Mmm, yes, that'd work ... a giant plastic tube, probably Imipolex G or one of the other anti-archipelagic polymers ... one end on Chomolongma, frozen into place, and the other in the Islets of Sandwich, hung with flora ... one good suck, and it's like taking gasoline from a tank ... gravity and one of Boyle's laws do the rest. Tourists, torque, tempests and timezones ... the flow of biomass alone would be impressive, never mind the magma.

A curry for Mistah God, you might say. With backing vocals by the Spice Girls, while the Spice Islands are snorted away like cocaine cut with jalapenos. I've never personally tried this mix; thus I still have a nose. A nose for trouble, some say.

The initial motive force is easy to set up. As Leibniz and the Counter-Newtonians -- great band, if you like electric violin solos and harmonium riffs -- used to say: "There is no gravity - the Earth sucks".

Since you've, well, *raised* the subject of Pacific deeps, is it possible that the Mariana Trench - the boundary between two tectonic plates, and the deepest of deeps - is there for a divine purpose? Like, if the local god ever needed to hide the Philippines in a hurry, he's got the hole dug in advance.

Plus, of course, *Challenger Deep*, the world's only oceanic hole named after Nigel Short, Efim Bogolyubov, and Viktor Korchnoi, all members of the great Challengers' Club.

These world-building types - whether deities proper or planet-morphing aliens - tend to think big.

Also, it doesn't seemingly apply to forum names: Frogspawn/20,000 Lashes/ Phrontistery/ Waxwing's Wah-wah Rabbits, usw, has been <Fotheringay> for about 24 hours now.

Maybe some brave soul should the limits of forum names -- call it <@#$% art, let's dance>, see what happens... ?

I know what happens. It bypasses any new filters, but it elicits an email from that nice Mr Freeman, who explains why it won't do -- in my case he can simply point to earlier correspondence on the topic -- then ask me to change it, or just do it themselves.

Anyhoo. One of the inbuilt asymmetries of this *thing* is that *we* are mostly resistant to being in gangs, forming insider us-groups to attack the them-groups, and so on. We're not just individualistic: we are philosophically opposed, at some level, to anything that dissolves our individuality into the herd.

Which means we don't have a chance against the hardcore herders, the nationalists of every stripe, and the Ferengi Panjandrum (with the little round button on top) ...

I find it funny, though, that people *here* would be immature enough to threaten me. I've been in some situations in RL that would make every hair on their bodies horripilate ... like the time an IRA 'volunteer' turned filmmaker objected to my hostile review of his film about the hunger strikers in Northern Ireland. Using a rather unfortunate metaphor, I told him that my article had been intended to take out a bigger target, and his little film just got in the way.

I momentarily forgot that some of these people had real-life experience of victims getting in the way.

I lived, anyway. Well, I suppose you could *call* it living ...

Heh. This is *fun*, kids. Expect nothing but profound cretinism from the human race, and you may be surprised on two fronts: the pleasant demeanour and really smart smarts of the rare exceptions, and the increasingly bizarre mental contortions used by the majority in their dances.

The two words are 'bradah' and 'barangay'. When the first told me I could never understand the second, I laughed aloud. Not at him, but the maze he'd unwittingly stumbled into ... the whole network of possible meanings and misunderstandings -- (Annie seems to be an expert on the human capacity for misunderstanding, the noise that always leaks into the communication circuit). Brad's point is vaguely Whorfian: linguistic relativism, the idea that each language - maybe every word - contains a unique point of view.

I used to be very sympathetic to those ideas. Now I'm not. I'm a sort of pragmatist -- translation gets enough across to be getting on with, and if it doesn't let's aim for a better translation. The notion that metaphysical experience exists outside language is either absurd or redundant -- and either way we can't do much about it.

Anyhow, I had this idea. That anyone blundering into *this* forum for the first time would be at least as disoriented as a stranger among the tagalogs chez So. Because we *do* have a private language here, in a sense, and it mutates every so often.

Heh. Sic.

I thought - stupidly - of providing a short history lesson, some key terms, some approximate beliefs or antibeliefs...

But *they* don't really care about anything outside their world, do they? Unless they're attacking it for showing insufficient respect.

ABC...

An American airforce, ah'm awfully afraid
Backed by Blair's Britain, bombed Belgrade.
Clinton commanded. Chiefly, children cried.
Dissent disappeared. Democracy died.

Every evil empire exports empty engineers
For foolish foreigners. Forget faint fears.

Go google Goebbels. Gods, generate
History's horror, here harboring hate.
Ironsides is inside. Invisible inks
Join jackal, joker, jocoserious jinx.
Ku-Klux Klan killers, kindly Krauts
Let loose like lions. Learning late lessons, louts.

Milo married Mira. Milo's Mum
Needed no narcotics, naturally numb:
'One of our offspring opted out of our
Preternaturally patented parenting power.'

