Does Slow Johnny still pull the wings off flies

On Saturday, January 16, 2021 at 4:17:43 PM UTC-8, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:00:41 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 8:06:06 PM UTC-8, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:34:41 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 18:58:23 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2021 6:04 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I suspect that the next translation of the bible will be into text
message abbreviations and acronyms, which is the common language of
todays youth:
https://www.webopedia.com/reference/text-message-abbreviations/

Long ago I read a science fiction novel (probably by Heinlein) that
featured some sort of secret society. As I recall, to be inducted one
needed a high degree of intelligence; but once inducted, trainees
learned a new language, one that was heavily abbreviated. The claim was
that we think by internal use of language, so learning a language whose
information was very dense (in terms of ideas per syllable) allowed much
faster processing of data - i.e. faster and more efficient thinking.

I read the same story, but can't recall the name or author. I did
some random Googling for clues, but can't recall enough of the story
to construct a working key word search. As I vaguely recall, my first
thoughts were that high speed thinking was of marginal value because
it also accelerates one's rate of making mistakes and reduces the
available time to consider side effects and "what can go wrong"
thoughts after the high speed decisions are reached. While one can
probably learn to communicate at high speeds, there's no guarantee
that they will also think at high speeds.
Found it! It's _Gulf_ by Robert A. Heinlein.

Wikipedia says that the story was written after the table of contents
for the magazine was composed, which explains why it fits its title
very loosely.

I was never able to understand why do many writers visualized a race superior to humans when the ultimate thing made by the hand of God himself with all of his foibles is the human being.
No Tommy God did not make humans he made Adam and Eve who in turn made
the rest of humanity. And, quite obviously the blight set in very
early in the game. After all, One of their sons murdered the other
one.

Perhaps you you should spend a little time reading Genesis before shooting your mouth off.

On Saturday, January 16, 2021 at 4:39:44 PM UTC-8, Ralph Barone wrote:
John B. wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:00:41 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 8:06:06 PM UTC-8, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:34:41 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 18:58:23 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2021 6:04 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I suspect that the next translation of the bible will be into text
message abbreviations and acronyms, which is the common language of
todays youth:
https://www.webopedia.com/reference/text-message-abbreviations/

Long ago I read a science fiction novel (probably by Heinlein) that
featured some sort of secret society. As I recall, to be inducted one
needed a high degree of intelligence; but once inducted, trainees
learned a new language, one that was heavily abbreviated. The claim was
that we think by internal use of language, so learning a language whose
information was very dense (in terms of ideas per syllable) allowed much
faster processing of data - i.e. faster and more efficient thinking..

I read the same story, but can't recall the name or author. I did
some random Googling for clues, but can't recall enough of the story
to construct a working key word search. As I vaguely recall, my first
thoughts were that high speed thinking was of marginal value because
it also accelerates one's rate of making mistakes and reduces the
available time to consider side effects and "what can go wrong"
thoughts after the high speed decisions are reached. While one can
probably learn to communicate at high speeds, there's no guarantee
that they will also think at high speeds.
Found it! It's _Gulf_ by Robert A. Heinlein.

Wikipedia says that the story was written after the table of contents
for the magazine was composed, which explains why it fits its title
very loosely.

I was never able to understand why do many writers visualized a race
superior to humans when the ultimate thing made by the hand of God
himself with all of his foibles is the human being.

No Tommy God did not make humans he made Adam and Eve who in turn made
the rest of humanity. And, quite obviously the blight set in very
early in the game. After all, One of their sons murdered the other
one.
If humanity is the pinnacle of all of God’s creations, it casts serious
doubt on the concept of a perfect, infallible God.
Did you think that God made man only to worship him? Or to be a fallible lot attempting to reach the level of a civilized God?

