From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #50 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Wednesday, March 1 2000 Volume 02 : Number 050 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: o/re-posting ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/re faithdreams ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/fights (also m/Beethoven) ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/ some speculations [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: m/Beethoven [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: m/Beethoven ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/ some speculations ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/ some speculations [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/ some speculations [allenw ] Re: b/ some speculations ["David S. Bratman" ] www.archfiend.org is available for registration [klh@technologist.com] b/whoareyou ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: os - administration (was Re: b/ thunder) [meredith ] Re: b/whoareyou [allenw ] Re: b/whoareyou [GHighPine@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 07:43:30 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: o/re-posting On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > To put it another way, this list feels like a "workshop" situation > (while re-posting or putting it on the Net feels like a > "publication" situation); I feel like whatever wild stray thought > crosses my mind I can post here, and maybe it'll strike sparks with > someone else (or maybe not, which is valuable to know, too). There's > a kind of a "journal" feel to it, as it were. I often find that the audience I'm expecting to read my writing has an affect on the tone: in particular, if I'm expecting a formal audience I tend to freeze up and get pompous. Most of my best formal papers, including everything I've written for NYRSF, began as stuff for a more informal audience (to be specific, apa contributions). The result of this is that the criticism I most often get from editors is that I'm too informal and chatty, and that at least I can sometimes deal with. > And I also feel that > what's going on here is more of a "discussion" than a "lecture" on > my part, and if you examine the texts I'm posting you'll see I'm > deliberately asking questions, speculating, etc., i.e. leaving > openings for other participants to express an opinion. (Which is why it's > a little disappointing to have long posts met with deafening silence > sometimes, but that's life.) That's because what in fact you're giving is an open-ended lecture (by which I mean one designed to elicit comments and questions, rather than one that's endless). But even real-time lecturers sometimes have trouble getting response, and in any case I believe that online communication is much more akin to oral conversation than it is to paper, and not hospitable to the lecture format. If you'd sent us letters, at least it'd be on paper and we could see it all at once. (Yes, we could print it out, but the nuisance factor of doing so is a barrier.) And if we were in fact conversing, you could be laying out your thoughts while everyone else interjected as you were going on, which is why those short snappy exchanges always worked best on Genie. Also, e-mail lists, or Usenet format, are not as hospitable to this kind of chat as Genie was (a fact often remarked on in Genie). There are apparently far fewer people here than there were reading your Genie topic. And for my part if Genie were still alive I would probably be going through one of those periods when I didn't get to the SFRT for a month. No time: my new job is fairly intense, and looks to remain that way, and the rest of my time right now is going into getting Charles Williams's Masques to press. In general, although I don't always follow what you're saying (my knowledge of the Dumezil/Levi-Strauss areas of mythic analysis is pretty nil, and my knowledge of Hindu myth still comes mostly from _Lord of Light_), I think it's mostly on the right track: that is, what you're seeing seems to be either to actually be there or else to be a legitimate and significant perception. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 08:19:27 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/re faithdreams On Sat, 26 Feb 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > So let's talk about Faith's dream-trilogy, shall we? > > I'm assuming, for the sake of argument (so argue, if you must) that the > Buffy/Faith dream in "Graduation Day" II is Buffy's, and that in it Buffy > appoints dream-Faith as her "spirit guide" to tell her something she > unconsciously knows "appoints" -- that's interesting, because regardless of whether the dream was shared or not, there's been speculation that what Faith said in the GD2 dream was an actual message from her in some way (even if she was unaware of it, even if she'd been unaware of it if she hadn't been in a coma). I think it makes more sense to see it as Buffy's projection: wishing to see other people as something that they're not is a recurring theme in the show, and this has similarities to that. (Example of the recurring theme: Willow and the witches. She wanted the campus coven to be real; it wasn't; now she's trying to mold Tara into both a powerful witch and a Slayerette, and Tara seems a little reluctant to go.) > It seems clear to me that this is the sequel, or rather the > Faith-alternative, to Buffy's dream in "Graduation Day" II: it's very much > the same serene mood, to start out with, the same sense that both Slayers > feel a deep (unconscious--we're in the unconscious) bond to one > another. It's interesting to note that in Buffy's dream she's visiting > Faith's (shattered) room, while in Faith's dream she's visiting Buffy's > (very tidy) room. I think the whole bed-making routine represents Faith's > fundamental desire to be a part of Buffy's very cosy (as Faith sees > it) domestic situation, and to work with Buffy. Damn right it's unconscious, because Faith hides it very well when awake, and to the extent that she's aware of it, it's the fuel for her resentment. In real life I tend to be very skeptical of the common psychological notion that extreme X masks an underlying desire to be not-X, but in this case I think it works. Buffy is going through something similar, but we're more privy to Buffy's psychological turmoils than to Faith's, and the expression/repression of the "bad girl" in Buffy is another recurring theme. But Buffy as a bad girl is stil different from Faith - more cold, less wild, as Faith's dreams repeatedly note - so perhaps the good Faith is equally alien to Buffy. > Which contrasts strongly > with Faith's feeling, throughout =her= dreams, that Buffy is a cold and > methodical killer, and that Faith is helpless to oppose her. (Whereas our > own instant reaction would be to look at them in the opposite manner.) And here's what's so remarkable about the writing: though Buffy is not like that, Faith is seeing something that is there, and one can understand how Faith feels that way without agreeing with her. Again, this is the kind of psychological trope that's a thousand times more common in fiction than in life, but Faith's aggressive attitude (which has always been there, but has grown over time) may even be a reaction to her perception of Buffy. But since it's more perception than it is reality, it seems to everyone else to be unprompted. This makes the sisters metaphor really appropriate, since sibling rivalry is definitely the kind of thing at hand here. > [Dream 2] The basic situation is a Garden of Eden scenario: the Mayor > and Faith enjoying another idyll. Again, here's something that Faith doesn't want to admit she enjoys: recall her bashful/embarrassed responses to the Mayor's loving-father initiatives: the ice cream cones, the dress. > So in these first two parts we see Faith's longing for a stable, idyllic > situation twice frustrated: one with Buffy and the other with the Mayor, > and both destroyed by Buffy. And why, on the conscious level, did Faith turn to the Mayor in the first place? Wouldn't it be accurate to say that her plans and ideals had been foiled by circumstances in which Buffy figured largely, and that Faith intended to get what she wanted - as Number Six said to the Colonel in "Many Happy Returns", "if not here, then elsewhere"? > Now there's an odd twist of dream-logic that Faith falls into the grave, > Buffy deliberately jumps into the grave...but only Faith emerges. Deirdre > speculates that this is an anticipation of Buffy "turning into" Faith, and > vice versa; it's an attractive idea. I'm not so sure. Since Faith was in there too, this looks more like a Faith-defeats-Buffy (which at the moment, until tonight's episode, is certainly the situation) than a marker of transformation. Of course one could say that since, in the dream, Buffy's still in there, she's "dead" as Faith was dead, but since Faith is no longer dead, it seems strained to pull that comparison. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 08:39:49 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/fights (also m/Beethoven) On Sat, 26 Feb 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > I had a sudden urge to listen to Beethoven piano sonatas tonight (heaven > knows why), so I went to the library and scooped up four > CDs' worth (11 sonatas including the last five and a few of the > famous middle ones). Whose recordings? Richard Goode's set seems to be the current standard-bearer: I don't know it, but I have heard him play live, and he certainly lives up to his name. Arrau and R. Serkin also shine in this repertoire, and they're among my favorite pianists (which goes both ways: it's partly because this is the kind of piano music I most like. Beethoven, Schumann, and Prokofiev are my favorite composers for piano: it's strange that I otherwise like Schubert, but his solo-piano music does nothing for me whatever.) > (The 5th Symphony, like the > Moonlight Sonata, is a masterpiece most people only know the very > first few bars of.) I once managed to demonstrate this. In my high-school music appreciation class, in which it was my job to cue the records (which could be exciting, as most of them were the teacher's old 78s), most of the students had a good layman's ear for music (and some were performers, too). At the Christmas party I was asked to put some music on, and chose an LP of Beethoven's 5th, which I started _with the second movement_. I was going to ask when it was over, "How many of you recognized that?", but I didn't have to: a couple people turned to me and said, "What was that?" The desire to find out what Beethoven's 5th did after going "dah-dah-dah-DUM" (that it began that way was one of two facts I knew about Beethoven's symphonies before I ever heard any, the other fact being that there were nine of them) had led me at an early age to take the trouble to listen to it, and I was spellbound: this was probably the single key event in my discovery of classical music. (Do I think Faith is a superior fighter? Yes I do. Twice now Faith has gotten away when Buffy could have followed her. In the fight last week Buffy had the initial upper hand because of the element of surprise. And while Buffy's body delivered the knockout blow, it had Faith behind it: which shows, as you've implied, that Faith's superiority does not lie in, or merely in, physical strength. Also, this time Faith had the element of surprise: she seems to have known, or guessed, the machine's nature, while Buffy must have been shocked and confused: that certainly seemed to be the expression on Dushku's face.) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 08:45:16 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: o/signon (was: b/this year's girl) On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, meredith wrote: > Hi! > > David complained: > > >After some problems with my e-mail server over the weekend, I'm back on > >the list. I think. Anyway, I've gotten a couple messages overnight. I > >have to say that the new smoe "key confirmation" signon system (more > >complicated than their previous system) sucks, and thanks to Meredith for > >bypassing it for me. > > Actually (always have to step up to defend my system here :), it's not a > new key confirmation system. It's the same one that's always been in > place. The problem you had responding to that, as well as the problems you > had receiving mail from the list were due to a name server problem at Media > One, the ISP that services smoe.org. Fortunately the supreme leader of > smoe.org, Jeff Wasilko is also in a position to be able to fix that problem > at Media One, so once we figured out what was going on he rebooted the name > servers and everything should be fine now. Well, that's a relief. Sometime around then, people writing to me got some more bounce messages (though their mail did get through to me), so I was afraid that Genie was acting up again. Or that I wasn't following the instructions right. What I meant by "new system" is that when we created this list a couple months ago, although I had to send back a confirmatory message to the server to confirm signon, I do not recall that it had to contain a specific key. Though maybe I've forgotten that part. This time it did have to contain a specific key, I put the key in, and I got an error message back saying that I hadn't, which is certainly a perplexing thing to happen. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 09:24:26 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/ some speculations Reply to Gayle's message from a few days ago: By "similarity", I meant "enough similarity to be significant, or to command belief that it's intentional". There are some authors who do indeed play word games on this level, but I've seen no signs of it on _Buffy_ (not even any heavy irony at the name "Faith"), and it's the fact that the show has solid meaningfulness on the symbolic level that is part of its appeal. The writers don't tease you with Hidden Meanings for the sake of Hidden Meanings. And unless, in a given fictional universe, people choose their own names, or the names are given to them in prophecy, I find that it shatters the secondary world to find more than a passing coincidental amuseument in the symbolic significance of names. I'm afraid that the point of my whimsical correspondences did not come through. First, of course, I didn't mean that significant similarity between words consists of a cardinal number of letters, but that it comes in points of similarity vs. points of dissimilarity, and in context. In other words, just as you said in reply, "similarity is a matter of degree". "Oz" vs. "Oz" is of course 100% similarity; so is "Will" vs. "Will"; but to get to 100% we must first shorten to "Will" from "Willow", which is in fact done on _Buffy_: otherwise, despite 4 out of 5 identical sounds, the name Will is too common, and not common enough as a shortening of Willow (and Will Robinson is presumably short for William, an even more different word) for it to strike me as in any way significant. My point was thus not that "Oz" couldn't mean "Oz" because they only had two letters in common, but to say that if you can see a significant similarity between "Walsh" and "Watcher", then all these other similarities are even more obvious and significant. In other words, I wasn't _denying_ the similarities, I was suggesting them sarcastically. Didn't that come across at all? The human mind is capable of seeing similarities between any two things if it tries hard enough, and your comment about how all these words are in the Roman alphabet, in phosphors, etc., goes a long way to proving my point that there is no similiarity. (Or, if you must, that there is no _significance_ in the similarity, but really: is that the way you use the word "similarity"? If someone says of two books, "They're totally different, not similar at all," are you minded to say, "Of course they're similar! They both use the alphabet, have paragraphs, appear in print, etc. etc."? If somone talks of two people with totally dissimilar personalities, do you reply that they both have an ego, superego, and id?) I can't accept the argument that there are more phonetic similarities in the words. Let's look at them: W W identical a a same letter, but I pronounce those two a's slightly differently; I'm not sure if others do t l same point of articulation in the mouth, true, but totally different sounds. To count that as part of a "100% correspondence" is to grant anything. ch sh also part of the same phonetic family as each other, and they certainly come across as more similar- sounding than "t" and "l" do. And even though there are only so many points of articulation in the mouth, I'd be inclined to grant the point if it were the final sound in both. But the word is never "Watch", it's "Watcher": e no correspondence r no correspondence _I'm_ reading things are that are not there? My claim is that you are reading a similarity between "Walsh" and "Watcher" that is not there, and only external evidence (which would fall straight into the Intentional Fallacy, but never mind that, because I don't believe in the Intentional Fallacy), like a comment from the creators, would show otherwise. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:35:44 EST From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/ some speculations My point was that similarity is a matter of degree and of context, not an absolute. The fact that two words are both written in the Roman alphabet may make them "similar" in some contexts, but not in others. "Walsh" and "watch" (the root word) have a 60% letter match, an 80% sound match, and their "shape" is the same. Those matches alone are enough to make them more similar than 99+% of words in the English language, My dictionary must differ from yours. You made the statement that there is no similarity =unless= there is evidence that it is intentional -- that intentionality (or evidence of it) is a prerequisite for similarity. My dictionary somehow leaves out any hint that intentionality plays any role in similarity. (I'm curious about exactly what your dictionary says on the matter.) I guess that when someone says that two species of trees are similar, there is a theological implication in that statement of which I was never before aware. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:35:56 EST From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: m/Beethoven In a message dated 2/29/00 5:42:22 AM Pacific Standard Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << > (The 5th Symphony, like the > Moonlight Sonata, is a masterpiece most people only know the very > first few bars of.) >> I have to confess that while I have played the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata on the piano hundreds of times in my life, I have never heard the sonata in its entirety to my recollection. But Beethoven's 5th, totally agreed on that. For good reason it is considered the greatest symphony ever written (not just the first few notes ever written ;-) . The connected third and fourth movements are my favorite -- especially that powerful part in the fourth movement (occurs a couple of times) where the "pain" returns and turns back into "triumph," IYKWIM. + Sometimes when I am listening to classical music I imagine myself living in a time when there was no such thing as recorded music, when the only way that you could hear these pieces was by going to a concert hall and hearing a full orchestra perform it live -- what a different experience from a time in which orchestral music has become so "cheap" it bores people in elevators! And when I listen to it I imagine how astounding Beethoven's 5th must have been at a time when music had never explored such deep powerful emotion before and people heard it for the first time performed live by a full orchestra. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 11:53:13 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: m/Beethoven On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 GHighPine@aol.com wrote: > Sometimes when I am listening to classical music I imagine myself living > in a time when there was no such thing as recorded music, when the only way > that you could hear these pieces was by going to a concert hall and hearing a > full orchestra perform it live -- what a different experience from a time in > which orchestral music has become so "cheap" it bores people in elevators! It was indeed a different experience; and the only way most people (among that subset who got a chance to hear high-art music at all) got to know orchestral music was through arrangements, which typically were for piano four-hands. There was lots of home music-making among the gentry in the 19C, an activity which pretty much died out around the time the phonograph reached its first level of maturity, around 1900-1910. Have you seen the film _Paradise Road_? It's the Glenn Close film telling the true story of women in a Japanese POW camp in WW2, some of whom were musicians and kept the group's spirit up by forming a vocal orchestra (they had no instruments, of course) to hum great music which their conductor had written down from memory. Long before the film came out, I found an LP on which these works had been recorded by a chorus working from the surviving manuscripts. It was stunning to hear, and the film captures some of that. > And when I listen to it I imagine how astounding Beethoven's 5th must have > been at a time when music had never explored such deep powerful emotion > before and people heard it for the first time performed live by a full > orchestra. Absolutely. And what a shame that so many people consider this work a tired old warhorse. They have lost their ability to hear it afresh. It was totally astounding when new. A man who attended the premiere wrote that when it was over, he got up to leave, but when he tried to put on his hat he could not find his head. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:31:08 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/ some speculations On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 GHighPine@aol.com wrote: > My point was that similarity is a matter of degree and of context, not an > absolute. The fact that two words are both written in the Roman alphabet > may make them "similar" in some contexts, but not in others. Precisely! And in this context they are NOT SIMILAR. > "Walsh" and "watch" (the root word) have a 60% letter match, an 80% sound > match, and their "shape" is the same. Those matches alone are enough to make > them more similar than 99+% of words in the English language, We aren't dealing with "watch" (the root word). The word is always "Watcher". To use "watch" is a forced change intended to push it in the direction of being more similar. The shape is not the same, the letter match is less than half, and the sound match is even less than that. (And it's not even 80% between "Walsh" and "watch", as "sh" and "ch" aren't the same sound; and as I mentioned, I hear the two "a" sounds as different.) And there are a lot more than 99 words in the English language. How many, half a million? 99% of that is five THOUSAND. With that many to chose from, you can force a meaningful similarity to something relevant out of any word you choose. Which I proved with my facetious list. It would be virtually impossible for the creators of the show to choose a set of names which did NOT have an accidental, meaningless similarity in it somehow. > You made the statement that there > is no similarity =unless= there is evidence that it is intentional -- that > intentionality (or evidence of it) is a prerequisite for similarity. No I did not. Read it again. Quoting from memory, because I can't look at two messages at once on this system, I said that by similarity I meant "enough similarity TO BE SIGNIFICANT" (a limitation on the meaning of "similarity" which you allow: see your first paragraph) "_OR_ one which commands belief that it's intentional," which I put in as an out because sometimes extremely loose similarities of this kind are indeed intentional. But in this case I don't think it is, because I've seen no evidence that Whedon & company do things like this, and for reasons that I stated before I'd think less of them if they did. It's a meaningless coincidence. Most of your observations on _Buffy_ are not only dead-on (in my view), but they expand my understanding of the show, opening out breathtaking new intellectual vistas. Observing that Walsh is to Riley something close to what Giles is to Buffy (and the Mayor to Faith) is a good example. But to nail it down by kabbalistic letter-marking (are we going to prove that the Mayor is like a Watcher too because _his_ last name begins with a W? After all, it could so easily have been some other letter, and there's 26 to choose from, and what are the chances that both he _and_ Maggie would have names beginning with the same letter as Watcher?), even if it's intentional or significant, is narrow and petty. Instead of broadening out the show, it diminishes it. >My > dictionary somehow leaves out any hint that intentionality plays any role in > similarity. (I'm curious about exactly what your dictionary says on the > matter.) What does _your_ dictionary say about similarity being "a matter of degree and of context"? If it doesn't, then can we kindly can this rushing off to dictionaries? Mine says "having a general resemblance but not exactly the same"; it doesn't say anything about degree or context, although they obviously apply. > I guess that when someone says that two species of trees are > similar, there is a theological implication in that statement of which I was > never before aware. Even if I had said that similarity was only a matter of intention, this would not be a meaningful rejoinder. First, of course, we are talking about this whole thing in the context of works of art, which do have creative intentions. Second, if one believes in God, and that he created species of trees either through special creation or through directed evolution, then yes, the similarities are intentional. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 14:43:26 EST From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/ some speculations In a message dated 2/29/00 9:35:11 AM Pacific Standard Time, dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: << > You made the statement that there > is no similarity =unless= there is evidence that it is intentional -- that > intentionality (or evidence of it) is a prerequisite for similarity. No I did not. Read it again. Quoting from memory, because I can't look at two messages at once on this system, I said that by similarity I meant "enough similarity TO BE SIGNIFICANT" >> Your exact words: << What similarity of "Watcher" and "Walsh"? The first two letters? That's not enough to make a similarity (unless one has some other evidence that it was intended). >> IOW, similarity is dependent on intentionality. A point which you make over and over again; I have addressed the question of intentionality not at all, and you keep tying similarity with intentionality. There is a 60% phonetic match and an 80% phonetic correspondence between "Walsh" and "Watcher." As a linguistics major who has studied sound correspondences and sound changes in related languages rather extensively, I know that such a similarity would be significant from a linguistics standpoint. I have addressed the question of intentionality not at all. But since, to you, similarity must be intentional in order to exist, I take it that you do not share Donald's belief in Jungian synchronicity. Any correspondences he finds in his research either must have conscious intention behind them or else they have no significance (whatever THAT vague word means). Let's see, the correspondence between snake & thunder in Faith's dream and snake & lightning in Hopi mythology -- did that come from conscious intention on Doug Petrie's part ("Let's put a Hopi reference in there") or does the similarity not exist? You allow no other alternatives. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 14:43:48 -0600 (EST) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/ some speculations On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 GHighPine@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/29/00 9:35:11 AM Pacific Standard Time, > dbratman@genie.idt.net writes: > << > > You made the statement that there > > is no similarity =unless= there is evidence that it is intentional -- that > > intentionality (or evidence of it) is a prerequisite for similarity. > No I did not. Read it again. Quoting from memory, because I can't look > at two messages at once on this system, I said that by similarity I meant > "enough similarity TO BE SIGNIFICANT" >> > Your exact words: > << > What similarity of "Watcher" and "Walsh"? The first two letters? That's > not enough to make a similarity (unless one has some other evidence that > it was intended). > >> > IOW, similarity is dependent on intentionality. A point which you make > over and over again; I have addressed the question of intentionality not at > all, and you keep tying similarity with intentionality. Gayle, At the risk of putting words in David's mouth, I think you're misinterpreting his above-quoted passage. My reading of it (and the rest of David's messages) is not that David thinks "similarity is dependent on intentionality", but rather that David doesn't think "Watcher" and "Walsh" have enough points of structural correspondance to be meaningfully called "similar". He does go on to imply, in his parentheses, that if there was some evidence that they were intended to be similar, he might revise his opinion, so apparently David does think that intentionality can contribute to similarity, but I see no claims of dependence. -Allen W. p.s. David, I agree about the "a"s being pronounced differently. That being said, isn't this an odd thing to argue about? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 17:53:26 -0500 (EST) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/ some speculations On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Gayle wrote, >> What similarity of "Watcher" and "Walsh"? The first two letters? That's >> not enough to make a similarity (unless one has some other evidence that >> it was intended). > > > IOW, similarity is dependent on intentionality. A point which you make > > over and over again; I have addressed the question of intentionality not at > > all, and you keep tying similarity with intentionality. No, no, no. If a similarity is close enough to be apparent, it needs no excuse. It can even be there if the creators not only didn't intend it, but deny it. IOW, if it were much more than two letters, it _would_ be enough to make a similarity, no reference to intentionality needed. But if a similarity is not that close, THEN it can be verified by intent. This one is not close. You keep going on about 60% and 80% (I thought you were the one who said this couldn't be quantified), but your 80% is flat wrong, and your 60% is a correspondence with THE WRONG WORD. I have to say that it's bewildering, at the least, to have you go on and criticize opinions that you are reading in to my writing that are not only not there, but that I've repeatedly denied. I explained very clearly in my last post that I only mentioned intentionality so that I wouldn't be caught out if what I thought was a coincidence wasn't one. Reading things that aren't there ... seeing similarities that aren't there ... is there a pattern? And Allen wrote, > At the risk of putting words in David's mouth, I think you're > misinterpreting his above-quoted passage. My reading of it (and the rest > of David's messages) is not that David thinks "similarity is dependent on > intentionality", but rather that David doesn't think "Watcher" and "Walsh" > have enough points of structural correspondance to be meaningfully called > "similar". He does go on to imply, in his parentheses, that if there was > some evidence that they were intended to be similar, he might revise his > opinion, so apparently David does think that intentionality can contribute > to similarity, but I see no claims of dependence. Thank you; that's pretty much what I meant. I don't think that "intentionality can contribute to similarity", what I think is that it can DEMONSTRATE similarity when the question is in doubt. My claim is that there's no similarity; it's just a coincidence. If Josh came out and said "No, it was deliberate", then we would know it was indeed a significant similarity. > p.s. David, I agree about the "a"s being pronounced differently. That > being said, isn't this an odd thing to argue about? Perhaps, but the only reason there's an argument is that someone else is disputing what you and I agree about. If we all agree on something, there's no argument, no matter how potentially contentious the subject. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:35:00 -0500 (EST) From: klh@technologist.com Subject: www.archfiend.org is available for registration Those of us who missed www.annoyingsister.com a couple of months ago shouldn't rue missing another. - --------------------------------------------------- Get free personalized email at http://iaf.iname.