suggested). <-----> Please send information, suggestions or queries concerning OFFLINE to Robert A. Kraft, Box 36 College Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA 19104-6303. Telephone (215) 898- 5827. BITNET address: KRAFT@PENNDRLS. To request printed information or materials from OFFLINE, please supply an appropriately sized, self-addressed envelope or an address label. A complete electronic file of OFFLINE columns is available upon request (for IBM/DOS, Mac, or IBYCUS), or from the HUMANIST discussion group FileServer (BROWNVM.BITNET). From: Brian Whittaker <BRIANW@YORKVM2> Subject: Re: 4.0196 Interpretation and Ordering of Biblical Texts Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 00:32:19 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 212 (573) Peter Junger asked for methodological references dealing with the problem of getting back to the way a text might have been read and understood in the time and place where it was written, rather than as it might be read by a historically naive reader in our own time and place, or at some point in time and space between its origin and ourselves. As I tell my students, we look at texts and events down the wrong end of the telescope of history... Edmund Spenser saw himself as influenced by Chaucer; he did not see himself doing things that would influence Milton. Matthew presents Jesus explicitly in relation to the Torah and the Prophets; he does not present Jesus explicitly in relation to the administration of the Church by bishops. One major scholarly tradition devoted to this methodological problem most often goes by the name of "hermeneutics." While this discipline has roots that go deep into the ancient world, the modern movement grows most directly out of the philosophical work of Martin Heidegger, most notably _Sein und Zeit_ (translated as _Being and Time_). Heidegger, like many people educated in the German philological tradition, believed that the etymology of a word often carried the true meaning of the word (a pun on the etymology of "etymology" that Heidegger would have approved of). The German word which most often corresponds to English "existence" is "Dasein": "sein" would translate as "being" and "da" as either "there" or "then". Thus existence must involve being in a particular place and time, and, at least as far as we can know, being would not take place in eternity. The contrast with the Platonic tradition is trivially obvious. Applying this view of "existence" by analogy to the meaning of texts would yield the hypothesis that a text does not have an eternal and immutable meaning but rather has meanings specific to particular audiences in particular times and places. If one of these meanings has primacy, it would be the meaning of the text for its original audience. This hypothesis has been pursued with considerable vigour and influence by two of Heidegger's colleagues, Gadammer and Bultman. Ernst Georg Gadammer, in _Wahrheit und Methode_ (translated as _Truth and Method_) lays out a detailed method and sustaining theory for the interpretation of texts in their original contexts. Gadammer's main interest is in the interpretation of philosophical texts, and there is in English a collection of translations of his shorter interpretive essays under the title _Philosophical Hermeneutics_. Followers of Gadammer have tended to see him in rather narrow Hegelian terms, pursuing a historically verifiable and thus useful Ursinn or original meaning to the exclusion of all other meanings. Gadammer himself acknowledged a more Kantian attitude... advancing prescriptively an agenda for the way a scholar ought to seek the original meaning of a text while acknowledging descriptively the way the reader enjoys and profits from the naive reading of the text. That the former prescriptive hermeneutics and the latter descriptive (and aesthetic, in the Kantian sense) hermeneutics were not only both important but continually interactive for Gadammer may be seen from the following anecdote: I once heard him address and audience of academics who had (somewhat willfully) read him in the strictly Hegelian and prescriptive sense I mentioned above. When he said that even with a text whose meaning in its original time and place he had studied with great thoroughness, like Nietshe's _Also Sprach Zarathustra_ (_Thus Spake Zarathustra_), he still enjoyed and valued the naive and anachronistic twentieth- century meaning that he could get when reading the same text for pleasure, there was a reaction of shock and dismay, especially from those who had been teaching their students that Gadammer insisted on always reading "hermeneutically." One graduate student said during the question period "But surely it changes your under- standing of Goethe's "Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh" if you know that it was written while Goethe was recuperating from a serious illness." Gadammer sat down suddenly, put his hand over his mouth and sat in silence for several minutes. Then he said, and I paraphrase as best I can, "You know, all my life that has been my favourite poem, but from now on I shall understand it very differently. I am profoundly grateful to you." Gadammer's colleague Rudolph Bultmann applied an interesting variation of hermeneutic method to the study of the Christian New Testament. Bultmann's approach in books like _Jesus Christ: Kerygma and Myth_ was to specify features of the text whose meaning was specific to the time and place of writing, like the assumption of a (veritcal) spatial relationship between heaven and earth, because of which Jesus would return for the second coming "riding on a cloud", so that these ancient elements could be discounted and the text made more meaningful for modern readers whose world view was radically different from that of the original audience. This process of filtering the text to obtain what still survived as meaningful Bultmann called "de-mythologizing". There have been a number of recent publications on literacy and reading habits in various periods, but one of the best books of this sort for the medieval period is still Eric Auerbach's _Literary Language and Its Public in the Latin Middle Ages_. He is one of the few modern scholars to appreciate the extent to which the Roman rhetoric texts shaped the medieval model of communication. In the last half-century, the French structuralists, following the methods of Saussure's _Cours general de Linguitique_ (_Course in General Linguistics_), and more recently the French deconstructionists, following the methods of Derrida's _De la Grammatologie_ (_Of Grammatology_), have unnerved the more complacent among the philosophers, historians, literary historians and art historians. The impact of the Prague School structuralists, like Roman Jacobson, may be more productive in these fields, because of the greater scope this model allows for diachronic processes. Also from language study one might cite the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein's _Philosophische Bemerkungen_ and the injunction to ask not what a word means but rather how the word is used. Barbara Raw's recent book _Anglo-Saxon Crucifixion Iconology and the Monastic Revival_ applies this line of enquiry to tenth-century scultpture and manuscript illustration; where the art historian has traditionally begun with a kind of etymology of the medieval sculpture or painting, seeking its ancestry in earlier works, Raw begins with the question of how the particular work of art was *used* - - what did people do with it. Her book demonstrates just how fruitful this line of enquiry can be. Brian Whittaker Department of English, Atkinson College, York University From: George Aichele <73760.1176@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Codex Date: 20 Jun 90 19:09:33 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 213 (574) Robert Kraft brought up in a recent posting the important technological development of the codex, at the beginning of the common era. What is known of the history of the codex? Are there any particularly good sources on this question? I know Aland and Aland (*The Text of the New Testament*) have a bit to say about it, and I get the impression that the origins are quite obscure. Is it true that the first codexes were (Christian) "Bibles"? (Granted the extreme variability of the early collections!) If so, do we know why? Kermode (I think) speculates that it may have had to do with the desire to "flip" back and forth between the (Jewish) scriptures and the added commentaries (now known as New Testament)--which would be much more difficult with scrolls. (Fulfillment of the scriptures and all that.) I also like Steve Mason's recent comment that scrolls worked well enough for a predominantly oral culture--does this imply that the switch to the codex correlates with a greater interest in reading and the written word? (Perhaps, as Samuel Sandmel suggested, a rejection of the "oral Torah"?) I also have a hunch that there is some relation between this matter and recent HUMANIST discussions of graphics vs. command line interfaces and of on-screen editing vs. use of hard copy-- but don't ask me what! Maybe now that we've got hypertext, it's time to add another testament or two. (Just kidding!) George Aichele 73760,1176@compuserve.com From: Stephen Clausing <SCLAUS@YALEVM> Subject: IBM Private Tutor update Date: Wed, 20 Jun 90 22:53:09 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 517 (575) I was swamped for requests for the IBM version of Private Tutor, so it may take me a few days to get around to everybody. If you have not received anything a week from now, write back to me. I am sending out the binary version first to everyone who indicated they could handle binary files. Download this as binary and then type ptutor10 in the command line. The file will then de-archive itself, at least that is what the IBM people here tell me. From: Judy Koren <LBJUDY@VMSA.TECHNION.AC.IL> Subject: RE: 4.0195 Notes and Queries (5/80) Date: Wed, 20 Jun 1990 11:12:23 EET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 518 (576) Re. Louis Janus' question on names of computers: I don't know of any study but can give a few examples from personal experience. In Israeli universities, most of the nodes get their names from their operating system (the first VMS machine is VMSA, etc.) or function within the institution (TECLIB is the Technion library computer, HAIFAL the Haifa University L(ibrary) one). Some commemorate a Great Event in the lives of their proud owners (WIND is the Aeronautical Eng. computer, commemorating the building of a large wind tunnel). The neatest idea I've come across started out from the Proud Owner syndrome: NOGA after the newborn daughter of one of the programmers/systems managers; but since Noga in Hebrew is the name of the planet Venus, it spawned a fashion, and subsequent machines were called by the names of planets (Pluto, Neptune etc.) with the occasional associative idea thrown in (Star, Galaxy). How do you collect them? The only thing I can think of is to ask anyone who feels inclined to help to list the nodes of his institution (plus any others easily verifiable, eg those accessing his network from others) to a file and send you the file. Of course that doesn't tell you the reason behind each name or even the meaning of the name if it isn't English. From: Alan D Corre <corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> Subject: One and Many Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 15:46:12 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 215 (577) "I've learned a lot--and most of it doesn't apply anymore."--Charles E. Exley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NCR Corporation, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, June 20, 1990. Mr. Exley's statement set me thinking, and I found that it applies to me too. I became involved with computers around 1975 after a visit to Professor Guido Alinei's computer project on Italian texts at the University of Utrecht. Few Humanists were involved in computers at that time, and it was very difficult to obtain any information, let alone get involved. I started to learn about the Univac 1100 to which I had access, and became quite proficient at its operating system. That system was like a graveyard. As new methods came in, the operating system accomodated to them, but nothing was ever disposed of. Even today you can in theory edit a file by punching individual corrections on individual cards--but there is no longer a punch machine on which to punch the card or a reader to read it once punched! As of next January no new accounts will be opened on that reverend machine, and the following July it will be phased out entirely. With that, my knowledge of the 1100 operating system will become totally useless. Unfortunately I have no conscious erase program in my head, and I guess those neurons will stay active until they are food for worms. After years of working with that cumbersome machine, the Apple II was like a revelation. I loved Ken Bowles' neat operating system that was adapted for Apple Pascal, and never understood why it did not become more widely accepted. Although programs I wrote with that p-system are still in use, I do not use it any more. At this point I feel that my useless computer knowledge is greater in bulk that the knowledge that I can actually use, and wonder for how long this has to continue. Is this what is meant by "keeping up?" What a drag. There has been some compensation, though. It has really been thrilling and exciting to watch the way in which the computer world has bounded ahead, even with my limited technical know-how. The kind of progress that took centuries for some disciplines has taken just a few decades for computers, and I am grateful to have been able to watch some of the action. I heard a lecture by Grace Hopper, the computer veteran, who related that in the forties she got into difficulties keeping her check book in balance, and her accountant brother pointed out that she had unwittingly started using octal arithmetic. I was unaware of computers at that time when mental octal arithmetic was a prerequisite, but I am happy to have witnessed, and in my way understood the enormous changes that have taken place. I have to contrast this, however, with my "real" area. I learned the basics of Classical Hebrew forty-five years ago, and nothing has changed. By definition it cannot; if you change it, it isn't Classical Hebrew. True, we understand certain features better today than we did before with the help of modern Linguistics. But the essentials are the same, now and forever. The same applies to the texts to which the language studies are the key. The insights and turns of phrase of a Jeremiah, a Lucretius or a Shakespeare can be "run" again and again in an individual life, and in the collective life of humankind, and never become obsolete. And it's the same for great art and music. "The One remains, the many change and pass." In some sense the classics are part of the "One" and the snazzy new desk-top is part of the many, but there does seem to be need for both. How we balance the two seems to me one of the major current challenges for the humanist. From: Oxford Text Archive <ARCHIVE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK> Subject: JANET names Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 10:47 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 519 (578) In an idle moment this morning I have been analysing the names of JANET sites, a list of which is freely available. Of course these names for computers are all assigned according to a Name registration scheme and therefore less freely chosen than those you might find in your local department. There are 1131 different terminal names (i.e. the last name following the dot) in the current list, most of which are one offs. Among countless abbreviations for places and institutions, there are a lot of really rather silly names (examples of hapax legumina <fn>this is a joke</fn> which caught my eye include AMAZON, BADGER, BASIL, BEETROOT, CABBAGE, KLINGON, NUTMEG, PIGLET, TURNIP WOMBAT and ZEN - as well as one to delight the heart of all humanists - 'GOLLEM' (sic). If anyone wants the full list, I will send it. For the moment, here are the names that appear more than five times: no surprises here, unless it is to demonstrate fairly conclusively how popular computer manufacturers with names begining with 'D' are these days, for networking purposes at least: A 6 CAD 6 CU 6 DIR 6 DIRECTORY 6 EE 6 IBM 6 APOLLO 7 CMS 7 COMPUTER-SCIENCE 7 MATHS 7 MVAX 7 NEWS 7 PAD 7 VAXC 7 CLUSTER 8 NORHEP 8 INFO 9 PRIME-A 9 TEX 9 SUN 10 UX 10 LASERJET 11 LIB 11 TEST 14 VAXB 16 CS 17 STARLINK 22 VAX 25 LIBRARY 31 VAXA 34 From: Oxford Text Archive <ARCHIVE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK> Subject: postscript on JANET names Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 11:05 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 520 (579) P.S. I forgot to remark that there are a total of 1670 different JANET sites in the list I looked at, which produce 1121 different terminal names. I also forgot to sign my message Lou Burnard From: Don Fowler <DPF@vax.oxford.ac.uk> Subject: RE: 4.0213 History of the Codex? (1/26) Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 12:08 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 521 (580) The standard work on the introduction of the codex is C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat The Birth of the Codex london 1983, though many areas remain controversial. But one should be very careful about excessive technological determinism. There is a lot of re-evaluation going on of the notion of orality and its effects in Greco-roman culture, and a growing scepticism about the sort of stuff Havelock and others pushed out. The development of literary scholarship as we know it - a concern for exact wording, even down to questions of punctuation and accentuation - took place in the Greco-roman world in the 3rd C B.C.E. when scrolls were the norm. That was also the period when the order of works was fixed for many authors. But try asking a Sanskritist about the way Panini and the other grammars were (indeed are) discussed orally and you will see that the question of respect for the word and literacy are much more complicated than fanatics like Ong make out. There's a huge bibliography. Don Fowler. From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Re: 4.0213 History of the Codex? (1/26) Date: Sun, 24 Jun 1990 09:51 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 522 (581) In reply to George Aichele's remarks on the history of the Codex. I would appreciate a more complete reference to Sandmel's suggestion that the transition to the Codex represented a rejection of the "oral Torah". I would also like to mention my own humble contribution to this discussion. In my article "An Early Fragment of Avot deRabbi Natan from a Scroll", Tarbiz 52:2 (1983), 201-222 [Hebrew with extensive English Abstract] I assembled what information was then available for use of the Scroll format for recording non-Biblical materials (i.e. "oral torah"). I also suggested that the replacement of the tetragrammaton with various pious abbreviations was related to the transition from the hallowed scroll format to the less sacred codex format. Since that time some additional material has been published by Peter Schafer and Malachi Beit Arie. Also Menachem Haran of the Hebrew University Bible Dept. has published a number of articles (at least some of which also appeared in the journal Tarbiz) on the subject of the scroll format. If this is of interest, I will try to get together a more detailed bibliography. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: psc90!jdg@dartvax.dartmouth.edu (Dr. Joel Goldfield) Subject: "Query about locating old world history texts" Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 20:00:33 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 523 (582) Does anyone have suggestions about locating a few old world history texts via INTERNET or other means? Interlibrary loan searches by a colleague have proved fruitless for 3 texts by Barnes, Willis West and Hutton Webster published between 1900 & 1914 for use in U.S. secondary schools. I'd welcome contact with anyone with a research interest in pre-WWI U.S. world history texts to get in touch with me. Thanks, Joel D. Goldfield Plymouth State College (NH, USA) joelg@psc.bitnet From: "Robert T. Trotter, II" <CMSRTT01@NAUVM> Subject: bibliographies on computer disk Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 16:09:00 MST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 524 (583) I would be very interested in finding sources of bibliographies that are available on computer disks. If people would like to reply directly to me, I would be willing to summarize for the list, or replies can be sent directly to the list. I am most interested in bibliographies about U.S. ethnic groups and Latin America. The subject matter is not important, although global information on particular cultures is of considerable interest. I am trying to find out what sources of bibliographies are available, in addition to the normal on-line/mainframe search sources. RTT From: Thomas Zielke <113355@DOLUNI1> Subject: voice cards Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 12:39:10 CET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 525 (584) A friend of mine has asked me to transmit the following question: Has any of you already had experiences with voice cards, i.e. cards which allow your computer to reproduce digitally stored speech/sounds? We're looking for such a card to be used in Second Language Teaching; it should therefore a) produce speech at the best possible quality b) offer possibilities to connect headphones AND an external loudspeaker c) be also able to record speech digitally. Thanks for responding, Thomas Zielke Historisches Seminar Universit{t Oldenburg Postfach 2503 D-2900 Oldenburg From: "Adam C. Engst" <PV9Y@CORNELLA> Subject: Re: 4.0201 ... Interactive Fiction ... Date: Mon, 25 Jun 90 08:27:21 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 526 (585) For those interested in interactive fiction, Gordon Howell of Herriot-Watt University in Scotland published a sporadic journal called IF-Digest which is oriented towards interactive fiction as a literary genre. Gordon's address is gordon@hci.hw.ac.uk. Also, I majored in hypertextual fiction at Cornell last year and wrote a large piece of hyperfiction along with a long discussion of hyperfiction as a literature. Both pieces are in a hypertext editor (what else?) called StorySpace on the Mac. StorySpace was written by Jay David Bolter of U of North Carolina and Michael Joyce of the U of Michigan and will hopefully be published this summer by a company called Eastgate Systems. If anyone wants a copy of my thesis work, send me a disk with a self-addressed, stamped envelope ($.45 usually does it if the envelope is light in the US). The files are too large to upload and will come in a self-extracting StuffIT archive. A Mac Plus and hard drive are required. Another place to get information on interactive fiction is the Usenet group rec.arts.int-fiction, which I started four years ago, but which has changed topic from hypertextual fiction (as I started calling it) to things like AI role-playing games and simulated environments, in which I'm not as interested. The best place to find other references is in my thesis discussion so I won't go into more details here... Adam Engst Adam C. Engst pv9y@cornella.bitnet From: John Unsworth <JMUEG@NCSUVM> Subject: New discussion group Date: Sun, 24 Jun 90 17:13:29 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 527 (586) I'd like to announce the commencement of a new discussion group on postmodernism, which has recently begun operating at NC State. Interested parties can subscribe by sending a request to pmc@ncsuvm (Bitnet) or pmc@ncsuvm.ncsu.edu (Internet), or by sending mail containing the one-line command subscribe pmc-talk [your full name] to the address listserv@ncsuvm (Bitnet) or listserv@ncsuvm.ncsu.edu (Internet). The list is open and unedited, and is a companion-list to <Postmodern Culture>, the peer-reviewed electronic journal which begins publication in the Fall. So far, the discussion group has included postings of the first in a three-part series by Michael Heim, a forthcoming essay by one of the participants in the _Harper's_ symposium on computer hacking, and an extensive bibliography on the subject of postmodernism. Please join us. John Unsworth From: Ben Salemans <U070011@HNYKUN11> Subject: Re: 4.0210 ... Ingres listserv list Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 17:35:09 MET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 528 (587) Subscription to an INGRES-list is possible. The simple (?) message: TELL LISTSERV AT HDETUD1 SUB INGRES-L Ben Salemans resulted in my case in a subscription to the INGRES-list. I found the name of this and other interesting lists in the file LISTSERV LISTS which was sent to me after I gave the message: TELL LISTSERV AT HEARN LIST GLOBAL In your case you will have to fill in another name for 'HEARN' (most of the times this will be the central EARN- or BITNET-node which is as close as possible to the computer you are working on. But I think you can face this problem, since your subscription to the HUMANIST-list was succesful. Else, ask your local network wizzard for more information on the matter! Ben Salemans --------------------------------------------------------------------- This information was also received from Hans van der Laan <RCDILAA@HDETUD1.TUDELFT.NL> at Delft University. -- [eds.] From: Lisa Cziffra <LISAC@PUCC> Subject: Re: 4.0183 Queries: ... Fonts Date: Mon, 25 Jun 90 12:51:46 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 529 (588) Have you tried the Oxford Catalogue of Fonts? If not, contact Catherine Griffin at the Oxford University Computing Service (13 Banbury Road; Oxford OX2 6UP, England) (Janet address: CATHERINE@UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX). In Spring 1989 she announced her intention to create such a catalogue. Lisa Cziffra, Data Librarian Princeton University BITNET: LISAC@PUCC From: Mary Ann Lyman-Hager <MAL1@PSUVM> Subject: Re: Interfaces [eds.] Date: Sat, 23 Jun 90 17:01 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 530 (589) One can see constantly the conflict of "form over function"; "content over substance," by viewing (even) such films recently released as "sex,lies an d videotape" and "Broadcast News." Isn't there a comparison between the beauti ful GUI and lovely text that the Mac offers and the power of text generation of fered by the IBM PS/2-generation machines? Seems a bit simplistic, but I use both machines for different reasons. From: Henning M|rk <slavhenn@aau.dk> Subject: Contact with Canada Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 11:05:48 +0200 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 531 (590) A friend of mine wants to have e-mail contact with Wiktor Askanas, Fredericton University, Canada. (Probably: Department of sociology). Please send information about possible addresses directly to: Jan Nowak SLAVJAN@AAU.DK From: Bill Ball <C476721 at UMCVMB> Subject: node names Date: 22 June 90, 13:02:35 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 532 (591) Re the query on node names: I have a 2500 line list of Bitnet node names and institutions which I could send to whoever is interested. Unfortunately its dated 10/88. I would recommend that one check one's local system for such a list first, but again I'd be glad to forward what I have . Bill Ball Pol Sc U. Mo-Columbia c476721@UMCVMB --------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone interested in the current list of bitnet node names and institutions can request the files directly from the bitnic listserv by sending the commands get nodes info1 get nodes info2 to listserv@bitnic either interactively or in a mail file. See your Guide to Humanist if you need further information on how to do this. -- Elaine & Allen From: <MAL1@PSUVM> Subject: Re: 4.0121 Midrash and Collage Date: Sat, 23 Jun 90 17:52 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 533 (592) Will someone redefine "midrash"...I seem to have lost the argument, but am very much interested in it. From: ST_JOSEPH@hvrford.bitnet Subject: Re: 4.0212 Hermeneutics: was Ordering of Biblical Texts Date: Sun, 24 Jun 90 00:34 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 534 (593) Sorry to be picky, but its Hans-Georg Gadamer, not Ernst George Gadammer (!). David Carpenter St. Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA From: Germaine Warkentin <WARKENT@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: The Codex Date: Thu, 21 Jun 90 20:23:26 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 535 (594) George Aichele inquires about the origin of the codex. The standard recent source is Colin H. Roberts and T.C. Skeat,, _The Birth of the Codex_ (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1983). The argument there, well substantiated by reference to the relevant papyri, is that the codex origi nated, probably at Antioch, as a medium for the sacred writings of early Christianity. For their merely secular writings the early Christians used the same kind of rolls employed by the Greeks and Romans, and the codex did not become the dominant form of the book until the fourth century, by which time its association with the sacred was well established. Germaine Warkentin (Warkent@vm.epas.utoronto.ca). From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Codex - Canon Date: Tuesday, 26 June 1990 1454-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 536 (595) I hope I may be forgiven for sending this note to both the HUMANIST discussion group and to IOUDAIOS, since some of the same issues are of interest to both, and the discussion regarding canonical order in Jewish scriptures that began on HUMANIST has now been taken up on IOUDAIOS as well. George Aichele has asked about the history of the codex, and Don Fowler rightly notes that many of the claims about that history remain problematic. Perhaps the most influential voice in the English speaking world on the development of the codex has been Colin Roberts (Oxford), who has argued that for all practical purposes it was Christians who popularized the codex form in the 2nd century of the common era, perhaps for economic reasons (double the space to write on) as well as convenience of reference. The idea of writing on both sides of a surface and binding such "leaves" together on one edge was certainly known prior to the beginnings of Christianity (e.g. in school exercise books, with leather thongs binding together thin waxen boards), so the issue is less "who first had the idea?" than it is "who first brought it into wide/popular usage?" The main evidence that Roberts offers is the percentage of codex fragments of Christian writings relative to the percentage for non-Christian works in the early centuries, with much more evidence for Christian use. Indeed, in what I would consider to be a methodologically question-begging approach, some scholars argue that the early fragment of Genesis known as P.Yale 1 (perhaps as early as the last third of the first century) must be "Christian" in origin because it is codex in form! My suspicion is that it may very well be a Jewish codex, and that there may be other early biblical fragments that are Jewish as well. How does one tell for sure? One can assume that Jews would not put scriptural texts on anything but scrolls, but that certainly begs the question. One can argue that certain abbreviations of "sacred" words and names (spirit, heaven, Joshua/Jesus, Lord, God, etc.) must be Christian, but that also needs to be argued on the basis of evidence. Maybe "Christians" (whatever that designation means for the particular times and places under discussion) did popularlize the use of codices, but I don't think the evidence has been examined carefully enough yet to establish that as a historical (sociological, technological) "fact." In this context, it would be interesting to hear more about the evidence from Qumran -- Frank Cross once alluded to the discovery there of what seemed to be piles (or perhaps a pile) of unbound pages that contained consecutive text, but I never heard more (e.g. what sort of text? written on one side only or on both? -- that is, could they be glued or sewn together to form a scroll, or not?). Anyone out there have any light to shed? And in emerging classical Judaism, when and under what conditions do discussions of whether Torah must be on scrolls, etc., take place? Is it a response to an identifiable situation (such as Christian codex Pentateuchs)? A further observation about the development of codex technology, which relates to the question of order of works and (perhaps) of significance of ordering. The earliest codices of which we know (2nd century CE) are relatively small in capacity -- often holding a single work (e.g. Genesis) or even a portion of a work. They are often formed by folding larger sheets into a "single quire" of maybe 20 or 30 pages (the more pages, the more technologically awkward in terms of the inner margins near the fold), held together with thread/cord. As the idea of binding several small quires together into a multi-quired work develops, the ability to hold vast numbers of writings together in a single (but more complex) codex also develops. By the mid 4th century CE, such large codices are being manufactured and circulated. Thus "order" is ont an automatic concomitant of "codex" format, but as codex format becomes more sophisticated, order becomes a more relevant issue in the sense of "table of contents." Bob Kraft, Religious Studies, U. Penn. From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: codex and scroll Date: Tue, 26 Jun 90 09:10:27 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 537 (596) I also found Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex, London: Oxford University Press, 1983 to be a good source about the early codex. I thought it might be useful to share an excerpt from a paper prepared for the Electronic Publishing '90 conference, to be held in September in Gaithersburg Maryland. The paper, "Design of Hypermedia Publications: Issues and Solutions" was co-authored by myself and Julie Launhardt of IRIS and Krzysztof Lenk and Ronnie Peters of Rhode Island School of Design. The point made about the scroll in this quote is a contribution from Prof. Lenk, who is working on a large study of information graphics from the early manuscript tradition up through current practice on both print and electronic media. "The presentation of information on the computer screen has some similarities to one of the book's earliest forms, the scroll. In Mediterranean antiquity, before the technology of binding leaves of papyrus or parchment between boards was developed, the method for creating portable collections of written material was to roll and tie continuous pieces of papyrus into a scroll [Roberts 1983]. The way in which a scroll stores and presents information to the reader is interesting in the context of our present work on the computer screen. In a scroll, information is stored on either side or above and below the area being read. This is similar to the operation of the scrolling bars of the document window on the computer, and the present practice of revealed information only within the document window. In either case, the reader does not know what information is just out of view. Unlike the pages of a book, which are of a fixed size, the viewing area of a scroll can be broadened or narrowed. As a result, the demarcation between visible and hidden information on the surface of a scroll is not as clear as the edges of a book page. Even in the case of the scroll, the reader is oriented to the magnitude of the collection by being able to hold the entire collection in her hands. In contrast, a visual examination of the surface of the computer screen does not give the reader the same kind of access to the hypermedia publication as a whole. The hypermedia documents are 'hidden' within the memory of the computer and the visual appearance of the icons that represent each document does not express the same information as spines of bound volumes on a shelf or stacks of papers on a desk. There are other interesting comparisons to be made between hypermedia and the printed book. Yankelovich, Meyrowitz, and van Dam [Yankelovich 1985] point out a fundamental difference between the two: that information in a book is static. Once committed to ink on paper, the information cannot be changed without reprinting the book. Their table of comparison emphasized the greater potential for reader interaction found in electronic media. While print media offers advantages in areas such as portability, established standards of typography and graphic design, and general aesthetic appeal, the reader of a book cannot alter the content or customize the arrangement of a printed page to suit individual needs. Intermedia, designed in large part by Yankelovich and Meyrowitz, challenges this relationship between the author and the reader. The Intermedia reader must actively create the sequence in which information is presented. Within the limit of permissions established by the author, the reader is also invited to add to and alter the information being presented. While this area of comparison is entirely valid, there are other issues of orientation and meta- information that should not be overlooked. These include a consideration of the non-verbal information found in the book as a physical object, the differing relationship between verbal and visual language in the two mediums, and a comparison of the sensory channels through which the book and the computer screen present information to the reader. The physical presence of a book, i.e. its weight, size, method of binding, its cover (hard or soft), can tell the reader a great deal about the publication before it is read. Flipping quickly through the pages will tell the reader about the type of publication, the amount of copy, the size of type, the number of illustrations (if any). Our visual sense is the primary channel through which we receive information from a book. However, a person reading a book uses more than just the sense of sight. A book can be picked up and oriented to the viewer's requirements. The "hard" nature of the book brings in such sensory information as the physical feel of the pages, the weight of the book, the smell of the ink, evidence of past ownership, and so forth. By convention, books have bound pages that are expected to be read with a directional orientation. While this directionality varies from culture to culture (Greek and Latin reading horizontally left to right, Hebrew and Arabic reading horizontally from right to left, Classical Chinese reading vertically right to left), the page of a book in the European tradition is, by convention, read from top left to bottom right. The contents of pages within a book are most commonly organized in a linear, sequential fashion." If anyone is interested in the full text of the paper, let me know and I will send a printed copy via surface mail (the full paper relies on figures that cannot be transmitted via HUMANIST). Paul Kahn Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship Brown University pdk@iris.brown.edu From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Non-Roman Fonts (Forwarded from comp.fonts) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 90 16:20:20 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 224 (597) Original Sender: scott@sage.uchicago.edu (Scott Deerwester) The following on non-Roman fonts may be of interest to Humanist subscribers. It was posted on USENET's comp.fonts by Scott Deerwester. Forwarded message follows: ----------------- A month or so ago I asked for information on non-roman fonts. The list that I asked about was: Arabic Chinese Gujarati Korean Pollard Armenian Cyrillic Gurmukhi Lao Sinhala Batak Devanagari Hebrew Latin Tamil Bengali Ethiopic Japanese Malayalam Thai Burmese Georgian Javanese Mongolian Tibetan Cambodian Greek Kannada Oriya I've heard back about several sources of fonts, and here is a summary of what I've heard. Thanks to all who gave me information. I will update this list if there appears to be a need to. This list makes no attempt at all to include things that are written with a varient of the Roman alphabet. This explicitly includes Vietnamese, Turkish, Polish, Icelandic and any other scripts that are basically Latin, but with extra characters. It's not that I don't care about those, it's just that that's not the point of this survey. First, there are several kinds of fonts; - MetaFont source, suitable for use with TeX - BDF (X Windows) fonts - Stroked PostScript (usually called "Laser") fonts - Macintosh screen fonts - SUN NeWS fonts My posting said that I was interested in PostScript, but I heard back about a number of kinds of fonts. The remainder of this posting is divided into two sections. The first section lists sources of fonts, with an indication of what they have. There are two kinds of sources of fonts; ftp sites and companies. I've tried to indicate price for companies. The second section is listed by script. *** I do not have any connection with any of these sources of fonts, *** and inclusion in this list does not constitute endorsement. I. Sources of fonts A. Commercial Macintosh and PostScript fonts 1. Linguist's Software Address: PO Box 508, Edmonds, WA 98020-0580 Telephone: (206) 775-1130 Fax: (206) 771-5911 This is arguably the best single source of non-Roman fonts. Most of the Mac fonts are $79.95. The "MacSEMITIC COPTIC DEVANAGARI" package, which is also $79.97, includes everything between Coptic and Devanagari in the following list. Macintosh fonts: Gujarati, Punjabi (Gurmukhi), Tamil, Burmese, Armenian, Georgian, Kanji (Japanese), Chinese, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac (Nestorian, Jacobite and Estrangelo), Ethiopic, Ugaritic, Sabean, Devanagari, Hieroglyphics, Akkadian, Sanskrit, Greek, Cyrillic Laser fonts are between $99.95 (why don't they just say $100?) and $149.95. "Laser" (PostScript) fonts: Cyrillic, Hieroglyphics*, Greek, Tibetan, Hebrew, Thai (8 typefaces), Extended Latin 2. Ecological Linguistics Address: PO Box 15156, Washington, DC, 20003 [deleted quotation]Macintosh." They concentrate on things like "almost automatic" transliteration, keyboard interpreters, switching fonts easily, and cheap prices. The licensing is for "any number of users on a single terminal (one user at a time)." They also have a lot of fonts which have some alphabet plus Times. Macintosh fonts: Amharic (Ethiopic), Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Burmese (Mon, Shan also available as additions), Cambodian, Cyrillic, Cham, Cherokee (Cree, Inuktitut, Pollard syllabic), Chess, Bopomofo (if you don't know, don't ask), Devanagari, Hieroglyphics, Georgian (plus Old Georgian), Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Hebrew, IPA, Katakana (Japanese syllabic), Kharosthii, Korean, Laotian, Malayalam, Mayan Hieroglyphs (plus a Mayan calendar calculator!), Mideastern Syllabaries (Mycenean, Cypros, Paphos, CyproMinoan, Ugarit), Mongolian, Mycenean, Oriya, Sinhalese (4 typefaces), Tamil, Telugu, Thai (22 typefaces!), Tibetan. PostScript fonts: Greek, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Thai, Amharic, Arabic, Hebrew He (Ecological Linguistics is a "he") also sells script managers, etc. Prices are mostly $50 for Mac fonts (on a system disk) and $90-$120 for PostScript fonts. 