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:19:00 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Saturday, January 16, 2021 at 2:59:14 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, January 16, 2021 at 2:29:19 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 3:11:11 PM UTC-8, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 15 Jan 2021 10:20:43 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 5:43:43 PM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 1/14/2021 7:20 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 4:15:02 PM UTC-8, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 10:01:56 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 11:49:04 +0700, John B.
wrote:

Well, certainly there are various "versions" of the Bible and some of
the instructions are a bit different. "Thou shall not kill" in some
versions and "Thou shall not commit murder" in others for instance

New versions appear constantly. The latest is the MEV (Modern English
Version) which takes the KJV bible and translates the 17th century
idioms and terminology, into modern English. It was finished in 2013.
https://modernenglishversion.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_English_Version

It's the idioms that drive readers nuts. One famous example is from
WWII, when a misunderstanding of the phrase "table the motion" brought
an important military meeting to a grinding halt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_(parliamentary_procedure)
That's just one example, and the bible is crammed full of idioms.

"Thou shalt no kill" is not sufficient in a court of law. Question
arise as to exceptions and killing what? Is it acceptable to
slaughter animals for food? Some attempts have been made to clarify
such details, usually resulting in a bible that reads like a legal
document or history book:
https://gnt.bible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_News_Bible

Incidentally, here's a vocabulary list extracted from the KJV bible:
https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.tbsbibles.org/resource/collection/D1B0BDBE-CD9E-4D12-BBDD-138677F98835/Bible-Word-List-and-Reading-Plan.pdf
Most of the words and phrases on the list are in dire need of
translation to modern terms.
Another thing, regarding the Bible is that of translation. As I have
lived in a number of non-English speaking countries I have been made
aware that literal translations are frequently meaningless, if even
possible, and even worse people often use nicknames and phrases that
when literally translated are far different in meaning then what is
meant by those using them. For example, it is very common,
particularly in Bangkok, to hear a man reference "fan phom" which
literally translated is "friend me" but actually means "my wife", a
somewhat different meaning than the translation.

Given that the Jewish holy books weren't originally written in
English, or Latin, but were likely translated first into Greek, and
then into Latin and then into English the chances of misinterpreting a
word or phrase, or even a loyal advocate of one group or another
simply inserting a totally new word into his copy seems more than
likely.

The Torah or "law" handed down to Moses was in Aramaic. Only scholars could read it for centuries. This was eventually translated from several languages into Latin and then the Bible was only available to priests and monks and the like and again, only scholar could read it. During the reformation the Anglo-Saxons wanted a bible that everyone could read and have and at THAT point it was translated into what passed for Saxon under Martin Luther and finally English as England became the colonial power they passed their Protestant Bible to every corner of the globe where native believers then translated it into local languages. The word "engraver" had the origin in reproducing religious texts.

Moses' Jehovah couldn't manage writing in Hebrew?

Aramaic was a written language and Hebrew was not for many centuries. There were all sorts of "gospels" since like today, people loved to speak of Jesus never having known him. So the Catholic Church had to sort through these gospels and decide which had authority and which did not. And they were all translated into Latin.
https://patternsofevidence.com/2019/...irst-alphabet/
"the first Hebrew writing is called “Old Hebrew” or “Paleo-Hebrew.”
This is known from inscriptions found from about 900 BC in the
kingdoms of Israel and Judah until the destruction of the Temple in
Jerusalem and the exile of many of Judah’s inhabitants to Babylon
around 586 BC."
Since you're the expert in a religion you know nothing about perhaps you'd like to explain to us why the Torah is written in Aramaic and is read by scholars that way to the present day?
Uh, Tom, it was written in Hebrew. Google it. I know this from going to friend sons' Bar Mitzvahs and seen those stressed out boys struggle through their Hebrew Torah reading.
Originally old Hebrew was not a written language which is why the Torah that Moses brought down from the mountain from the burning bush was in the language that Moses was fluent in. Question: Since there was no such thing as paper at that time and papyrus could only be found near the River Nile, where did Moses get the papyrus upon which to write down the words of God directly? And where did he get the coloring with which to write? Ink was only known in China at the time.