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 23:16:04 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/whoareyou LET ME KNOW WHEN THERE'S ENOUGH SPOILER SPACE! "I believe decapitation is a problem as well." (Dismemberment, anyone?) My first reaction: Too short. Or maybe: too many plot threads. Yep, I've watched it twice, and I'm still thinking that it wasn't =really= necessary to give Adam so much screen time; surely there was another plot twist that could have served the climax equally well. I'll be curious to see what Gayle thinks, but I know I had my hopes up a bit too high for this (especially when I found out this morning from the Douglas Petrie interview that Joss Whedon had written it), and it fell just a bit short. I think one of the things that's happened is they decided to use delayed reaction, to play out the implications of the situation at more leisure. And to throw the Adam thing in to keep =that= situation rolling. So it ended up not being as much of a switcheroo- fest as I'd hoped. There was =just= enough to make me wish for, oh, even =one= more scene each of Faith-as-Buffy and Buffy-as-Faith. Not that the actors didn't do a swell job. I particularly liked SMG getting Faith's "uh-oh" wild-eyed stare, and Eliza Duskhku getting Buffy's mixing in lame little jokes. =Very= subtle touches: anyone else notice "Buffy" using Faith's near-Canadian "aboot"s? Or that, Faith being lefthanded, "Buffy" used her left hand to kill the vampire outside the Bronze? Swell to give Tara an important plot point to execute. Really hilarious scene with Spike. Oh, the fight. Faith[-as-Buffy] definitely started it this time. Fairly short. Draw. And Faith runs away again. I'm gathering from the lack of "next week" promos that they're doing reruns 3/8. And here I was a good boy and stayed away from the =TV Guide= for next week...Do we have broadcast dates? Or titles for this and last week's =Angel= episodes? I guess that's enough for a first go-through. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 23:19:02 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: os - administration (was Re: b/ thunder) Hi! Gayle noted: > Of course, if the default was for replies to go to the list, that wouldn't >happen, nor would posts sent =only= to individuals by mistake, nor would we >any longer have to manually fix the To: field every time we send a post to >the list. When a referendum was taken about whether the default should be >for replies to go to the list or to the individual poster, did the latter >=really= receive more votes? It was a draw, actually. But since it has become clear that this list isn't going to be able to function like a normal Internet mailing list, I have changed the configuration to automatically send replies to the list. Please be aware, though: personal responses will inevitably slip through to the list at large this way. Make sure you have the correct address in the "to" field when you respond to something you see here! I've seen some really embarrassing situations crop up on other lists that were set up to default list replies (for which reason those lists were changed to send replies to the sender instead, hence the original default configuration here). You can't say I didn't warn you. :) +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:46:16 -0600 (EST) From: allenw Subject: Re: b/whoareyou Donald, I'll leave analyses of the recent eps for a later time (except to say, way to go, Wesley! And Cordelia may have an actual future as an actress. And the W/T subtext is getting a lot more texty. And Buffy doesn't seem to have learned anything about being Faith, but Faith is learning about being Buffy. But I digress.). However, since you were asking about future ep schedules, here's a list from the Upcoming Slayings section of Little Willow's Slayground (http://www.angelfire.com/al/LittleWillow/upcoming.html): FUTURE EPISODE TITLE SPOILERS . . . . . . . . . . . BtVS Season 4, Episode 6: "Wild At Heart" - rerun March 7th - Written by Marti Noxon BtVS Season 4, Episode 17: "Superstar" - circa April - Written by Jane Espenson BtVS Season 4, Episode 18: "Where the Wild Things Are" - circa April BtVS Season 4, Episode 19: "Where the Heart Is" - circa April or May Angel Season 1, Episode 1: "City of" - rerun March 7th - Written by David Greenwalt and Joss Whedon Angel Season 1, Episode 17: "Eternity" - circa April Angel Season 1, Episode 18: "Five by Five" - circa April Angel Season 1, Episode 19: Title Not Known Yet - circa April or May -Allen ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2000 00:27:22 EST From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/whoareyou In a message dated 2/29/00 8:21:17 PM Pacific Standard Time, dgk@panix.com writes: << I'll be curious to see what Gayle thinks, but I know I had my hopes up a bit too high for this (especially when I found out this morning from the Douglas Petrie interview that Joss Whedon had written it), and it fell just a bit short. >> The ep showed us what a rich and complex character Faith is. Rich and wonderful Faith scenes. Great scene with Willow and Tara and the orgasmic spell-casting. Other than that, I found the ep disappointing in many ways. I don't mind being wrong, as long as what they do is better than what I have speculated. Now we are done with Feb sweeps and I am prepared to be disappointed with the rest of the season. The Adam thread seems downright stupid. "I was created to destroy life"? Too bad this switch didn't last for the rest of the season, it was better by far than anything else we have had. So much more could have been explored with Faith, not to mention the possibilities that were left unexplored altogether. My new speculation: we are winding up for a disappointing finale. Gayle ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #50 ****************************