From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Thu May 27 07:37:24 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 27 May 1993 07:37:24 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3435; Thu, 27 May 93 07:36:35 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 4596; Thu, 27 May 93 07:37:47 EDT Date: Thu, 27 May 1993 12:29:59 BST Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: John Hodges on "Why Lojban?" To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: Logical Language Group's message of Wed, 26 May 1993 23:37:18 EDT <17700.9305270339@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> Status: O X-Status: Message-ID: After reading the essay, I feel urged to identify myself as one who: (1) Does not believe that war, peace, conflict or cooperation have anything to do with language, and for this reason dismisses the moral crusade set out by Esperanto as well as a kajillion of other conlangs as totally misguided. Setting such goals on the Lojban agenda would mean expecting certain political views to be held by all of the population of Lojbanistan, which would be destructive to the Effort; (2) Has no warm feelings towards Esperanto, whilst at the same time acknowledges its appeal for many people. I have read and spoken it; but I dislike it, and I wouldn't have anyone expected to learn it. (3) Sees well-functioning, cheap, portable T-boxes for travellers as a matter of some very distant future, if not altogether fictional entities. That's what my exposure to the area of machine translation tells me. (4) Is very fond of Lojban as a mind-expander. Does anyone think with me on these subjects? Ivan PS--I love the idea of the elephant cover and logo. Count my vote in favour.