Tommy, do you make things up deliberately? Or does it come to you in a
dream.

Moses quite obviously must have spoken the Egyptian of his times,
after all he was educated as a part of a member of the Egyptian
royalty. And equally obvious he must have spoken the language of God,
who spoke to him from the burning bush, probably ancient Hebrew.
As for paper, the first known use of paper seems to date from about
225 B.C., in China so obviously Moses couldn't have used that.
However, the earliest known fragment of written papyrus, The Ebers
Papyrus, dates from approximately 1550 B.C.

As Moses was said to have lived from about 1391–1271 BC, some 200
years after papyrus had been used in Egypt there is no reason that he
couldn't have written God's Word on that "paper".

Now Tommy, the above is not some sort of archaic knowledge known to a
few initiates it is rather commonly known, to those interested in the
subject. I googled the term "The Ebers Papyrus" and got 440,000 "hits"
so you could have looked it up and have spoken from a background of at
least minimal knowledge instead of the subject instead of your usual
blathering of weird notion that is your usual contribution.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 16:41:15 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Saturday, January 16, 2021 at 4:17:43 PM UTC-8, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:00:41 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 8:06:06 PM UTC-8, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:34:41 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 18:58:23 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2021 6:04 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I suspect that the next translation of the bible will be into text
message abbreviations and acronyms, which is the common language of
todays youth:
https://www.webopedia.com/reference/text-message-abbreviations/

Long ago I read a science fiction novel (probably by Heinlein) that
featured some sort of secret society. As I recall, to be inducted one
needed a high degree of intelligence; but once inducted, trainees
learned a new language, one that was heavily abbreviated. The claim was
that we think by internal use of language, so learning a language whose
information was very dense (in terms of ideas per syllable) allowed much
faster processing of data - i.e. faster and more efficient thinking.

I read the same story, but can't recall the name or author. I did
some random Googling for clues, but can't recall enough of the story
to construct a working key word search. As I vaguely recall, my first
thoughts were that high speed thinking was of marginal value because
it also accelerates one's rate of making mistakes and reduces the
available time to consider side effects and "what can go wrong"
thoughts after the high speed decisions are reached. While one can
probably learn to communicate at high speeds, there's no guarantee
that they will also think at high speeds.
Found it! It's _Gulf_ by Robert A. Heinlein.

Wikipedia says that the story was written after the table of contents
for the magazine was composed, which explains why it fits its title
very loosely.

I was never able to understand why do many writers visualized a race superior to humans when the ultimate thing made by the hand of God himself with all of his foibles is the human being.
No Tommy God did not make humans he made Adam and Eve who in turn made
the rest of humanity. And, quite obviously the blight set in very
early in the game. After all, One of their sons murdered the other
one.

Perhaps you you should spend a little time reading Genesis before shooting your mouth off.

Well, you could excite us with your vast knowledge so please advise us
whether The God of Abraham did or did not create Adam and Eve? And
whether or not one of their sons did or did not murder the other son.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 16:41:15 -0800, Tom Kunich scribed:

On Saturday, January 16, 2021 at 4:17:43 PM UTC-8, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:00:41 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:


I was never able to understand why do many writers visualized a race
superior to humans when the ultimate thing made by the hand of God
himself with all of his foibles is the human being.
No Tommy God did not make humans he made Adam and Eve who in turn made
the rest of humanity. And, quite obviously the blight set in very early
in the game. After all, One of their sons murdered the other one.

Perhaps you you should spend a little time reading Genesis before
shooting your mouth off.

Is that the bit with all the begitting and begatting. I got up to that
bit and decided I wouldn't begitting anything reading this silly book,
unless i was begatting myself out of here into the real world. Never
been back since.

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 08:01:39 +0700, John B.
wrote:

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:19:00 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Saturday, January 16, 2021 at 2:59:14 PM UTC-8, jbeattie wrote:
Uh, Tom, it was written in Hebrew. Google it. I know this from
going to friend sons' Bar Mitzvahs and seen those stressed out
boys struggle through their Hebrew Torah reading.