3. Pacific Rim Connections, Inc. Address: 3030 Atwater Drive, Burlingame, CA 94010 Telephone: (415) 697-0911 Fax: (415) 697-9439 They sell a lot of Asian language software for Macintoshen and PC compatibles. If you're interested in Chinese, Japanese or Korean word processing on the Mac or IBM PC, write to them for a catalog. I'm not, so I didn't include the information here. They also second- source a number of Linguist's Software's fonts, for the same price. Worth contacting if you want to know about the software. 4. NeoScribe International Address: PO Box 410, Clinton, NY 13323 Telephone: (315) 853-4427 Email: neoscribe%applelink@apple.com They sell a PostScript Devanagari, Hebrew, Arabic and some other fonts. They also do custom font design for non-Roman scripts if you're desperate and can pay. Michael Ross, the President of Neoscribe, seemed very knowledgeable and helpful, even though they don't have a large inventory of fonts. 5. Bitstream Address: 215 First Street, Cambridge MA 02142-1270 Telephone: (800) 237-3335 Bitstream claims to have "over 1,000" typefaces. According to a TUGBoat article, this includes Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Laotian and Tai Dam. Unfortunately, none of these is available except to OEM's. If you're an OEM, maybe they'll talk to you. They sent me a letter entitled, "Dear Macintosh User." Oh, well. 6. Publishing Solutions Telephone: (301) 424-3942 They allegedly have a lot of fonts, but I have not yet received any literature from them in response to a phone call. They *did*, however, answer the phone, which is more that some other companies managed! B. Public Macintosh fonts There is a collection of Mac fonts at doc.cso.uiuc.edu (128.174.73.30). They've got fonts for Polish, Russian, Czech, Ukranian, German, Greek, Armenian, Yiddish, Georgian, Bengali, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Devanagari, and Tamil. The fonts vary a lot in quality, as you would guess. There's also an IPA font and some sillier things like Elvish. C. Metafont 1. Survey Dominik Wujastyk (wujastyk@euclid.ucl.ac.uk) wrote an article in TUGBoat, v. 9 (1988), no. 2, entitled, "The Many Faces of TeX: A Survey of Digital MetaFonts." He listed fonts in: Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Arabic/Farsi, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, IPA and various other things. 2. RussTeX A note from Dimitri Vulis says: I am the 'administrator' of RusTeX-L, the mailing list for Russian text processing (mostly TeX-oriented). We have METAFONT for Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, et al), and we're planning to extend it to support Uzbek, Azeri, etc (Cyrillic-based with extra letters). You might be interested to browse through the list archives and files on LISTSERV@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU in filelist RUSTEX-L (of course). There are also pointers to PostScript and (raster) HP fonts. 3. Washington A number of Metafont fonts are available from ymir.claremont.edu in directory [anonymous.tex.babel]. This archive is maintained by Don Hosek (dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu). D. NeWS Standard NeWS sites have fonts in Kanji, Cyrillic, Coptic and Elvish. These can be convered using NeWS utilities to fonts that are usable in X, but I haven't done so. II. Sources of Fonts by Script Sources: 1. Linguist's Software 2. Ecological Linguistics 3. doc.cso.uiuc.edu 4. Pacific Rim Connections 5. ymir.claremont.edu 6. X distribution 7. Neoscribe 8. Wujastyk article 9. Bitstream PostScript Mac X TeX Arabic 1, 2 1, 2 Armenian 1, 2 1, 2, 3 Batak Bengali 2 2, 3 Burmese 1, 2 Cambodian 1 Chinese 1, 4 5 Cyrillic 1, 2 1, 2, 3 6 5 Devanagari 2 1, 2, 3 8 Ethiopic 2 1, 2 Georgian 1, 2, 3 Greek 1, 2 1, 2, 3 6 5, 8 Gujarati 1, 2 Gurmukhi 1, 2 Hebrew 1, 2, 7 1, 2 5, 8 Japanese 1, 2, 4 Javanese Kannada Korean 1, 4 1, 3, 4 Lao 2 Malayalam 2 2 Mongolian 2 Oriya 2 Pollard 1 Sinhala 2 Tamil 2 1, 2, 3 8 Thai 1, 2 1, 2, 3 Tibetan 1 1, 2 III. Odds and Ends A. Hanzi A package called Hanzi is available that allows manipulation of files in Chinese in a format called HZ. It comes with a relatively complete PD set of Chinese (raster) fonts in their own format, but with tools to convert to other things. It is available from june.cs.washington.edu in /pub/yeung, which also has a document on transcribing cantonese. B. Chinese Metafont ==> These files are not usable with TeX or modern MetaFont <== Go Guoan and John Hobby, now at Bell Labs, wrote a set of Chinese fonts in *Old* Metafont. It is asserted that somebody, somewhere is working on these being updated to Metafont, but I have not heard anything more. These files are available by anonymous ftp from june.cs.washington.edu. This is Pierre Mackay's home machine, which explains a few things... C. Here is a paragraph from an article on the net by Mark Edwards, posted in February, 1989: ------- This is my attempt at compiling information about output devices and such things. What I mean by output devices are display terminals, laser printers, and typesetters. The kinds of information that you will find here is about typesetting, fonts, converting some type of font to another, converting device independent files to device dependent files, converting various ways of storing pictures to postscript and so. I have also started a small glossary of important or useful terms to help aide in understanding. I originally posted parts of this list in comp.fonts and comp.text. But it has grown and includes information that pertains to other groups now. ------- If there is sufficient demand, perhaps Mark will post it again, or if he doesn't mind, I'll post my copy. D. Kterm Here is the first paragraph of the README: Kterm is a terminal emulator allowing to use Japanese on X11 Window System. It is expansion of xterm and have some bugs like xterm. Further there may be some bugs in the expanded part. If you find such bugs, send me them please. 1989 November 18 Hiroto Kagotani kagotani@cs.titech.ac.jp It comes in the contrib/clients directory of the X11R4 distribution. E. Hopefully, since this is way at the bottom of a huge posting, nobody will see it, but (and here I switch to 6 point type) I've collected most of what's on the net regarding non-Roman fonts, and if there is absolutely overwhelming demand, I will make it available via anonymous ftp from a system at the University of Chicago. Shhhh... Scott Deerwester | Internet: scott@tira.uchicago.edu Center for Information and | Phone: 312-702-6948 Language Studies | 1100 E. 57th, CILS University of Chicago | Chicago, IL 60637 From: Giorgio Perissinott <9824peri@UCSBUXA.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0218 Qs: ... Voice Cards Date: Tue, 26 Jun 90 14:08:26 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 225 (598) This is in answer to the inquiry about voice cards. There are, of course, several on the market. I am personally familiar with an 8bit card by Covax inc. 765 Conger Street, Eugene, Oregon 97402 (503 342 1271). It is marketed as a Voice recognition system with the name Voice Master Key. The cost is about $175.00 including software. I have been using for quite some time and I am pleased with it. I must say, however, that the end user will probably have to develop his/her own software. I am currently developing software for Teaching Language Varieties (L.A. Spanish) using a combination of Hyperpad and My Own Programming in C. I will glad to correspond with anyone working along the same lines. Giorgio Perissinotto Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 gperissi@ucsbuxa.bitnet gperissi@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu From: dusknox@skipspc.idbsu.edu (Skip_Knox) Subject: Knowledge: Permanent and Transient Date: Tue 26 Jun 90 10:54:37 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 226 (599) Alan Corre observes the difference in his computer knowledge, which rapidly becomes useless, and his classical knowledge, which serves him always. Fair enough. That's an interesting observation; I hadn't quite thought of it that way. I sympathize - I work as a PC support tech, have for six years, but have my Ph.D. in Early Modern European history. But I have to disagree with the despondent tone of his message. I don't see that anything needs to be balanced. I can still recite the Winston cigarettes jingle. I can see Speedy Alka-Seltzer in my mind's eye. My brain is stuffed with all sorts of garbage. But that's not the right metaphor. My brain is not an urn, which gets filled up. It is a muscle that needs regular exercise. It doesn't much matter whether I exercise it with something eternal or something ephemeral; it's the exercise that counts. So just because I remember the syntax for PIP (but not all the switches!) is no cause for alarm. That just means that I've been busy over the years, and the old muscle in the cranium is still limber. Don't worry, Alan - you've still got tons of disk space left! -= Skip =- Skip Knox Boise State University Boise, Idaho DUSKNOX@IDBSU.IDBSU.EDU From: KRAFT@PENNDRLS Subject: Codex - Canon Addendum Date: Tuesday, 26 June 1990 1707-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 227 (600) This is a PS to my note earlier today on Codex - Canon. I forgot to call attention to the fine study relating to the development of the codex by Eric G. Turner entitled The Typology of the Early Codex (U. Penn. Press, 1977). Turner supplies information on much of the hard evidence important for this discussion; for example, in table 13 he gives an inventory of codices dated before the 4th century CE (starting with 2nd century CE). Of the approximately 30 examples of possibly 2nd century codices, 6 are clearly "Christian" (gospel traditions, etc.), 12 are of Jewish scriptures, and the rest seem to have no Jewish or Christian clear associations. Interestingly, Turner himself is only confident about the second century date of 13 of these codices, of which 1 is Jewish scriptures (Ex+Deut; note the "order") and 4 are "Christian" gospel traditions. He is sceptical (as am I) about the late 1st century date assigned to P.Yale 1 by Bradford Welles, and would even suggest "perhaps" (p.95) a 3rd century date for that fragment! Reference should also be made to Kurt Treu's article on "Die Bedeutung des Griechischen fuer die Juden im roemischen Reich" ["What Greek meant for Jews in the Roman Empire"] in KAIROS 15 (1973) 123-144, which seems to have made little impact on English language studies but is extremely stimulating and competent. In his preface to the Codex volume, Turner apologizes for his use of the term "Christian" to mean "Biblical" as follows: I have used "Christian" as a blanket term to describe theological, religious, polemical or scriptural works that are obviously not "Greek literature" [sic! from a classicist's perspective]. I wish I had used a more neutral terminology. Dr. K. Treu has recently pointed out ... that a number of anomalies make it less certain than has been generally supposed that the use of the codex form and certain standardized _nomina sacra_ are firm evidence that the text concerned is of Christian ambiance. [Preface, xxii] As is clear from my earlier note to which this is an appendix, I agree fully with such caveats! Bob Kraft, Religious Studies, Penn. From: cb%kcp.UUCP@XAIT.Xerox.COM (Christopher Bader) Subject: 4.0225 Date: Tue, 26 Jun 90 18:57:19 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 538 (601) Anyone who wants voice input and output on a personal computer should consider a Macintosh. All the recent models have a speaker and a sound chip for audio output. Voice input can easily be added with MacRecorder from Farallon (about $160). No "cards" are necessary for either input or output. From: John Slatin <EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET> Subject: 4.0218 ...Voice Cards ... Date: Wednesday, 27 June 1990 8:54am CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 539 (602) Re: Thomas Zielke's query about voice cards for use in language teaching. There are quite a few such cards available, ranging from very expensive devices such as Digital Equipment Corporation's DECtalk (a few thousand dollars US-- it offers 9 different voices, possibility of multiple connections, excellent output), down through Texas Instruments' Speech Board 2 (also high quality, with an extensive library to support development; cost is around $1000 US I think-- well worth it, though, as TI's support service is extensive and excellent, including a free BBS), and on down to relatively inexpensive devices like the Votrax Personal Speech System (around $400 US), and even cheaper things like CoVox (around $100). These are all for MS-DOS machines; the Macintosh has its own on-board speech synthesizer, though the sound quality isn't as good. The TI card I mentioned earlier allows for record-and-playback of human speech as well; so does the Farallon MacRecorder, a very inexpensive device for the Macintosh. Hope this is helpful. John Slatin, University of Texas at Austin (EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET) From: "Patrick W. Conner" <U47C2@WVNVM> Subject: Hardware/Software configs for sight-impaired Date: Tuesday, 26 Jun 1990 23:17:20 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 540 (603) A close friend of mine just returned from a visit, after many year, to a boyhood pal, and discovered that his friend's sight is rapidly deteriorating; he can, in fact, read his computer monitor only with great difficulty. My friend promised him that he would try to find out what options exist for configuring a microcomputer so that it can be operated by a blind person, and I have been asked to query HUMANIST on the subject. I have a couple of ideas about how to approach this problem on the Mac, using Smoothtalker, etc., but I would like to produce a list of recommendations for all kinds of machines, and provide a list of appropriate software, particularly software which has been developed for sight-impaired persons. I shall compile all responses into a single file, leaving headers and signatures intact, and forward it to HUMANIST to be deposited on the server for others who may be interested in the subject. Thank you in advance for any information you may send my way. Pat Conner West Virginia University BITNET : U47C2@WVNVM INTERNET : U47C2@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU From: Gerald Barnett <OTT@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU> Subject: ACADEMIC SOFTWARE SUPPORT Date: Tue, 26 Jun 90 16:04:01 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 541 (604) The Office of Technology Transfer at the University of Washington is seeking to identify colleges and universities that have implemented interesting models of support for software development. We are especially interested in how other academic institutions support software--including distribution, on-going program maintenance, and end-user support--after the creation of working alpha versions. We would appreciate hearing from those who have found effective (decent?) support for their software packages. We would also like suggestions of names of people we should contact to discuss software support models in more detail. Send replies by e-mail to OTT@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU or by snail to Gerald Barnett / Office of Technology Transfer XD-40 / University of Washington / Seattle, WA 98195 From: K.C.Cameron@exeter.ac.uk Subject: Re: ... Teaching French ... [eds.] Date: Wed, 27 Jun 90 19:02:04 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 542 (605) [deleted quotation]the teaching of French. Would it be possible to set up a subgroup of persons into the teaching of French Language and Literature for an exchange of ideas relating to that discipline? I am prepared to lead such a subgroup. Keith Cameron. From: "Adam C. Engst" <PV9Y@CORNELLA> Subject: Re: 4.0219 Interactive Fiction Date: Wed, 27 Jun 90 08:32:57 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 543 (606) Oops, I forgot. For anyone who wants to send me a disk for a copy of my thesis fiction, my snail mail address is 901 Dryden Rd. #88, Ithaca, NY 14850 USA. Adam Engst Adam C. Engst pv9y@cornella.bitnet From: Donald Spaeth 041 339-8855 x6336 <GKHA13@CMS.GLASGOW.AC.UK> Subject: 4.0215 Meditations Date: Wed, 27 Jun 90 09:35:32 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 544 (607) Has the study of Classical Hebrew really not changed? The Hebrew itself may not have, but I'm sure interpretations have. My own field (early modern English history) has changed significantly over the past 45 years--several times--although I grant not as much as computing. Don Spaeth From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0226 Knowledge: Permanent and Transient Date: Tue, 26 Jun 90 18:00 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 545 (608) I rather think Corre was expressing something else: the economics of it all. The fact is, one invests in learning something, like his Classical Humanist subjects over years, and also years in learning computer procedures, which fade faster than a Pasadena rose. He mourns the "waste" of time. Thoreau has many lessons to teach on this head, in WALDEN. The first chapter, on ECONOMY. What Corre was also getting at is something only age teaches one: that the very same things, the very same proverbs, apothegms, saws, tropes, choruses, prayers, songs, become ever deeper in meaning and significance, while the procedures of input were never more than 1 micron thick in signficance. Furthermore, computers are but the latest example of something more profound, since science itself functions by disproving and forgetting what it once labored to learn. Not maths, I guess, but the understanding gained by more primitive instruments: the procedures of Leeuwenhoek are not useful to the electron microscopist. Life itself is expensive too, in terms of time. Most of what we have learned is quite forgettable, though it too often comes up out of the lower depths in hours of fever or delirium, as we all know. So, the analogy of the urn is of course false; only our littel children wonder if our heads are stuffed up, with useless knowledge; but then as we get older we say, If only we knew it was to become obsolete. But then the joy of learning to use the instrument is part of the long road. Pity that learning so manmy things is wasteful of our strength and time, but some things are expensive. A poet often finds, as I have, that lots of reading of all sorts sometimes comes out as a phrase that condenses it all, and the rest of the work goes for naught; but without all effort, that phrase so full of pith would never have come into existence. We are indeed very strange creatures, and not like my 20 meg diskdrive at school that is full of mere programs and so very slow to execute anything as a consequence. Kessler at UCLA From: Helmut Schanze <GC130@DSIHRZ51> Subject: ALLC/ACH 90 Conference Date: Wed, 27 Jun 90 17:06 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 546 (609) To all participants of the ALLC-ACH 90 Conference THE NEW MEDIUM SIEGEN The local Organizers would like to express thanks to all participants of the conference who contributed to the success of the conference by lectures, demonstrations, chairs and statements in discussions or even by giving hints in more private talks. We also would like to thank all participants for coming to Siegen. The great interest compensated many times for the efforts of organization. Those who could not attend the conference but are interested to get a book of abstracts may order it by help of their local book seller or the publisher. The price is DM 50,- (plus shipping). The address of the publisher is: Alano Verlag Kongresstrasse 5 D-5100 Aachen Germany Helmut Schanze From: Julie Falsetti <JEFHC@CUNYVM> Subject: Halio article Date: Tue, 26 Jun 90 23:18:55 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 547 (610) The Halio article has reached the New York Times (6-26-90). A summary of the article was the follow up piece for a review of MacProof. The intro reads "Most writers need all the help they can get. If a recently published study is to be believed, those who write on a Macintosh computer may need even more. " I guess it is to be believed because the last paragraph of the summary of the Halio article is "A computer analysis of randomly selected compositions confirmed her impression. The research will continue." From: Alan D Corre <corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> Subject: One and Many Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 15:46:12 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 215 (611) "I've learned a lot--and most of it doesn't apply anymore."--Charles E. Exley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NCR Corporation, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, June 20, 1990. Mr. Exley's statement set me thinking, and I found that it applies to me too. I became involved with computers around 1975 after a visit to Professor Guido Alinei's computer project on Italian texts at the University of Utrecht. Few Humanists were involved in computers at that time, and it was very difficult to obtain any information, let alone get involved. I started to learn about the Univac 1100 to which I had access, and became quite proficient at its operating system. That system was like a graveyard. As new methods came in, the operating system accomodated to them, but nothing was ever disposed of. Even today you can in theory edit a file by punching individual corrections on individual cards--but there is no longer a punch machine on which to punch the card or a reader to read it once punched! As of next January no new accounts will be opened on that reverend machine, and the following July it will be phased out entirely. With that, my knowledge of the 1100 operating system will become totally useless. Unfortunately I have no conscious erase program in my head, and I guess those neurons will stay active until they are food for worms. After years of working with that cumbersome machine, the Apple II was like a revelation. I loved Ken Bowles' neat operating system that was adapted for Apple Pascal, and never understood why it did not become more widely accepted. Although programs I wrote with that p-system are still in use, I do not use it any more. At this point I feel that my useless computer knowledge is greater in bulk that the knowledge that I can actually use, and wonder for how long this has to continue. Is this what is meant by "keeping up?" What a drag. There has been some compensation, though. It has really been thrilling and exciting to watch the way in which the computer world has bounded ahead, even with my limited technical know-how. The kind of progress that took centuries for some disciplines has taken just a few decades for computers, and I am grateful to have been able to watch some of the action. I heard a lecture by Grace Hopper, the computer veteran, who related that in the forties she got into difficulties keeping her check book in balance, and her accountant brother pointed out that she had unwittingly started using octal arithmetic. I was unaware of computers at that time when mental octal arithmetic was a prerequisite, but I am happy to have witnessed, and in my way understood the enormous changes that have taken place. I have to contrast this, however, with my "real" area. I learned the basics of Classical Hebrew forty-five years ago, and nothing has changed. By definition it cannot; if you change it, it isn't Classical Hebrew. True, we understand certain features better today than we did before with the help of modern Linguistics. But the essentials are the same, now and forever. The same applies to the texts to which the language studies are the key. The insights and turns of phrase of a Jeremiah, a Lucretius or a Shakespeare can be "run" again and again in an individual life, and in the collective life of humankind, and never become obsolete. And it's the same for great art and music. "The One remains, the many change and pass." In some sense the classics are part of the "One" and the snazzy new desk-top is part of the many, but there does seem to be need for both. How we balance the two seems to me one of the major current challenges for the humanist. From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: Computing for Visually Impaired Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 09:49 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 548 (612) For visually impaired students here we have an AST Premium/286 with Vert Plus which enables the computer to "speak" information that appears on the screen via headphones or a speaker. It also has a Vista screen magnification system and a NEC Multisynch XL 19" monitor. We also provide a braille embosser for braille output. I don't know details (costs, companies, configurations, etc.) about this system, but if anyone is seriously interested I will try to find out and pass it along. Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: AEB_BEVAN@ VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK Subject: Software applications for sight-impaired users Date: Thu, 28 JUN 90 17:20:08 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 549 (613) Patricia corner asked about sources of infromation on software applications for people with visual imnpairments. There are specialist lists open to discuss (amongst other issues) software adaptations for peopel with disabilities. One is BLIND-L ... sorry dont remember the host offhand. Another is L-Handicap@NDSUVM1 Good luck with your serch - and if you find specialist software with particular application for sight-impaired scholars I and the office for students with special needs at my University will be glad to hear from you Edis Bevan Open University UK From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: Computing for the Visually Impaired Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 14:41 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 550 (614) After my last posting I received my copy of the May-June issue of "Perspective", the newsletter from the Office of Academic Computing at UCLA. It contains a longish article on computing facilities for the disabled at UCLA. The person looking for information on resouces for computing for the visually impaired might be interested in this. Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: John Lavagnino <LAV@brandeis.bitnet> Subject: Re: Teaching French Date: Wed, 27 Jun 90 17:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 551 (615) The American Comparative Literature Association is currently looking into setting up some kind of electronic-mail groups on the Bitnet or Internet. They suggest two functions (in a letter to their membership that I got last week): ``1) to collect and make available material such as current syllabi, lists of books and related information, pedagogical strategies in various settings, and critical perspectives on all of the above, and 2) to provide a national communication space where teachers of Comparative Literature, world literature, or international/ intercultural literature of any kind could exchange ideas and experiences related to their work.'' They didn't include any electronic address. The person who's collecting information on this is: Professor Sarah Lawall Chair, ACLA Undergraduate Studies Committee Department of Comparative Literature South College 315 University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 John Lavagnino, Department of English, Brandeis University From: Diana Meriz <MERIZ@pittvms> Subject: Subgroup on the teaching of French Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 15:53 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 552 (616) Many thanks to K. C. Cameron for suggesting the formation of a subgroup devoted to exchanging ideas related to the teaching of French language and literature. Please count me in as a prospective member. Diana Meriz University of Pittsburgh <meriz@pittvms> From: Espen Ore <espeno%navf-edb-h.uib.uninett@nac.no> Subject: 4.0218 Qs: ... Voice Cards Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 08:43:11 +0200 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 553 (617) A simple but effective system for digitized sound/speech on a computer is a Macintosh with MacRecorder (a sound sampler) from Farallon Computing. MacRecorder is an eight-bit sampler, and its best quality is about the same as old fashioned hi-fi. With two MacRecorders (or some tricky use of one) you can record stereo sound. The software that comes with MacRecorder allows for editing of the sounds, and it is possible to use the sounds (mono) as standard sound resources in HyperCard. I think the price for the MacRecorder is about $ 200, and you can use it on any Mac from the Plus and up. Espen Ore Bergen, Norway From: J J Higgins <Higgins@np1a.bristol.ac.uk> Subject: Re: 4.0218 Qs: ... Voice Cards Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 14:10:51 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 554 (618) Thomas Zielke, who asked about voice cards, may like to know that one of the best informed people in this area is Bernd Rueschoff of the University of Wuppertal. I am afraid I have not got an exact address. Both the cards I have worked with incorporate a headset with microphone, and will also take input from a tape recorder and digitise it, and feed output to an external amplifier or loudspeaker. Quality varies, but I do not think that second language learners need high quality. A great deal of real-life listening takes place in acoustically unfavourable conditions; a diet of studio-recordings of careful speech in language labs may not be the best preparation for coping with listening in the real world. Some of Bernd Rueschoff's work made a virtue of necessity, since he based listening exercises on a simulation of playing back the tape on a telephone answering machine, justifying the less-than-perfect sound quality and the one-sidedness of the conversation at a single ingenious stroke. From: Richard Ristow <AP430001@BROWNVM> Subject: A confirmed nerd from Swarthmore Date: Wed, 27 Jun 90 16:53:14 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 235 (619) In followup to the exchange about the term "nerd", thanks to Gregory J. Marsh in Special Collections at the Swarthmore College library. He writes in response to an inquiry about its occurrence in a college review in the early 1960s: "I found Millard Fillmore Nerd in ... the 1961-62 Hamburg Show. ... In [a] skit, 'The Dean's Office,' he is visiting the dean and is unable, at first, to tell the dean his problem. The dean assumes he has broken some college rule (drinking, women, etc.) and prepares to expel Millard. Millard finally admits that his problem is that he has broken no rules, and is hence a square." He also feels that, in context, Nerd's name seems intended to imply his squareness, and that therefore the term was previously known to the show's authors and audience. Marsh points out that, in addition to the 1950 attestation in Dr. Suess previously mentioned on the list, the OED2 cites the Glasgow *Sunday Mail* as defining "nerd" as "a square" in 1957; these are the only two attestations before 1968, after which they become relatively common. He cites Richard Martin's book *Jocks and Nerds* as attributing to Eric Partridge a conjecture that the term originated in the 1920s or 30s. The interesting picture this paints is that the term has existed in roughly its modern sense since the late 1950s, but with limited popularity, and that it gained wide usage around 1970. The television show *Happy Days* is apparently anachronistic in making it common in 1950s slang, but may well have contributed to its more recent popularity. From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Re: 4.0222 ... On Midrash Date: Thu, 28 Jun 1990 12:51 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 555 (620) In reply to the request (from MAL1@PSUVM, 23 June -- RE:4.0121) for a definition of "Midrash", I would refer those interested to what I consider the best non-professional introduction to this very "thorny" question: Barry Holtz, "Midrash" in *Back to the Sources -- Reading the Classic Jewish Texts*, Summit and Jewish Publication Society, New York, 1984), ed. Barry Holtz, pp. 177-211. On page 178, after clarifying the problems of defining such a term, Holtz says: "What, then is Midrash? It is helpful to think of Midrash in two different, but related ways: first, Midrash (deriving from the Hebrew root "to search out") is the process of interpreting. The object of interpretation is the Bible or, on occasion, other sacred texts; second, Midrash refers to the corpus of work that has collected these interpretations, works such as Midrash Rabbah" The discussion about Midrash and Collage (initiated by my query back in May) was more about the editing and "literatary texture" of the Midrashic corpora. At the end of this article, Holtz gives a good short bibliography. Further bibliography can be found in *Midrash and Literature*, eds. Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick, Yale: New Haven and London, 1986, pp. 369-395. I hope that helps to clarify matters somewhat. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: "Michael S. Hart" <HART@UIUCVMD> Subject: Re: 4.0226 Knowledge: Permanent and Transient Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 07:04:04 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 556 (621) I would have to disagree with skip: not only does the brain get full, rampant senility set in, etc. for a major portion of the population, but even if you do not consider this, the following is still fearfully true and a cause for rampant conservatism as age increases: When one is ten years old, half one's knowledge is five years old. When one is 20 years old, half one's knowledge is over 10 years old. ..... When one attains maximum political power, academic power, etc. one is likely to be 55 - 65 (or later, in the case of the Gipper, or earlier in the case of JFK) and then half one's information (or more, in case of senility) is going to be over 30 years old. Even in the case of the classics, new information/interpretation arises. Thank you for your interest, Michael S. Hart, Director, Project Gutenberg National Clearinghouse for Machine Readable Texts THESE NOTES ARE USUALLY WRITTEN AT A LIVE TERMINAL, AND THE CHOICE OF WORDS IS OFTEN MEANT TO BE SUCH AS TO PROVOKE THE GREATEST POSSIBLE RESPONSE SHORT OF BEING OFFENSIVE. TRUTH IN THESE NOTES IS OF GREAT CONCERN, THE FORM IS SECONDARY - OTHER THAN THE TOKEN EFFORT OF JUSTIFIED RIGHT MARGINATION. BITNET: HART@UIUCVMD INTERNET: HART@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU (*ADDRESS CHANGE FROM *VME* TO *VMD* AS OF DECEMBER 18!!**) (THE GUTNBERG SERVER IS LOCATED AT GUTNBERG@UIUCVMD.BITNET) NEITHER THE ABOVE NAMED INDIVIDUALS NOR ORGANIZATIONS ARE A AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF ANY OTHER INSTITUTION NOR ARE THE ABOVE COMMENTS MEANT TO IMPLY THE POLICIES OF ANY OTHER PERSONS OR INSTITUTIONS, THOUGH OF COURSE WE WISH THEY DID. From: "Diane P. Balestri" <BALESTRI@PUCC> Subject: Software support Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 09:35:09 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 237 (622) In reply to Gerald Barnett's query about software support: there's an article in the Spring 1990 issue of the EDUCOM Review that takes up the topic. "Managing Software Support in Higher Education" by Ree Dawson (MIT), Bill Mitchell (U Mo/Columbia) and Lee Shope (U Iowa). It summarizes the findings of a survey conducted by the these folks under the auspices of the EDUCOM Software Initiative, now called the EUIT (for Educational Uses of Information Technology). They conclude that successful strategies are closely tied to an institution's own culture and level of experience with technology; that policy and procedures in software support should be used as marketing and management tools; and that timing is critical to their effective use. EUIT, by the way, is both an organization of participants and a set of projects sponsored by EDUCOM. Some of its projects are related to support services; others have to do with intellectual property issues, access for disabled persons, faculty development, information resources, software reviews, and awards. The next meeting of the EUIT participants is in Snowmass, CO, Aug. 8-10. Anybody interested can get more information by scribbling a note to eden@bitnic. Diane Balestri From: Bob Boynton <BLABYNPD@UIAMVS> Subject: electronic books (forwarded from GUTNBERG filelist) Date: Fri, 22 Jun 90 01:57 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 238 (623) Forwarded by: "Michael S. Hart" <HART@UIUCVMD> I would like to thank the individuals who made suggestions about dealing with copyright, publishers and producing my own electronic versions of out of print text. I feel more confident. This seems a group that would be interested in the shareware program I have just run into--named IRIS. It is a program/language for producing electronic books; running on IBM PCs and compatibles. For displaying text there seem some rather direct parallels with KnowledgePro (the original, not the Windows, version). It is a rather creative attempt to take advantage of the flexibility computers provide to enhance enjoyment of texts/books. And it is one way to address the claims that reading off a "tube" is an unpleasant experience. Their description follows. N.B. the registration fee is only $8.00. I got it for $4.00 (I think) from one of the shareware sales/distribution companies, but I will also pay the registration fee. GRB blabynpd@uiamvs IRIS: ELECTRONIC BOOKS MADE SIMPLE Binding sheets of paper together to form books was a landmark idea. Papyrus scrolls were suddenly obsolete. The book format made a table of contents and index practical. Steering the reader to another part of a book was as simple as citing a page number. Best of all, you never had to rewind a book. This was the beginning of random access. Iris has taken books one step further. Instead of citing page numbers, authors can cite topic names. Readers can select the names directly from the screen, or from a menu. Electronic books can ask questions and respond to the answers. Readers can jump from one topic to another with the flick of a key. Windows can change color and size, and be accompanied by pleasant tones. When you use Iris, the first thing you see is a friendly help screen and a menu of available books. This menu works like all Iris menus. A single sorted column with items that can be selected with cursor keys, or by typing the first letter of the item. If all the items cannot be shown at once, readers can quickly scroll up and down the list. The Iris distribution disk comes with two complete electronic (or "virtual") books. One is a tutorial. Another is a reference work. The tutorial and reference books cover Iris itself, including an introduction to writing virtual books. Both are good examples of what Iris can do with these types of books. Although a sample text adventure was not provided, it's obvious that Iris was designed with gaming in mind. If you already have material stored in an ASCII text file, converting it to a virtual book is a snap. Internally, Iris uses a format similar to the well-known DOS batch file. The major difference is that "unmarked" lines are displayed, while "command" lines take special prefixes. To get started, all Iris needs is an occasional "topic name." These look just like a batch file "label". Just type a colon followed by the name you want to give the following text. Topics can be any length. Rename the file with a .PGE extension, and you're in business. Of course, you might want to go on and take advantage of the many special features Iris offers, but that's optional. Note that Iris does not include an editor. To write a book, you must use your own text editor (or ASCII-capable word processor), and name your file with a .PGE extension. Burgeoning authors would also want to print a copy of the IRIS-XTR book for reference. UserWare is also building a "library" of virtual books. Your submissions are invited, and royalties will be paid. Catalogs will be distributed to registered users. A registered copy of Iris sells for $8.00. An advanced version, Prism, is $16.00. Prism adds many features that would interest people writing books themselves. Iris, a MS DOS program, uses 148k of free memory, and works well with both color and monochrome monitors. UserWare, 4 Falcon Lane East, Fairport NY 14450-3312. Features List: For readers: selectable screen colors, borders, and CPU speeds, sound switch, bookmark, topics list, view list, DOS shell. For authors: color, sound, windows, variables, arithmetic and logical operators, procedural commands, external programs, user input, link topics via menus or "hotwords", (advanced version also includes) autoplay, topic and variable listing, command trace, editor support. Capsule Description: Iris. "Electronic book processor." Link topics. Store input. Merge variables. Run programs. Use color, sound, windows. $8 registration. 