Queerly, quaintly, quintessentially quiet,
Ruling Ruritania's rancorous riot,
Slobo screwed Serbia. Some suicides survive.
Thanks to TV, the torturers thrive.

Under useless umbrellas, using uniforms unclear
Vagrants vanish, vermin volunteer.
Who would wish ...? What wiser way?
Xeroxed xenophobia, XS, X-ray?

<When the first told me I could never understand the second, I laughed aloud.>

That got a smile from me as well. ;)

Most likely, a society-scale version of a typical teenager, convinced that they are the only deeply sensitive, tragically misunderstood, yet profoundly philosophical person in the world. :) They usually grow out of it. Most newly-exposed-to-the-larger-world societies do too, given enough exposure and interaction with others. It does take time, though, and there's not much point telling the afflicted then and there that it's "only a phase".

<I used to be very sympathetic to those ideas. Now I'm not. I'm a sort of pragmatist -- translation gets enough across to be getting on with, and if it doesn't let's aim for a better translation. >

S-P-O-T O-N.

For that part -- but I do actually also believe that thinking in different languages really does create different modes of thought. In fact I have once written a very long essay on the subject of the damage caused by the resurrection of Hebrew as the formal language of Israel. I'll point you to it, or copy it here, sometime. :)

i was only joking of course. :o)

and gay is a happy word. happy happy gay gay. sometimes evolution just clutters things up - something that used to be a positive word has its connotations gradually changed to the opposite.

I was about to post that! Though for a different reason, concerning my struggle to keep the flow of clear thought and reasoning going amidst a frustrating feeling re the absence of an adequate english vacabulary to keep up with you guys, heh.

Well, rephrase/correction:

For not being able to keep up with my "Dutch Mode of Thought"

Though it has its advantages as well, having to go back in time/thought/translation,

... but it is so freakin TIME CONSUMING!

Well, it is.

I regret the loss of European Yiddish culture. Obviously that was genocide rather than linguicide, but I mourn the world where Nimzowitsch et al moved. I still have a Yiddish dictionary too.

I agree with you about the psychology of the bradster. Part of the problem, I suspect, was the high-handed loftiness of my tone: it must have felt like I was picking him up with tweezers and holding him to the light for examination.

Admittedly, the mass culture now pretty much regards literacy as a waste of time, and readers like me as godless freaks. But even when what I say is deemed irrelevant, the tone in which I say it is crucial. And I *did* give Brad the impression he was being tweezered.

actually i briefly touched saphir-whorf during my computer science master thesis, but then in the context of artificial languages. in the 80s, when work stations became affordable (well, at universities anyway) and computer scientists in the field of hci and programming environments started exploring the possibilities that new, "fancy" graphics provided, we saw the advent of several graphical computer languages. it included stuff like phd thesis called "programming in 3d" (not creating 3d graphics, but <expressing> the computer program with 3d constructs), "programming as participatory theater", and so on.

suddenly dozens of computer science articles cited sahpir-whorf - with new artificial [and some were really "artificial"] languages one could express things a whole lot better and think/conceive of solutions never thought possible before on computers. of course it was mixed with highly scientific justifications like "a picture's worth a thousand words" and so on, and it provided for some really entertaining reads. practical results were scarce, though. heh.

"and now we're going to show you the inner workings of your new business critical system. i know, it looks a bit like a picture of a sunset, and we don't really understand how it works, but isn't the reflexions in the water just adorably romantic?!"

<... but it is so freakin TIME CONSUMING!> True dat. Maybe we won't even manage to solve all the world's problems... <today>. :s

<Dom: <-- and yet a political faction still looks enviously at Israel and wonders where 'we' went wrong.>>

Ouch. Major ouch.

<frogbert: <has anyone of you read howard rheingold's "tools for thought", btw?>>

Actually "gay" is a happy word in every context. A few brutes have attempted to turn it into something else. They have failed to impress anyone but their own small minded kind.

<Will the beaurocrats never learn? The Stalinists devoted huge resources to force Russian on the people. After many years of draconian efforts in the Ukraine, the result was that 95% still spoke Ukranian. You can't inject a language like some innoculation.>

I know a mouse,
And he hasn't got a house
I don't know why I call him Gerald
He's getting rather old,
But he's a good mouse

If I had a time machine ... forget the great historical moments ... I'd rather nip back to 1967 and see Pink Floyd at the UFO club. I was technically alive at the time but I don't think they'd have let me in.

I told you about this simply fabulous documentary I saw about him.

Despite the horror stories- especially the one where he pitched up at a <Floyd> session and they didn't recognize him because he was so fat and he was giggling and brushing his teeth or something--

His sister and his mother both steadfastly maintained that <Sid> was actually happy with his gardening and laying about the house.

Contrary to the myth- he actually didn't keep up with the drugs.

He was just a fat rich gardener.

In fact, there were more than a few local punters and old friends who claimed that his mind was not "destroyed" in the slightest.

Could the <Madcap> have gotten the last laugh?

One hopes so.

You are also a known Mac booster....