I still recall going through the Bar Mitzvah ordeal process. Stressed
out boys was a chronic problem for the rabbis, who had an excellent
solution. Part of the ceremony was the Bar Mitzvah brat would drink
from a cup of wine. That should calm him down a little. I had no
idea what was going to be in the cup and it hit me unexpectedly.
Instead of wine, they had substituted some kind of non-alcoholic
energy drink, probably to avoid prosecution for contributing to the
delinquency of a minor. It was mostly of grapefruit juice and I hated
grapefruit juice. I made a rather sour face, which the audience
decided was humorous and which brought the proceedings to a temporary
standstill.

Originally old Hebrew was not a written language which is why
the Torah that Moses brought down from the mountain from the
burning bush was in the language that Moses was fluent in.

Moses received a royal primary education which was in Egyptian. As a
hot headed adolescent, he got into a fight, killed a local, and had to
leave town in a hurry. He ended up in the Land of Midian, which was
probably somewhere in the Arabian peninsula for 40 years in exile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midian
https://ancientexodus.com/where-was-ancient-midian-2/
Midian was founded by one of descendents of Abraham. In Midian,
Moses's knowledge of Egyptian was useless, so he switched to the local
tongue, which was probably spoken Aramaic. As a sheep herder, Moses
would have no need to do any reading or writing.

Incidentally, Moses and the suffix "mose" mean "born of" in Egyptian.
Since nobody knew the name of Moses' father, they just left off the
name.

Question: Since there was no such thing as paper at that time
and papyrus could only be found near the River Nile, where did
Moses get the papyrus upon which to write down the words of
God directly?

He used parchment or vellum. Parchment is made from untanned animal
hides and could only be written on one side. Vellum is made from much
finer calves skin and can be written on both sides. For "ink", they
used a concoction of soot, plant sap or gum, and water. Same as the
Greeks.

Contrary to the CB DeMille version of the Ten Commandments, God did
not inscribe his commandments on two slabs of stone. If he did, it
would have been inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphic. God might have
been clever and used clay tablets which favored the cuneiform stick
writing. More likely, he suspected that Moses was not going to
survive the trip down the mountain carrying 50 lbs of stone tablets
and opted for something lighter and more familiar such as parchment.

However, there's a problem. Moses was illiterate. He might have been
able to read Egyptian if he could remember any of it from his youth.
If is recall was anything like my ability to recall German, French,
Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish from my youth, forget that idea.
So what to do?

Well, God probably dictated his commandments and Moses took notes. For
writing material, Moses had the sacrificial lamb that was caught in
the thicket on the mountain. For ink, he had charcoal and gum from
the burning bush. So Moses took notes as fast as he could scribble,
probably in a very crude version of a Aramaic or maybe pictograms.

After the burning calf idolatry incident, Moses had to do it all
again. However, this time he was prepared. He probably brought some
writing materials with him up the mountain, or simply hired a scribe
to follow behind.

In any case, what he brought back was probably not readable to the
Jewish scribes who left Egypt who were expected to read the word of
God to masses. As recent refugees, these scribes spoke Egyptian and
not Aramaic. Moses probably couldn't remember Egyptian and certainly
couldn't write it. So, he had his brother Aaron translate Moses's
parchment scribbling into Egyptian. After wandering around the desert
again for another 40 years, someone probably translated it again into
Aramaic. Incidentally, Moses tended to stutter, so he had his brother
Aaron do most of the talking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron

Incidentally, I'm not sure if the translators edited the 613
commandments down to 10, or whether the bureaucracy expanded the
initial 10 to 613 commandments.
https://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm

And where did he get the coloring with which to
write? Ink was only known in China at the time.

The Mechanics of Scriptu Materials Used to Write the Bible
https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Mechanics-of-Scripture

Tommy, do you make things up deliberately? Or does it come to you in a
dream.