148K, monochrome or color. Disk _____. From: Pamela Trittin <trittin@dorothy.asel.UDEL.EDU> Subject: Spanish Dictionary and Corpus [eds] Date: Sun, 1 Jul 90 14:25:52 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 557 (624) I am a graduate student at the University of Delaware doing research in speech synthesis for the Spanish language and am looking for the following: (1) An off-line Spanish dictionary in either ASCII or EBCDIC in order to test my text-to-speech program. (2) A Spanish corpus which contains words that are most frequently used in the Spanish language (a more contemporary piece of work would be most appropriate for our applications). Any information, leads or contacts pertaining to the above inquiries will be greatly appreciated. I can be reached at the following email address: TRITTIN@ASEL.UDEL.EDU or the following surface mail address: Alfred I. duPont Institute Applied Science and Engineering Laboratories P.O. Box 269 Wilmington, DE 19899 Thank you for your time attending to this inquiry. Sincerely, Pamela J. Trittin From: "Jim Y." <UD131000@NDSUVM1.BITNET> Subject: Russian(Cyrillic) WordProcessor Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 22:43:08 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 558 (625) [Forwarded by: Kevin Berland <BCJ@PSUVM> Posted on: International Intercultural Newsletter <XCULT-L@PSUVM> Please reply directly to UD131000@NDSUVM1] Hi, Maybe this isn't the right plae to ask, but: Recently I've been writing a *simple* (and Free!) English/Russian WordProcessor for IBM PC (and compatiables). My goal is to be able to display Russian(Cyrillic) and English characters at the same time, and print them using a standard (Epson brand) printer. Does anyone have a book reference on the Russian keyboard Layout ? I've sent Air-mail to my family, but it takes 6-8 weeks. Thanks.... Jimbo From: Rich Mitchell <MITCHELR@ORSTVM> Subject: Elephants and Blind Men Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 16:36:31 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 559 (626) The John Saxe poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant" is familiar to many North American school children. I would like to use this piece in introduction to a book in which a social movement, so called survivalism, is considered from a variety of perspectives. Can any HUMANIST help with the origins of Saxe's poem? It is rumored to be derived from a Sufi poem circa 1200, something about an "Elephant in a dark house." Author Rumi? I suspect the implied presence of an external, objective reality will not be present in earlier versions. Any help much appreciated. Richard Mitchell Department of Sociology Oregon State University MITCHLER@ORSTVM.BITNET From: Gerald Barnett <OTT@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU> Subject: SOFTWARE ADMINISTRATION Date: Fri, 29 Jun 90 16:22:31 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 560 (627) The University of Washington participated in the EDUCOM survey and received a copy of the report written by Dawson et al. in November 1989. The material we received is directed primarily at college-wide support polices and services such as how to classify levels of support for software packages used broadly on campus and what percentage of schools publish their software support policies. My concern, however, is with the (often) non-commercial software developed on campuses, often with federal or corporate grant funding, and with what happens to that software once it has reached a useful, working state. Examples: Data acquisition software developed as part of a grant in a biochemist's research lab. Instructional software specific to an introductory Russian course. Whose responsibility--if it is anyone's--is it to assist academic software developers in maintaining and distributing the software? Along these lines, I would be interested to hear from people who have used academic software distribution centers such as Wisconsin's Wisc-Ware, Duke's National Collegiate Software, and Iowa's National Clearinghouse for Academic Software. Have these centers adequately served your needs? When you need a specialized software package for research or instruction, do you consider checking these sources, or do their ads in the Chronicle and Academic Computing go for naught? --Gerald Barnett/OTT@UWAVM.ACS.WASHINGTON.EDU From: U245 at ITOCSIVM Subject: using server containing beta-versions of CCAT software Date: 2 July 90, 14:49:25 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 561 (628) Some weeks ago I received a message from Jack Abercrombie. I don't understand what must I do to access the server containing beta-versions of CCAT software. Here is his message: anyone can help me? [deleted quotation] I have access to a 3270 terminal, running VM; at home I have a modem running at 2400 baud. If you can help, please write to my personal email address. Thank you. (I don't write directly to Jack because he has too much to do|). Maurizio Lana From: Terrence Erdt <ERDT@VUVAXCOM> Subject: computers for the visually impaired Date: Thu, 28 Jun 90 19:57 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 562 (629) Patrick W. Conner <U47C2@WVNVM> inquires about hardware and software for indiviudals with sight impairments: According to ads in BYTE, The National Braille Press (617-226 6160) offers a publication entitled "The Second Beginner's Guide to Personal Computers for the Blind and Visually Impaired," which surveys large print display processors and voice cards. The address of the press is: 88 St. Stephen Street Boston, MA 02115 The American Foundation for the Blind's National Technology Center (NTC) maintains a user network of people who use adaptive equipment, including computers. The phone number for the center is: (800) 232-5463; the address is: 15 West 16th Street New York, NY 10011 CompuServe offers the Handicapped Users' Database (Go Hud) and the Disabilities Forum (Go Disabilities). A message sent to the nearest listserv (e.g., listserv@villvm) can elicit a subscription to Blind-l, which emanates from listserv@uafsysb (that is, the Univ. of Arkansas Main Campus); otherwise, send the message sub blind-l [your name] to listserv@uafsysb. Terry Erdt, Villanova University From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET Subject: 4.0229 Notes and Queries (4/64 Date: Sunday, 1 July 1990 2:26pm CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 563 (630) A quick reply to Pat Connor's query about configuring microcomputers for the visually impaired. There's quite a lot of stuff out there: you might contact Project EASI (Equal Access to Software for Instruction), via Jim Fox (I think that's right) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I'm afraid I don't have their address handy. There's also the second edition of The Beginner's Guide to Computing for the Visually Impaired, available ffrom the National Braille Press in Boston-- again, I don't have the address to hand (it's in my office, and I'm not!). Telesensory Systems of Mountain View, CA makes a product called VISTA, which is a screen enlarger, and a very nifty one at that: it allows the user to mark an area of the screen for enlargement, and to toggle back and forth between enlarged view and normal view so as not to lose too much context (sometimes a problem with screen enlargers, at least for me); it also allows the user to control the degree of enlargement. VISTA can be used on its own, or it can be used in conjunction with VERT Plus, also from Telesensory Systems, which provides high quality speech output and thus reads the screen data to the user. I've just seen an announcement from Telesensory that they're shipping a scanner/OCR package, OsCar, as well. It's pricey stuff, though not as pricey as the Kurzweil Personal Reader (a standalone device that includes, in the top-of-the-line model, both a handheld and a flatbed scanner, and sends output through the DECtalk speech synthesizer: around $12,000 US; they make a PC-based version that's around $6000, if you don't need portability). There are other screen enlargers out there as well, such as the Lyons Large Print Program (distributed by a programmer named Lyons, who's somewhere in Canada), and others whose names I've forgotten. I took an alternate route for myself, at least as a temporary solution: when I bought my new computer back in January, I ordered a 19" color VGA monitor: the larger screen means that text displays are larger as well, and this is adequate for the time being-- it's the first time in years that I've been able comfortably to see what I'm doing! As my eyesight deteriorates, I will probably go to something like the VISTA screen enlarger-- should be an amazing combination, between the already-large 19" display and the magnifying capabilities of the VISTA! On the Macintosh I use CloseView, a screen enlarger that comes as part of System software. It's not bad, I guess, but I find it very frustrating on a 9" screen; I was recently given the use of a Mac II with a 13" monitor, and CloseView is a little less claustrophobic there. CloseView is a stripped-down version of another product (Enable, maybe?) by Berkeley Systems Design; I've not used the full version. In a previous message I mentioned several speech output devices, including the DECtalk and the Texas Instruments Speech Board, and the CoVox, and the Votrax Personal Speech System. Hope this helps. John Slatin, University of Texas at Austin (EIEB360@UTXVM) From: dusknox@skipspc.idbsu.edu (Skip_Knox) Subject: Knowledge [eds] Date: Fri 29 Jun 90 10:14:00 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 564 (631) Michael Hart's comments about the age of knowledge are specious. When I learned about the Roman Revolution I was 27 (or so). But those were not "fresh facts" - the knowledge was centuries old. But then, that whole logic is nonsense. Was the knowledge as old as the text I read, or as old as the events themselves? If I re-read the text, does the knowledge become new again, as I gain fresh insights upon re-reading, or is it the same old knowledge? And I am frankly astonished to find anyone arguing that the brain gets full. On the contrary, I've always understood senility to be in part biological inevitability (sigh) but in part also the result of mental inactivity. We've all seen active old people who attribute their vitality to the fact that they try new things. It's when you STOP trying to fill up your brain that you risk senility. -= Skip =- DUSKNOX@IDBSU.IDBSU.EDU From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0236 Responses: Midrash; Transient Knowledge (2/69) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 90 20:57 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 565 (632) Sorry, but information qua news gets old; knowledge is something else again. We put away what we thought as children, not because it is old, or out of date but because it belongs to an epoch in ourselves we include, but stand outside of. Playing with numbers is absurd, when it comes to knowledge. A little self (or Psycho) analysis would reveal immediately that old knowledge is oftern dterminant knowledge. If we could be reborn each day with new news, what would we be like? Of course old and recent information and knowledge is what we must always work with in a lively fashion, lifely fashion. Try some of Idries Shahs' Sufic anecdotes and you will see what old knowledge makes new again each time, as in Aesop, which is more accessible. What sort of knowledge lies inside a fable like that of the ass in the lion's skin? does it get old, even if asses are not running down the alley where you live, I mean 4 legged ones, and lion skins are worn only by Masai today? Etc. Kessler. From: Stephen Clausing <SCLAUS@YALEVM> Subject: Software reviewers needed again Date: Sun, 01 Jul 90 22:04:04 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 566 (633) A few weeks ago, I asked for volunteers who wanted to review software for Calico Journal. About 20 people responded positively in spite of the policy that software reviewed had to be returned to the journal. For those who disagreed with this policy, I am happy to report that reviewers may now keep the software. If anyone would like to be added to the list of reviewers, given this new information, please send me a brief note to my e-mail address: SClaus@Yalevm. For your information, Calico Journal deals with language software in all its facets but with an emphasis on computer aided language instruction. From: Marc Eisinger +33 (1) 40 01 51 20 EISINGER at FRIBM11 Subject: Teaching French Date: 29 June 90, 10:48:16 SET X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 567 (634) Besides a Humanist sub-group may I suggest that people interested in French a way or another should contact French members of these various networks we use in order to get "real french" exchanges ? Although it is rather difficult to have "real french" without diacritics ... Amusez-vous bien. Marc From: George Aichele <73760.1176@CompuServe.COM> Subject: more on codex Date: 30 Jun 90 09:47:37 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 243 (635) For Marc Bregman, and anyone else who may be interested: S. Sandmel's remark concerns the gospel of Mark 7:1-8, especially Jesus's words to some Pharisees and scribes, "You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men." It appears on page 32 of *Anti-Semitism in the New Testament?* The inference drawn was mine, not Sandmel's. Thanks to all for your many helpful suggestions, and I would indeed be interested in a copy of the bibliography that Marc mentioned. George Aichele 73760,1176@compuserve.com From: Jim Wilderotter -- Georgetown University Academic Subject: Spanish corpus or dictionary. Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 11:49 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 568 (636) Pamela Trittin, You wrote in Humanist (Vol. 4, No.0239 Monday July 2, 1990) that you were searching for a Spanish corpus or off-line Spanish dictionary. The following three organizations might be what you are looking for. The first two are Text corpi, and the last has an electronic dictionary available. A. The Digital Archive and Thesaurus of Spanish Texts at the University of California at Berkeley. (text corpus) Professor Charles Faulhaber Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of California Berkeley, Ca 94720 internet: Cbf@Faulhaber.Berkeley.Edu B. Nijmegen Corpus of Spanish Texts. (text corpus) Hans van Halteren Department of English University of Nijmegen P.O. Box 9103 6500 HD Nijmegen The Netherlands telephone: (NL)-080-512836 bitnet: Cor_Hvh@Hnykun52 C. Institut d'Etudes Romanes. (dictionary available) Professor David Mighetto Departmento de Lenguas Romances Seccion Lengua Espanola Universidad de Gotemburgo S-412 98 Gotemburgo Suecia telephone: 031-631800 bitnet: mighetto@Hum.Gu.Se James A. Wilderotter II Project Assistant Georgetown University Department of Text and Technology bitnet: Bitnet%"Wilder@Guvax.Bitnet" From: "Robin C. Cover" <ZRCC1001@SMUVM1> Subject: UPENN CCAT SERVER Date: Tue, 03 Jul 90 12:21:19 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 569 (637) Re: Using Server Containing Beta-Versions of CCAT Software For Maurizio Lana and others who may be having trouble reaching the Penn server on Internet (by virtue of a stupid NameServer, or having none at all on your local system): try the IP routing direct, using 128.91.13.73. Otherwise, Bob Kraft (kraft@penndrls -BITNET) may be able to help you but he also is busy, and I do not know the latest status of Penn's External Services. Please don't ask me, in any case. Robin Cover zrcc1001@smuvm1 From: Brian Whittaker <BRIANW@YORKVM2> Subject: Interfaces Date: Fri, 29 Jun 90 19:16:48 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 245 (638) In a recent message to Humanist Mary Ann Lyman-Hager drew a contrast between "the beautiful GUI and lovely text that the Mac offers and the power of text generation offered by the IBM PS/2-generation machines". Before someone reopens the wars of digital religion that have laid waste continents, lists and bullentin boards, perhaps we could build a productive dialogue. Assuming that everyone has heard enough of the glorious Graphic User Interface for the moment, could I ask the other side of the question: What *specific* powers of text generation and manipulation are available on the IBM but not on the Macintosh? I am not calling for renewed hostilities. The IBM's evolution has clearly profited in recent years from trying to catch up with the Macintosh's interface. I suspect that the Macintosh could profit similarly from trying to catch up to the IBM in other areas, and text handling may well be one of those areas. Please try to be specific. It may be possible to add features to Macintosh text editors like Vantage and word processors like Nisus by way of macros and external commands, or by means of simple utilities. This is the kind of dialogue from which all may profit by refining the tools on which we all increasingly depend. Brian Whittaker Department of English, Atkinson College, York University. From: SA_RAE@ VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK Subject: software to aid indexing Date: Tue, 3 JUL 90 16:06:39 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 570 (639) A colleague has asked about software to aid/assist in the task of indexing keywords and concepts contained in two 19th century trade journals ("BOOKSELLER" and "PUBLISHERS' CIRCULAR"). Neither of the two journals are available in machine-readable form and there are no plans to input them. If anyone has information about software that may be of use would they respond direct to my e-mail address, I will summarize any replies for HUMANIST if necessary. Thanking you in anticipation, Simon Rae: Research Adviser, Academic Computing Services The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK. SA_RAE@VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK (BITNET address or SA_RAE@UK.AC.OPEN.ACS.VAX JANET address) From: Robert Hollander <BOBH@PUCC> Subject: Re: 4.0235 The Absolute Last Word on "Nerd" Date: Fri, 29 Jun 90 00:54:02 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 571 (640) And "wonk": does no one remember that denomination of nerdliness? If we are to close the books on "nerd," is there a wonker out there who can start the philology of our kind moving in ever more pedantic and wider arcs? If nerd is a four-letter word And wonk is a four-letter term Has anyone out there heard Of other versions of "worm"? From: "Adam C. Engst" <PV9Y@CORNELLA> Subject: Re: 4.0228 Voice Cards Date: Fri, 29 Jun 90 09:12:50 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 572 (641) The MacRecorder is only the beginning of voice on the Mac. At Macworld Expo last year I saw a product called (I think) the Voice Navigator, which would recognize your voice commands and act on them. It worked pretty well, even in the loud and crowed expo hall. I can't think of the name of the company now, but if anyone is interested, I'm sure I could find it. Adam C. Engst pv9y@cornella.bitnet From: Jim O'Donnell (Penn, Classics) Subject: indexing programs: further query Date: 03 Jul 90 21:46:43 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 573 (642) I have a dense 450,000 word manuscript in the home stretch and have begun thinking about indexing it. This will be a large project: there will be at least three and perhaps four separate indices (index of the works of the author I'm dealing with, index of other ancient and late antique passages cited, perhaps separate index of scriptural passages, index of subjects/names/etc., and perhaps index of modern scholars cited). The indices locorum alone could have five to ten thousand entries. The work is being prepared in Nota Bene on IBM, but I have been advised that NB can be slow and cumbersome in doing its indexing. I also have WordPerfect 5.1 available, and on small MSS, its indexing works fairly quickly and transparently, but in WP 5.1, anything involving large files (this will be broken up into fourteen files of between 150 and 300K each: further breakdown not very practical) gets *very* slow, at least on my 8 MHz 286 with 640 RAM. The query is: is there another way to do these indices that I should be thinking of? Factors I know to consider are ease of marking items to be included, speed of index generation, accuracy of index generation: are there others? From: Barry W. K. Joe<grfjoe@BrockU.CA> Subject: Word Processor and IPA Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 11:55-0600 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 574 (643) A colleague in Child Studies recently asked me if I knew of a word processor that would permit him to incorporate the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet in his word processing documents. I am sure I have seen references to a number of packages that will produce the IPA symbols, but I cannot remember details. Does anyone on HUMANIST have a reference for this? Barry Joe Brock University From: Antonio-Paulo Ubieto <HISCONT@CC.UNIZAR.ES> Subject: two archeological queries Date: 28 Jun 90 18:23 +0100 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 575 (644) Dear HUMANISTs: I forward hereby two archeological queries from allready-non-HUMANIST colleagues here at Zaragoza. Please reply to them at "arqueolog@cc.unizar.es". Thank you very much. Greetings. Antonio-Paulo Ubieto, Zaragoza University (Spain). ----------------------------------------------------------- SUBJECT: studies in ceramic technology Dear colleague: We are working with ceramic tipology, and we are especially interested in functional approaches and ethnoarchaeological studies about pottery. We are studing Iberian pottery (VI-I centuries B.C.) and Roman pottery in the Middle Ebro Valley (Spain). We are especially interested in patterns of production, firing and decoration. Yours faithfully Elena Maestro and Jesus Tramullas. Department of Antiquity Sciences Zaragoza University, Spain arqueolog@cc.unizar.es ----------------------------------------------------------- SUBJECT: microwear stone axes analysis Dear colleagues: We are working about microwear analysis, experimental and functional studies in polished stone axes. This studies are focusing in Spanish Neolithic, Calcolithic and Bronze Age, so we would be very grateful to all help you can provide. We are especially interested in North Europe studies about this subject, and in ethnoarcheological studies about primitive tribes that use this kind of utils, too. Yours faithfully Luis Miguel Alfranca and Jesus Tramullas Department of Antiquity Sciences Zaragoza University, Spain arqueolog@cc.unizar.es ---------------- the forwarded messages end here. Thanks and greetings! From: Jose Igartua <R12270@UQAM> Subject: Re: 4.0242 ... French Date: Wed, 04 Jul 90 10:47:39 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 576 (645) Les francophones de cette liste pourraient d'abord s'identifier aupres de M. Eisinger? Jose Igartua Departement d'histoire Universite du Quebec a Montreal From: 6600ca@UCSBUXA.BITNET Subject: etymologies Date: Tue, 3 Jul 90 15:09:12 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 577 (646) I'm curious if anybody has any insight into the term "empathy". Does anybody have a Esperanto (sp?) translation? thanks, charles at ucsb From: elli@harvunxw.BITNET (Elli Mylonas) Subject: Press Clippings (64 lines) Date: Wed, 4 Jul 90 10:39:18 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 248 (647) Recently, I noticed a clustering of articles in the popular press that may be of interest to HUMANISTS. It struck me that these publications are all pointing out problems (and solutions??) that are familiar. "The Next Frontier is the Text Frontier" Business Week, 6/18, pp. 178, 180. This was brought to my attention by a colleague, Sebastian Heath. This article points out the difficulty in performing retrieval on text that is not in database or other structured format. Because this is Business Week, it mentions text retreival as a $98 million and growing industry, and goes on to discuss research in this kind of software- Verity's Topic software and GESCAN's hardware-based system . Also Information Dimensions Inc's Basis. In addition to the introduction to the problem of full text retreival that is given in the article, there is a side bar on (you guessed it!!) hypertext. This is just a brief definition of the term, with a reference to Ted Nelson's _Computer Lib/Dream Machines_. Products mentioned are Apple's HyperCard, Autodesk and Nelson's Xanadu (almost product) and Folio Corp.'s Views. "Gothic Mystery: Pixelated Probe Pries Prose from Palimpsests" Scientific American, July 1990, p. 28. This is a short exposition, in the "Science and the Citizen section in SA, on James Marchand at U of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. He is using ultraviolet scanning and image enhancement in order to read Gothic palimpsests. He is able to get very good results from this, and has also been able to get reproducible pictures of the codices. Marchand also wants to use this methodology to publish more manuscripts. The column does not really explain how, but it does mention that he has a typeface based on the scribal hand, which he uses to create facsimiles. (Seems to me that this requires new data entry however, which is another project again...) Finally, the column mentions that he "dreams of expanding his basement scrivener's den into a national archive for the storage and analysis of digitized manuscripts." SciAm point out that this would "put the pressure on those nonpublishing scholars and uncooperative archivists who monopolize a large share of the world's manuscripts." Ben Smith, "Around the World in Text Displays" Byte, May 1990 p. 262-268. A basic exposition of the problems facing those who want to compute in languages that are not English, or worse yet, character sets that are not Roman. It describes the technology different systems use for handling diacritics. Packard's Ibycus gets some press, as well as Zondervan's ScriptureFonts. The article continues with a description of the difficulties of Chinese and Japanese. It concludes with a truly wise sentiment: "Until the problem is attacked at that level [international standards] international users will be forced to make do with ad hoc solutions. Not that we need more standards; the existence of YAT (Yet Another Standard) would only make the problem worse. We just need to change our mind-set from "I can do it better" to "We can do it together." This is a good basic introduction. Also, Avital Ronell's _Telephone Book_ was reviewed in the NY Times by Robert Coover. it was in the Sunday Book Review, but I have misplaced my copy, so I can't say exactly when. what strikes me most about these columns and articles is that the problems many of us are trying to solve are becoming more prominent for the general computing world. They are not just strange requirements of a restricted group engaged on arcane work, as humanists are sometimes viewed by the industry. --Elli Mylonas, Perseus Project, Harvard University From: Jan Eveleth <EVELETH@YALEVM> Subject: Userid Directories Date: Thu, 05 Jul 90 13:07:28 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 249 (648) David Reimer recently asked about finding userids. Since I've done some digging in this area myself, let me see if I can share something useful. [Most of this information comes from the _Internet Resource Guide_ put out by NSF Network Service Center (nnsc@nnsc.nsf.net).] Electronic databases of user information are frequently referred to as White Pages. Several organizations, including DDN, NYSERNet, and CREN/CSNET, maintain white pages. Of most interest to BITNET users would be the CREN/CSNET service. (CREN = Corporation for Research and Educational Networking, formerly BITNET, Inc.) All users of the Internet are eligible to register and use the service. To get information about the service send mail to INFOSERVER@SH.CS.NET with the following lines in the body of the message: Request: info Topic: ns You will receive 2-3 files with instructions on how to use the service. If you are interested in registering yourself on the service, duplicate the following form with your information and send it in a mail message to cic@sh.cs.net. (It will take a few working days for your entry to be processed.) Example mail message form from CSNET: Name: Mock Turtle Account: mt,wonderland.oxbridge.edu, oxbridge Mailbox: mt@wonderland.oxbridge.edu Phone: (617) 999-8765 Address: Oxbridge University Eastboro, MA 02199 Misc: soup Griffon Disposition: Add The "misc" category above should include one-word indications of the topics you're interested in. How to find someone that's registered in a white pages database? You can query the database directly. The CREN/CSNET white pages can be reached by telnetting to sh.cs.net, login as "ns". Once logged on you may use the "whois" command (help is available) to locate a user/userid. Similarly for using the NYSERNet White Pages Pilot Project (about 50 institutions currently participating) accessible at wp.psi.com, login as fred. But an easier (though not always faster) method is to make your query on the Knowbot Information Service. Knowbot systematically poses the query to many white pages located around the country--including CREN/CSNET. To access Knowbot, telnet to nri.reston.va.us 185. (The 185 is a port number and is essential.) Once connected, you are provided a rather stark screen with a prompt waiting for your input. Simply type the name you're searching for, e.g. Mock Turtle. The system searches for exact matches so if Mock Turtle registered as M. Turtle, Knowbot won't find it. Usually best to use just last names, but beware those that are common; you could easily end up with over 100 Smiths. The disadvantage of Knowbot is that it will systematically search through all of it's accessible white pages, even if you found the user you were looking for at the beginning of the search. The advantage of using Knowbot, is the simplicity of use and "one-stop shopping". As with any information service, it will only be useful if there's a critical mass of users. I encourage you to register with CREN/CSNET and try Knowbot. And, as with any publicly-accessible information, there will be some people who don't want their phone numbers--or userids--listed; so don't expect to find the email address of your university president. Jan Eveleth eveleth@yalevm Yale University From: Roberta Russell <PRUSSELL@OCVAXC> Subject: Publishing support services Date: Thu, 5 Jul 90 11:15 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 578 (649) I would like to hear from Humanists whose institutions provide publishing support services to their faculty (by publishing support I mean preparation of manuscripts for publication in scholarly journals or books, not "desktop" or graphics-oriented publishing). Such services might include producing diskettes, camera-ready copy, or e-mail transmission of manuscripts. Who on your campus is responsible for providing these services? What do they entail? Is there a fee involved? Additionally, is anyone aware of any surveys of university presses and/or journals to determine their software and formatting requirements? What should computing center personnel gear up to support in the way of preferred software, disk formats, etc.? Please send your replies directly to me - I'll summarize if there is enough interest. Roberta Russell Academic Computing Associate Oberlin College prussell@oberlin From: Alan D Corre <corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> Subject: Jewish/Civil Calendar Date: Thu, 5 Jul 90 09:16:11 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 579 (650) I have published the code for a visually equivalent Jewish/Civil calendar. The file is about 29K bytes. If you would like a copy, send a request to ralph@cs.arizona.edu Alan D. Corre Department of Hebrew Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (414) 229-4245 PO Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201 corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu From: Malcolm Hayward <MHAYWARD@IUPCP6.BITNET> Subject: Last Nerd Word Heard Date: 05 Jul 90 12:51 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 580 (651) I swore to shut up. Okay. RPI, Troy, New York, 1962, the word was "tool." Variation: "wedge" (because a wedge is "a simple tool"). I checked Mad Magazines c. 1968-1972: no "Nerds" that I could find. In fact, surprisingly few general terms of the name calling sort. Mostly comic names--little slang. Still, it's crackers to slip a rasor the dropsy in snide. Malcolm Hayward MHayward@IUP Department of English Phone: 412-357-2322 or IUP 412-357-2261 Indiana, PA 15705 From: "Michael S. Hart" <HART@UIUCVMD> Subject: Re: 4.0241 The Age of Knowledge (2/38) Date: Wed, 04 Jul 90 23:33:00 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 581 (652) re: dusknox@skipspc.idbsu.edu (Skip_Knox) Senility, Roman Empire, etc My response must be that you check these out yourself, and not take my word or Skip's. Skip's "arguments" are ALL listed in the 57 major fallacies. mh From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM> Subject: Re: 4.0247 Qs: Indexing ... Date: Fri, 06 Jul 90 06:17:43 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 582 (653) On indexing. I think that you will probably find it easiest to remain with nb's indexing program rather than massaging the text for someone else's. It is a fairly slow process but not otherwise cumbersome in my experience and very accurate. Perhaps you could borrow a 386 machine for this job. On a fst machine it takes a fraction of the time that it does on a slow one of course. Also a job like that can be left to run overnight or over a weekend if you are sure about the electricity supply. By the way, your book sounds fascinating to me. What is it about? My guess is Philo or patristics? Both topics of great interest to me. Good luck,Daniel Boyarin From: "M. R. Sperberg-McQueen " <U15440@UICVM> Subject: low tech indexing; NLCindex Date: 7 July 1990 11:50:15 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 583 (654) The following addresses the questions on indexing raised by O'Donnell only indirectly. But perhaps a general discussion of people's experiences with indexing might be of interest. When I did an index last summer, I ultimately settled on a very low tech solution that, however, worked satisfactorily: I followed the Chicago manual of style recommendations for manually marking the page proofs and then, instead of writing the entries on index cards, I created the electronic equivalent in the form of a list of entries in a file that I later sorted alphabetically (as one would sort the index cards). In part, this solution reflects my being more comfortable working on a hard copy, where you can flip back and forth to look in the margins to see how you treated a particular concept on an earlier or later page. And, having marked the hard copy, it seemed silly to re-mark a copy on the screen. The idea that indexing an electronic copy permits you to begin your index before you get the page proofs doesn't seem to me to be persuasive. If one has a publisher who's not going to allow reasonable time to do the index on the basis of page proofs, one should find a different publisher. It's not a weekend project. I found trying to index the text electronically frustrating: WP is happiest if you simply mark words in your text; since I was often indexing concepts that did not consistently appear as words or phrases in the text, I was having to type these in--and having to do so repeatedly, as WP didn't allow me to write a macro for a phrase to be called up and entered into the index entry field. I was also indexing titles of German baroque poems which, notoriously, are not short, and WP had a limit on the length of its entries. It's easier to get around these problems in NB, since you can invoke stored phrases into index entry fields. For indexes of names and places such as O'Donnell speaks of, either WP or NB may well provide good solutions; for indexes of subjects, they may be less helpful. I will not dwell on the quality of subject indexes of the majority of computer manuals, as these disasters presumably have been produced by people who don't realize that an index is not a word list and that a good one requires intelligent reflection on the part of the human indexer. I have the feeling my low tech route is not going to be very appealing; as compensation I suggest looking into LNCindex, which was originally developed for indexing a scholarly edition (the Jefferson papers?) with very complex and detailed multiple indexes. It permits 3 levels of entries; it reduces typing by allowing one to use abbreviations (one could type, for example, TJ to get Jefferson, Thomas). It runs on IBM compatibles. It may or may not seem like a bargain at $160 (you can get a $25 demo disk with the $25 to be applied to the purchase of the program). It can certainly handle very large indexes; I don't know how it does speed-wise, which is one of O'Donnell's main concerns. But I know at least one person who thinks it's the cat's pyjamas, and Michael would doubtless be willing to talk about it when he returns to Chicago Monday. For official information on the program, you can write NLCindex / The Newberry Library / 60 West Walton Street / Chicago, IL 60610 or phone 312/943-9090. Marian Sperberg-McQueen U. of Illinois at Chicago. From: "David R. Chesnutt" <N330004@UNIVSCVM> Subject: Re: 4.0247 Qs: Indexing ... Date: Mon, 09 Jul 90 11:39:54 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 584 (655) In response to Jim O'Donnell's query re indexing, one approach might be to use a dedicated indexing program rather than trying to handle the various tasks with a word processing package. The old mainframe version of CINDEX we developed for the Laurens Papers project has been revised into a user-friendly PC version that will run on IBMs or IBM-compatibles and is available through the Newberry Library at Chicago, 60 West Walton St., Chicago, IL 60610. Running on a standard IBM-AT, an index with 10,000 cites takes about 45 minutes to sort. We've used the PC version for the last three indexes of the Laurens Papers. The PC files are fully compatible with the mainframe version which means that we can easily update our in-house cumulative index as we publish volumes. Like its predecessor NLC follows the indexing rules of the Chicago Manual of Style. One of the major improvements in the PC version is its flexibility in allowing the user to edit and resort the index files it creates. On a normal index at Laurens, we probably spend 50% of our time editing and refining the index so its very important to us to be able to produce a "rough draft," edit that, and then have a new draft which incorporates those changes. Editing can be done in any word processing package which writes an ASCII file back out for reprocessing via NLC. David Chesnutt Papers of Henry Laurens University of South Carolina From: Jim O'Donnell (Penn, Classics) Subject: indexing report Date: 09 Jul 90 13:29:03 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 585 (656) My thanks to numerous correspondents. I thought I would report briefly on what I have found about indexing large files. 1. There is what sounds like a good dedicated index program out there, and I have encouraged the specialist who knows about it to report directly. 2. WordPerfect is going through a turtle stage. I have confirmed both with other users and with their 800-line that if you are at all crowding the limits of available RAM (not hard, since the program alone takes well over 400K now in 5.1), the program slows down astonishingly. Executing a simple command in a 228K file took a full and unbelievable thirty seconds, just to mark one word for indexing. Expanded memory may help, if you can get enough headroom that way, and WP reports that they `are working on it'. Breath-holding not advised. 