That message engraved in Elvish script is transliterated English. It says "health to good friends".
Galen Strawson's sidelit review is a very odd piece of writing. He's reviewing a book which he criticizes for simply assuming the truth of the whole "self-as-narrative" bit, and in the middle of it he baldly states:
There is a deep divide in our species. On one side, the narrators: those who are indeed intensely narrative, self-storying, Homeric, in their sense of life and self, whether they look to the past or the future. On the other side, the non-narrators: those who live life in a fundamentally non-storytelling fashion, who may have little sense of, or interest in, their own history, nor any wish to give their life a certain narrative shape. In between lies the great continuum of mixed cases.
Er, Galen, would you like to prop that assertion up with some evidence or references? If not, you are doing precisely the same thing you are complaining about in book you review.
He then goes on to suppose that the narrative of the self-narrator is a fiction or even a lie, which is missing the point of the the self-as-narrative completely.
I was watching a cool documentary on BBC last night called Motherland in which the makers funded DNA tests for a couple of hundred British black people to try and find out where in Africa their ancestors might have originated (via the Caribbean and originally the slave trade).
One man in four had a Y chromosome which traced back to Europe, not Africa, which the reserarchers put down to that "good to be the king" power factor.
One case was very striking: a test of Mitochondrial DNA for a woman named Beaula gave eight matches from the database of tens of thousands of samples used.
All eight were from the island of Boiko in Equatorial Guinea. Further DNA tests on the island turned up two women of the Bubi tribe with the exact same mDNA, women who shared a recent matrilineal ancestor with Beaula.
She visited them, and they welcomed her to the tribe. It was very cool.
Your recent sidelight on Clinton's jokewriter makes this point neatly, with the bit about the egg-timer.
If Walter died in 1999, he lived to see the Good Friday Agreement of Easter 1998, the likes of which many of us did not believe we ever would, so it was not all disaster and hopelessness.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Fellini is the man. Bruno Latini is more mellifluous than my original thought, Da Vinci. If I were a Jawa auteur with some creative control, I'd want a score by Enrico Nicola Mancini.
Last time I rode the MetroNorth, you could buy cocktails from a guy with a little cart on the platform for the commute, and while I'm partial to pink gin, Jawas naturally prefer a dry martini.
As for speeders, I was thinking of this:
http://www.timpelen.com/images/cars/tn_diablo_roadster_sv.jpg
And the Duke? Uno Jawa, una voce!
Bryan, the Puccini reference was a small joke inspired by my purchase at the weekend of a Naxos CD for the princely sum of 7 euros called "The Best of Puccini" (I listen to a lot of "classical" music, but I'm not an opera fan [sotto voce: yet]).
Anyhow, the name Puccini was rattling around in my head, and the old pattern recogniton wetware found a match:
The Jawas are the little guys with glowing eyes in dressing gowns from the movie "Star Wars", not to be confused with Jabba from the later movies.
Mostly they speak in indistinct high-pitched muttering, but early in the film, when the droid R2D2 is ambushed in a desert canyon and shot with a tazer gun, a Jawa calls out an order, a rare example of a clearly heard word of the Jawanese language, which sounds something like:
"Oocheenie!"
Hence my post, and a host of other obvious questions. What kind of mushrooms to Jawas like? Which character in Disney's "Alladin" is most popular with Jawas? What do Jawas call courgettes? Which Renaissance polymath is revered by the Jawas? Which Pacific atoll was formerly a secret Jawa base? Which director has won the most Oscars on Tattoine?
Or getting further afield: What do Jawas drink on the MetroNorth commute from Grand Central to Bronxville? What make of speeder sells best to Jawas? What's the name of the One Duke of the Jawas?
Authors note: too much of this may strain your vocal cords. Imitate Jawas sensibly.
Q. Which operatic composer is most popular on the Jawa's homeworld?
In addition to the outright misogyny and veiled antisemitism, I note from the linked material that Gibson is a creationist who doesn't believe in evolution. This puts him strictly at the lunatic fringe of Roman Catholicism.
Mind you, I have a neighbour who's in the same camp, she never misses a chance to lecture anyone she can buttonhole about the Latin liturgy and the false pope and all that.
My dog hates that woman. Barks like a loon every time she comes in view.
That'll do, Liath, that'll do.
We mustn't ignore the fact that not once, ever, has the Martian regime gone to the people in a free and open election. Never in the history of the planet! Clearly we must bring Democracy and Freedom to Mars.
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|---|---|
| 2004 | 11 |
| 2003 | 2 |
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