I'll not speculate on his motivation or methodology. However, I will
note that whatever he's doing, it's not working.

Moses quite obviously must have spoken the Egyptian of his times,
after all he was educated as a part of a member of the Egyptian
royalty.

Nope. Receiving the 10 commandments on Mt Sinai was 40 years after he
fled from Egypt. Also, his education in Egypt probably did NOT
include writing as that was the job of a scribe and the scribes union
might object. I had much the same problem in the early days of
computers. Upper corporate management did not want to learn how to
operate their personal computer and left the job to their secretaries.
I had a few managers have me send every incoming email directly to the
printer.

And equally obvious he must have spoken the language of God,
who spoke to him from the burning bush, probably ancient Hebrew.

Aramaic would be my guess. Among the tribes and caravan organizers of
the time, it was the main spoken language.

As for paper, the first known use of paper seems to date from about
225 B.C., in China so obviously Moses couldn't have used that.
However, the earliest known fragment of written papyrus, The Ebers
Papyrus, dates from approximately 1550 B.C.

As I previously mumbled, spoken language and written symbols are
fairly independent. Similarly, the writing media varies with the
available resources. Egypt had the Nile river, so writing on reeds
was a economical solution. The nomadic goat herders of the deserts
had animal skins, so that's what they used for writing. In
Mesopotamia, they had river mud, which was quite suitable for
cuneiform stick writing:
https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/Adkins_Cuneiform
If there had been more water and plants, vegetable paper would have
been suitable writing as well as cooking:
https://www.ahlstrom-munksjo.com/campaigns/GVP/
Writing on stone worked for the cave man, but carving in stone really
sucks but has only one advantage. It's fairly permanent.

As Moses was said to have lived from about 1391–1271 BC, some 200
years after papyrus had been used in Egypt there is no reason that he
couldn't have written God's Word on that "paper".

He wasn't anywhere near Egypt when he received the ten commandments. I
suppose the local Midian stationary store only carried the local
parchment and vellum.

Now Tommy, the above is not some sort of archaic knowledge known to a
few initiates it is rather commonly known, to those interested in the
subject. I googled the term "The Ebers Papyrus" and got 440,000 "hits"
so you could have looked it up and have spoken from a background of at
least minimal knowledge instead of the subject instead of your usual
blathering of weird notion that is your usual contribution.

Whatever. What I see here is a very common problem. People like to
believe what they read. Worse, they adjust what they read to conform
to their biases. That's human nature and can't be fixed. Tom did the
right thing by asking the right questions. How did God and Moses
communicate? On what was the original 10 commandments inscribed.
However, he didn't go far enough because that would be trampling on
hallowed ground. Had he dealt with even a few of the problems I've
mentioned, I would have been very impressed. There are still a few
major unanswered questions in the Exodus, such as on what were perhaps
60,000 Jews doing to stay alive wandering around the desert for 40
years? The answer is easy, if you think of it in terms of what would
you and your family do to survive in a desert for 40 years.


--
Jeff Liebermann
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On 16/01/2021 23:54, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 5:21:00 PM UTC-8,
wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 06:11:04 +0700, John B.
wrote:
https://patternsofevidence.com/2019/...irst-alphabet/
"the first Hebrew writing is called “Old Hebrew� or
“Paleo-Hebrew.� This is known from inscriptions found from about
900 BC in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah until the destruction
of the Temple in Jerusalem and the exile of many of Judah’s
inhabitants to Babylon around 586 BC."
More on Old Hebrew:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet Compare the
Old Hebrew characters with the Hebrew characters in the right hand
column. A few a close, but most are very different.