3. Detailed experiments with Nota Bene have been more encouraging. I put 600+ index markers randomly through the same 228K file, and it generated a very satisfactory index (on my AT at 8MHz with 640 RAM) in only about ten minutes. For myself for now, that is probably the way I will go. 3. One piece of advice. If you are creating a text that will need to be indexed, you may think about including some fence or marker when you are generating the text. I have a lot of abbreviated references to ancient works (e.g., Aen. 6.234-238, Aug. conf. 11.10.13): it would speed things marvelously in marking these things for index if I had put some fence character (even one that is invisible to the printer) after the 238 or the 13 in those examples: then in one program or another a macro or a global search/replace could speed the marking of items dramatically. From: Alan D Corre <corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> Subject: Recursive Fiction Date: Thu, 5 Jul 90 19:36:03 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 253 (657) There has recently been some discussion about interactive fiction on this group. I should like to speak of recursive fiction, which I discovered a few years ago, and of which I have written the first (and possibly the last) example. It came about thus. The fine editor used on the Apple II Pascal system, written by Ken Bowles of UCSD, has two modes, either of which may be TRUE or FALSE. The setting FILLING=TRUE and AUTOINDENT=FALSE is appropriate for normal text like this, since it avoids constant carriage returns. The setting FILLING=FALSE and AUTOINDENT=TRUE is appropriate for writing Pascal programs, where each successive indentation is continued until canceled. The setting FILLING=FALSE and AUTOINDENT=FALSE is appropriate for columnar output which would be spoiled by filling. This leaves one possibility (both TRUE) for which there appears to be no use whatsoever. Now the Midrash (you all know about Midrash) Genesis Rabba 10.5 declares expressly that "even the things that you view as superfluous in the world" are part of the generality of creation and hence have a function. This, it declares, includes fleas, gnats and flies, imagine! And spotted owls. The thought is repeated in at least three other places (Leviticus Rabba 22.2, Numbers Rabba 18.22 and Ecclesiastes Rabbati 5.8.2.) Accordingly, it became a challenge to find SOME use for FILLING=TRUE and AUTOINDENT=TRUE. Now the LISP programming language likes to use recursion rather than iteration for repetitive actions. Maybe I should explain recursion, which is a concept with an eerie feel about it, as though one was entering a hall of mirrors. Using Icon, which also supports recursion, but is a little easier to follow than LISP, I will give you an example, will give you an example, give you an example, you an example, an example, example,. (sic--or sick, if you prefer, but please note the comma before the period.) Consider the following procedure: procedure recurse(phrase,n) if n > 0 then { recurse(phrase,n-1) writes(phrase) } return end Let's substitute "Hi there!" for phrase and 2 for n and see what happens. The procedure first checks if n is greater than zero. Since it is, we enter the curly brackets. But now the procedure calls itself, so we have to enter the second call of the procedure before we can finish the first. In this call, the value of n is 1, because n has been reduced by 1. Lo and behold, it calls the procedure a third time. This time the value of n is 0, so the curly brackets are skipped. The call of the procedure concludes, having done--precisely nothing. But it finished, and that is important. Another proof of the truth of our Midrash. This lazy call serves just by standing and waiting. At this point the second call of the procedure can be finished, but since this continues INSIDE the curly brackets it writes out "Hi there!". Since it then finishes, the first call can be finished and writes out "Hi there!" again. There is now no unfinished business, and we are through. And we have performed a repetitive action without an iterative loop. We selected the number two, but these calls can go on for- ever, or until the memory runs out of space, whichever comes first. (The computer has to "remember" all these uncompleted calls.) On the computer on which I am writing, I found that I could call this procedure 219 times. If I dare to go 220, the machines blows its stack, and in effect tells me that if I want to do that I had better buy the next 128K of memory. LISP programs generally represent the "depth" of the recursion by increasing indentation on the page. The constant decrementation which helps ensure that the program will end after 2, or 219 calls is represented by continually beheading a list of linked items, rather than by whittling an integer down to zero. When this list becomes of zero length--the words you see between the comma and period above--the program ends. The head of the list is mystically referred to as its CAR. Somehow we have got used to the idea of zero, but an empty list is still strange. Can you imagine going to the supermarket with a shopping list consisting of nothing? But centuries ago zero must have given people the same feeling. And maybe we should shop occasionally with an explicit empty list; it is quite economical, and perfectly logical. Computers are tolerant of insanity, and maybe can teach us mortals a lesson. Recursion provided the key to a use for the two trues. If I wrote a recursive story, I could use filling for the story and autoindent for the depth of recursion. And that is what I did. If you use the EMACS editor, you can turn on the auto-indent and auto-fill modes simultaneously to achieve a similar effect. I called my story The Friends of Gerry A Recursive Parable Gerry sat down at the counter of his favorite bar, and ordered a double apple juice. The bartender handed him his drink, and he sat quietly contemplating it. Suddenly he noticed a beautiful young woman sitting nearby. She was physically perfect in every detail. He admired her blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her ample bosom gave promise of pneumatic bliss. Her slender legs were draped around the bar stool naturally and expressively. Gerry turned to her and said: "Would it be a thin to have a drink with me?" (Gerry always lisped when he was nervous.) She agreed with a sweet smile. Gerry put out his hand and touched her elbow lightly. She did not flinch or scowl, but looked at him calmly and confidently. "I think we can be friends," said Gerry. "So do I," replied the girl, and she impulsively grasped his hand. Just as she did so, Gerry noticed another young woman who had come in. She resembled the first young woman so closely that Gerry could hardly believe it, but there was one crucial difference--she was headless. Gerry found himself wondering why this inspired no dread in him, and how she managed to smile at him when she had no head. He found himself thinking of the Cheshire cat in 'Alice,' who disappeared leaving only his smile behind. "That was different," he concluded. "After all, the Cheshire cat had a head to start with, and yet.." He got up abruptly, leaving his beautiful companion with no sense of loss. "Would it be a thin to have a drink.." he essayed. Like the first woman, she agreed readily, and explained to him that she had stopped in for some light refreshment because she had lost her car. Gerry expressed his regret and concern, but she shrugged it off with a gesture of resignation. "In an environment like this, what else can you expect?" she said. Gerry was puzzled by this comment because he had no awareness of being in a bad neighborhood. On the contrary, he had heard that it was full of intellectuals and pilots without a flight plan. "Why am I so attracted to a headless woman who has lost her car?" he asked himself in some puzzlement. He bent forward and touched her elbow. "I think we can be.." he began, but as he finished the sentence, he noticed another woman come in and sit down, and he hardly heard the response to his remark. He got up and moved towards the new patron, noticing as he did so that she was merely a waist and a pair of legs. Despite her deficiencies, she still, to his surprise, seemed perfect in every detail, just as attractive as her predecessors. "Would it be a.." he began. Gerry felt a little foolish. "Why don't I try a new line?" he thought. "Those other women must be listening and thinking what a bore I am." Yet somehow he realized that the line was working, and it would be foolish to change. Touching her elbow presented no difficulty to Gerry, although he could not under_ stand why it did not, seeing that she was, so to speak, only part of a woman. As he moved his hand along her arm he was dis_ tracted by a new visitor. This woman, perfect and beautiful as the rest, in_ spired in him a sense of listlessness which he had not felt be_ fore. "No hair, no bosom, no legs," he said to him_ self. "Why, she isn't ANYTHING AT ALL!" None_ theless, he could not resist her fatal attraction. Leaving abruptly the waist and the legs that had so en_ chanted him he addressed his newest love. "Would it.." he began. But Gerry got no further. The smell of apocalypse was in the air, and his failing consciousness dissolved in a flash of blazing l i g h t . From: K.C.Cameron@ exeter.ac.uk Subject: Call for Papers Date: Fri, 6 Jul 90 17:27:52 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 586 (658) Preliminary notice and call for papers There will be a conference on the theme of CALL and HyperMedia University of Exeter September 18 - 20 1991 For further information, please contact Keith Cameron, Department of French, Queen's Building, University of Exeter, EXETER, EX4 4QH, UK. <cameron@uk.ac.exeter> From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield) Subject: "Search for reviewers of English mss on Arabic text retrieval" Date: Fri, 6 Jul 90 23:34:49 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 587 (659) Any HUMANIST members interested in reviewing English-language manuscripts dealing with information retrieval involving Arabic and the Koran (the Holy Quran), please contact me. I would also welcome queries from non-HUMANISTs possessing such expertise, especially those residing in the western hemisphere (for postal reasons). Sincerely, Dr. Joel D. Goldfield Assistant Editor, Computers and the Humanities jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu or joelg@psc.bitnet From: C. David Perry <carlos@ecsvax> Subject: Re: Publishing Support Date: Sat, 7 Jul 90 08:06:24 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 588 (660) The Association of American University Presses has produced a pamphlet of general instructions for authors preparing manuscripts on computers. I have a supply of them and would be happy to share copies. I will have to have a stamped, self-addressed envelope, however. David Perry University of North Carolina Press Box 2288 Chapel Hill, NC 27515 (919) 966-3561 carlos@ecsvax.bitnet carlos@uncecs.edu From: U245 at ITOCSIVM Subject: corresp. analysis software Date: 6 July 90, 12:57:18 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 589 (661) I know the following software to do correspondence analysis: SIMCA SPAD-N SPAD-T the package from professor McKinnon SAS 6.3 LEXICLOUD I am interested in the last item: I know that it exists and comes from France, Universit! de Saint Cloud, but nothing else. I'd like to know an address to which one could ask information and maybe buy the software. Lexicloud seems to be the only software, together with Spad-t, able to read directly the text and produce the data for the cluster analysis. If used it, you know that spad-t is completely unfriendly, produce erratic errors not well explained (or also not explained at all), and use only 40k RAM also on machines with 640 and more... Please, could you answer (also) directly to me? Thank you. Maurizio Lana From: KLCOPE@ VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK Subject: Restoration Jeopardy, Or, Who is Bentivoglio? Date: Fri, 6 Jul 90 20:40 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 590 (662) Can anyone identify the party who might be signified by the type name BENTIVOGLIO? The name appears in William King's DIALOGUES OF THE DEAD, c. 1699, which concerns a controversy over Bentley's EPISTLE FROM PHALARIS. Elements in the work concern Swift, Temple, Bentley, Wotton, and Dryden, but the work, which sends up this Bentivoglio, may attack someone else altogether, or may be aimed at a composite identity. I appreciate any suggestions. Kevin L. Cope KLCOPE@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK or ENCOPE@LSUVM.BITNET From: Alan D Corre <corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> Subject: Jewish/Civil Calendar Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 13:08:54 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 591 (663) I wish to clarify that the visually equivalent Jewish/Civil calendar is offered in the form of Icon code which must be compiled. It is not a simple table. Visually equivalent means that the Hebrew and English months are the same shape on the screen, and hence can be compared easily. If you would like a copy, send a request to the *address below.* Alan D. Corre corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu From: David.A.Bantz@mac.dartmouth.edu Subject: IPA font Date: 05 Jul 90 22:43:14 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 592 (664) Neoscribe International produces a Postscript font (i.e., screen font and laser font combination) containing the IPA symbol set. Any Macintosh applications (not just w.p.'s) which support fonts can use the IPA symbols intermixed with usual text (this includes any w.p. you're likely to encounter). ---Barry W. K. Joe<grfjoe@BrockU.CA> wrote: Does anyone on HUMANIST have a reference for...a word processor that would permit [one] to incorporate the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet in his word processing documents... ---End of quoted material From: LNGDANAP@VM.UOGUELPH.CA Subject: 4.0242... French Date: Fri, 06 Jul 90 20:48:37 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 593 (665) C'est quoi, au juste, un-e francophone, dans le contexte electronique? Dana Paramskas, University of Guelph From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0251 Responses: Nerd; Knowledge (2/26) Date: Sat, 07 Jul 90 16:36 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 594 (666) To Hayward re "tool." We used tool to mean a dumb schmuck in the 30's in the Bronx. But as you know, a schmuck is slang for penis, which is also a tool. Read Moravia's novel Io e Lui. Schmuck is jewel in german of course. Precious thing, to some. But always pejorated. Kessler at UCLA From: MHEIM@CALSTATE Subject: Arcane Humanists & Info Society Date: Sun, 08 Jul 90 11:38:48 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 595 (667) Elli Mylonas makes the good point, with evidence, that questions arising among us humanists, such as text retrieval, are questions that also arise in the business community and the world at large. He notes that "the problems many of us are trying to solve are becoming more prominent for the general computing world. They are not just strange requirements of a restricted group engaged on arcane work, as humanists are sometimes viewed by the industry." The convergence of shared problems is no surprise in the age of information. McLuhan remarked in one of his letters (to John Culkin): "In the age of information the University becomes itself environmental, whereas in the mechanical age it had been merely the content of a machine technology." When our nations's primary product becomes information, then we as a society relate to the University as an environment. An environment is the subconscious backdrop or ground against which all cultural activity occurs. Whatever the difference in content may be, the same background guides the shared approach to content. If information becomes the backdrop of business and commerce, then the University as the clearing house for information becomes the invisible paradigm for intelligent work. Have you noticed how in recent years businesses have co-opted educational situations like "workshops" and "seminars"? But what is the relationship between information and humanism? Is information the same as humanistic endeavors? Which leads to the related question, what is the relationship of academic humanists to the University as information-provider? If we distinguish information from significance, perhaps the work of humanists is to assess the significance of cultural information? If so, how does humanistic work relate to the business community and the University? Mike Heim Cal State Long Beach From: Frank Dane <FDANE@UGA> Subject: Knowledge Date: Thu, 05 Jul 90 21:21:06 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 596 (668) As a social psychologist, I am intrigued by the current discussion re: knowledge transience. As is Knox, I am astonished that anyone would entertain the notion that one's brain could get full. Certainly, the structure of memory could get sufficiently complicated as to make it difficult to retrieve long-unused information, and there does exist evidence for the physical decay of memory (even though we don't know what "physical" processes are responsible for memory). I am equally intrigued with the notion that knowledge could get old. The dynamics of memory make that impossible. Every time information is used (remembered), it is "freshened." More important, every time knowledge is used it is altered, however slightly, by what is going on in the current environment. In Knox's words, the knowledge does, indeed, become new again upon rereading a text, or merely reflecting upon what was once read in a text (or any other source). Kessler made the same point when referring to reexamination of Sufi anecdotes, although any reconsideration is sufficient to alter stored memory. Similarly, existing (stored in memory) knowledge affects one's interpretation of new knowledge--psychologists refer to this a proactive interference. Again in Knox's terms, existing knowledge is determinant knowledge. Thus, there is a dynamic cycle of new information being affected by and simultaneously altering existing information. It's this dynamic process of human memory that has the Artificial Intelligence folks pulling out their hair--computer models of human memory usually fail because computers do not forget, nor does new information "unintentionally" alter information stored in memory or on disk. Frank Dane From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Re: 4.0252 Indexing (4/145) - Fence Characters Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 14:34:19 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 597 (669) In regard to O'Donnell's comment on inserting fence characters - I suppose he means something that can be replaced by a final bracket around the item to be indexed. If not, the following is founded on a misconception. Instead of using such a bracketing marker, a system that can do pattern matching on regular expressions could be used. For example, in this case the pattern would be something like: ((Aen.)|(Aug. conf.)) [0-9.-]+ That is, match Aen. or Aug. conf., followed by space, followed by a maximal string of digits, periods and dashes. (Notation for "regular expressions" is not quite standardized, but this is typical.) There are a number of text editors on the market that have regular expression matching, as well as several implementations of the AWK text processor, which also has regular expression pattern matching. The thing to be cautious about, however, is that text editors often have limits on line length. E.g., the Brief text editor does regular expression replaces, but has a user-set line length limit. AWKs also have line length limits (c. 1000 chars.). This is significant because Nota Bene paragraphs are represented as "lines," as far as ASCII text editors are concerned. An editor that might do the job would be Lugaru's Epsilon. I believe that I have heard that it does not have limits on line lengths, though I cannot confirm this at the moment. From: "R. Burr Litchfield" <HI700000@BROWNVM> Subject: Re: 4.0252 Indexing Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 09:11:35 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 598 (670) With regard to indexing, I have a good program called INDEXX (IBM-PC) that I got from the inventor, Norman Swartz, Dept. of Philosophy, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 186, in 1986 for about $50. It makes an index from page proofs, or other printed sources. The program was also distributed by the Philosophy Documentation Center, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. It was recommended by Princeton University Press. I have used it with success ever since. It is a compiled Basic program. Instead of making slips from the page proofs, you type the entries and page numbers into the program prompts. It does some standardization (it will ask whether the D. Hume you just typed in was the David Hume you were using earlier--and it will up-date the earlier entries). At the end, it alphabetizes the entries, sorts the page citations, and sends the final index to a printer or a disk file for further work with your own word processor. You can have up to 750 entries, but for longer indices you can combine up-to-750-entry segments. Some use of one's own word processor is needed at the end to change 11, 12, 13, 14 into 11-14, add diacritical marks (which the program doesn't recognize), and put in final refinements. I am now on my third index using this program, and for the money I have found it to be very satisfactory. Maybe there is now an updated version (I have 2.05). From: tgmcfadden@ucdavis.BITNET Subject: Indexing Software Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 11:30:30 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 599 (671) What follows is a comment on the recent HUMANIST conversation on indexing software. There are essentially two kinds of indexing software: that which works from within a particular word processing program, and that which does not. The former is intended to extract marked text from a word processing file and format and paginate an index. The latter is intended to be used with publisher's printed page proofs, and generally requires that all index entries be entered manually. What this software does, frequently using a 3x5 card metaphor, is sort, organize, format, and output the completed index, either to paper or to a disk file. There are about 10+ software programs currently available of the second kind. These programs are most often used by professional indexers who require not only power and flexibility, but also a variety of output formats (of which the University of Chicago style is one of most common). Hence the most sophisticated of these programs are relatively expensive: in the $400-$500 range. There are other such programs which, while less sophisticated, would nonetheless be quite suitable for use by an author wishing to prepare his or her own index to a work. Professional indexers find that subject analysis in particular can best be done using indexing software of the second kind, which permits human intervention in the process of designing and structuring an appropriate indexing vocabulary for the work in hand. Indexing software of the first kind, which is a kind of low-level automatic indexing, can generally not provide this kind of flexibility. The American Society of Indexers publishes several titles which might be of interest to readers of this note: Choosing a Computer for Indexing ($15) Generic Markup of Electronic Index Manuscripts ($15) A Guide to Indexing Software ($15) Register of Indexers ($15) The Register of Indexers is a classified list of professional indexers whose indexing services (or editing services) are available over a wide range of disciplines and formats. All of these titles can be obtained, prepaid, from: ASI Publications Sales Office POB 386 Port Aransas, TX 78373 I would of course be happy to answer any other questions about indexing software programs (if I can) or about the American Society of Indexers. From: tgmcfadden@ucdavis.BITNET Subject: Indexing Software Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 11:48:44 -0700 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 600 (672) A postscript: There are two indexing programs with very similar names: NLCindex and CINDEX. These programs appear to be rather different. The CINDEX program is published by: Indexing Research POB 18609 Rochester, New York 14618 (716) 461-5530 I happen to use this program in my own work, and find it very satisfactory. I cannot comment on the other program. From: Andy Covell <LIBABC@SUVM> Subject: ZyIndex Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 11:24:54 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 601 (673) I have a client who is seeking advice on ZyIndex and other full-text indexing packages which may be useful in qualitative research, and I've been told that this list is a good place to look for such expertise. If you have used ZyIndex or other similar packages and are willing to share your expertise, please respond directly to me...I do not subscribe to the list. A brief summary of your experiences with some indication of the pluses and minuses of the software you have used would be greatly appreciated. Thank You. Andy Covell =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Manager, Research Data Center | (315)443-3606 | Academic Computing Services | LIBABC@SUVM | Syracuse University | libabc@suvm.acs.syr.edu | =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From: "GILES R. HOYT" <IPIF100@INDYCMS> Subject: Indexing Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 10:32:36 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 602 (674) Regarding the recent discussion on indexing: has anyone tried using WordCruncher which is advertised by MLA? From: Alan D Corre <corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> Subject: Knowledge Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 16:22:39 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 603 (675) In response to Frank Dane's comment, I should like to say that I do not think that anyone ever suggested that the brain could become full in reality. That notion was a straw man which one respondent knocked down to comfort me for the regret that I expressed at my obsolescent knowledge of the Univac 1100. Another respondent correctly noted that my concern was economic rather than plenitudinous--with computers bounding along the way they are, how can one intelligently use one's time and energy in ways that do not become obsolete in short order. At the same time, I think one can get a perception of fullness. Terms like "mental indigestion" and "cramming for exams" suggest that people sometimes feel that their poor brains are ready to bust. The medical student learning the names of human muscles for a quiz, and even buying books of mnemonics to help, must sometimes feel that the surplus knowledge is about to run out of his or her ears. Maybe the art of good teaching is the ability to serve an intellectual alka seltzer along with the hard knowledge one imparts. From: Jim Cerny <J_CERNY@UNHH> Subject: Knowledge/memory and anecdotal evidence. Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 09:06 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 604 (676) When people say something like "their brain is too full," I suspect they are reacting to problems of memory writing and retrieval and that this is a colloquial way to express it. Anecdotal evidence seems to abound and I wonder how formally it is recognized in any psychological or medical studies. I always thought I had a very good memory (easy to store facts, easy to retrieve them), though not "photographic," until reaching 40 or so. Wow! What a shock. The most noticible problem was retrieving information, particularly names of things and people. But my ability to cram facts is also much diminished. Linda Weltner, a writer for The Boston Globe, wrote an _excellent_ commentary on this a year or so (see, what I mean!) ago. She vividly describes how one is racing along in a conversation, bringing in witty and incisive tidbits of information, and suddenly, WHAM!, some key item you need is just not there. Resort to cute mnemonic tricks won't retrieve it, it just isn't there at that moment, though it will bob to the surface later. Everyone in the 40-50 age range that I have showed this to, has said, "Yes, yes! Exactly!" So, I return to my original speculation. Has anyone bothered to study this? Do the studies bear out the anecdotal evidence? Is this something that has always existed, but is just much, much more noticible in an information age? Is it due to something we are ingesting or exposing ourselves to (I think some people regard aluminum as a suspect)? Jim Cerny, University of New Hampshire. j_cerny@unhh From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0257 Humanist Tasks; Transience of Knowledge (2/74) Date: Mon, 09 Jul 90 17:21 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 605 (677) Frank Dane is making an interesting comment, when he alludes to the "rstoration " as it were of a memory trace in its recall, into a temporally-new context. But as each moment brings with it temporal novelty as well as newness, and also recedes into the past directly, en passant, as it were, we have the problem of a n enlarging cistern or tank, or cesspool, or oubliette, but not a midden, in which discarded, say abalone shells, layer by layer, attest to a 5-10,000 year village dependent on mollusc harvest. The interesting thing to me at least, subjectively, is that reading itself is something one continually learns, as is seeing and hearing music, say. The great texts, those that seem to contain the possible freshness of the future and which lead to understanding or wisdom, must be read early and again and again, studied, as we say, in order to be comprehended. But...do they comprehend us, or we comprehend them? The computer physiological model is one that starts from reductionism, and cannot, or does not grow, it seems to me. If I ask myself why, I think it is because our age tends to be terribly egoistic: my brain, my motherboard, my circuits, and overlooks the committment of the self to the greater whole, which itself must be made up and remade constantly in our attention, the quest for angelhood, even deityhood. Example: how could one have grasped, I mean understood, such a simple admonition as that in ECCLESIASTES (which I read as a lad of 8 or so, and surmised to be full of terror, how did I surmise it? because it was mysterious? what is that?), and it said, One day the sound of the water plashing in the fountain in the courtyard will be intolerable to you. When one thinks, and thought in imagination as a child, Gee, the fountain sounds so soothing and calming and nourishing out there in the glare of the day (a di chirico fountain?), so what must it mean to be told that one day its very gentle delight will exacerbate your sensibility. Inf ormation it was then, to me the child; knowledge it became to me the adult, as a sort of guide; and now, after 60, I begin to comprehend that it meant what it said, and what it meant was a kind of horror at existence itself, which is eve rything to one! It is a phrase that reverberates with wisdom and understanding; yet that understanding is not ever new and refreshed when one calls it up, not simply that: it grows louder and more full of meaning, if one gives oneself to it, and not simply takes it in as another bit of many sentences in that work. In fact, it begins to be unendurable because unspeakable, because too full to be uttered, except as itself; and yet as itself it is but a sentence. One of course know that the world's wisdom literature is chocabloc with such sentences, and they are different in kind from other sentences, as is poetry different from prose, etc. Tell that to the business community? How? Who whom? as Lenin. asked Kessler at ucla. Maundering, but here. I hope. From: Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: clearing houses for information? Date: Mon, 09 Jul 90 20:51:42 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 261 (678) In 4.0257 of Humanist, Mike Heim wrote that, "If information becomes the backdrop of business and commerce, then the University as the clearing house for information becomes the invisible paradigm for intelligent work.... But what is the relationship between information and humanism? Is information the same as humanistic endeavors?" While respecting the question, my verbal fur is rubbed the wrong way by two expressions here, "clearing house" and "information". I would argue that since words are all we have here, getting the right ones for the question is worth some bother. "Clearing house", I suggest, is all wrong for the job because it connotes a chaotic place in which quantities of stuff are sold at a discount or otherwise distributed with a minimum of care or fuss. Rare or precious things are not found in clearing houses except by accident; accidents may, of course, be happy accidents, one may find a real bargain, just what one has been looking for. You cannot reasonably expect to find every size and shape of thing, however, and you must take special care that what you do find is worth carrying away. Universities to my mind should not be dumping grounds or clearing houses for whatever piles of information may have accumulated. Furthermore, the idea of the university as a kind of business, a vendor of things people happen to think they need at the moment, seems to me pernicious. Universities are part of society and so must respond, but the question is how? Isn't the idea of a Socratic opposition still as necessary as it has always been, perhaps even more so? "Information" seems wrong to me also. All knowledge is in a sense information, and the etymology (suggesting that to be in-formed is to be given intelligible shape) suggests further that information is what every philosopher strives for, or should. The current English word connotes, however, "factual information", as in how to drive a car, build a circuit, enroll in a course, or mix paint. "Knowledge" is quite different in ordinary usage, "wisdom" even more so. I wonder very seriously if the vision of the Information Age, when our most important commodity is information, has any room at all for the knowledge of poets and philosophers. Surely as computing humanists we are best equipped to understand the difference between "information" (what can be fed into the computer, and what comes out) and the "knowledge" or even "wisdom" that we may occasionally, with much hard work, be able to derive from it. Words are important, such distinctions as I am trying to make are important. Again from failing memory I pull out what I recall as a Confucian gem. (I beg to be corrected or supplemented by those who know.) Asked what one thing he would want to have done, the single, most important change to be made to the world as he knew it, Confucius is reported to have said, "the rectification of terms". Let us say clearly what it is that we want. Willard McCarty From: <RX6@PSUVM> Subject: bibliography programs Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 17:34 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 606 (679) I am seeking information about application programs specifically designed for compiling large bibliographies on the Macintosh. I'd also be interested in data base programs that could be easily adapted to managing MLA format for footnotes and bibliographies. My word-processing program is Microsoft Word 4. I'd appreciate any advice from Humanist subscribers. Thank you, Jane Rice, RX6@PSUVM German Dept., Penn. State Univ. From: Roy Flannagan <FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB> Subject: HSLA? Date: 9 July 1990, 17:31:07 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 607 (680) Needed: identification of an acronym for a journal in fine arts and literature probably published in Israel--HSLA. A colleague asked me to post a query. The person who had an article published in HSLA is a professor at Bar Ilan University. Thanks for any help. Roy Flannagan From: hcf1dahl@UCSBUXA.BITNET Subject: Dickens and James Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 09:45:59 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 608 (681) A faculty member here at UCSB, not yet a user of e-mail or a member of HUMANIST, has asked me to mention that he would welcome the opportunity to communicate with anyone interested in the use of machine readable text for stylistic textual analysis of the works of Dickens and James. He has been using our Kurzweil scanner to create his texts, and is now beginning to manipulate them with the OCP and WordCruncher. His address is: Patrick McCarthy Department of English University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Eric Dahlin Humanities Computing Univ. of California, Santa Barbara hcf1dahl@ucsbuxa.bitnet From: "Adam C. Engst" <PV9Y@CORNELLA> Subject: Re: 4.0253 Recursive Fiction (1/211) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 10:46:57 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 609 (682) Bravo! A truly innovative use of the strange tools that abound around us. A ficcionne enforced by its very medium - I suspect Borges would approve. I must try this some time soon . . . Adam Engst Adam C. Engst pv9y@cornella.bitnet From: John Slatin <EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET> Subject: 4.0253 Recursive Fiction Date: Tuesday, 10 July 1990 1:44pm CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 610 (683) Many thanks to Alan Corre for the wonderful explanation/demonstration of recursion in fiction/action. Your story reminds me of Poe's "The Man That Was Used Up" (The Man WHO Was Used Up?), in which the narrator keeps trying to find out about Brig. Gen. John ABC Smith. He encounters a number of people at different social functions, and puts his question to each of them in turn. Always his interlocutor replies, "Br.g Gen. John ABC Smith? Why, he's the man--" and then something happens and the sentence goes unfinished. The narrator becomes increasingly frantic, until, in desperation, he goes early one morning (the last morning of the story, of course), to the General's home. He bursts into the General's room, to find the General's valet patiently putting the General together from a series of what we would now call modular units-- and the sentence is finally complete, and with it Poe's story: "Brig. Gen. John ABC was the man who was used up." (In italics, of course.) Many of Poe's stories work like halls of mirrors-- most notably "William Wilson. A Tale," which ends with the narrator fatally wounding someone who is either his double or himself, seen in a mirror. The story itself, like many of Poe's stories, breaks into two mirror-images. So does "Ligeia," for instance: the first half ends with the death of Ligeia, the second half ends with the death of the Lady Rowena of Tremayne and Ligeia's "return," accomplished through the medium of Rowena's corpse... "The Fall of the House of Usher" is the paradigmatic case, to be saved for another time if anyone cares. John Slatin From: Terrence Erdt <ERDT@VUVAXCOM> Subject: computers & visual impairments Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 17:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 611 (684) One more piece of information on computer resources for people with visual impairments: The Advisior column in _PC Magazine_ (July 1990, p. 27) mentions IBM's National Support Center for Persons with Disabilities (P.O. Box 2150, Atlanta, GA 30055, USA; voice (800) 426-2133). Apparently the Center distributes a publication entitled _Resource Guide for People with Vision Impairments_ , which suggests, for instance, a "text-magnification utility" called _ZoomText_, as well as _B-Pop_ (a shareware program from Hexagon Products (P.O. Box 1295, Park Ridge, Il 60068 USA; voice (708) 692-3355). The Disabilities forum on CompuServe is said to distribute Hexagon's products ("browse" Data Library 4 of the forum sv. "bpop*.* and bedit*.*). Terry Erdt, Villanova University From: TREAT@PENNDRLS (Jay Treat, Religious Studies, Penn) Subject: IPA fonts Date: Tuesday, 10 July 1990 0039-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 612 (685) Another Macintosh IPA font is available from Linguist's Software. It is called LaserIPA, and as the name suggests it is a Type 3 PostScript font. You can reach the company at (206) 775-1130. Regards, Jay Treat, Penn From: Lou Burnard <LOU@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK> Subject: EP90 - conference announcement Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 05:23:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 265 (686) Electronic Publishing '90 Advance Program and Registration Information International Conference on Electronic Publishing, Document Manipulation, and Typography September 18-20, 1990 National Institute of Standards and Technology Gaithersburg, MD About the conference EP90, "Electronic Publishing '90," is the third in a series of international conferences dedicated to all areas of electronic publishing, document manipulation, and digital typography. Widely regarded as the premier forum for reporting new research developments in these fields, the EP conference series has attracted scientists and engineers from leading academic, research, and industrial organizations around the world. The British Computer Society sponsored EP86, held in Nottingham, England and INRIA sponsored EP88, held in Nice, France. EP90 will be held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly the National Bureau of Standards) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, close to Washington, D. C., from Tuesday, September 18th through Thursday, September 20th, 1990. An associated exhibition will provide an opportunity for participants to see commercial and research systems in action. A broad definition of electronic publishing is adopted to encompass all aspects of computer-assisted preparation, presentation, transmittal, storage, and retrieval of documents. Topics include traditional paper-based documents; hypertexts and hypermedia; font design (both latin and non-latin alphabets); experience with structured document preparation systems; the intersection with and application of database systems and software engineering environments; the theoretical foundations for document models and systems; character, text and document recognition and manipulation; experience with standards; and documents with actively computed content. The proceedings of EP90 will be published by Cambridge University Press in its Electronic Publishing Series and a copy will be provided to each conference registrant. Sponsors EP90 Sponsor: National Institute of Standards and Technology EP90 Co-Sponsors: ArborText Inc., EPSIG/American Association of Publishers, INRIA, University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center In Co-operation With: Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Office Automation, TeX Users Group Preliminary program Tuesday, September 18 8:00- 9:00 Registration 9:00- 9:30 Opening session/chaired by Peter King Welcome to NIST James H. Burrows (Director, NCSL, NIST) 9:30-10:30 Keynote Issues and Tradeoffs in Document Preparation Systems Brian W. Kernighan (AT&T Bell Laboratories) 10:30-11:00 Coffee break 11:00-11:30 Invited paper Towards Document Engineering Vincent Quint (INRIA), Marc Nanard (CRIM), and Jacques Andre (INRIA) 11:30-13:00 Paper session 1/chaired by Vincent Quint Managing Properties in a System of Cooperating Editors Donald D. Chamberlin (IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center) A Logic Grammar Foundation for Document Representation and Document Layout Allen L. Brown, Jr. (Xerox Corporation, Webster Research Center) and Howard Blair (Syracuse University) Structured EditingHypertext Approach: Cooperation and Complementarity Anne-Marie Vercoustre (INRIA) 13:00-14:00 Lunch 14:00-15:30 Paper session 2/chaired by Robert Morris An ODA Page Planner for Professional Publishing Giovanni Guardalben and Mose Giacomell (Hi.T Srl Ingegneria per la Microinformatica) flo: A Language forTypesetting Flowcharts Anthony P. Wolfman and Daniel M. Berry (Technion) Design of Hypermedia Publications: Issues and Solutions Paul Kahn, Julie Launhardt (Brown University), Krzysztof Lenk, and Ronnie Peters (Rhode Island School of Design) 15:30-16:00 Coffee Break 16:00-17:30 Paper session 3/chaired by Jan Walker Strengths and Weaknesses of Database Models for Textual Documents B. N. Rossiter (Newcastle University) and M. A. Heather (Newcastle Polytechnic) A Structured Document Database System Pekka Kilpelainen, Greger Linden, Heikki Mannila, and Erja Nikunen (University of Helsinki) The Integration of Structured Documents into DBMS Jose Valdeni De Lima (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) and Henri Galy (Laboratoire de Genie Informatique, IMAG) 17:30- Exhibition and Reception Wednesday, September 19 9:30-10:00 Invited paper Electronic Publishing - Practice and Experience David F. Brailsford, David R. Evans (University of Nottingham), and Geeti Granger (John Wiley and Sons) 10:00-11:00 Paper session 4/chaired by Peter Brown ADAPT: Automated Document Analysis Processing and Tagging John Handley and Stuart Weibel (OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.) Recognition Processing for Multilingual Documents A. Lawrence Spitz (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center) 11:00-11:30 Coffee break 11:30-13:00 Paper session 5/chaired by Richard Rubinstein Editing Images of Text Gary E. Kopec and Steven C. Bagley (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center) Automatic Generation of Gridfitting Hints for Rasterization of Outline Fonts or Graphics Sten F. Andler (IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center) Chinese Fonts and their Digitization Y. S. Moon and T. Y. Shin (Chinese University of Hong Kong) 13:00-14:00 Lunch 14:00-15:00 Keynote address TBA 15:00-18:30 Exhibition 18:30- Banquet Thursday, September 20 9:30-11:00 Paper session 6/chaired by Heather Brown The Role of a Descriptive Markup Language in the Creation of Interactive Multimedia Documents for Customized Electronic Delivery Gil C. Cruz and Thomas H. Judd (Bellcore) An Extensible, Object-Oriented System for Active Documents Paul M. English, Ethan Jacobson (Interleaf, Inc.), Robert A. Morris (University of Massachusetts at Boston), Kimbo B. Mundy, Stephen D. Pelletier, Thomas A. Polucci, and H. David Scarbro (Interleaf, Inc.) Documents as User Interfaces Eric A. Bier (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center) and Aaron Goodisman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 11:00-11:30 Coffee break 11:30-13:00 Invited paper Electronic Publishing: Why is it so hard? Richard J. Beach (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center) Close -------------------- [A complete version of this announcement is now available through the fileserver, s.v. ep90 confrnce. You may obtain a copy by issuing the command -- GET filename filetype HUMANIST -- either interactively or as a batch-job, addressed to ListServ@Brownvm. Thus on a VM/CMS system, you say interactively: TELL LISTSERV AT BROWNVM GET filename filetype HUMANIST; if you are not on a VM/CMS system, send mail to ListServ@Brownvm with the GET command as the first and only line. For more details see the "Guide to Humanist". Problems should be reported to David Sitman, A79@TAUNIVM, after you have consulted the Guide and tried all appropriate alternatives.] From: Computational Linguists <registry@tira.uchicago.edu> Subject: Linguistic Software Registry Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 12:37:07 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 266 (687) NATURAL LANGUAGE SOFTWARE REGISTRY There are now many natural language software projects, both commercial and noncommercial. In order to facilitate the exchange and evaluation of software, the University of Chicago's Center for Information and Language Studies is undertaking to catalog projects for the community. If you have developed a piece of software for natural language processing that other researchers might find useful, you can help us by describing it below. An electronic