From: Jim Fehlinger (fehlinger@home.com)
Date: Thu Mar 22 2001 - 17:07:08 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> Does this whole "all your base are belong to us" thing strike anyone else
> as being totally inexplicable?
This looks to me like a classic example of Japanglish, which
has always been a source of great hilarity to native English
speakers -- see http://www2.gol.com/users/cmb/japang.html
(or just google on "Japanglish").
I guess it's a sign of the times that one-liners like these are
now coming out of gaming culture. In my day it was TV
commercials ("Where's the beef?", "Parts is parts.", [I kicked
myself for not sticking that one in at the end of the blurb
I posted the other day about the baaad movie _Parts: The Clonus Horror_],
"It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."),
TV shows ("He's dead, Jim.") or even **books** ("Consider it
evolution in action" from Pournelle & Niven's _Oath of Fealty_).
Speaking of one-liners, I'll bet there are a number of folks
on this list who have heard of Nancy Lebovitz (I know that
Robin Hanson has, because she's mentioned in the acknowledgements
of his paper "If Uploads Come First"
( http://www.primitivism.com/uploads-dawn.htm ).
I'm a little surprised, in fact, that she hasn't shown up on the
Extropians', but she's everywhere on rec.arts.sf-lovers (or I guess that's
rec.arts.sf.written, these days. Anyway, if you know her you
know that she makes and sells calligraphic buttons (formerly at SF
conventions, where she has been a habituee for decades, and now
on the Web, http://www.nancybuttons.com/ ).
I used to know Nancy in the flesh, circa 1975, when she used to hang out
around the Student Center at the University of Delaware playing her
recorder (the wooden flute kind, not the electronic kind). When I bicycled
back to town from the lab technician job I had at DuPont Instruments,
I'd have dinner at Jimmy's Diner on Main Street in Newark, and she'd
often pop up around the same time. I was into behaviorism then
(B. F. Skinner's _Beyond Freedom & Dignity_, _Science and Human
Behavior_, and so on), from which she tried strongly to dissuade me.
I had checked out Skinner's _Verbal Behavior_ from the university
library, and she remonstrated with me "Don't you know that's been totally
discredited? What about Chomsky?". "Who's Chomsky?" [blush].
Ah, well, that was in a past life.
Now if you'll excuse me, I feel a hot fit coming on ;-> .
(Not that) Jim
"When a passenger of the foot hove in view, tootle the horn;
trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he
still obstacles your passage tootle him with vigor and express
by word of mouth warning, 'Hi, Hi.'"
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