Aramaic is the base alphabet for most of the middle eastern
languages. Notice on the chart that the Imperial Aramaic and Hebrew
characters are fairly similar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_alphabet#Letters

So, why are some characters radically different while others seem
to copied from older character sets? What happened is that the
spoken languages are not necessarily written in the written
language of the same name. Sometimes, the spoken language for a
region is a common language, such as Aramaic was in biblical times.
Everyone spoke Aramaic, but wrote it in a variety of character
sets. Sometimes, either or both the language and character set is
specific to the region, trade, politics, status, etc.

For example, the Emperor of Japan during WWII had a very different
spoke language than what was spoken by the common people. That was
to isolate the Emperor from the common people. That worked well
until the Emperor Hirohito had to give his famous "Bear the
Unbearable" speech near the end of WWII. It went out over
loudspeakers and radio to all over Japan. Nobody could understand
what he was saying, so it had to be repeated by someone else in the
language of the common people.

This kind to stratification was very common in biblical times. The
priesthood had their own language and character set. The various
merchants all spoke Aramaic, but used the written language familiar
to those with whom they were trading.

Something similar happened with the decoding of the Rosetta Stone.
It was the same proclamation written in Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Coptic, and Greek. Greek and Coptic could be read, but not the
hieroglyphics. What Champollion determined was that hieroglyphs
could be read just like Latin characters, where each symbol
represents a sound in spoken Egyptian. By substituting the similar
Coptic equivalents for the hieroglyphs, Egyptian could be read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone#Reading_the_Rosetta_Stone



If you go to Hawaii, they say Hawaiian place names in the native
Hawaiian spoken language, but since there wasn't a written
language, they just borrowed the Latin characters and
pronunciation. Same thing in biblical times. Language and
characters were fairly independent.

Modern Hebrew is also quite different from biblical Hebrew. When
the Zionist movement setup the framework for what was eventually to
become Israel, they had a problem with the language. Hebrew was the
language of the bible and was not easily converted to something
that could be used for everyday commerce. For example, it has very
few technical terms. In an effort to find a quick fix, Theodor
Hertzl wanted to use Yiddish, which is mediaeval German, as the
official language of Israel. Yiddish uses the written Hebrew
alphabet, but is spoken in German. It's much like Polish and
Russian are fairly similar spoken languages, but Polish is written
using Latin characters, while Russian uses Cyrillic (Greek)
characters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB5MtF70xe8

Anyway, I hope this helps disconnect spoken and written languages.
My mother's name was Herz which is nothing more than one of the many
spelling variations of Hertz, Hertzl , Herzle etc. which was the
Austrian Royal Family. What isn't a matter of discussion is that
Moses spoke Aramaic even if he could understand Hebrew. He also spoke
and understood middle Egyptian and Median. Moses received not just
the Ten Commandments but the Torah or "law" We have that until today.
The Talmud is a scholarly interpretation of the Torah and the
prophesies of Moses.

Yesyes, but did he vote for Trump?

On 17/01/2021 01:39, Ralph Barone wrote:
John B. wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:00:41 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 8:06:06 PM UTC-8, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:34:41 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 18:58:23 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2021 6:04 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I suspect that the next translation of the bible will be into text
message abbreviations and acronyms, which is the common language of
todays youth:
https://www.webopedia.com/reference/text-message-abbreviations/

Long ago I read a science fiction novel (probably by Heinlein) that
featured some sort of secret society. As I recall, to be inducted one
needed a high degree of intelligence; but once inducted, trainees
learned a new language, one that was heavily abbreviated. The claim was
that we think by internal use of language, so learning a language whose
information was very dense (in terms of ideas per syllable) allowed much
faster processing of data - i.e. faster and more efficient thinking.

I read the same story, but can't recall the name or author. I did
some random Googling for clues, but can't recall enough of the story
to construct a working key word search. As I vaguely recall, my first
thoughts were that high speed thinking was of marginal value because
it also accelerates one's rate of making mistakes and reduces the
available time to consider side effects and "what can go wrong"
thoughts after the high speed decisions are reached. While one can
probably learn to communicate at high speeds, there's no guarantee
that they will also think at high speeds.
Found it! It's _Gulf_ by Robert A. Heinlein.