version of the form is preferred; it is available by anonymous ftp to tira.uchicago.edu. Feel free to write up software that is useful to you, even if you are not the originator. Although the registry will be an ongoing project, we ask that you please return the form by July 30 for existing software. Results will be made available in this forum. Elizabeth Hinkelman, for CILS (registry@tira.uchicago.edu) Name: Person to contact for software (if different): Institution: Department: Street: City/State/Zip: Country: Phone (with country & area codes): Email network & address: Name of system: Type of system: commercial product research system other (specify) Application: machine translation database interface parsing generation understanding other (specify) Components: phonological analyzer/generator morphological analyzer/generator parser/generator semantic interpreter knowledge representation discourse structure pragmatic features other (specify) Are the components available as independent modules, or firmly embedded? Can they be extended easily, under certain conditions, or with difficulty? Size of system: Programming language: Operating system or hardware: Applicable natural language(s): Can other languages be substituted easily? Number of examples the system has been tested on: [Unit: sentences, messages, other (specify)] 1-10 - demonstration system 10-100 - small research system 100-1000 - larger research system 1000-10000 - robust or production quality system Is the project under development, completed, or ongoing? Summarize the main goals and ideas. Indicate what makes the project a useful and interesting tool for research applications. List documents in which the software is described: User documentation: System documentation: Available support: none upgrades source code consulting Format for software distribution: Cost: Restrictions on use: If you are willing to have the software reviewed, please send us a version along with this information. We are also interested in reports and documentation, even for software not reviewed. NL Software Registry Center for Information and Language Studies 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, IL 60637, USA registry@tira.uchicago.edu From: C. David Perry <carlos@ecsvax> Subject: AAUP pamphlet on electronic mss, additional info Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 10:40:23 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 613 (688) An early respondent to my earlier posting offering to send copies of the AAUP pamphlet on preparing electronic mss to interested persons and requesting that responders include a stamped, self-addressed envelope points out that it would be useful to have an idea of the size of the pamphlet so that folks can know how large an envelope to enclose. The pamphlet fits very well into a standard business envelope and a first-class stamp will get it anywhere in the US. Postage to folks in other places: Canada, $.30; Europe, $.45; Latin America, $.90. This assumes you have a drawerful of US stamps. Obviously, it would be handy to have an electronic version of the guidelines on the Humanist file server. I'm working on it. David Perry University of North Carolina Press PO Box 2288 Chapel Hill, NC 27515 (919) 966-3561 carlos@ecsvax.bitnet carlos@uncecs.edu From: Ralph Griswold <ralph@cs.arizona.EDU> Subject: Re: Code for Jewish/Civil Calendar Date: Mon, 9 Jul 90 12:29:53 MST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 614 (689) Alan Corre's Jewish calendar material is a program, not a printable calendar. The program is written in the Icon programming language. If you want a copy of the program, you can get it by anonymous FTP to cs.arizona.edu. cd /icon/contrib and get calendar.text. See your local support group for information on using FTP if you are not familiar with it. Ralph Griswold / Dept of Computer Science / Univ of Arizona / Tucson, AZ 85721 +1 602 621 6609 ralph@cs.arizona.edu uunet!arizona!ralph From: "Robin C. Cover" <ZRCC1001@SMUVM1> Subject: PAT RETRIEVAL PROGRAM: PUBLISHED REVIEWS Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 13:54:33 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 268 (690) Several months ago, I saw an article in UNIX Review, or UNIX Today, or UNIX World (I think) on PAT, the exceptionally powerful retrieval program developed at the UW Centre for the NOED, now (perhaps) supported by an offshoot company, Open Text Systems. Does anyone recall the location of this article on PAT? Actually, I would be interested in any published reviews of PAT, or comments from those who may be using PAT. Equally: an email address or postal address for Open Text Systems. Thanks in advance, Robin Cover BITNET: zrcc1001@smuvm1 Internet: robin@txsil.lonestar.org From: John Burt <BURT@BRANDEIS> Subject: indexing software Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 18:52 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 615 (691) There is in the public domain software for making indexes from page proofs. Essentially it is a small database program, and its chief use is to automate the sorting and collating of entries, each record being a single, multi-level entry. Naturally you can make analytic entries as you please, since you are not tied to the words in the text, or even to markers in the text. I am familiar with a program called INDEXER, available from the CP/M user's group of the Boston Computer Society. I expect that there must be MS-DOS versions available, and I would not be surprised if there were C source code available from the C user's group in Kansas. I have also just seen on MS-DOS bulletin boards public domain bibliography software which will do what Pro/Tem's BIBLIOGRAPHY or Scribe's Bibliography Utility will do--construct a bibliography in any format from a database of citations, selecting from that database only the works you cite. I haven't tried it out since I don't have an MS-DOS machine, but I expect the program will be coming soon to bulletin boards in your area. From: David.A.Bantz@mac.dartmouth.edu Subject: Re: 4.0262 Qs: Bibliographies Date: 10 Jul 90 20:09:42 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 616 (692) Pro-Cite and EndNote are two commercial products which will maitain bibliographic references and automatically format bibliographies according to MLA and other style sheets. EndNote is interactive with Word 4: you select references from your bibliography during editing, then later use the program to automatically format both the references and the cited references in a bibliography. ... [eds.] From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: bibliographic software Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 09:21:25 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 617 (693) I have been using ProCite for the Mac (current version is 1.4) for several years. This is a database management system designed specifically for managing bibliographic information and generating citations in a variety of formats from a single database. It comes with a dozen formats for output of citations, including MLA. The software is available from Personal Bibliographic Software, PO Box 4250, Ann Arbor MI 48106 (313) 996-1580. I don't know what the current price for the software is. You might want to check with your campus computing center first, since a number of universities have volume deals with PBS already. From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Codex and Scroll/Canon Date: Wed, 11 Jul 1990 15:19 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 270 (694) In reply to George Aichele's "More on Codex" of June 30, here is the bibliographical information that I hope some others involved in the Great Canon Debate may also find of interest. Prof. Menahem Haran of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has been doing quite alot of research on how Biblical and other ancient texts were committed to writing (the materials: papyrus, skins, parchment, etc. and the formats: scrolls, codices, etc.) and its impact on the question of how these texts were canonized. Haran is presently preparing a booklength monograph on this subject in Hebrew. But quite a number of articles have already appeared: "Book-Scrolls in Israel in Pre-Exilic Times", Journal of Jewish Studies 33:1-2, (1982), pp. 161-173. "Book-Scrolls at the Beginning of the Second Temple Period -- The Transition from Papyrus to Skins", Hebrew Union College Annual 54 (1983), pp. 111-122. "More Concerning Book Scrolls in Pre-Exilic Times", Journal of Jewish Studies 35 (1984), pp. 84-85. "Book Size and the Device of Catch Lines in the Biblical Canon", Journal of Jewish Studies 36 (1985), pp. 1-11. "Bible Scrolls in Eastern and Western Jewish Communities from Qumran to the High Middle Ages", Hebrew Union College Annual 56 (1985), pp. 21-62. "The Codex, the Pinax and the Wooden Slats", Tarbiz 57 (1988), pp. 151-164 [Hebrew with English abstract] Book Size and the Thematic Cycles in the Pentateuch," Die Hebraeische Bibel und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte -- Festschrift fuer Rolf Rendtorff zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. E. Blum, C. Macholz u. E. W. Stegemann As I mentioned in my earlier communication, I have dealt with the continued use of the Scroll format for non-Biblical materials ("Oral Torah") in my article: "An Early Fragment of Avot deRabbi Natan from a Scroll", Tarbiz 52 (1983), pp. 201-222 [Hebrew with English Abstact]. Since then another such scroll fragment has been published by: Peter Schaefer in his Geniza-Fragmente zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tuebingen, 1984), pp. 9-32. I believe other such early material may be found in a book to which I do not have immediate access: C. Sirat, M. Dukan & M. Beit Arie, Les papyrus ecrits en lettres hebraiques trouves en Egypt [CNRS]. I would be most grateful for any additional bibliography on the transition from Scroll to Codex which has not appeared in the discussion of Canon so far. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem [HPUBM@HUJIVM1] From: EIEB360@UTXVM.BITNET Subject: 4.0261 Clearing Houses for Info Date: Wednesday, 11 July 1990 9:06am CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 618 (695) Gregory Bateson defines information as the news of difference (elsewhere he says that information is difference that makes a difference), and that perception of difference is always limited by a threshold. (That's in Mind and Nature.) The example I use in talking to students is the chameleon, which is biologically compelled to try to avoid *becoming* information: its goal is to bring the difference between its skin color and the surrounding environment below the perceptual threshold of its predators, and when it succeeds it is not information. But when the environment changes faster than it can change in response, then it does become information-- or, to put it differently, food. For thought? Maybe. We try to create information where none is apparent: we so construct the contexts, the environments, as to make visible to ourselves and our readers the things we've been lucky enough to see (or unlucky enough to see even if we'd prefer not to). John Slatin From: DEL2@phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk Subject: Re: [4.0253 Recursive Fiction (1/211)] Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 14:50:32 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 619 (696) Sorry Alan, your recursive story is not the first (and probably not the last). See the one in D Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher Bach in which some characters read a story about themselves reading a story about themselves reading... Douglas de Lacey. From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Re: 4.0262 Qs: HSLA Date: Wed, 11 Jul 1990 14:45 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 620 (697) In response to Roy Flannagan's query about HSLA. This stands for: Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts. I hope that helps. Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem (HPUBM@HUJIVM1) From: ALAN COOPER <ACOOPER@UCBEH> Subject: Re: 4.0262 Qs: Bibliographies; HSLA; E-Dickens and James Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 12:32 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 621 (698) Attn: Roy Flanagan The abbreviation _HSLA_ refers to "Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts," published twice yearly by the Institute of Languages,s, Literatures & Arts, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is available for $15/yr or $8/single issue from Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, POB 7695, Jerusalem 91076, Israel. It is also sometimes referred to by the abbreviation _HSL_. The most recent number that I've seen is 17 (1989). I have all this information at my fingertips, incidentally, because I had trouble tracking down a reference, too! Best wishes. Alan Cooper <accoper@ucbeh> Hebrew Union College From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0260 Knowledge and Memory (3/100) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 13:01 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 622 (699) Maybe not aluminum, but the way the chemistry lays down the traces attended to in aging, apart from interest. The lecturer, like myself, and others I have spoken to, who is on the high wire, without notes, notices this all the time. I know what I intend to say, but am aware that by the end of the sentence I may not be able to fetch up, retrieve, the name, the title, the author I actually thought to allude to at the beginning of the sentence. It makes for thrilling lectures. Notes help, but they tend to be vague, boring, repetitious, and more meaningless each year, as one's thoughts, on literary subjects alter, or opinions, or tastes. Living dangerously, a nice incitement, but only for those who know how to associate. I will look out the window, as if thinking, and wait for the second to pass: either Rover, good boy! fetches that old bone of a title, or line or phrase, or he doesnt. I wonder how older actors do it. My god, to get LEAR up after 65! Anyway, it is not a subject that is understood, but then, only when the curious docs get more research money for this crucial brain stuff will we know what has happened to us after 40. Try, meanwhile, Lecithin tablets, which are sold in healthfood counters. Experiments (how good?) suggest that they supply the acetylcholine stuff for the synapses, although the label on the bottle says nutritional value unknown. It is soya extract oil. 6 a day possible, but I make do with 2 in the morning, since it really is an unknown thing, and perhaps a waste of money. When I get desperate, I will up the intake? Maybe. Kessler here. for your entertainment, at least. From: Ruth Hanschka <HANSCHKA@HARTFORD> Subject: Hitting the Memory Wall Date: Tue, 10 Jul 90 22:04 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 623 (700) Here's some more anecdotal evidence for you. But first I have to disagree on a small point - it isn't just "older" :) folks that that happens to. I'm only 24, and it happens to me all of the time. My memory seems to be prinarily [primarily - anyone know a good text editor for mailer systems?:)] visual and musical. I can often remember faces, places, and whatever, but run into the "memory wall" when I try to put names to them. I could not remember the word 'lilac', as in bush, yesterday. And English is my first language.:) Re: cramming problems - I have not run into any yet. Give me a few decades, please, before that one sets in.;-) -Ruth Hanschka - and yes, I have experienced the "overload" feeling - where was that neuro-alka-seltzer when I needed it? From: Bob Kraft <KRAFT@PENNDRLS> Subject: Shakespeare on CD-ROM Date: Wednesday, 11 July 1990 1755-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 624 (701) Have any HUMANISTs made use of the following, which I found advertised in the magazine CD-ROM EndUser 2.3 (1990) 15: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Modern & Queen's English versions on the same disc! Search in seconds with DiscPassage software! $99 + $5 shipping & handling! CMC ReSearch, Inc. 7150 SW Hampton, Suite C-120 Portland, OR 97223 (503) 639-3395 Copyright 1989. I'm especially interested in the value of the software, and the choice of texts (and their integrity). The price seems right. Is this one of the Shakespeare texts alluded to by Michael Neuman in his excellent and instructive report to the ACH/ALLC on Text Archives? Incidentally, elsewhere in the same magazine William H. Perry has a column called "Lexicographer's Corner" in which he suggests that there is a tendency in computerspeak circles to use the spelling "disc" for optical media, and "disk" for magnetic (p.25). He presents some impressive evidence, and the ads in the magazine seem to support the point. How did this come about? Bob Kraft, Penn From: sem sutter <book@midway.uchicago.edu> Subject: Internet-Accessible Library Catalogs Outside USA Date: Thu, 12 Jul 1990 11:47:20 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 625 (702) What information can anyone share with me about procedures for (or their own experiences with) logging on to OPACS outside the USA via Internet? I have Art St. George's "Internet-Accessible Library Catalogs & Databases" (available on BITNET by sending the message GET INTERNET LIBRARY to LISTSERV@UNMVM) and find it avery helpful directory with Internet addresses and logon procedures for many online catalogs, but it covers the USA only. Does anyone know of comparable list(s) for Britain and the Continent, or can they share bits and pieces of info from personal experience? I would be most greatful for any leads. Sem C. Sutter book@midway.uchicago.edu Bitnet: uclbook@uchimvs1 Internet: book@midway.uchicago.edu From: Peter Lafford <IDPAL@ASUACAD> Subject: Belinda in E-text? Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 17:47:09 MST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 626 (703) Aside from the fact that our Kurzweil has just gone on vacation, it would save 450 pages of effort for one of our faculty who needs Maria Edgeworth's "Belinda" in electronic format. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. Peter Lafford, Manager, Humanities Computing Facility Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona USA (602) 965-2679 From: <P_EMISON@UNHH> Subject: laptops Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 17:31 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 627 (704) I am looking for advice about laptops in the $2500 range. I will be using the machine for LaTeX. I hope eventually to scan texts and images (I am an art historian specializing in Renaissance prints). I have been considering the Zenith Turbosport 386 with 40 MB and 2 or 3 MB RAM, but am curious about a machine due out in August from Airis, a VH286 with 20 MB and 2 or 4 RAM (only 6 1/2 lbs.) Thanks for any information, pointers, shared convictions--about either outstandingly good or mamouthly bad machines. Has anyone used laptops to scan images or text (especially with early printed books)? Patricia Emison, Univ. of New Hampshire p_emison@unhh.bitnet From: Peter Lafford <IDPAL@ASUACAD> Subject: ACH '91 Call for Papers Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 17:44:44 MST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 275 (705) CALL for Papers ACH/ALLC 91: "Making Connections" where: Tempe, Arizona, USA when: March 17-21, 1991 abstracts: of: 1,500 to 2,000 words on: any topic in humanities computing by: October 15, 1990 to: ATDXB@ASUACAD.BITNET Daniel Brink English Department Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0302 USA The Program Committee for ACH/ALLC 91 (Don Ross, University of Minnesota, chair) invites abstracts/proposals on any topic in humanities computing to be considered for delivery at the 1991 joint international conference of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing, March 17-21, 1991, at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, USA. Abstract review will be completed by December, 1990. Electronic submissions (to ATDXB@ASUACAD.BITNET) are encouraged. Program Committee: Don Ross, Minnesota, chair (ACH) Daniel Brink, Arizona State, local host (ACH) Paul Fortier, Manitoba (ACH) Nancy Ide, Vassar (ACH) Randall Jones, Brigham Young (ACH) Thomas Corns, Wales (ALLC) Jacqueline Hamesse, Louvain-la-Neuve (ALLC) Susan Hockey, Oxford (ALLC) Antonio Zampolli, Pisa (ALLC) From: Bob Kraft <KRAFT@PENNDRLS> Subject: Codex/Scroll Bibliography Date: Wednesday, 11 July 1990 1806-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 628 (706) A forthcoming CNRS Colloquium (10-11 October 1990, Paris) should perhaps be added to Marc Bregman's bibliographical list on Scroll/Codex, etc., in anticipation of the publications that will be associated with the Colloquium. The title is Tablettes a ecrire de l'antiquite a l'epoque moderne [Writing Tablets from Ancient Times to the Present] and the papers include Beatrice Andre and Jean-Louis de Cenival (both of the Louvre) on Tablets from the Middle East (in French); Colette Sirat on Wooden Tablets in the Jewish Tradition: Texts and Documents (in French); Joseph van Haelst on the development from a codex of tablets to the short codex, and on Greek and Latin terms used to designate writing tablets (in French); John Sharpe on "The Dakhleh tablets and some codicological considerations" (English); William Brashear on Magical Tablets (French); Francisca A. J. Hoogenduk on "School Exercises on Wax Tablets" (English); David Thomas on "The Wooden Writing Tablets in Latin from Vindolanda in North Britain" (English); and so on to a closing paper on electronic tablets! Write to Elisabeth Lalou, Secretary, IRHT, 40 avenue d'Iena 75116 Paris (tel 47 23 61 04). I'll try to keep the program handy, if any HUMANISTs need more information. Looks interesting. Most papers in French, a few in English, and one each in German and Italian. Mostly on the ancient materials. Bob Kraft, Penn From: Curtis Rice <USERCRIC@SFU.BITNET> Subject: 4.0247 Qs: IPA Fonts Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 23:08:38 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 629 (707) Gamma Productions of Santa Monica put out Multi-Lingual Scholar and also offer an IPA font. Write to Gamma, 710 Wilshire Blvd, STe 609, Santa Monica, CA 90401, Tel 213-394-8622. Curtis Rice From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0263 On Recursive Fiction Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 17:41 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 630 (708) Dear John: My reading of USHER is different, and after decades I thought I had found its secret, when I was advised to give up the main consolation of my life, my giant $5.00 cigars. I discovered that the story was really about addiction and withdrawal, about the structure of personality. I havent written a note, because only ex-smokers (or poppy addicts) will understand subjectively that Roderick Usher is the esthetic faculty (his wild improvisations on the guitar) and the person addicted to the inspiration of...what? laudanum? morphine? and his twin sister is Madeline, she, the substance and addiction itself, which is laid down in the nerves. She is renounced, killed, buried, but can claw out of her tomb and come for her "brother." (Cf Cocteau's remarkable description of the power of opium to recall in the very bloodstream as it were, itself, from renunciation. The ego, the personality, the rational part of the self is the narrator, who finds usher and his body sadly decayed. For the ego and reason never suffers change, and cannot. After all, what is it that saves the doomed drunk or drug addict who is strung out from the next, and fatal binge or shot...? If the ego and reason are weak, well, then, fare thee well. read Berryman's unfinished novel on that head, and see how his reason itself said farewell, in despair, what is it that despairs? who? the soul? the narrator of the story? and then leaps onto the ice from 60 feet after blessing the world in farewell. As for recursive fiction: it is good for a one time shot, a curiosity, like much of Hofstadter's gee whiz logicking. It suffers from what Whitehead termed the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. IN this case, taking the surface, the story as told, as the object of esthetic attention. That is the trouble with the esthetic of minimalism that has so many excited: it is on the surface only, and yields its whole self at the first go. It has nothing more to say, because it mea ns nothing more than its saying. Good for chat and fun and critics who think they have found something new, but...also vacuous, and immediately so, not in the longer run. Kessler From: Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> Subject: memory Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 21:13:45 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 631 (709) More unsystematic thoughts on memory and its loss. I've noticed that some people remember facts as factual quanta, others remember facts as parts of a pattern. (Some people, rare ones, remember in both ways simultaneously.) As one grows older, and years of accumulated thinking about certain patterns of thought strengthen them, is it not possible that the inability to remember things as things may also signify a mental maturity rather than, or in addition to, a degeneration? What happens seems in part to depend on one's field of specialization. Us humanists in this respect seem to have the advantage over mathematicians and theoretical physicists. Physical degeneration certainly seems inevitable. But is it not possible that going down hill may be accompanied, if one works hard at it, by soaring? (It is, of course, entirely irrelevant that my birthday is tomorrow!) Willard McCarty From: "Tom Benson" <T3B@PSUVM> Subject: information Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 18:55 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 632 (710) Didn't Marshall McLuhan claim that a lightbulb (lit) was pure information? Tom Benson Penn State From: MHEIM@CALSTATE Subject: University -- information clearinghouse Date: Wed, 11 Jul 90 21:15:52 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 633 (711) Re: university -- information clearinghouse Now that Willard McCarty is back among us, I will have to watch my language. He objects to my referring to the university as a "clearing house for information" in the information age. What rankles him is the significance of the terms I use, not their informational value. He objects to what these terms imply about the contemporary university. For this I'm grateful and stand corrected. A deep bow to the Confucian reverence for terms. Where did I get such terms? Recently the letters of Marshall McLuhan have fascinated me. I note the way his vocabulary widened over the years, opening up to influence from business, advertising, and the media. In an effort to break away from the stuffiness of academic life, he seems sometimes to have betrayed the values he held privately as a professor. Willard says, "I wonder if the vision of the Information Age, when our most important commodity is information, has any room at all for the knowledge of poets and philosophers." Could it be that McLuhan's own life split him down the center because he tried to reconcile the two unreconcilables: the university and the information age? The director of the Kenyon College library wrote recently: "The image of the humanist scholar in the book-crammed study, thinking deep thoughts, will continue to be less and less viable in professional scholarship." What could this librarian, who knows the hearts of scholars, have meant? Will we soon bid adieu to the Schreibstube in Faust's "hochgewoelbtes, engen gotischen Studierzimmer"? Would a computerized library of exclusively electronic texts signal the renovation of a university that is on the way to becoming a clearing house for the information society? Or does today's university have such a strong identity that it can resist such change? Mike Heim Cal State Long Beach From: "W.Watson" <ERCN94@emas-a.edinburgh.ac.uk> Subject: Re: 4.0247 Qs: Indexing Date: 13 Jul 90 16:29:54 bst X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 634 (712) Jim O'Donnell might also look at the July 1990 issue of Byte magazine, (which I just got y'day). In the International Section, pp. 64 IS 15-22, Dick Pountain suggests using the Micro - Oxford Concordance Package to do indexing. He would have to read the details, to see how this compares with other answers already offered via Humanist. If the copy of Byte that he can buy does not include these pages, then I'll put them on a xerox, if he will give me a paper mail address. Bill W. From: "Adam C. Engst" <PV9Y@CORNELLA> Subject: Re: Disk v. Disc Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 09:21:39 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 635 (713) About the term disc (vs. disk)... When I was doing some research into videodisc applications, I came across mention somewhere (and I really have no idea where) that the word "disc" should be used for read-only media whereas "disk" should be used for read-write media. I can't see that it makes much difference, but it is a handy rule of thumb when you are dealing with both types of media. Adam C. Engst pv9y@cornella.bitnet From: stephen clark <AP01@liverpool.ac.uk> Subject: On Memory and Memorials Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 11:22:01 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 636 (714) Remember the Art of Memory (described by Frances Yates in The Art of Memory). Placing what one needs to recall at will in an imagined building is still a helpful device. I would also recommend as a splendid evocation of what it's like to be a really efficient Bruno-esque memorist John Crowley's fantasy novel Little Big, and the first volume of his Aegypt. We imagined computer storage long before we had anything like computers. Stephen Clark Liverpool From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0261 Clearing Houses for Information? Date: Thu, 12 Jul 90 15:11 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 637 (715) Oh by the way, I think Confucius was working against a vast cultural catastrophe that preceded his era: the destruction of all written things by that man Chin chi Huang, the Great tyrant megalomaniac who unified China for the first time. Capital punishment to own a book under him. Well, it was all destroyed, thousands of years of achievement. But then, there are the Bamboo Annals, a reputed discovery of the chief historical records, and he was their annotator. But...how to discover what the terms were and meant? after such a lapse, hiatus, lacuna? That was his problem, and a hell of a problem it was. We however suffer from a plethora of writings. Does it come to the same thing, sort of? Confusion? From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield) Subject: "Mike Heim's comment on the University Clearinghouse" Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 09:53:02 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 638 (716) Oh, these are deep, dark thoughts! Mike may be right that McLuhan was "split" by the very "holism" (my term) he elected to adopt in the spirit of information tolerance. Did he indeed become an information generalist, open to all linked information, and thus lose the tighter humanistic focus that helps provide a counterbalance to the pragmatism of technology and the Information Age? Are those of us in literary and quantitative studies, including structuralism and stylo-statistics, changing the bandwidth of literary studies? Or is McLuhan's comment to a surprised movie-goer and would-be McLuhan critic in _Annie Hall_ (while Woody Allen delightedly eavesdrops in line) to be believed? (Roughly, since dimmed by the slightly decayed memory: "I AM Marshall McLuhan, and I just wanted to say that I heard what you said. You don't understand anything about my work.") Regards, Joel D. Goldfield Language Outreach, Dartmouth College From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield) Subject: "Knowledge & the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle theory" Date: Thu, 12 Jul 90 22:47:03 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 639 (717) Can someone confirm my impression that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle puts into the mouth of Sherlock Holmes his idea that a "brain too full" (my paraphrase) requires that some previously "learned" information leave before new information can be retained? Regards, Joel D. Goldfield jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu joelg@psc.bitnet From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz) Subject: Useful Reference on Finding Quotes Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 09:48:20 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 640 (718) I noticed the following new book and thought that it might be useful in connection with a recurring theme of this list: Shipps, Anthony W. 1990. The quote sleuth: a manual for the tracer of lost quotations. U of Illinois Press. 200 p. From: Bob Kraft <KRAFT@PENNDRLS> Subject: "Jewish Greek" / New Documents vol. 5 Date: Friday, 13 July 1990 0956-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 641 (719) This morning's regular mail brought my copy of volume 5 of NEW DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATING EARLY CHRISTIANITY, by Greg Horsley (Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, Macquarie University, Australia: 1989). This volume differs radically from the first four, which reviewed specific papyri and related documents pertinent to a study of early Christianity that were published or republished in the period 1976-1979. In volume 5, subtitled LINGUISTIC ESSAYS, Horsley provides state-of- the-discipline treatments on key philological issues as noted below. The only focused discussion of actual documents of the sort reviewed in volumes 1-4 comes on pp. 95-114 "A Fishing Cartel in First-Century Ephesos." Volume 5 is Horsley's "swansong as regards the series" (4). He will now concentrate his efforts on the "New Moulton-Milligan" project to update our information on the Greek of the early (Jewish and) Christian period and produce an appropriate lexical tool to replace Moulton-Milligan. The New Documents Series is committed to continue under a new editor for at least 5 more volumes. The "Essays" deal with the following subjects: 1. "The Fiction of 'Jewish Greek'" 2. "_Koine_ or Atticism -- a Misleading Dichotomy" 3. "The Syntax Volume of Moulton's _Grammar_" 4. "The Greek Documentary Evidence and NT Lexical Study: Some Soundings" The blurb on the back cover helps give the feel for Horsley's interests in its description of the problems addressed: -Was there a separate Jewish-Greek dialect of the _koine_? -Is the emphasis given by NT Grammars to its Semitic features justified? -Can onomastic research aid our understanding of the social level of the early Christians? -How adequate for current research is Moulton and Milligan's _Vocabulary of the Greek Testament_ and other such lexicographical works? The application to ancient languages of certain features of General Linguistics is dealt with, and an appendix is included which surveys some recent linguistically attuned contributions to Ancient Greek studies. Cumulative indexes to all five volumes of the series have been produced _de novo_. The book thus serves in part as a stocktaking of the wealth of non-literary material which the earlier volumes have highlighted for the study of early Christianity and contemporary Judaism. [Thus far the blurb.] Those of you who know the series, or its editor/author, will know that this is front-rank scholarship at every level it addresses. Students of early Christianity and early Judaism are extremely well served by the series, but also students of the ancient world in general, of the Greek language, and of comparative linguistics -- to mention only the most obvious. As a sample of what you will find, and as a contribution to discussions of the aforementioned areas, I will close by quoting extensively from the conclusion to Horsley's essay on "Jewish Greek" (40): The edifice of Jewish Greek lacks foundation in reality, neither does it have any cogent linguistic framework. Accordingly, it is built largely using weak arguments and assertions. While it is not denied that certain Semitic features obtrude into Greek written by Jews and Christians in antiquity, where this occurs it is to be understood as the expected phenomenon of interference which manifests itself in varying degrees in the speech and writing of bilinguals. The door should be left open, however, for the possibility (and even liklihood) that Greek was spoken with a distinct ("marked") accent by those Jews in Palestine whose mother tongue was Aramaic (or perhaps Mishnaic Hebrew). But phonological differences alone are insufficient to establish the existence of a separate dialect. Furthermore, other Aramaic speakers who acquired facility in Greek must have had a similarly marked pronunciation. All that could have distinguished a Jew from a non-Jew in this regard, then, would be the use of certain technical terms distinctive of Jewish culture and religion.... It was in their social customs that the Jews were distinctive, not in their use of Greek, as K. Treu has emphasized.... Problems of definition are one aspect of the question, lack of contact with developments in linguistics another. Possibly a certain theological predisposition has encouraged the continuing acceptance of Jewish Greek in certain quarters. Just as there are ghost words imputed to a language, so it may be urged that Jewish Greek is a ghost language. And like all ghosts it needs to be laid to rest. [Thus far Horsley.] Bob Kraft, Penn From: Bob Kraft <KRAFT@PENNDRLS> Subject: Dissertation Abstract Date: Friday, 13 July 1990 0020-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 642 (720) I asked my relatively new colleague, Edward Breuer, for permission to circulate the following abstract of his recently accepted PhD Dissertation at Harvard (1990). The networks are a good way to keep people informed of this aspect of scholarship as well. Bob Kraft, Penn. IN DEFENSE OF TRADITION: THE MASORETIC TEXT AND ITS RABBINIC INTERPRETATION IN THE EARLY GERMAN HASKALAH The German-Jewish Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century, the Haskalah, marks the political, social, and intellectual transition of European Jewry to modernity. One of the most important features of this movement was an intensified interest in the Hebrew Bible. Beginning in Prussian lands, the Maskilim decried the contemporary neglect of Biblical scholarship and called for pedagogic emphasis on linguistic and exegetical skills. The struggle to revive a creative and vigorous tradition of Bible study has long been understood as a positive manifestation of the Maskilic internalization of Enlightenment cultural ideals and a move away from centuries of Jewish learning centered on rabbinical literature. This thesis will focus on another set of factors that appear to have shaped the Maskilic interest in Scripture, namely the contemporary challenge to traditional Bible study. Eighteenth century European scholars aggressively questioned the authority and reliability of the Masoretic text, a move that undermined the historical Jewish perception of this version of the Hebrew Bible. At the same time, early modern writers attacked the rabbinic interpretation of Scripture as philologically and grammatically untenable. We shall attempt to demonstrate that Moses Mendelssohn and other Maskilim of Berlin and Ko%nigsberg were sensitive to such attacks, and that the publication of Mendelssohn's edition of the Bible must be partly understood as a defensive response to contemporary challenges. In its exegetical writings, the early German Haskalah not only remained faithful to medieval Scriptural interpretation and handling of Talmudic and Midrashic literature, but endeavored to go beyond medieval writings in order to bolster the Maskilic defense of rabbinical exegesis. As such, the German Haskalah's embrace of _Aufkla%rung_ ideals represented an important reorientation of Jewish life, but one that was informed by a need to respond to elements of eighteenth century culture that were perceived as threatening to traditional Judaism. From: "Robin C. Cover" <ZRCC1001@SMUVM1> Subject: MULTILINGUAL OCR Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 23:08:31 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 282 (721) Multilingual OCR/ICR With Kurzweil 5100/5200 I would appreciate help from anyone who has had experience scanning multilingual documents or mixed non-Roman scripts using the Kurzweil Model 5100 (or 5200) scanner. If you have personal experience or can supply the name of someone who has, I will be deeply grateful: please include name, email address, postal address and phone number. I need to make these contacts in the next three weeks. About a year ago I tested the Kurzweil Model 5100 sufficiently to determine that its optics (400 dpi) and brain are excellent for scanning standard roman and non-Roman scripts; it has several striking performance advantages over the older Model 4000. For example, it faithfully scans sub-linear diacritics (like Hebrew vowels) where the Model 4000 is nearly blind. Unfortunately, I was unable to make one crucial test. This is now my primary area of interest: the arbitrary assignment of "special characters" to 4- or 5-byte strings. Trainability is the issue, of course, though Kurzweil's marketing division (feeling pressure from Panantir/Calera's "automatic" scanning) forced the term "verification" to be used rather than "training" for the current models. Whereas the Model 4000 permitted about 400 of these "MPD" assignments (as I recall) and allowed mapping to 3-character strings, the Kurzweil Model 5100 and 5200 support an allegedly "unlimited" number of MPD's, and mapping to 4-character strings (5100) or 5-character strings (5200). As of a phone conversation today, Cambridge-Kurzweil stands by this claim of "unlimited" number of MPD's, but this is still theory as far as I'm concerned. I want to hear whether someone has tested Kurzweil 5100/5200 trainability in making 500-2500 or more such arbitrary assignments, and whether performance is thereby degraded, and in what ways, to what extent. Theoretically, the technology would allow for millions of special-character assignments, (hi-bit chars are legal with a few reserved chars) but I confess I'm skeptical. "Unlimited" is clearly hyperbolic, and "millions" is probably also false, so what's the truth? One unfortunate disadvantage of the "omnifont" (general feature extraction) technology used in the newer Kurzweil Discovery Series is that the user has lost control over fixed "font" assignments. On the earlier Kurzweil models ("multiple-font recognition"), trainability suffered from too limited a number of map-able characters, but at least the user *could* map characters of a certain set into discrete "fonts." This permitted a mode or state operation (it takes two characters in a font to trip the "font sequence), so that alphabets, languages or other sets with typographically-distinct print attributes could be output in delimited formats. Delimited strings based upon user-defined font sets has apparently been lost in the "omnifont" technology, at least in Kurzweil's scanners. The Model 5200's 5-character-string mapping buys back some of the earlier "font" functionality if one makes creative (if necessarily painful) mnemonic assignments with four characters, leaving the fifth (first) byte as a font identifier. (This is just theory too!) For example, pointed Hebrew could be scanned -- I tried this -- in block-character units, using one hi-bit character for the Hebrew font identifier, two characters for the (mnemonic) consonant-name, and two for the (mnemonic) vowel-name. Training would not be a nightmare, and subsequent text-processing with string handling utilities could supplement the standard output with delimiters based upon these named entities in fonts/alphabets/languages. We all do this for markup anyway. Questions: (1) Does the Kurzweil Model 5100/5200 actually support an "unlimited" number of MPD's -- and at what cost? What *actually* starts happening with the second, third, fourth, fifth...alphabet? (2) Are there any other trainable scanners that can compete with Kurzweil in this arena? Until now, I have not heard of any serious competition to Kurzweil if you have documents in Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic or other mixed non-Roman scripts where training is required from the ground up. ("Optiram" does not interest me at this point.) Thanks to anyone who will contact with me if you can shed light on these matters. No flames please: I know many believe scanning will never be practical for digitizing multilingual texts. But even industry -- and the EEC moving toward 1992 -- are starting to say otherwise. Robin Cover DTS - Semitics & OT 3909 Swiss Avenue Dallas, TX 75204 AT&T: (214) 296-1783 FAX: 214-841-3540 BITNET: zrcc1001@smuvm1 INTERNET: robin@txsil.lonestar.org UUCP: ...texbell!txsil!robin From: Elliott Parker <3ZLUFUR@CMUVM> Subject: Halio article (on student writing) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 11:45:11 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 643 (722) [...] Some months ago, Humanist discussed Marcia P. Halio's article on student writing ("Student writing: Can the machine maim the message," <Academic Computing>, Jan 1990). This month's Academic Computing carried a note that the article and also comments are available via anonymous FTP from umd5.umd.edu (128.8.10.5). They are in subdirectory pub/jac and in addition to plain- vanilla ASCII, can be pulled off in a variety of word processor formats. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM Journalism Dept. Internet: eparker@well.sf.ca.us Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 USA UUCP: {psuvax1}!cmuvm.bitnet!3zlufur From: "Robin C. Cover" <ZRCC1001@SMUVM1> Subject: *RELATIVELY* USEFUL... Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 18:14:08 CST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 644 (723) Re: [deleted quotation]John Koontz is to be thanked for alerting us to this resource: I intend to have a look. Another feeling swept over me as I read the posting, however. For 10% of the cost in production and distribution, we could have had something 10-times more useful, if what you want to do is "hunt for a lost quotation." A diskette instead of a book. Probably 2-3 times more content, as well (with compression). Someone will say, "Well, you can't curl up by the fire with a good novel and a diskette of digital quotations." Right: my solar-powered hand calculator won't work by firelight either, but I won't trade it in for my old slide rule. Why don't we all write Univ. of Illinois Press and say, "Gee, if you publish this on a diskette where it's actually useful, I'll buy it." rcc From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU> Subject: Can anyone locate this passage from Borges? Date: Sat, 14 Jul 90 18:15 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 645 (724) Recently, while browsing through the Lexis library of law review articles, I discovered an article by Jay M. Feinman entitled "The Jurisprudence of Classification," 41 Stan. L. Rev. 661, 662 (1989), which quotes the following passage from M. Foucault, The Order of Things xv (A. Sheridan trans. 1970), which in turn--as you will note--quotes from Borges. I have seen this reference to Foucault several times, but have not been able to discover where the passage appears in the writings of Borges himself. I have posted this query before, but I am still looking. Can anyone tell me where the quoted passage appears in Borges's writings? This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought -- our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography -- breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.' In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. Thank you. Peter D. Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, Ohio From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield) Subject: "Australian e-mail problems?" Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 16:57:18 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 646 (725) Could anyone tell me if users at 'wacsvax' are being deprived of INTERNET or BITNET mail due to mailer failure or other reasons? My connections to wacsvax.cs.uwa.oz.au have been refused for the past few days. Thanks, Joel D. Goldfield Language Outreach, Dartmouth College jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu From: Frank Dane <FDANE@UGA> Subject: Re: 4.0279 More on "University as Clearinghouse" (2/37) Date: Sun, 15 Jul 90 18:36:08 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 647 (726) New to the list, and one of the heretics who never benefitted from a liberal arts education (science was all, all else was elective), I must ask: What is the difference between information and knowledge? Is not knowledge merely information applied in an appropriate context? Frank Dane Mercer University (a liberal arts institution) From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0279 More on "University as Clearinghouse" (2/37) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 20:06 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 648 (727) Of course, McLuhan said it, before he ..well, deaded it. Kessler From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0279 More on "University as Clearinghouse" (2/37) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 20:07 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 649 (728) I mean, if he said it, it is to be believed. Take him at face value: his message is his message. Kessler From: pdk@iris.brown.edu (Paul D. Kahn) Subject: Re: 4.0279 More on "University as Clearinghouse" (2/37) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 09:09:37 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 650 (729) Confucius was responding to the fragmentation of a much older unified "Chinese" culture. The First Emperor, Qing Shi Huang Di, ruler of the state of Chin, unifier of the several "Chinese" states, and connector of the Great Wall, lived about 300 years after the author of the Analects. He did have a famous book burning party and did bury scholars alive. Somehow, information survives. From: Jim O'Donnell (Penn, Classics) Subject: ... Yates on Memory ... Date: 13 Jul 90 17:32:36 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 651 (730) Yates's book on Memory is famous (but to be used with this caution: the Renaissance claimed to be reviving an ancient technique, but probably wound up taking it more seriously and using it more effectively than ever the ancients did), but even more accessible and exotic and fascinating is Jonathan Spence, *The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci*, about the transplantation of these notions from eastern into western culture in the sixteenth century. Holmes's remark (I'm doing this, ostentatiously, from memory) is about the memory as a lumber room that has to have extraneous clutter kept out of it and appears in the first story of all, *A Study in Scarlet*. Dedicated Holmesians have pointed out that many of the subjects which Holmes claims to have willfully ignored at that stage turn out to be ones on which he is later revealed to have much accurate expertise. From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0278 Responses: Indexing; Disk/Disc; Yates on Memory (3/39) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 20:05 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 652 (731) And then, alas, there is the awful fate of the human computer memory bank, the idiot cripple in Borges' marvelous story, "Funes, the Memorious." (Funesto is a sad name, a funereal onomastic.) Kessler From: "Mary Dee Harris" <mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu> Subject: Memory Capacity Date: 14 Jul 90 13:24:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 653 (732) With regard to the continuing discussion on memory and the fading thereof, I want add my observations based on my own experience. When I was in college, I had an excellent memory for names. If I met a person once, I knew the name and could recall it quickly. When I began teaching, I also learned the names of all my students. Even with 100-200 students in a semester, by the third or fourth week I could call each student by name, both in class and out- side of class. But when the semester ended and I turned in the grades, I forgot the students' names. If I saw them even a week later, I would have trouble remembering their names. Only when a student had been through more than one semester, would I learn their name well. (I was never conscious of trying to forget the names; it was more like a "Clear memory" operation that coincided with turning in the grades.) I am now very bad at learning names of people I met. When I attend conferences, I rely on name tags, but unless I make a determined effort, I won't remember names. It has occurred to me that I must have a certain number of slots for names in my brain and I used them all up years ago. I don't seem to have as much trouble remembering other kinds of things, but specific names (including titles of books or articles) are a real bother. Perhaps, someday brain researchers will understand some of these phenomena, but for now we can only speculate. Mary Dee Harris mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu mdharris@guvax.bitnet From: Jamie Hubbard <JHUBBARD@WISCMACC> Subject: Re: 4.0277 On Memory and Memorials; Information (2) (3/74) Date: Sun, 15 Jul 90 11:06 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 654 (733) To add a few words to Willard's discussion of loss of facts and soaring , I remember reading an article some time back that talked about the inevitable and astonishing loss of grey matter (some hopeless number of brain cells dying daily) but it was coupled with the increased number of neural "links" (physical? chemical? electrical-- synapses?) that were created as one gets older. The point was something to the effect that though we may lose discrete facts as we get older, because of the increased complexity of the neural patterns we not only gain the depth of wisdom but are also (usually) able to re-find those lost bits of information because they exist in many many more virtual constellations of meaning (patterns), so that more routes exist to take you to them. Like a single word being linked to many other discussions in a hypertext situation. Which also brings to mind the hallowed difference between knowledge and wisdom. While knowledge may be the accumulation and quick manipulation of discrete facts, possibly the territory of the young, wisdom is almost always said to be the domain of the elderly (the wisdom of age, etc.). Certainly the mere accumulation of information is not significant. In this information age we are daily (and it seems to me rather brutally) reminded of the impossibilty of "knowing it all." If I let my e-mail go for a couple of days, the fear of "You have 83 new mail messages" greeting me serves not to whet my appetite for facts, information, and the delightful tidbits of other's wisdom that I know are in many of those missives, but rather to keep me from logging on at all (which only compounds the problem). Lao-tzu (Lao, of course, means "old, venerable") said: "Learning consists in adding to one's stock day by day; The practice of Tao consists in subtracting day by day, Subtracting and yet again subtracting till one has reached inactivity; But by this very inactivity everything can be activated." Ch. 48 No knowledge, only patterns, which activates everything??? So take heart on your birthday Willard. On the other hand, at the 'tween age of 37, I think that there is only loss with no new and exciting patterns emerging. Jamie Hubbard (jhubbard@smith) From: Frank Dane <FDANE@UGA> Subject: Memory Date: Sun, 15 Jul 90 18:24:27 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 655 (734) Jim Cerny wrote: [deleted quotation] witty and incisive tidbits of information, and sudden- ly, WHAM!, some key item you need is just not there. Resort to cute mnemonic tricks won't retrieve it, it just isn't there at that moment, though it will bob to the surface later. Everyone in the 40-50 age range that I have showed this to, has said, "Yes, yes! Exactly!" So, I return to my original speculation. Has anyone bothered to study this? Do the studies bear out the anecdotal evidence? Is this something that has always existed, but is just much, much more noticible in an information age?<< That one is incapable of calling up a key item now and then is not surprising. Indeed, I suspect that many outside the 40-50 range would also respond "yes" to the idea. Perhaps members of the 40-50 age range respond "yes, yes" because they are concerned such slips are signs of aging. What I find much more fascinating about memory (which is not my area of expertise) are all of those other occasions on which one is racing along and experiences no WHAM!, or the period of wit and incite that precedes the WHAM! Considering the amount of information, knowledge, wisdom, whatever we process every day, what is surprising is that lapses occur with such infrequency that we are able to notice them at all. From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: A.C. Doyle & Knowledge Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 09:38 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 656 (735) It's been a while since I've read the Holmes stories, but I don't recall Holmes ever commenting on the notion that old information has to leave the brain before new information can be acquired. What we are told (via Watson) is that Holmes has no use for knowledge that is not directly relevant to his line of work (sounds like some of our students!). Thus, he doesn't know or care whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa, but he does care about the appearance of various types of tobacco ash. The ash may help him identify a criminal; astronomy will not. Watson's explanation of this is in the opening pages of the first Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet". Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: Sarah L. Higley <slhi@uhura.cc.rochester.edu> Subject: knowledge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Date: Sat, 14 Jul 90 03:24:27 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 657 (736) Along with about seventeen other humanists, I'm sure, I write now to respond to Joel Goldfield's impression that Sherlock Holmes inveighs against an overloaded brain. Mr. Goldfield is correct. It's in _A Study in Scarlet_, the first of the Sherlock Holmes Cases. Not only does Holmes fear packing his brain too full of irrelevancies, he describes it as an attic that can be crammed too full of junk. He doesn't even know (or care) that the earth revolves around the sun, or who Carlyle is. I must say I find this a little inconsonant with his other many claims that one never knows when a bit of trivia will come in handy. Despite the ungodly lateness of the hour which combined with my eyestrain made me hit control D and send my incomplete posting to the editors, I've trudged out into the living room and retrieved my copy of the Doubleday Complete Sherlock Holmes where the passage in question is to be found on page 21: "His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it. `You appear to be astonished,' he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. `Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.' `Forget it!' `You see,' he explained, `I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.' `But the Solar System!' I protested. I am too tired to trudge back out into the living room and find the story in Borge's _Labyrinths_ where the man goes insane because he can remember every blade of grass he sees, the number of bricks on every wall. I believe that it has been said (or it should be if it hasn't) that knowledge-- or at least "consciousness"-- is everybit as much what one forgets as it is what one remembers. Forgetting and coherence. Holmes has a point there. But I think that somewhere along the line, knowing something about astronomy might help him solve a case. I think Doyle modified this portrait of Holmes as ignoramus-savant... or at least film versions have done so. I can't imagine Jeremy Brett admitting to not knowing Copernicus or Sartor Resartus. Isn't there a koan somewhere which, along with the sound of one hand clapping, challenges you to "not think of a monkey"? How does one "do one's best to forget" something? Sarah Higley The University of Rochester slhi@uhura.cc.rochester slhi%uhura.cc.rochester.edu@uorvm rutgers!rochester!ur-cc!slhi From: TREAT@PENNDRLS (Jay Treat, Religious Studies, Penn) Subject: Sherlock Holmes and the Brain Date: Saturday, 14 July 1990 0009-EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 658 (737) Joel D. Goldfield's memory serves him well. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle does indeed have Sherlock Holmes express the theory that the brain can get too full. The reference is in the very first Sherlock Holmes story, "A Study in Scarlet." In Chapter 2, Watson explains the composition of the solar system to Holmes, whom he has just met and found to be ignorant of the Copernican Theory. Holmes promptly decides to forget this information. On the assumption that the material is now public domain, I will quote Holmes' justification. "You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." There you have it, another piece of lumber for your attic. Regards, Jay From: "Ed. Harris, Academic Affairs, SCSU" <HARRIS@CTSTATEU> Subject: Holmes' brain Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 09:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 659 (738) I think Joel Goldfield is referring to an early conversation between Holmes and Watson, just after they've taken rooms together and begun to chat and Holmes has demonstrated his remarkable powers of observation and deduction. Watson is surprised that Holmes knows so much about some very esoteric things and nothing about some things that Watson considers commonplace. Holmes explains his strategy of study by likening the brain to a desk which contains a limited number of cubbyholes, which one can choose to fill any way one wishes. But a cubby once full of data on cigar ash, say, cannot then be used for something else. Ed <HARRIS@CTSTATEU.BITNET> Southern Connecticut State U, New Haven, CT 06515 USA Tel: 1 (203) 397-4322 / Fax: 1 (203) 397-4207 From: walker@flash.bellcore.com (Don Walker) Subject: Workshop on Textual and Lexical Resources at COLING-90 Date: Fri, 13 Jul 90 21:11:35 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 288 (739) WORKSHOP ON TEXTUAL AND LEXICAL RESOURCES 9-12 Sunday, 19 August 1990 At COLING-90, Helsinki, FINLAND [Check at registration for location] Work in computational linguistics is becoming increasingly sensitive to the need for natural language data. Data are critical for theory formulation, for the development of practical applications in the language industries, and, in particular, for the evaluation of computational linguistics as a whole. Of particular interest from this point of view are recent activities concerned with the collection of text files, with the creation of lexical data and knowledge bases, and with the development of ways to increase the ability to reuse and share both data and tools. The results will increase the possibility and likelihood of cooperation across a broad range of areas in computational linguistics. This workshop will provide an open and informal forum within which these activities are discussed and their relationship to current research and development established. The results will be reported on during COLING-90. There are no restrictions on participation and there is no need to register specifically for the workshop. For further information, before 10 August contact: Dr. Donald E. Walker Bellcore, MRE 2A379 445 South Street, Box 1910 Morristown, NJ 07960-1910, USA Phone: (+1 201) 829-4312 Fax: (+1 201) 455-1931 Internet: walker@flash.bellcore.com Usenet: uunet.uu.net!bellcore!walker After 10 August, contact: Dr. Hans Karlgren Prof. Fred Karlsson KVAL Department of General Linguistics Skeppsbron 26 University of Helsinki S-111 30 Stockholm, SWEDEN Vuorikatu 5 B, Hallituskatu 11 Phone: +46 8 7896683 SF-00100 Helsinki, FINLAND Fax: +46 8 7969639 Phone: +358 0 1913512 Telex: 15440 kval s Fax: +358 0 653726 Internet: hkarlgren@com.qz.se Earn/Bitnet: karlsson@finuh Bitnet: hkarlgren@qzcom.bitnet From: John Lavagnino <LAV@brandeis.bitnet> Subject: Memory Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 13:36 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 660 (740) An excellent book on memory, information, and knowledge is A. R. Luria's *Mind of a Mnemonist*, about a patient of his with an extraordinary memory. This patient was, like Borges's Funes, a person whose vast store of information impeded his ability to think: abstract thought and analysis were very difficult for him; he couldn't step back from the facts and generalize. He wound up drifting from job to job, passive in the expectation that something ``particularly fine'' would someday happen to him... John Lavagnino, English, Brandeis University From: mcs@iris.brown.edu (Mark C. Sawtelle) Subject: Re: 4.0285 University as Clearinghouse (4/36) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 11:12:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 661 (741) The present discussion puts me to mind of some of the flap during James Watt's tenure at the Dept of Interior. Substitute "information" for "the environment". On a more useful tangent, I highly recommend Theodore Roszak's _The Cult of Information_, from which (I think) the following quotation is taken: "...the technology of human communications has advanced at blinding speed, but what people have to say to one another by way of that technology shows no comparable development." - T.Roszak As I recall it, Roszak explores questions like: - What kind of "information"? - What is it about? - Is that really useful? - How are we getting it? - Who's selling the means of access? (computer vendors) - Are their priorities altruistic (what do you think?) - Do these priorities subtly direct discussions about The Information Age? - Who's getting it? How are they controlling it? - Scholars? - Business concerns? - The government? - How is information really being used? - To find the cure for cancer, or to see if you've ever bounced a check, or perhaps burned a flag? -- Mark C. Sawtelle IRIS - Brown University p.s. I owe the transcription of the Roszak quotation to Dave Phillips Internet: davep@acsu.buffalo.edu Bitnet: v184gavw@ubvms who uses it in his signature. From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0285 University as Clearinghouse (4/36) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 11:03 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 662 (742) Yes, but that information was said to have been found in a bricked up wall: all the history, as it were, of the past: the Bamboo Annals, I believe they are called. They have not survived, but been copied. Still, it is asked were there such things as came out of a wall, or were they created much much later...That is a rather big crux in Chinese historiography, one reads. And I have been told that there are some centuries in our Era from which no texts of the Pentateuch are known. How does one comprehend the precision of the 4th century texts, say, that match those from much earlier. Paleographers hope that something may somehow somewhere turn up, I have been told. But those texts are not "information" merely, in any casual use of the term. Kessler From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0287 Holmes' Brain (4/137) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 10:57 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 663 (743) Dear Sarah Q., Here is a bit of information, which can also go to all Humanists who have ever been stumped, mystified, stymied, nauseated by the impossible statement, "The sound of one hand clapping." The monkey you associate with that is the "monkey mind," shorthand for that impossible creature Poe calls The Imp of the Perverse, which one may also know today as the ID. However (and of course I have forgotten the name of the author and the title of the book, which I gave away to my local bookshop a few years back), there was an autobiography, by a Dutch or Belgian fellow who left for Japan and Zen training in the late 1940's, and spent a long, perhaps as much as 16 years, undergoing the monastic discipline and training, which was devilish hard work, especially, the zazen or sitting, for a longlegged European. One of the repeated instances of the training was the audience, regular, perhaps weekly, of all the young monks at which one or another was to speak, to announce a solution to his koan. Invariably they were wrong, since satori, or insight, or enlightenment, or the achievement of access to the secret of our being, is not to be had for the asking or praying, or even a decade's latrine-cleaning, rice husking, courtyard sweeping, and so on. And each time a monk failed to announce with clarity, the Master's hand struck the low table before him with immense force: a clap of thunder in the silent auditoriaum! That was to recall him and the rest to thoughtful meditation, to keep their monkey minds from hopping about. That is the sound of one hand clapping, a reminder to them to remember where they where, or are, are were not, or are not. What is the sound of one hand clapping? The crack of that palm on the table, heard by those with heads bowed. Things are even simpler than mistranslation and pothead mystification guesses! Try it with a napping classroom sometime! Jascha Kessler at UCLA [... PS] Sorry, I see it is Higley, not Quigley! Speak of a full head of ill-assorted lumber! That's mine. From: John Lavagnino <LAV@brandeis.bitnet> Subject: Quotation book Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 13:27 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 664 (744) According to an article about Anthony W. Shipps in the *Harvard Magazine* last year, his book *The quote sleuth* is not a quotation dictionary, but a book about tricks for finding the sources of quotations that aren't in any such compilation. So I don't imagine it would really be at the top of anyone's list of stuff that would be better published only in electronic form. John Lavagnino, English, Brandeis University From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield) Subject: "Robin Cover's comments & 'digital books'" Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 23:31:17 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 665 (745) Speaking (writing) of "curl[ing] up by the fire" or not with a diskette is not as far away as we might think. I've already seen several announcements of Sony's new digital book technology using 2" disks that not only include the text (at least as long as a novel's) but also sound and graphics. The display is an LCD of some sort and can run on batteries, solar power, or from a house current adaptor. Just the thing to curl up with on the beach, eh, as long as you don't get it wet. It's being marketed first in Japan, I think, sometime late this year. Does anyone have more information on this? Regards, Joel D. Goldfield Language Outreach, Dartmouth College From: Ric Gudgeon <R1436@CSUOHIO> Subject: Cartagraphic Software for the PC Date: 17 July 1990, 16:14:02 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 666 (746) Is there any software for someone who has cartagraphic skills that can manipulate images and text on screen, including the ability to rotate letters at more than 45 or 90 degrees? Such software would presumably allow scanning (using an optical scanner) of hand drawn maps to begin with and allow the user to paint textures (for landforms, etc.) on screen. Also will it permit the user to tilt and rotate three dimnesionally? My friend would prefer to stay away from the Cad environment if possible. Additionally, are there any maps of Israel in some type of databank for biblical cartography. Ric Gudgeon, R1436@CSUOHIO From: A10PRR1@NIU Subject: Holmes' brain Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 08:04 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 667 (747) Of the four of us who responded to the query about Sherlock Holmes, the other three were right and I was wrong. But they all cheated and actually looked it up! :-) (I was going to look it up but I couldn't remember where I put my copy.) Phil Rider Northern Illinois University From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield) Subject: "A.C. Doyle and knowledge, cont." Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 00:01:07 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 668 (748) Many thanks to my fellow HUMANISTs who wrote in about the quotation from "A Study in Scarlet," and especially to Sarah Higley and Jay Treat who, in the wee hours of the morning, took the time to quote the appropriate passage to us all. By the way, should one prefer underlining the title or enclosing it in quotation marks? [...] Regards, Joel D. Goldfield Language Outreach, Dartmouth College From: UBWC003@EUCLID.UCL.AC.UK Subject: MA in Computing for the History of Art Date: Thu, 17 May 90 17:51 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 292 (749) University College and Birkbeck College, University of London, History of Art departments, are offering an MA in "Computer Applications for the History of Art" this October. This course will cover new developments in the use of computers in museums, galleries and research institutions. Their use in conservation, databasing, graphics, imaging and image processing will be covered. A skill can be learnt such as video disk/CDROM design, or databasing, imaging .. etc. It will run joint with the MA in Historical Computing at the Institute for Historical Research. Many computer facilities are available for demonstration and projects in the department and the "Bloomsbury Consortium". The departments are active in Arts Imaging research including a multi-million dollar European project VASARI (Visual Arts System for Archiving and Retrieval of Images) to develop high quality and high resolution digital image scanning direct from paintings. The course is offered full time (1yr) or part time (2yrs). For further details please contact: Prof. William Vaughan, History of Art Dept. Birkbeck College, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H OPD tel: (0)71 631 6110, Fax: (0)71 631 6107 From: Alvin Snider <ASNIDEPD@UIAMVS> Subject: Foucault on Borges Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 21:00 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 669 (750) Michel Foucault's quotation of Borges in _The Order of Things_ (which Peter Junger is now puzzling over, as I did a few years back) comes from an essay on "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins," available in _Other Iquisitions, 1937-1952_ (Austin, TX, 1964). Wilkins is best known as the author of a universal language scheme, _An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language_ (1668), and Borges hilariously parodies his elaborate taxonomies with his invention of "a certain Chinese encyclopedia," which divides animals according to the scheme Foucault quotes. The Foucault- Wilkins connection is discussed in an article by Sidonie Clauss, "John Wilkins' _Essay_: Its Place in the 17th- Century Episteme," _Journal of the History of Ideas_ 43 (1982): 531-53. -- Alvin Snider University of Iowa From: THEALLDF@TrentU.CA Subject: qUERY ON bORGES AND FOUCAULT Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 07:56 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 670 (751) The passage by Borges which Peter Junger cites from Foucault is from "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins". The Spanish title is "El lenguaje analitico de J.W.". It was published in 1941. A translation of it can be found in Borges:A Reader, ed. Monegal & Reid, p.142 (where the reference to the original Spanish publication can be found in an endnote) or in Other Inquisitions 1937-1952, p.103. Donald Theall THEALLDF@TRENTU.CA From: John Lavagnino <LAV@brandeis.bitnet> Subject: Borges Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 13:17 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 671 (752) The Borges quotation in Foucault is from ``The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,'' in his collection *Other Inquisitions*. Compare this from Kierkegaard, *Repetition*, translated by Walter Lowrie (Princeton UP, 1941), 56: A wit has said that one might divide mankind into officers, serving-maids and chimney sweeps. To my mind this remark is not only witty but profound, and it would require a great speculative talent to devise a better classification. When a classification does not ideally exhaust its object, a haphazard classification is altogether preferable, because it sets imagination in motion. A tolerably true classification is not able to satisfy the understanding, it is nothing for the imagination, and hence it is to be totally rejected, even though for everyday use it enjoys much honor and repute for the reason that people are in part very stupid and in part have very little imagination. John Lavagnino, English, Brandeis University From: jdg@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Joel D. Goldfield) Subject: "... knowledge, cont." Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 00:01:07 -0400 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 294 (753) [...] Sarah Higley's comments about Borges are also intriguing, not in the least because the concepts which I think of as conscious or unconscious selective omission influence us as literary critics as well. Several of the contributors to _Literary Computing and Literary Computing_ (ed. Rosanne Potter, U. Penn , 1989) note or imply that they would have never found certain phenomena in the text(s) they studied had they not had access to a complete analysis of thematic groups or other such strategies that could be implemented by a nearly infallible, counting and "ordering" computer (thinking of the French "ordinateur"). At conferences I've attended -- MLA, Institute for Academic Technology, ALLC-ACH, among others -- a few attendees expressed their surprise that certain results could be "massaged from the data" (my quotation of Frank Dominguez' remarks at the IAT conference, March '90, UNC-CH, in support of a presentation I had just made). Yet the literary results have not been refuted. If one omitted mentioning the computing side, perhaps no-one would ever notice how one arrived at the tip of the iceberg (or perhaps the bottom?). Besides the wealth of personalities and viewpoints throughout the ages that demands reinterpretation of texts, it seems that quantitative wealth of information, of words, collocations, paragraphs, pages, books, and the poetic and rhetorical devices, themes, etc. we find within them comprise another factor, not to forget forgetfulness. Regards, Joel D. Goldfield Language Outreach, Dartmouth College From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: hypersatire (Hebrew, neologizing) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 90 19:52:28-020 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 295 (754) The postings, in Humanist, on hyperfiction (interactive, hypertextual fiction) and Alan Corre's "recursive fiction" prompted comments about the exciting perspectives of features of specific kinds of computer support guiding the content of composition. Well, I am completing a rather heterogeneous book, mainly social satire, titled << Midde' Muddi' >> ("Whenever I Measure"). Language is wildly neologizing but also archaistic Hebrew (formation of hundreds of neologisms is fully documented in especially playful, but sometimes scholarly notes (of notes (of notes (...) ) ) , that also introduce satirical considerations, and are not really secondary). Another thorough neologizer, Shlonsky, had to limit innovation to avoid the necessity of including notes (albeit sometimes he had to insert them). Hypertextuality allows text parallelism that has something holographic about it, so the need for explanations is no longer a deterrent. Also, associations can occur rather freely, as several paths can be followed: we are not limited to one level of notes. Occasionally, such paths meet, but basically, their theme is meant to ultimately strengthen the message of the starting passage in the text. Different subsections or notes (chunks or text) differ by style and linguistic stratum. Some are even (mildly) mathematical. Windows (or, on paper, as the book is: odd pages with notes, the main text being on even pages, for example, as suitable according to the quantitative ratio) allow, sometimes, a kind of holographic rounding of the meaning. Or, very critical passages are cooled down, out of literary economy or of sarcasm, by recalling innocuous and themes. This way, one sentence that depicts the yellow of a broken giant egg inundating society, points to an ancient Talmudic legend about the giant bird Bar Yokhani, one of whose eggs would have inundated sixty cities and many more villages, and then, Eastern mythical gigantornithology is discussed. This, in turn, leads to Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi's reuse of the image of the Giant Cock in a philosophical pessimistic passage, but we make sure a note reproduces the Latin definition (he had read) from 17th century Buxtorf's Rabbinical Hebrew an `Chaldaic' Lexicon. The fact a 19th century edition of Buxtorf's Lexicon was dedicated to a person qualified as Belfastinus Irus (an Irishman from Belfast), is pointed to from a mention of our present president, Haim Herzog (also a belfastinus Irus), who recently avocated a very controversial electoral reform, a proposal that brought people in the streets (in favor). As to the yellow of the egg, the mention points to a certain verse from a poem about society, but that can also read according to a Lycian key, that is to say, to embedded linguistic, geographical, and other data based on a paper by Gusmani, with an intepretation of a Lycian stele from the city of Xanthos (that we can misread as suggesting yellowness). A context suggesting seats, in a very critical context, has a pointer leading us to a note, with a translation of a short review from an ergonomics journal, about a bibliography on the science of seating (user aspects of seat manufacturing), and a nearby note, also by rather free association, mentions McAlpin's hypothesis on a prehistoric link between ancient Elamite (of western Persia) and the Dravidian languages of India, and yet another note referencing a paper on reactions, in mid 19th century Britain, to the till then unheard-of phonetics of Khoisan languages (specifically, Victorian reactions to the clicks and clucks produced by Bushmen brought to Britain). Let us consider a certain passage, <<The Diaspora of Tires>>, based on an episode taken from real life. One kibbutz (pace Marx) sold its manufacture -- producing machinery for producing tires -- to South Africa (of all places), practically together with the personnel, made up of people from nearby Hatzor of Galilee, an [under-] "development town" of Jewish immigrants from North Africa: a kind not much beloved by the (pre-1977) ancien re'gime (at least). The passage includes a poetized litany (based on a report on job interviewing with the new owner), of workers begging the new employer to fly them to the new location of the manufacture, instead of leaving them flatly unemployed: ha`ifenu, ( "Have us fly, hadrifenu, Send us to South Africa [ acronymic root: Dr'f = Drom 'Afriqa = South Africa ], hatrifenu Make us devour / eat lehem huqqenu, Our lawful bread, qnenu, Buy us, torfenu, Devour us, hoqnenu. Give us an enema." ) And so on. (In this quotation, only "hadrifenu" is a neologism.) The passage wonders: will those tires have nothing to do with necklacing? What can this new diaspora expect? A subsequent section recalls that predicament, in a more general social context: "Stand on a hill, bellow: < Zeem-be-zoom! > ... but down in the city, they are not even going to hear you: they are too busy with "zoom-zeem" (that is to say: "zoom" of "zeem"; see below). Pointers lead to explanations of these Hebrew neologisms (expanding the topic), inter alia. "Zeembezoom" is a regularly formed verbal form from a new root (a morphologically adapted loan from "Zambezi"), and it means, obscurely of purpose: "They Zambezized them", that is, "They [sent] them [south of the river] Zambezi [and of the River Limpopo, too, for that matter." Actually, there is a further note, in English in the original: "They Zambezize 'em!" In connection with another point (also mentioning the River Limpopo), there is a reference to the owls of the Limpopo valley (including a metaphorical elaboration in verses about the pearl-spotted owl), with an ornithological discussion, and neologisms meant to translate their names into Hebrew. Another point in the text has "zeembezoom" co-occurring with "qimbezoom", a new Hebrew verb of the same conjugation an expressing the factitive aspect (having somebody do a given action), an based on the Judaeo-Arabic verb "qambaz", that is, "to sit down frogwise". (As to "zoom-zeem", it is a neologism we could render as "porno-zooming": "zeem" [zim] /zimm/, from /zimma/, means "lust". That is, people are thought to be insensitive to the plight of the exiled and to rather play a porno-cassette, for example, and zoom close in.) Hypertextuality can afford this style, that in sequential text would be either awful or impossible. Another passage, about the dire effects on mentality produced in peoples ruled by "New Man" ideologies (either Leninist of Ben-Gurionite, mutatis mutandis), has a term inserted in the text, "deshrait", which is morphologically formed as an adverb, and use with that syntactic role in the passage. A note explains it synthesizes some features pointed out in the passage: the term is defined as meaning "Northern (Soviet, relative to here, or of red Haifa), red, and swampy". The etymon is the ancient Egyptian toponym Deshrait (the Place of the Red Crown, that is, of the crown of Northern = Swampy Egypt. Egyptian had two similarly sounding terms for north and swamp: mehi and meht). This way, we have also a deadpan serious discussion of two entries in a toponomastical lexicon of ancient Egypt. However, one more note thwarts a possible criticism of having kept the vowel "e" in "deshrait" as a Hebrew neologism, instead of replacing it with a more standard "i". And then? The note asks (though more concisely than what I am explaining here): didn't (physician and founding-father neologizing philologist, also: former Russian revolutionary activist) Dr. Aaron Meir Masie (1858-1930) or his posthumous editor, (paganizing poet, and physician) Shaul Tschernichowsky (1875-1943) include, in their "Dictionary of Medicine & Allied Sciences (Latin, English, Hebrew)" (Jerusalem: Margalit, 1934), the entry for "spine", as Hebrew "shedra"? (Now, standard is "shidra".) Another note has a personification of querulous personification of academical self-importance blame Tschernichowsky (for providing me with a precedent): Parce Dr. Masie (who first was here as a physician in villages run by Rothschild: now, part of national myth), one of the founder of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, but his (all the more mythical) editor? Shaul, Shaul -- from the shoulder down [cf. King S[h]aul, chosen because he was higher than average from his shoulder up] -- wasn't it enough we brought you [in 1931] to this country and gave you a job? [He first got a job as the editor of late Masie's dictionary, and after its publication, obtained a job as a physician in the schools of Tel Aviv.] (For not having corrected that "e":) You have not read your lesson. Were you playing "iskumdarei"? (Another note relate scholar's actual discussions on the identity of this game, whose Aramaic name taken from a Talmudic idiom.) And so on, and so forth. The term for "spine" ("shidra") is resorted to in another passage, for neologizing purposes. Two sentences there state I am not continuing a list of faults, because I don't wish to tarnish the page any more; the second sentence goes on: ' ' ' ' ' ' "Lo etqanne be-khore- ha-(d)dovi me-'iyye 'eretz shidra'im." (neologism) (neologism) = "I wouldn't envy the miners of guano (dovi: from divyonim, bird drops) from the islands of the Land of the Spinalians." That is, of the islands of Chile, in the Pacific. Chileans are Spinalians, because Chile is like the spine of the back of South America (Hebrew: Drom America; acronym: dr'm. This acronymic root is embedded inside the word for Spinalians: "shidra'im"). Acronymicity is conveyed by a double quote inserted inside the word, as usual in Hebrew. But, on the other hand, orthographically, the y of the plural ending /-im/ ºymº is missing, thus conveying an association with Phoenician names of peoples, where the ending was also /-im/ but was written by the ºmº alone. (Phoenicians ---> countries far away, beyond the sea.) Another passage tells about a person (myself) who finds a job in Australia. There is a sentence that could be rendered as follows: "Thus far, existence was Chagallian, aereous. And now: wawirrious." A note explains that, according to data gathered by Ken Halle, apud a certain paper by Eloise Jelinek, "wawirri" means "kangaroo" in Warlpiri (sic), a native Australian language. "Chagallian", instead, points to a passage about Italian singer Domenico Modugno who, in the mid 1960s, sang <<Volare>> ("To Fly": after Chagall's people in the air). Perhaps you recall: "Volare, oh oh. Cantare, oh oh, oh oh. Nel blu, dipinto di blu. Felice di stare lassu`." I (mis)translated these words into Hebrew -- keeping the original metrics -- in such a way that we are brought back to autobiographical remarks, out of the senses that standing in air can take. But yet another note relates recent news about Modugno related: compelled to use a wheelchair, after a stroke, in '89 he was beaten up in a parking lot, by somebody who wanted to park his car where Modugno's car was. What wouldn't one do for a place? The hologram of the main text and the hypertextual hierarchy (or net) of notes produces what I term, neologizing again in Hebrew, a "kattabbavu'a" (last vowel stressed), for a blend of images within text. And then there is a rambling, neologizing passage explaining this, and another passage that explains hypertext and proposes Hebrew terms for hypertext (partzikhetev) and hypermedia (partzitemekh). For Neologizing writing, the model is Shlonsky, but in the extreme, as only hypertextuality can afford. This is also part of the satirical intent, beside the fact I take a great pleasure in word coinage. (Well, I even developed an expert system for doing that, by conservative rules, but I used none of its proposals in the book: why should I leave the fun to a stupid machine?!) I suppose that Oedipus lurks in my relating to Shlonsky's (literary, not editorial) lesson. Shlonsky, as an editor, was a kind of ideological vestal for published Israeli literature to be, broadly speaking, Marxist or at least Marxigenous (i.e., originating in the right, i.e. left, circles), during the 1950s-60s, that is, at a time you had better be (or be thought to be) with the ruling camp to get a job (after all, the trade union concerns used to be, and still are, the largest employer, and the trade union used to own 60% of national economy). Well, it is history, hopefully, albeit an open-minded newspaper such as "Yedioth Ahronoth", that is open to a broad ideological spectrum (and that took the lead over "Maariv", hat used to be the independent newspaper of the Labor Era), often relates about persisting ostracizing attitudes in the literary establishment. There used to be a visible exception even among Shlonsky's contemporaries: Uri Tzvi Grinberg, another giant. Even the trade-union paper used to publish his poems, accepted by Shlonsky, but then, again, "Yedioth Ahronoth" recently charged His Royal Editorhood with having, once at least, even plagiarized one of Grinberg's submissions, by using a cute idea and even passing it to another poet, and then rejecting Grinberg's original poem, because its ideas were unoriginal (two poets had used them). Well, it was for the Good Cause. And Shlonsky definitely did not need somebody else's literary ideas. More in general, now and then, you hear about some recently dead writer (even such one who was "the father of them all" right after World War I), that stopped writing some decade ago because he was not on the winning ideological vessel. The fact these things are said openly, now, and the growth of several independent publishing houses, ought to modify the situation. Those literati that are still outcasts can blame only themselves for not founding some journal of their own, to save themselves from critics that keep silent on their work to (its) death. Moreover, reasons are often idiosyncratic, not necessarily ideological; there is, for example, the case of Hungarian-born Ephraim Kishon, a benign satirist who is popular in some Northern European countries, and enjoys the esteem of the Israeli public (well, he used to be the witty weekly satirist of "Maariv" of old), but is a lifelong bitter outsider among Israeli literati (especially Israeli-born, perhaps). His success in German-speaking countries has even been used to blame him. These aspects of the history of Israeli literature are little known outside the local scene, but perhaps this has very much to do with the rather narrow extension of its cognoscenti circles. ("Cognoscenti" is a term I frown upon: it is a hybrid of Latin and Italian. Italian "conoscitori" is American "cognoscenti". Italian "conoscenti" is English "acquaintances". The "gn" in "cognoscenti" comes from Latin verb "cognoscere", "to know. to be acquainted with", which in Italian is "conoscere". Stress is on the second syllable.) More on neologisms: I sent the Academy of the Hebrew language a report with "100 terms you should know about e-lists"; later, an academician told me why they had rejected this (without notifying me): I had resorted too much to portmanteau formation. Therefore, as the book uses two or three of these terms, I made an appendix out of the e-list glossary. Standard Hebrew for mail is "do'ar". I coined: "dorur" for e-mail; "dorurav" /do%rurabb/ for e-list (email + many), "doruriv" for a quarrel on an e-list, stemming from flaming on e-mail (formation: email + quarrel); "dorurabban" for an e-list editor (e-list + rabbi), and, for an e-list woman editor: "dorurabbanit" ("rabbanit" is the wife of a rabbi); and so on. There is even: "dorurovina" (the stress is on the "o"), for an e-list primadonna, after the late Israeli stage actress Hanna Rovina. "Dorurit ha-qqetanna shel Dickens" (Little Dorurit from Dickens: instead of Litle Dorritt) is pictoresque speech for a newcomer to email, that still needs some guru to mentor him or her. Ephraim Nissan onomata@bengus.bitnet From: Tim Seid <ST401742@BROWNVM> Subject: Interpreting Manuscripts (HyperCard stacks) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 16:20:26 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 672 (755) [These Hypercard stacks will be available on the server by the end of the week -- eds] INTERPRETING MANUSCRIPTS Interpreting Manuscripts is a series of HyperCard stacks (800k) which teach about the procedure involved in analyzing ancient Manuscripts. Since the stacks are designed for the course Earliest Christianity, all of the examples are from the New Testament and deal specifically with that area. The purpose of this exercise is to help the undergraduate student be aware that interpretation of a text not only concerns judgment of the modern translation or of the critical text but has to do with how one deals with the ancient manuscripts themselves: reconstructing the original from the copies, editing the ancient text (deciphering characters, making divisions between words and sentences, punctuating), and finally translating and exegeting ("drawing out" the meaning of) the document. The main stack creates the simulation of going to the New England Museum of Antiquity in order to begin work on some newly found manuscripts. With a little animation, you are brought to your office in the Ancient Manuscript Center. From here you will be able to learn about Paleography and Textual Criticism. After you have mastered these disciplines, you are ready to go to the basement to the Manuscript Vault (Be careful on the stairs!). The last task, after analyzing the four manuscripts (Codices Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Rhode Island) and dating them, is to start up the computer that is on your desk in the office--a Macintosh, what else?-- and run the program MacEdit. You first have to edit each manuscript. Then determine the relationship among the four. The key here is to see if manuscripts share the same mistakes or are completely different (the scribes who produced these copies were really bad). Finally, you must attempt to reconstruct the manuscript from which the others were copied. When you have finished, you can compare your reconstruction with the actual original, something we don't get a chance to do in reality. This project was funded by an Educational Computing Grant from Brown University in the name of Dr. Stanley K. Stowers, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University. The author, Timothy W. Seid, a graduate student in the Religious Studies Department at Brown, received funding from the Graduate School in the form of several Computer Proctorships. You are encouraged to make use of this stackware without cost. If you make changes or have comments, send them to Tim Seid, Religious Studies Dept., Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 or electronically to ST401742@BROWNVM. From: Frank Dane <FDANE@UGA> Subject: Re: 4.0290 Notes on Books; Query on Map Software (3/46) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 20:50:26 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 673 (756) SAS institute (box 8000, SAS Circle, Cary, NC 27512-8000, USA) has an extensive graphics/cartographic package that is a component part of their Software package. It is a language based, as opposed to mouse manipulable, program, but includes topographical capabilities and a number of preexisting maps (mostly USA I believe). I have no idea how much it may cost, but SAS is rarely inexpensive. Good luck, Frank Dane, Psychology, Mercer University From: "James Bower" <BM.GAN@RLG> Subject: Job Announcement: Executive Director for MCN Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 10:39:54 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 297 (757) The Museum Computer Network (MCN) seeks an Executive Director to develop and administer programs of this not-for-profit professional membership organization dedicated to furthering the use of computer technology in all aspects of museum research, management, and interpretation. Must have good knowledge of museum history and practice and of relevant state-of-the-art computer technologies; ability to communicate complex subject matter to specialist and lay audiences; skills in membership development, budgeting, fund-raising, and grant administration. Duties also include editing quarterly journal (Spectra), organizing annual conference, and representing MCN to the field. Overall policy direction is established by a Board of twelve specialists in museum-related fields. Headquarters presently East Coast, but relocatable. Salary commensurate with experience. Send resume and names of three references to: Suzannah Fabing, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC 20565 (fax 202-289-3584) before August 17, 1990. EOE/M/F From: Terry Butler <TBUTLER@UALTAVM> Subject: Language Characters Printing Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 09:26:33 MDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 674 (758) Special Character Printing in Word Perfect 5 One of our faculty is using Word Perfect 5.1 to create camera-ready copy for a multilingual journal. He has so far been unable to locate an HP LaserJet II font source which has the COMPLETE set of foreign language characters so enticingly printed as Character Set 1 in the Word Perfect manual. (Word Perfect does a lousy job of graphically simulating these characters with the International Collection fonts, which he is using for their Western European language characters.) He requires fonts with a range of sizes (e.g. 6pt for footnotes, 10pt for text, 14pt for headings), roman bold and italic styles, proportional of course, with the complete range of language characters. Is there any hope? Terry Butler Humanities Computing Coordinator, University of Alberta TButler@VM.UCS.ALBERTA.CA From: C. Perry Willett <PWILLETT@BINGVAXC> Subject: Request for info on bibliographic software Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 16:37:23 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 675 (759) This request was posted on another list--I thought that folks here might be able to help. Bibliographic Instruction Discussion Group <BI-L@BINGVMB.BITNET> I am presently writing an article on bibliography formatting software. I have information (some extremely sketchy!) on about 47 or so programs. I'd like to know if I'm missing any. If you know of any programs not on the following list, could you please send me email at uncses@med.unc.edu? Thanks! Archive Artfile Autobiblio Bibliog Bibliography Generator Bibliography Maker Bibliotek BiblioStax Bookends (for PC and Mac) CDS/ISIS Cites dms4cite EdiBase EndNote Find It Quick Get-A-Ref Journallog Keylibrarian Literature/Library Database Manager MacDewey Manuscript Manager Medilib Nota Bene (has bibliography module) Notebook II/Bibliography Paperbase Papers Papyrus Personal Bibliographic Reference Personal Reference Catalog Pro-Cite Publish or Perish Quickcite Ref-Ed Ref-11 RefBase Reference Gateway Reference Manager Reflist Refmaker Refmenu Refsys Research Assistant Research Notes System Resnoter Sapana Cardfile Sysbib 3x5 Ceased??: Bibtools Citation SearchLit 25:02 Sue Stigleman Health Sciences Library CB# 7585 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7585 (919) 962-0700 uncses@med.unc.edu From: James O'Donnell <JODONNEL@PENNSAS.UPENN.EDU> Subject: 4.0291 Holmes (2/27) Date: 18 Jul 90 00:24:31 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 676 (760) Can't resist: quotation marks or underlining A Study in Scarlet? The first edition of that work appeared as the only editorial contents of something called *Beeton's Christmas Annual* in 1887. Beeton was a magazine publisher who would at Christmas sell ads to put out a Christmas thing, and in that year the only thing in the book (about the size and shape of a copy of Readers' Digest) was the story by Conan Doyle. There are numerous pages of ads at the beginning, and others (I think later on). Now if an entire issue of a periodical be given over to a single story (which is later sometimes published in a volume with other stories and sometimes published separately), is that story a `novel' and therefore to be underscored or a `story' and therefore to be put in quotation marks? Serious question. I know the *Beeton's Christmas Annual* so well because once upon a time in the stacks of Sterling Library at Yale I was looking idly at the Conan Doyle range and wondered what this odd little cardboard covered, untitled volume was. It was indeed the first first edition, sloppily bound in cardboard in the library bindery. I knew that this was an extreme bibliographical rarity (who in 1887 knew that *this* edition of this throwaway magazine on little better than newsprint contained a literary classic?) and knew perfectly well that it would be a matter of two seconds concealment to get it out of the building. Instead I took it to the reference desk, who asked me to write up a note explaining why it was rare and valuable (1960s price: over $1000) and they would pass it on. I nosed further and found taht the reason why a copy was in the stacks was that they already had a copy in Beinecke (with `With the Author's Compliments' but no signature on the first page of the story) and figured that the second was just redundant and could be left in the stacks to circulate! Any curious Yalie would do me a favor to check and see if both copies are now safely in Beinecke. From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU> Subject: Thanks for the source of the Borges quotation Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 12:01 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 677 (761) I wish to thank all those who told me, through HUMANIST or directly, where I could find the quotation from Borges. I am especially grateful to John Lavagnino for the matching quotation dividing mankind into officers, serving-maids and chimney sweeps. Peter D. Junger CWRU Law School Cleveland, Ohio From: Michael Hancher <MH@UMNACVX.BITNET> Subject: Foucault > Borges > Franz Kuhn? Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 16:22 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 678 (762) Like other participants in this discussion I was puzzled by Foucault's crediting the "Chinese encyclopedia" to Borges. When a friend referred me to Borges's _Other Inquisitions_ the puzzle didn't disappear but regressed, as I should have expected. It is not clear that the encyclopedia is Borges's "invention," as Alvin Snider suggests (16 Jul 90). Borges introduces it as follows: These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies [i.e., in Wilkins's seventeenth-century taxonomy] recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled _Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge_. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained . . . [etc.] (103) Kuhn was a prolific sinologist; Hatto Kuhn has described his career in _Dr. Franz Kuhn (1884-1961): Lebensbeschreibung und Bibliographie seiner Werke_, Sinologica Coloniensia 10 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1980). Many of his works are hard to locate in the United States. Borges could just as well have invented the Chinese encyclopedia: but maybe he really did rely on Kuhn. Thanks to Foucault's famous commentary it would be worth tracking down what Kuhn wrote, and with reference to what. Michael Hancher Deparment of English University of Minnesota From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU> Subject: Dutch student of Zenn Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 11:51 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 679 (763) I believe that Kessler's reference to a Dutchman who studied Zen in Japan is to Van der Wettering (or something like that) who wrote The Empty Mirror about his experiences and later book called something like A Touch of Nothingness about his attendance at a sesshin in the United States. Van der Wettering is the author of several detective procedurals about a team of policemen in Amsterdam--the Zen attitudes often show through in his writing. As I understand it, the various zen practices are designe to free one's mind from distracting thoughts and perceptions, rather than to clear memories out of the old lumber room in the back of the house. [for designe please read designed--I abominate mailers!] Peter Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, OH From: Alan D Corre <corre@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> Subject: Hypersatire Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 11:38:50 -0500 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 300 (764) Before responding to Ephraim Nissan's rather astonishing convulsion, there is one general point I should like to make. Jewish and Islamic culture share the feature of having sacred texts at the heart of their cultural experience. These texts are cultivated and fondled, and above all, learned by heart. If you go at 4 a.m. of a Saturday morning to the synagogue of the Bukharan Jews in Jerusalem, you will find them singing lustily their religious hymns written in their obscure, allusive language. Not a book is open. The little kids with a faraway look in their eyes, brought on by the hypnotic nature of the chant, join in, the words and melody welling up from deep down inside. When I visited Tunis some years ago, I was invited to come and hear "les psaulmistes" in the afternoon. A group of old men sit round a table and chant the entire 150 psalms in Hebrew from beginning to end. When one tires, another takes over, while the others mouthe the words. A marathon effort in itself--but it is all done by heart! These men can recite the book of Psalms without a slip. Mishnayot, on their surface dry, legalistic texts, are lovingly memorized in traditional circles. One of my teachers asserted that as a child he enjoyed closing his eyes and summoning up a vision of a page of the Babylonian Talmud, complete with all the commentaries on the margin. Muslim boys commonly commit the entire Koran to memory, and are reinforced by the pleasure their elders express when they have, so to speak, adsorbed to their very being the eternal uncreated word. The medieval sage Moses Maimonides explicated the process very well. He declared that initially one says to a child, learn such and such a mishna, and I will give you a candy. And the child learns because children like candy. Later you offer nice clothing, because teens are typically concerned about their physical appearance. Then you say: learn so and so many pages of the Talmud, and people will do you honor, and stand when you enter the room. But the ultimate goal is to learn the truth, simply because it is the truth, and for no other reason, and the truth resides somehow in these texts. Similar situations exist in other cultures, and have a profound effect on their adherents. They have an intellectual and spiritual heritage shared with their fellows, and it only takes a hint, a word, a turn of phrase to summon up recollections of this heritage and how and when various elements of it were acquired. Gifted poets and writers like Immanuel of Rome or ibn Zabara could use this feature even for comic effect. For example, there is a statement in the Mishna that the hand that explores among women is praiseworthy, while the hand that explores among men deserves to be cut off. This opaque statement means that the woman should constantly piously check that she is not menstruous to avoid her husband's unknowingly falling into transgression, whereas the man must scrupulously avoid self-stimulation. Along comes a wag who says that *he* had the "hand that explores among women"--the same kind of theme that Robert Herrick revels in, but with the added spice of allusion to a religious text dealing with holiness. The establishment often disapproved of such liberties--Joseph Karo proscribes the reading of such books, especially on the sabbath--but the situation was there to be used for good or ill. It seems to me that Christian Europe lacked this feature. The literature of the classical world was the best candidate for this kind of treatment, but the players were pagans, with all their nasty self-indulgences, and Christians were never quite comfortable with them. Virgil was coopted into the Christian heaven, and even given retroactive prophet's privileges, but he must have stuck out like a sore thumb amid all those haloes. And the New Testament may or may not be a necessary ingredient in man's eternal salvation, but it is dreadfully unquotable. Most of us have our illusions, but Ephraim has his allusions. I wish him luck in being understood. Ephraim might be able to use productively the Iris software which has, I believe, already been mentioned in these pa--screens. I have not had a chance to look at it in detail, but it claims that the virtual books it creates can "ask questions and respond with the answers (sounds like a schoolteacher!), readers can jump from one topic to another, and windows...can be accompanied by pleasant tones." It would enable the layering of materials in the way he seems to need. They even offer to distribute the virtual books you create, although I do not know how far their net is spread. This effusion now gets more technical, and some of you may wish to tickle you know what. A few miscellaneous points. lehem huqqenu does not mean "our lawful bread" but rather the bread of our portion, the bread of our rizq, to use the Arabic expression. Needless to say, although Ephraim wrote this, he has no dibs on what it means, especially as it is allusive (Proverbs I think). Zeembezoom I should prefer to connect with the Zamzumim of the Ammonites. The be is just "leshaper et haqeriah" to ease the passage betwen m and z (am I playing the game according to the rules?) On the model of qambaz, I would propose hashbez, which means "to absorb occupied territory quickly." I admit that it is fun to read Hava's dictionary and see the astounding combinations to which Arabic words can correspond: for example, sajara which means "to prolong her groans" (of a she-camel); afhasha meaning to hold unseemly, obscene talks against someone, or nafaja which means either to spring up (but only as a hare does) or to come forth (but only as a chicken does.) So the next time you see a chicken come forth, be aware that she is nafijatun, engaging in that special chickeny-rich coming forth which only the magnificent Arabic language can properly capture. And now a comment on shedra. I noted in the Israel Brodie festschrift that the segol is subphonemic. You never get a three-way a/i/e contrast in classical Hebrew. e occupies middle ground, sometimes representing the a phoneme, and sometimes the i, possibly because Hebrew was being heard through Aramaic ears (why should anyone ever have thought that the phonemic inventories of the two languages are identical or even similar?) In the Sephardic tradition many i-words are e-words, and why not? I-efshar (impossible) is e-efshar; midrash is medrash. (In the London Portuguese Jewish community the members of the congregational academy were called "medrasistas".) Ephraim at this point must be the doruran who takes the prize for a contribution directed to an in-group, in this instance to students of classical Hebrew. The Sanskritists will doubtless take a nirvanistic revenge, but a commentary in nothing more outlandish than late Latin will be appreciated. From: Frank Dane <FDANE@UGA> Subject: Re: 4.0298 Queries: WP Fonts; Bibliographic Software (2/100) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 20:39:21 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 680 (765) re: WP fonts query There is a software package called Publisher's Powerpak, from Atech Software, that does a wonderful job of serving as a 'ghost' printer for Word Perfect. It serves as a printer as far as WP is concerned, and then reformats all characters so as to optimize the signals received by the 'real' printer: laser jet, whatever. Atech's address is 5962 La Place Court, Suite 245, Carlsbad, CA 92008. Their customer support # is (619) 438-2244 (only number I have, I assume they will also accept orders and provide pre-sales information). I have used Powerpak to produce camera ready copy for one journal (with an HP DeskJet+ printer), and am thrilled with the results. It includes full font range (from 6 to 90 or something incredibly large) and reproduces all of the characters in the WP manual with amazing clarity. Frank Dane, Psychology, Mercer University ------------------ [...PS -eds] I forgot to add that the cost is in the $150 range. Frank Dane From: "Mary Dee Harris" <mdharris@guvax.georgetown.edu> Subject: Multilanguage Fonts Date: 19 Jul 90 13:34:00 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 681 (766) In reply to Terry Butler's request for information about fonts for use with WordPerfect 5.1: I have been using the software product SuperFonts 25/1 for a while and it has a "cartridge" that might be helpful for Terry's colleague. The way this package works is in two steps: first, you "make" the "cartridge" using their software (very simple), then you download the "cartridge" into the HP II laser printer (I use it with my HP II P). Once that's done WordPerfect can access any font that's in the cartridge. When you hit Cntrl-F8 (Font), it gives you all the choices on that cartridge plus any built in ones and any others you have downloaded (until you turn off or reset the printer). SuperFonts 25/1 has all the HP cartridges defined; i.e. if you can buy a cartridge for the printer, it's in the package. I think The "C" Cartridge might work. The request was for 6 pt for footnotes, 10 pt for text, and 14 pt for headings with roman bold and italic. With SuperFonts, you get 12 pt roman, roman bold, and italic for the following symbol sets: USASCII, Roman8, Roman Ext, French, German, U.K., Spanish, Italian, Swe/Fin, and Dan/Nor. You also get 8.5 pt Line Printer. (The above are all Courier.) In addition to the standard Portrait, you get 8.5 pt for Landscape. Maybe not quite as requested, but workable. The price is about $180 US from Metro Software,Inc., 2509 N. Campbell Ave, Ste. 214, Tucson, Arizona 85719, 602/292-0313 or 5A Greys Road, Henley-on- Thames, Oxon RG9 1SB, England, Tel. 0491 579857. I bought mine at a printer store in DC, not at a software place. The only disadvantages that I have seen are that the manual is bad (not unusual) and you can't turn the printer off without losing the cartridges and having to download them again. But it doesn't hurt to leave the printer on, so that's not a problem. From: Stephen Clausing <SCLAUS@YALEVM> Subject: Prolog/Lisp exercises needed Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 15:35:05 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 682 (767) Does anyone have the programs for the exercises for "Natural Language Processing in Prolog" by Gazdar/Mellish? If so, can you share them with me? I would also be interested in the programs from the Lisp version. I have already written to the authors and was told that the text programs in the book are available from the authors, but not the answers to the programming exercises. I am trying to decide between using Gazdar/Mellish for a course or James Allen's text "Natural Language Understanding" and availability of exercise answers is an important factor in my decision. Any help would be appreciated. From: Marc Bregman <HPUBM@HUJIVM1> Subject: Canon Date: Thu, 19 Jul 1990 12:43 IST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 683 (768) I would like to add a few more items to the bibliography I listed on Codex/Scroll, which may also be of interest to those dealing with the Biblical Canon. Menahem Haran, "Scribal Workmanship in Biblical Times", Tarbiz 50 Jubilee Volume (1981), pp. 65-87 [Hebrew with English Abstact] __________, The Size of Books in the Bible and the Division of the Deuteristic Work, Tarbiz 53 (1984), pp. 329-352 [Hebrew with English Abstract] Marc Bregman, Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem [HPUBM@HUJIVM1] From: Sheizaf Rafaeli <USERLLHB@UMICHUB.BITNET> Subject: Hypertextuality, Memory limits Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 23:15:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 684 (769) Re: Hypertextuality, Nissan Fixed memory Humanists may appreciate (?) Saffire's comment in this Sunday's NYT magazine: "One word, one meaning, is my motto; when you use an alternative form to mean the same thing, you have wasted valuable space on the hard disk of your memory, and you have blocked the development of a different meaning." [Saffire is writing about eschewing "denouncement" in favor of "denunciation".] It seems to me Nissan (onomata) would disagree. Nissan's delightful dissertation on double meaning and neologizing seems to indicate he favors a democratic, living language. His (projected) disagreement with Saffire is twice curious. (1) Nissan is obviously close to Saffire's politics. (2) His understanding of hypertext is decidedly autocratic (as in here is a tool that will let me impose endless layers on my readers). Which brings me to my main point. The additional dimension(s) made possible by hypertext are viewed rather flatly if the social possibilities, [multiple authorship rather than multiple levels], are ignored. True, hypertext allows text to become "Holographic" (multi dimensional). So do parentheses, notes. But the most interesting added dimension is that of authorship. As the first generation of those thinking about hypertextuality it is our responsibility to shape the social construction of these tools. I'd much rather harness this new technology as a liberating one, than use it as glorified, electronic brackets. For example: I completely disagree with Nissan's politics, and most of his interpretations. (I really do). But I'd love to get my hands on his book. If only because it would give me pleasure to add my own neologisms and interpretations. I may retitle the work, by dropping a few letters: Midei Muddi --> Dai Dai. I may add my own interpretation to "hatrifenu" - as derived from "taref". I may even be tempted to rhyme my own lyrics to Volare... or look for some verse in "Alilot Mikki Mahu" that would sound good to that tune. Think about hypertext mostly as a tool that overthrows the tyranny of the author over reader! Hypertext is about DIFFUSING control. (ducking.... ...in expectation of Nissan's response) Sheizaf Rafaeli From: Sheizaf Rafaeli <USERLLHB@UMICHUB.BITNET> Subject: Hypertextuality, Memory limits Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 23:15:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 685 (770) Re: Hypertextuality, Nissan Fixed memory Humanists may appreciate (?) Saffire's comment in this Sunday's NYT magazine: "One word, one meaning, is my motto; when you use an alternative form to mean the same thing, you have wasted valuable space on the hard disk of your memory, and you have blocked the development of a different meaning." [Saffire is writing about eschewing "denouncement" in favor of "denunciation".] It seems to me Nissan (onomata) would disagree. Nissan's delightful dissertation on double meaning and neologizing seems to indicate he favors a democratic, living language. His (projected) disagreement with Saffire is twice curious. (1) Nissan is obviously close to Saffire's politics. (2) His understanding of hypertext is decidedly autocratic (as in here is a tool that will let me impose endless layers on my readers). Which brings me to my main point. The additional dimension(s) made possible by hypertext are viewed rather flatly if the social possibilities, [multiple authorship rather than multiple levels], are ignored. True, hypertext allows text to become "Holographic" (multi dimensional). So do parentheses, notes. But the most interesting added dimension is that of authorship. As the first generation of those thinking about hypertextuality it is our responsibility to shape the social construction of these tools. I'd much rather harness this new technology as a liberating one, than use it as glorified, electronic brackets. For example: I completely disagree with Nissan's politics, and most of his interpretations. (I really do). But I'd love to get my hands on his book. If only because it would give me pleasure to add my own neologisms and interpretations. I may retitle the work, by dropping a few letters: Midei Muddi --> Dai Dai. I may add my own interpretation to "hatrifenu" - as derived from "taref". I may even be tempted to rhyme my own lyrics to Volare... or look for some verse in "Alilot Mikki Mahu" that would sound good to that tune. Think about hypertext mostly as a tool that overthrows the tyranny of the author over reader! Hypertext is about DIFFUSING control. (ducking.... ...in expectation of Nissan's response) Sheizaf Rafaeli From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0289 Memory, Information, and Knowledge (4/110) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 10:58 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 686 (771) To Sawtelle: As I recall my review of Roszak's book, I thought it superficial and highly tendentious, a kneejerk from the 60's. The level of thought is tawdry and obvious. Take your quotation about information. Thoreau said it better and more interestingly, more politically too, in WALDEN, in the 1840's: I am not quoting him, but rephrasing him: People boast about the new telegraph that will connect Texas to Massachusetts (or Maine). But suppose Massachusetts has nothing to say to Texas? That is more to the point than thinking like Roszak that we cannot think as fast as the machines that transmit our thoughts. Kessler at UCLA From: Sheizaf Rafaeli <USERLLHB@UMICHUB.BITNET> Subject: Hypertextuality, Memory limits Date: Wed, 18 Jul 90 23:15:38 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 687 (772) Re: Hypertextuality, Nissan Fixed memory Humanists may appreciate (?) Saffire's comment in this Sunday's NYT magazine: "One word, one meaning, is my motto; when you use an alternative form to mean the same thing, you have wasted valuable space on the hard disk of your memory, and you have blocked the development of a different meaning." [Saffire is writing about eschewing "denouncement" in favor of "denunciation".] It seems to me Nissan (onomata) would disagree. Nissan's delightful dissertation on double meaning and neologizing seems to indicate he favors a democratic, living language. His (projected) disagreement with Saffire is twice curious. (1) Nissan is obviously close to Saffire's politics. (2) His understanding of hypertext is decidedly autocratic (as in here is a tool that will let me impose endless layers on my readers). Which brings me to my main point. The additional dimension(s) made possible by hypertext are viewed rather flatly if the social possibilities, [multiple authorship rather than multiple levels], are ignored. True, hypertext allows text to become "Holographic" (multi dimensional). So do parentheses, notes. But the most interesting added dimension is that of authorship. As the first generation of those thinking about hypertextuality it is our responsibility to shape the social construction of these tools. I'd much rather harness this new technology as a liberating one, than use it as glorified, electronic brackets. For example: I completely disagree with Nissan's politics, and most of his interpretations. (I really do). But I'd love to get my hands on his book. If only because it would give me pleasure to add my own neologisms and interpretations. I may retitle the work, by dropping a few letters: Midei Muddi --> Dai Dai. I may add my own interpretation to "hatrifenu" - as derived from "taref". I may even be tempted to rhyme my own lyrics to Volare... or look for some verse in "Alilot Mikki Mahu" that would sound good to that tune. Think about hypertext mostly as a tool that overthrows the tyranny of the author over reader! Hypertext is about DIFFUSING control. (ducking.... ...in expectation of Nissan's response) Sheizaf Rafaeli From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0289 Memory, Information, and Knowledge (4/110) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 10:58 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 688 (773) To Sawtelle: As I recall my review of Roszak's book, I thought it superficial and highly tendentious, a kneejerk from the 60's. The level of thought is tawdry and obvious. Take your quotation about information. Thoreau said it better and more interestingly, more politically too, in WALDEN, in the 1840's: I am not quoting him, but rephrasing him: People boast about the new telegraph that will connect Texas to Massachusetts (or Maine). But suppose Massachusetts has nothing to say to Texas? That is more to the point than thinking like Roszak that we cannot think as fast as the machines that transmit our thoughts. Kessler at UCLA From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0269 Indexing Software; Bibliographic Software (3/46) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 90 10:42:48 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 689 (774) Kevin Roddy's book <emp>UNIX: NROFF/TROFF</emp> (Holt Rinehart Winston, 1986) is a user-friendly introduction to UNIX text formatting which includes a chapter on how to create indices. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley From: ALAN COOPER <ACOOPER@UCBEH> Subject: Re: 4.0301 Responses: WordPerfect Fonts (2/65) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 20:28 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 690 (775) Further to Frank Dane's remarks about Publisher's Powerpak from Atech Software: (1) It is easy to use, and provides a wide variety of fonts and point sizes; (2) Atech's 800 number is 1-800-748-5657, and they aree happy to supply a free demo disk; (3) They have lowered the price of the software to $79.95 (with optional add-on typefaces @ $29.95). I've tried three printer enhancements for WordPerfect (the other two werewere Fontmax and Lines, Boxes, etc.), and Publisher's Powerpak is the only one that works on my seven-year-old XT-clone (may it live and be well). Alan Cooper xD Hebrew Union College From: Randy Donaldson <DONALDSON@LOYVAX> Subject: Fonts for WP 5.1 Date: Fri, 20 Jul 90 11:28 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 691 (776) Terry Butler asks about fonts for WordPerfect 5.1. As I read the request, the Bitstream SoftFonts available (these days for an extra fee) from Word Perfect would fit the bill. I'm finishing up a manuscript with at least four Western European languages and have had no problems. You can create fonts in any size from 1 point to 144 points (although I'm told that Word Perfect has so trouble handling point sizes above 30), including decimal values. Each font includes the Roman-8 character set, which I have found entirely adaquate for non-English language characters (albeit my needs are limited to Western European languages and basically a Roman alphabet). The basic kit includes the Swiss, Dutch, and Charter type- faces (Swiss is Bitstream's Helvetic, Dutch its Times Roman). Swiss and Dutch can be created in Roman, Italic, Bold Roman, and Bold Italic and a combination such as that mentioned (6 pt., 10 pt., and 14 pt.) would easily fit into the 356 K basic memory of a Series II. With additional memory any combination is possible. One aside: WordPerfect will bold Roman and Italic character even if there's not enough room in memory to download specific bold fonts. Add kerning and leading and you have very presentable camera-ready copy--even if at 300 dpi, but that's another issue. Randy Donaldson (DONALDSON@LOYVAX) From: Jeffrey Perry <JEFF@PUCC> Subject: Job Announcement Date: Fri, 20 Jul 90 11:43:43 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 692 (777) Humanities Applications Individual with advanced graduate training in literature, languages, fine arts or history and with basic computing skills on both mainframe and microcomputer for position in Research Services. Familiarity with such packages as SCRIPT and SPIRES under VM/CMS, relevant application programs under UNIX, word processors such as Word, WordPerfect or Nota Bene on the IBM/PC or Apple Macintosh would all be helpful. Programming experience, familiarity with some foreign language(s), and an understanding of the concepts of information retrieval and DBMS are all desirable. The most important qualification is an ability to work well with colleagues and computer users with widely differing backgrounds. The successful candidate will provide computer support for faculty, staff and students in humanities research and instruction; install and support software packages; write special purpose software in languages such as C, and assist users in locating and using machine- readable and multimedia resources and programs for analysis. Activities must be completed and documented in a timely fashion. This appointment is to the Professional Technical staff. Qualified candidates should forward their resumes to: Bruce Finnie Computing and Information Technology Princeton University 87 Prospect Street Princeton, NJ 08544 FAX: 609-258-3943 BITNET: FINNIE@PUCC An Equal Employment Affirmative Action Employer From: Charles Ess <DRU001D@SMSVMA> Subject: Carcinogenic monitors Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 13:38:24 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 693 (778) A number of friends and colleagues have approached me lately to warn me of impending death from my close association with computer monitors. Apparently, the Apple Color 12" monitor is especially bad in this regard -- I take it that we're discovering that low-level radiation from such monitors is carcinogenic? In all seriousness, if anyone has or can refer me to CONCRETE information on recent studies, I would be grateful. Especially as I am facing an additional installation of four double-page monitors on a Mac network, I need to know if I am inadvertently contributing to my students' health risks. Thanks in advance, Charles Ess Drury College Springfield, MO 65802 417 865-8731 From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU> Subject: Heinz Pagels on Information versus Knowledge Date: Fri, 20 Jul 90 14:07 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 694 (779) The following is extracted from a letter to the editor by Heinz R. Pagels that appeared in The New York Times, on Friday, February 19, 1988, Late City Final Edition, Section A, Page 35, Column 2, that was entitled: The Computer as Scapegoat: Some intellectual prophets have declared the end of the age of knowledge and the beginning of the age of information. Information tends to drive out knowledge. Information is just signs and numbers, while knowledge involves their meaning. What we want is knowledge, but what we get is information. It is a sign of the times that many people cannot tell the difference between information and knowledge, not to mention wisdom, which even knowledge tends to drive out. It is the better part of wisdom today to make sure that people, not computers, stand behind decisions. I believe that this passage (which is downloaded from the NEXIS database) has some relevance to the recent discussion about filling one's brain up with information. Peter D. Junger--CWRU Law School--Cleveland, Ohio From: cbf%faulhaber.Berkeley.EDU@jade.berkeley.edu (Charles Faulhaber) Subject: Re: 4.0280 Query on Sherlock Holmes; Quote Reference Book (2/24) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 90 11:01:59 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 695 (780) A Baker Street Irregular I'm not, but in one of the early stories ("A Study in Scarlet"?), Watson takes stock of Holmes's knowledge, which is vast in all matters pertaining to crime and abysmal in much else. He did not even know whether the earth revolved around the sun or vice versa, since it was a matter or profound indifference to him and affected his work not at all. When taken to task, Holmes compared the mind to a lumber room (attic), which could be well ordered with all the relevant information one might need, or a jumble of unrelated and useless information. Unfortunately, in later stories Conon Doyle muddied the picture somewhat by showing Holmes engaged in studies on black letter imprints. This also brings to mind --in re the question of what is "information"-- Holmes's distinction between seeing and observing. He asks Watson how many times he has seen the steps leading up to 221B Baker Street, to which Watson replies that he has seen them some hundreds of times. Then Holmes's asks him how many there are, a question which Watson cannot answer but that Holmes, of course, can. Charles Faulhaber UC Berkeley P.S. Coming back to this a week after the initial query, I suspect that others will have already answered, and probably more accurately. From: DAVE KERBY <DAVEKERB@USMCP6> Subject: HOLMES' MEMORY AND MARK TWAIN Date: 19 JUL 90 17:47:46 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 696 (781) The recent discussion about Sherlock Holmes' memory brings up a comparison with Mark Twain. Holmes complained that learning new things could be a bad idea, because it might crowd out old memories. Mark Twain notes that learning new things could be a bad idea, because it might not crowd out old memories. (Forgive me if someone else has noted the parallel. I have been absent from HUMANIST for most of the summer.) The passage occurs in _Life on the Mississippi_. In Chapter 13, Twain speaks of a pilot whose memory was amazing. After seeing each part of the river once in the day and once at night, his memory was so nearly complete that he took out a daylight license. After only a few trips, he obtained a full license. The man forgot very little. Wrote Twain: "Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrences are of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting circumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an insufferable bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject. He picks up every little grain of memory he discerns in his way, and so is led aside." -- Dave Kerby University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, Mississippi <DAVEKERB@USMCP6.BITNET> From: DEL2@phoenix.cambridge.ac.uk Subject: Re: [4.0286 Mary Dee Harris on Memory (5/139)] Date: Fri, 20 Jul 90 12:06:17 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 697 (782) We appear to have at least two different kinds of memory; one short-term and one permanent. A colleague of mine who suffered from a horrendous attack of meningitis as a child was left bereft of the former. She was totally incapable of looking at a phone number, turning to the phone and dialling it; she had consciously to `learn' the number. Lucky for her that Conan Doyle was wrong! Of course, the more permanent long-term memory gets lost or confused, and there is that strange phenomenon of `knowing that I know x' without being able to recall it, and perhaps the even stranger one of leucotomised patients who `know' one set of data if they read a question and a totally different set if the question is received aurally. Anyone an expert on memories out there? Douglas de Lacey. From: "Peter D. Junger" <JUNGER@CWRU> Subject: The Ubiquity of Borges Date: Fri, 20 Jul 90 17:22 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 307 (783) In my original inquiry wondering where in Borges's writings there appears the passage about the various types of animals that Feinman quotes Foucault as quoting from Borges, I quoted the passage as it appears in Feinman, The Jurisprudence of Classification, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 661, 662 (1989). Yesterday, after the members of HUMANIST had informed me that an English version of the passage appears in the essay "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" at pages 141-43 of E.R. Monegal and A. Reid, Borges: A Reader (New York: Dutton, 1981), I picked up a copy of that collection. The translation there, by Ruth L.C. Simms, varies slightly from the version that I quoted. That slight variation strikes me as a great improvement and so I take the liberty of now giving Simms's English version, which has the advantage of not having been filtered through the French of M. Foucault, that appears in Monegal and Reid at page 142. But first let me remind you of the context in which the passage appears, since the essay reminds me vividly of a recent scholarly discussion in HUMANIST (a discussion that I appreciated, but could hardly understand). Borges is discussing Wilkins' effort to generate a general language "that would organize and contain all human thought." Wilkins divided the universe into forty categories or classes, which were then subdivisible into differences, subdivisible in turn into species. To each class he assigned a monosyllable of two letters; to each difference, a consonant; to each species, a vowel. For example _de_ means element; _deb_, the first of the elements, fire; _deba_, a portion of the element of fire, a flame. In a similar language invented by Letellier (1850) _a_ means animal; _ab_, mammalian; _abi_, herbivorous; _abiv_, equine; _abo_, carnivorous; _aboj_, feline; _aboje_, cat; etc. In the language of Bonifacio Sotos Ochando (1845) _imbaba_ means building; _imaca_, brothel; _imafe_, hospital; _imafo_, pesthouse; _imari_, house; _imaru_ country estate; _imede_, pillar; _imedo_, post; _imego_, floor; _imela_, ceiling; _imogo_, window; _bire_, bookbinder, _birer_, to bind books. . . . _Idem_ at 141-42. Borges is not totally satisfied with Wilkins' universal language, and that is where the passage that originally caught my attention appears: These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled _Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge_. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into: (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance. _Idem_ at 142. But what is interesting is the way that Borges seems to have prefigured the entire content of this HUMANIST list. Thus in discussing the notation used by Wilkins, Borges had already noted (at page 141) that "Descartes had already noted in a letter dated November 1629 that by using the decimal system of numeration we could learn in a single day to name all quantities to infinity, and to write them in a new language, the language of numbers." And then he adds, in a footnote, in what strikes me as the perfect marriage of humanism and computer bits: Theoretically, the number of systems of numeration is unlimited. The most complex (for the use of divinities and angels) would record an infinite number of symbols, one for each whole number; the simplest requires only two. Zero is written 0, one 1, two 10, three 11, four 100, five 101, six 110, seven 111, eight 1000. . . . It is the invention of Leibniz, who was apparently stimulated by the enigmatic hexagrams of the Yi tsing. And this, in turn, should, of course, lead us--at least those of us who have read Quine's variation on the theme in his "Quiddities"--to Borges' "The Total Library" (which appears in Monegal and Reid at pages 94-96) where it is proposed that, by the use of twenty-five symbols (twenty-two letters, the space, the period, the comma), left to chance recombination and repetition, one could write "everything it is possible to express: in all languages." But, of course, we know--and surely Borges already knew--that only the two binary symbols of Leibniz are needed to express that universal library, though whether the coding should be ASCII or EBCDIC is a matter perhaps best left unresolved. (It was Quine who pointed out--or so it must appear in one of the books in the Total Library--who pointed out that one would need only two books, one containing just the symbol `1', the other just the symbol `0', plus some simple rules for stringing them together, to represent all the information contained in that library.) Now, if this is true, then I have in my head--like Funes the Memorious (who appears in "Fragment on Joyce" in Monegal and Reid at pages 134-36), but more so--the contents (or, at least, the means of generating the contents) of every book that could ever be written. And if that is so, then this message has, sub species aeternitas, been written by Borges, or by me, or by Pierre Menard, and need not be repeated here. Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University--Law School From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0299 Holmes; Borges and Foucault; ...and Kuhn; Zen (4/103) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 16:14 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 698 (784) Yes indeed, EMPTY MIRROR. How easily that title expunges itself, by mere suggestion! And yes, that one hand clapping certainly does call the dithering monkey minds of the assembled little monks back to reality, that sudden sharp crack of the palm on the table! That, that is reality itself. What a nice thing is e-mail when so many can help refresh the one. Kessler From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0299 Holmes; Borges and Foucault; ...and Kuhn; Zen (4/103) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 90 16:17 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 699 (785) Afterthought to Junger: in Saul Bellow's HENDERSON THE RAIN KING, Henderson, who cannot grasp his own monkey mind, let alone reality, gets his first (zen) glimpse when a log of firewood he is splitting jumps up from the ax and hits him squarely in the forehead (where his 3rd eye would be, if it were awakened), and the shock and the light are his first intimation. We need shocks. And that is the sound of the one hand clapping too. Only repeated shocks, which are his fate in the novel serve cumulatively to bring him from the slumber that has sealed his spirit, as he says over and over to himself. Kessler again From: Jamie Hubbard <JHUBBARD@WISCMACC> Subject: Machine-Readable Buddhist Texts Date: Sun, 22 Jul 90 11:22 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 309 (786) CONNECTIONS by Jamie Hubbard (jhubbard@smith.bitnet) (from the AAR Buddhism Section Newletter, 6/90) The second meeting of the ad hoc group of scholars interested in the use of computers in Buddhist Studies (known as WCCABS, the Working Committee on Computer Applications in Buddhist Studies, formed under the American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University in 1988) met at the Hsi Lai Temple last November. We updated each other on the various projects underway in our field, with special attention to the Buddhist Canon input projects underway in several parts of the world. I briefly reported on those projects at the AAR/Buddhism Section Business Meeting, and will simply repeat here that information, adding several new developments. TIBETAN The Asian Classics Input Project One of the more exciting moments this year was the recent receipt of a number of disks from the Asian Classics Input Project containing "the ten most often requested titles from the Kangyur and Tengyur collections" including the _Abhisamayalamkara_, _Madhyamakavatara_, Abhidharmakosa_, Pramanavarttika_, _Vinayasutra_, _Mulaprajna_, _Uttaratantra_, Catalog to the Kangyur (Derge edition), Catalog to the Tengyur (Derge edition), Catalog to the Kangyur (Lhasa edition), and the United States Library of Congress Tibetan-language Holdings. Under the Project Director, Michael Roach, these texts were input at Sera Mey Tibetan Monastic University and are distributed in standard ASCII format. The _enlightenedï policy of distribution (_so long as funding allows the data created should be offered to the international community without charge, for the betterment of mankindï) should serve as a light to all of us as we enter the age of information processing in the field of Buddhist Studies. For more information contact The Asian Classics Input Project, Washington Area Office, 11911 Marmary Road, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, 20878-1839, phone (301)948-5569. PALI The Mahidol Edition of the Pali Canon Many of you know that the entire Thai version of the Pali canon was input under the supervision of Dr. Supachai Tangwongsan at Mahidol University, and is available today with software for either Thai or Roman character display, search, and printing of any portion of the canon. This database comprises some 25 million characters, and together with indices occupies the better part of an 80 megabyte drive. Unfortunately, the high cost and unwieldy distribution of the database prevented it from becoming widely available. Fortunately, Lew Lancaster, just back from a visit to Mahidol University, reports that they are interested in making the data available on a CD-ROM, a project that should be relatively easy to accomplish. This summer ought to see the beginning of the pre-mastering stage for this important contribution. The Pali Text Society Edition Two years ago the American Institute of Buddhist Studies secured permission from the Pali Text Society to input and publish electronic versions of their editions of the Pali texts (including commentaries and translations), easily the standard editions in use today. A proposal for funding this project is still pending with the NEH, but in the meantime input has begun at the Dhammakaya Foundation in Bangkok, and several disks have already been received. Lew Lancaster checked their work and reports a high accuracy rate, attained through a double-input of the text followed by semi-automatic and manual verification. It is estimated that the sutta portion will be completed by July, and so work on the pre- mastering of this data set should also be well underway by the time of our conference in November. CHINESE The input of the Chinese canon is perhaps the most daunting of all canon input projects. Several initiatives are underway, including the Fo Kuang Shan sponsored input project to input the Ch'i sha edition that I reported on at our Anaheim meeting. Lew (he was a busy traveler this spring) also made contact with the Korean Lay Buddhist Association, which has pledged their support for the input of the Koryo canon. I have also heard that Professor Ejima, at Tokyo University, has made plans to input the Taisho canon, though I have not heard more on that subject. The Buddhist Text Archive With all of the financial, technical, scholarly, and other difficulties of these large text archive projects it is sometimes easy to lose sight of what is rapidly developing into the single largest database of machine- readable texts in our field¯ all of the research (commentaries), editions, and translations input by individual scholars throughout the world, either first entered into a computer of one sort or another or later printed from a computerized typesetter. The number of English translations and studies produced in the last decade alone would be a substantial database to have available for instant access, not to mention the Japanese, French, German, and other materials. Although the preservation and use of these materials involves significant problems, the fact remains that machine-readable texts and studies are being created every day in great numbers, and something needs to be done to record this information and begin the process of making it available. The Buddhist Text Archive, sponsored by the American Institute for Buddhist Studies, originally announced in this Newsletter (Issue #10) and endorsed by WCCABS at their last meeting, hopes to provide this kind of information-sharing. The Buddhist Text Archive, like other such archives (Oxford, Rutgers-Princeton, the Sanskrit Text Archive, etc.), seeks to collect and disseminate information regarding machine-readable texts, in our case, of interest to the field of Buddhist Studies. Initially the bare-bones information about the text (title, creator, original edition, availability, contents, format, etc.) would be cataloged. It is important to note that the simple existence of a machine-readable version of a text does not mean it is available; hence, your manuscript (your encoded text file) that was just published commercially could still be listed in the archive, even though no distribution was foreseen. The actual collection and distribution of these texts is another step, albeit a distant prospect at this stage. It is intended that this information will be readily accessible via IndraNet, though at this writing IndraNet is still in a state of transition (Bruce Burrill, who donated the original equipment and a great deal of time as the original sysop, turned the system over to the American Institute of Buddhist Studies last autumn). I will keep you posted when IndraNet comes back on-line; in the meanwhile, just think about a few CD- ROMs, with all of the Chinese, Tibetan, Pali, and Sanskrit texts at your fingertips, as well as full text versions of all of the modern research published within the last few decades . . . It is hard not to become slightly giddy at the prospect, but it does look as though we are finally getting closer to the time when such is not just the stuff of dreams (or envy of our colleagues in Classics or Western religious studies) but everyday reality. From: David.A.Bantz@mac.dartmouth.edu Subject: Re: 4.0305 N&Q: Job Announcement; Monitor Hazards Date: 20 Jul 90 21:30:29 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 700 (787) MacWorld, July 1990 issue has a cover story on health hazards from monitors. It is surprisingly comprehensive and critical of the computer industry. Low frequency electrical and magnetic fields have been associated with brain chemistry changes and diminished T-cell production (important in immune response) in experimental animals. Some epidemiological studies have correlated video display usage with elevated risks of cancer or miscarriage; others have apprently failed to find such effects. The industry has sytematically denied any health risks. The MacWorld piece gives measured magnetic field fluxes at several distances in different directions from 10 different monitors. There are also some important caveats about measurements, such as industry decalrations of safety based on measurements of X-ray emissions (negligible) rather than VLF (very los frequency) and ELF (extremely low frequency) electromagnetic radiation. The article cites journal literature, but often with incomplete bibliographical information. From: Jim Cerny <J_CERNY@UNHH> Subject: monitor hazards Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 10:00 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 701 (788) -------------------------------------------------------------------- from CCNEWS Newsletter (CCNEWS@BITNIC), v. 3, n. 21, June 22, 1990: Video Terminals as a Health Issue "I imagine most subscribers have some awareness of the Paul Brodeur's recent book on the potential, but seemingly understudied, electric and magnetic field hazards with which we surround ourselves. Things like video terminals, electric blankets, etc. "For our computer newsletter (ON-LINE), we have always tried to address computing health issues and Brodeur's reporting is something that we, as editors, have tried to follow closely and call to the attention of our readers. Included here is a list of some of the more important and accessible materials we have found. ... [eds.] "There seem to be two main voices emerging here. Brodeur represents one position, which I would colloquially put as: "Hey folks, it looks like we have a real problem here, why aren't people paying more attention." The other position is represented by M. Granger Morgan and associates at Carnegie Mellon University. Morgan heads the Department of Engineering and Public Policy there and I'd colloquially summarize his position as: "We who do research in this field are aware of the risks and they are not anything to get alarmed about -- and besides there are lots of problems with Brodeur's methodology." "For the Brodeur position see: * Brodeur, Paul, 1989, "Currents of Death: Power Lines, Computer Terminals, and the Attempt to Cover Up Their Threat to Your Health, Simon and Schuster. [Originally published in three installments in The New Yorker in June 1989.] * Brodeur, Paul, 1990, "The Magnetic-Field Menace," MacWorld, July 1990, pp. 136-145. [Includes some specific tests done on Macintosh monitors.] "For the Morgan position see: * Morgan, M.G., 1990, review of Paul Brodeur's book, Scientific American, v. 262, n. 4, April 1990, pp. 118-123. * Morgan, M.G., 1989, "Electric and Magnetic Fields from 60 Hertz Electric Power; What Do We Know about Possible Health Risks?," 45 pp. [Done in question and answer format. Includes a subset of the material in his longer study, below.] * Nair, I., et al., 1989, "Biological Effects of Power Frequency Electric and Magnetic Fields," Background Paper, Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress. 103 pp. OTA-BP-E-53. GPO stock no. 052-003-01152-2. Government documents cataloging no. "Y 3.T 22/2:2 B 52/16". [This is particularly useful for the very extensive bibliography, which runs to about 13 pages.] "Presenting this as a Brodeur/Morgan dichotomy of views, reminds me, BTW, of this old joke: All people can be divided into two categories -- those who believe everything can be divided into two categories and those who don't! -- Jim Cerny, Computing and Information Services, University of New Hampshire. j_cerny@unhh From: Donald MacRae <grfmacrae@brocku.ca> Subject: monitors Date: 21 Jul 90 13:44 -0600 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 702 (789) There was an article in MacUSER in February 1990, pp. 147-151, entitled: "Unsafe At Any Frequency?" It might have some useful information in it for him, although I am not sure how "concrete" i.e scientific it really is. The bottom line seems to be "...the best advice we can give is to take reasonable measures to control your exposure." Perhaps that suggests the use of one of the filters for the monitor which will cut down the radiation substantially. These are not cheap, however. If memory serves me right, about $200.00 plus. th e only other alternative seems to be to sit at least a meter from the screen, but at that point, some of us may have trouble reading the dots on the screen!! Don MacRae Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario, Canada. From: Diana Meriz <MERIZ@pittvms> Subject: Computer Monitors Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 15:52 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 703 (790) Charles Ess' recent query regarding low-level radiation from computer monitors brings to mind a rather sobering article on the subject that appeared in the July (1990) issue of MACWORLD. In this report, at least, Apple's own high-resolution RGB monitor does not at all fare well for close-distance viewing, but then neither does any of the other monitors reviewed. One's chances regarding low-level radiation are improved if the monitor is viewed from at least 28 inches' distance (a rather tricky thing to accomplish with a Mac Plus or SE!). Diana Meriz <meriz@pittvms> From: Robert Dale <rda@cogsci.edinburgh.ac.uk> Subject: Carcinogenic Monitors Date: Sun, 22 Jul 90 11:54:26 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 704 (791) See the US edition of MacWorld, July 1990; they have a lengthy feature on this topic, with some references (one of the articles in there is by Paul Brodeur, who wrote a recent book on electromagnetic emissions: "Currents of Death", Simon and Schuster 1989---I haven't seen this book, does anyone have any comments on it?). Seems there's controversy over the evidence, but if those who suggest that monitors are indeed a health hazard are right, it looks like there's little you can do other than complain to the manufacturers until changes happen. Some monitors are worse than others, but all CRT devices are bad, seems to be the story. One way out is the use of LCD displays. This means everyone who has a Mac has to replace it with a Mac portable :-). Things are a little easier on the IBM-alike market -- I think there are a few vendors of LCD displays there. See the latest Whole Earth Review for a mention of one. If you have a large bit-mapped display workstation screen, I think you may have to wait a while for an alternative to appear. R -------- Robert Dale Phone: +44 31 667 1011 x6487 | University of Edinburgh UUCP: ...!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!cogsci!rda | Human Communication Research ARPA: rda%cogsci.ed.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk | Centre, 2 Buccleuch Place JANET: rda@uk.ac.ed.cogsci | Edinburgh EH8 9LW Scotland From: onomata@bengus (nissan ephraim) Subject: hypersatire Date: Sun, 22 Jul 90 20:30:12-020 X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 311 (792) In this note, I wish to answer Alan Corre's interesting note. His description of memorizing is beautiful. [deleted quotation] I dared to be that allusive, for the very reason I adopted hypertextuality. It is like a game going on between the author at layer N, the reader at layer N, and then the author's comment at layer N+1. This way, Alan's remark: [deleted quotation] is just one legitimate, and sought-for (by the author), way to read the text. (By the way, Zeembezoom meant to be obscure, for the purposes of the passage.) On the other hand, the average secular youngster in Israel would certainly not think about a Penthateuchal hapax like "zamzummim", and would rather think of the modern verb "zimzem", that is, "to buzz", whereas a Moselm Israeli would perhaps think of the Zemzem Well in Mecca. As to the insertion of "b", I would expect it from an Italian speaker: "Israele" (for "Israel") is often "Isdraele" as pronounced in Italy. And the Biblical arch-hunter Nimrod had a "b" inserted (not only in Italian); in Italian it became Nembrotte. According to the reader's background, he or she would analyze neologisms differently. For the same reason (unless you read the explanatory note) you would not expect "Shifregaz" to be a proper name for a horse, unless you know about the Midrash (legendary exegesis) that states this was the name of the horse mounted first by Ahasuerus and then by Mordecai (the Book of Esther does not provide us with the name of the horse). An Israeli would rather think of a gas company (a competitor of AmIsra-Gaz? "shifra" could convey an agreeable sense; it is an existing term derived from the same root of the verb Alan used above: "leshaper"). Instead, an Italian confronted with the word "Shifregaz" would rather consider it a dialectal-like form of "ci fregasse", a conjunctive mood form of a vulgar verb: the meaning would be: "[that] he would cheat us", or, if followed by the direct object, "[that] he would steal [the object] from us". According to sectors of expected readership, one could try to standardize expectations, but as an exact task, it would be hopeless. My hypertextual note is a reply to the reader's expectations, but they would most often differ. Indeed, one thing is analysis to cope with unknown lexicon, and another one is knowing the conventions about an existing term. Layer N proposes the reader to analyze, whereas layer N+1 proposes the convention. [deleted quotation] This is a 4-literal verb devised according to an idiomatic compound that Alan is quoting by the very acto of neologizing, and that semantically, composes "quickly" + "snatch". Here is another example: in the Haggadah read on the evening of Passover, there is a Jewish Aramaic passage (which in baghdad was repeated in translation, by alternating the Jewish Aramaic text and the Judeo-Arabic translation three times), that includes: "Ha-shata hakha" ("This year [we are] here": "Hassana nihna hon" in Judeo-Arabic, but printed version are more literary.) Out of this idiomatic expression, verb "shattakh" was formed, in the Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic: it means to celebrate Passover evening rite. [deleted quotation] OK. My English translation was inaccurate. Actually, the idea of portion (that in a sense, is a due portion: hence the connection with law) is conveyed by "lehem huqqenu". I think I was thinking also of the Judeo-Arabic sentence "yit`i:nu: haqqu:", that is, "he'll give him his due [portion]". In yesterday's (July 21) Pentateuchal portion, Rashi's comment states that Balaam got his due (he was killed): "we-lo qippehuhu" -- "and they did not withhold his due" -- which incidentally happens to be coincident with another sense of the verb that here is negated: "qippehuhu" means also (in the same stratum of Hebrew) "they did away with him". Thus, if, instead, "qippehuhu" would have held as in the first sense, Balaam would NOT have been killed, as his "due" would have been withheld, and therefore "we-lo qippehuhu" would have been true as in the second sense: "they did not make away with him". This I write to combine Alan's remarks of above, about ambiguity (as in Zeembezoom), with the discussion about "huqqenu" and the due portion, or the lot. [deleted quotation] OK. This is the very reason Masie accepted the form "shedra", and Tscernichowsky did not modify this. However, whereas Masie as a data gatherer was (at least emotionally) rather in a *descriptive* philology mood, his dictionary had a *prescriptive* role: he was Ben-Yehudah successor as the president of the Committee (later Academy) of the Hebrew Language. That institution increasingly emphasized standard forms, from the morphological viewpoint. This is why the term in its form "shidra" prevailed. This narrowing of formation possibilities (according of an ideal of "the smaller, the purer": you find it also among Arabic institutional neologizers) I found worthy of ironizing about. [deleted quotation] OK. I accept the prize. I enjoy contributions to Humanist that are not in my own field, as they allow me to get a taste of things I am not doing. Of course, if I am not interest, I just avoid going on reading. However, my specifical contribution was meant to address several topics combined in "Midde' Muddi'": 1) hypertext; 2) satire (as a genre, and as content); 3) wild neologizing (in literature, you find it, e.g., in Carlo Emilio Gadda, who wrote in an Italian-based linguistic pastiche); 4) Hebrew. In a sense, four different in-groups are addressed, and you prized me just for point four, dear Alan... Ephraim Nissan onomata@bengus.bitnet From: Rudolf WYTEK <Z00WYR01@AWIUNI11> Subject: Re: 4.0307 Borges and Foucault Date: Mon, 23 Jul 90 16:58:42 MEZ X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 705 (793) Many thanks for your beautiful and most humane reply, but let me add one afterthought: I, as the universal librarian of this universal library, would refuse to accept data in ASCII or EBCDIC introducing again man-made conventions ... why not use GOEDEL numbers as representation of all possible information? rwy, Univ. of Vienna. From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET> Subject: Re: 4.0307 Borges and Foucault Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 11:09 PDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 706 (794) What has always struck me as the difficulty with the abstrusities of Leibniz, Descartes, and their parodists, especially the witty parodist, Borges, is that to speak of generating the infinite numerations implicit in the concept is to assume, by the impossible leap forward of the mathematical imagination, that what possibility is present already present in the abstract. But, to paraphrase and alter TSEliot, What might[be]remains a perpetual possibility only the world of abstract speculation. ONLY! Borges himself cancels logic out when he has his DON QUIXOTE being written again, letter by letter, as if for the first time, since to say it again as it was said, is superhuman, or metahuman, perhaps? That is, the element, or factor, or whatever the devil it is, of TIME is always amited from the calculator, and time means novelty, time means it has to happen, to come to happen, whatever we mean by futurity. It happens, and has to be integr ated through the present into the past. The history of the atom is also a HISTORY. Viz., the search for the life, or is it halflife, of the proton. The universe can be described only in mathematics; but if it is not static, if it is expanding, then it is still coming into being(ness), always. We do not yet know the history of the first second of the cosmos that we are cognizant of. It is still a matter of speculation (that word!), or hypothesis, and easier word. Before we allow ourselves to be swept in the enthusiasm, the sense of the power of KNOWING, suggested by the being able to say 0, 01, and say everything, we must realize that we cannot say or say meaningfully, our own birth, our own death, o ur own next moment, even before it is known that the next thing I will type will be a [.] (and perforce, a naming of my name, Kessler at UCLA). From: John Lavagnino <LAV@brandeis.bitnet> Subject: Quotation source sought Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 16:44 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 707 (795) An acquaintance seeks the source of this quotation: When I asked Mr. Church if he was himself the architect, he replied, ``Yes, I can say, as the good woman did about her mock turtle soup, `I made it out of my own head.' '' John Lavagnino, English, Brandeis University From: George Aichele <73760.1176@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Address Request Date: 21 Jul 90 16:02:30 EDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 708 (796) I am seeking an address (email or snail) or phone number for Christine Brooke-Rose. To the best of my knowledge she teaches at the University of Paris. I thought I had her home address (in Paris) but my letter was returned "address unknown." Any assistance would be much appreciated. George Aichele 73760,1176@compuserve.com From: HOKE ROBINSON <ROBINSONH@MEMSTVX1> Subject: Information vs. Knowledge Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 14:57 CDT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 709 (797) Frank Dane's question about the difference between information and knowledge reminds me of an exchange I had with a tutor for student athletes. She had called me about a logic student of mine who would be missing a number of classes because of an athletic road trip, and wanted to know another way (aside from attending class) the student could "get the information," using that phrase a number of times. The presupposition was that the class fed information to the student, which information the student could also get elsewhere, e.g. by reading a book (!). I finally managed to convince her that logic was more than information, but instead was rather like tennis: you need information, but you need to develop a skill, too, one that takes practice. Very good students (which the one in question was not) could get the "knowledge" or "know-how," the skill, from the book together with some practice on their own, but most students needed the instructor, as does a tennis player. Information, I think, has a purely passive, receptive connotation which knowledge does not (necessarily) have. You may inform students that it was Descartes who said, "Cogito, ergo sum," but I don't think they can be said to "know" it until they know something about Descartes and the background of his system. Understanding requires still more activity. See the debates on "Erklaeren vs. Verstehen." From: Jim Wilderotter -- Georgetown University Academic Subject: Holmes Date: Fri, 20 Jul 90 12:50 EST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 710 (798) In keeping with the topic of Sherlock Holmes, here is a quote that most Sherlock Holmes fans should remember: "It had always been a maxim of Holmes's that whenever the possible had been eliminated, the remainder - however improbable - was the truth." Dr. Watson (_The_Seven_Percent_Solution_. New York: Ballantine Books. [1974] page 18). Jim Wilderotter Wilder@Guvax From: "W.Watson" <ERCN94@emas-a.edinburgh.ac.uk> Subject: Winged Paraclete Books Date: 23 Jul 90 15:30:36 bst X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 711 (799) Dr Zinn, With Joy today, I am able to say, Seven Books flew in last Wednesday. Seven books have arrived By the Air-mail way Therefore now it is time to pay. Thirty-Five Ninety-Two won't break the bank, And Grover Zinn we have much to thank . . . Twenty Pounds and Tuppence, in British cash, In sending to you, we'll cut a dash . . . All we would like you to us to say, Is the name of your Banker, down Oxford way . . . And when that is done, we will also insist, That our friends all be glad, upon Humanist. Or - more prosaically - this records the happy conclusion of the query I initiated back in February, about Fr Chrysogonus Waddell's books on the Hymns from the Paraclete; so, thanks again to those who helped at that time. Bill Watson. From: Ruth Glynn <RGLYNN@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK> Subject: Disc vs. disk Date: Mon, 23 JUL 90 14:01:10 GMT X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 712 (800) The rule of thumb Adam Engst defined re disc and disk is not correct. The difference between the two respected in the computer industry and by most publishers is that 'disc' refers to all optical discs, whereas 'disk' refers to magnetic disks. Prior to the emergence of optical media, in the UK at least the preferred form was 'disc' for your floppy and hard disks, with 'disk' being considered an Americanism. There is no good reason for there to be a distinction, but since one has arisen, all OUP's electronic publications now respect the 'disc'/'disk' definitions as above. Ruth Glynn Oxford Electronic Publishing, OUP From: Douglas de Lacey <DEL2@PHOENIX.CAMBRIDGE.AC.UK> Subject: Jewish Inscriptions Project Date: Tue, 24 Jul 90 17:16:48 BST X-Humanist: Vol. 4 Num. 316 (801) Members of HUMANIST may be interested in the following details, and I would certainly be interes