Message-Id: <199310281622.AA07572@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Thu, 28 Oct 1993 09:38:22 EDT
Reply-To: "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GRACKLE.STOCKBRIDGE.MA.US>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GRACKLE.STOCKBRIDGE.MA.US>
Subject:      Re: {sorcu} definition
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: RO

Jorge LLambias, 13 Oct 1993:

    sorcu soc sro      store
    x1 is a store/deposit/supply/reserve of materials x2 in containment x3

    The idea of container, {vasru}, seems to be very marginal to
    "supply", and in many cases may be absent. The supply need not
    even be located in a single place.

On the contrary, the container is very important to a supply, store,
reserve or deposit of anything, whether it be physical or otherwise.

  * The store of money in a bank is contained by rules, electronic
    records, and paper records.

  * The store of gold in a vault is contained by physical walls.

  * The multiple stores of grain after a Soviet harvest were sometimes
    in piles outside in the weather, contained, not very successfully,
    by the physics of gravity and heaps in a windy, wet atmosphere.

A store or supply of an entity requires that it be separated from the
rest of the universe.  If not, you don't need to store it.  Thus, if
you are living in a breathable atmosphere, as on large parts of the
surface of the Earth, you do not need to store air.  However, if you
are in a submarine, you do need a reserve of air (or oxygen),
which must be in a container; or else you need to manufacture your
air, as is done in nuclear submarines (which also contain stores of
air).

As a practical matter, the nature of the container for stores has been
and still is very important.  For example, in the US, a better
container for chilled foods, i.e., more insulation in refrigerators,
would noticably reduce the ill effects of air pollution along the East
coast by reducing amounts of sulfur dioxide injected into the air when
electricity is generated.

Lack of grain silos, i.e., containers for the store of wheat,
seriously reduced the net revenue of the Soviet government; it had to
spend currency on foreign wheat instead of items it prefered to buy.

Lack of believable, inexpensive, unrestricted, legal encryption hurts
electronic storage in the US.  People fear that teenagers, extreme
political groups, government agents, or competitors will read their
records.  Encryption is a container of privacy for electronic storage.

Jorge LLambias, 14 Oct 1993:

    "They are collecting the supplies needed for the trip."
    "Our reserve of wood is going fast."

    In these cases, there may or may not be a container for the sorcu, and
    it is totally irrelevant if there is ....

Hey!  In both circumstances there are containers for the
supplies/reserves and in both cases the containers are very relevant.

My mother prepared for a picnic not long ago.  She asked me to help
her put on the pack carrying lunch.  One of the supplies she had
collected for this little trip was a container of orange juice.
Unfortunately, the top was loose.  I saw orange juice seeping out of
the pack that she had not noticed.

As for reserves of wood....I can tell you, logs burn better if they
are dry rather than wet.  The container is important.  Open sky is not
as good as shed roof.

In both the sentences used as examples, the speaker might not mention
the x3 place, but they are part of the concept of what you are
distinguishing or separating from the rest of the universe, and how
you are doing so.

{sorcu} is well defined as is, with a container place.

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    Rattlesnake Mountain Road        bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725