Wikipedia says that the story was written after the table of contents
for the magazine was composed, which explains why it fits its title
very loosely.

I was never able to understand why do many writers visualized a race
superior to humans when the ultimate thing made by the hand of God
himself with all of his foibles is the human being.

No Tommy God did not make humans he made Adam and Eve who in turn made
the rest of humanity. And, quite obviously the blight set in very
early in the game. After all, One of their sons murdered the other
one.

If humanity is the pinnacle of all of God’s creations, it casts serious
doubt on the concept of a perfect, infallible God.


Octopuses, anyone that can come up with octopuses gets my vote for
Supreme Being. Anyone that came up with spoonbills needs serious help,
and jellyfish inventors can suffer the nth circle of Tommie's Fantasies.

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 09:04:23 +0100, Tosspot wrote:

On 17/01/2021 01:39, Ralph Barone wrote:
John B. wrote:
On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 15:00:41 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

On Friday, January 15, 2021 at 8:06:06 PM UTC-8, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:34:41 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 18:58:23 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/14/2021 6:04 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

I suspect that the next translation of the bible will be into text
message abbreviations and acronyms, which is the common language of
todays youth:
https://www.webopedia.com/reference/text-message-abbreviations/

Long ago I read a science fiction novel (probably by Heinlein) that
featured some sort of secret society. As I recall, to be inducted one
needed a high degree of intelligence; but once inducted, trainees
learned a new language, one that was heavily abbreviated. The claim was
that we think by internal use of language, so learning a language whose
information was very dense (in terms of ideas per syllable) allowed much
faster processing of data - i.e. faster and more efficient thinking.

I read the same story, but can't recall the name or author. I did
some random Googling for clues, but can't recall enough of the story
to construct a working key word search. As I vaguely recall, my first
thoughts were that high speed thinking was of marginal value because
it also accelerates one's rate of making mistakes and reduces the
available time to consider side effects and "what can go wrong"
thoughts after the high speed decisions are reached. While one can
probably learn to communicate at high speeds, there's no guarantee
that they will also think at high speeds.
Found it! It's _Gulf_ by Robert A. Heinlein.

Wikipedia says that the story was written after the table of contents
for the magazine was composed, which explains why it fits its title
very loosely.

I was never able to understand why do many writers visualized a race
superior to humans when the ultimate thing made by the hand of God
himself with all of his foibles is the human being.

No Tommy God did not make humans he made Adam and Eve who in turn made
the rest of humanity. And, quite obviously the blight set in very
early in the game. After all, One of their sons murdered the other
one.

If humanity is the pinnacle of all of God’s creations, it casts serious
doubt on the concept of a perfect, infallible God.


Octopuses, anyone that can come up with octopuses gets my vote for
Supreme Being. Anyone that came up with spoonbills needs serious help,
and jellyfish inventors can suffer the nth circle of Tommie's Fantasies.

Well, I read that spoon billed birds exist on every continent, except
for Antarctica so they must be considered as at least marginally
efficient :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On 17/01/2021 09:57, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 09:04:23 +0100, Tosspot
wrote:

On 17/01/2021 01:39, Ralph Barone wrote:

snip

If humanity is the pinnacle of all of God’s creations, it casts
serious doubt on the concept of a perfect, infallible God.


Octopuses, anyone that can come up with octopuses gets my vote for
Supreme Being. Anyone that came up with spoonbills needs serious
help, and jellyfish inventors can suffer the nth circle of Tommie's
Fantasies.

Well, I read that spoon billed birds exist on every continent,
except for Antarctica so they must be considered as at least
marginally efficient :-)

Have you seen the courtship ritual?! You get a stick, wander up to the
nearest female, and give it a bit of;

"Oeer Missus! Nice stick see! Fancy a bit of how's your father?"

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/R3CWDA/usa...est-R3CWDA.jpg

It's a miracle they aren't extinct!