X-Digest-Num: 367
Message-ID: <44114.367.1997.959273826@eGroups.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 05:32:32 EST
From: Pycyn@aol.com
Subject: JCB
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 1997
Content-Length: 1957
Lines: 37

    The death of JCB is an emotional blow to all of us in the Loglan 
communities.  I
hope that, rather than disabling us, it will renew our commitment to bringing 
his project to a final definitive conclusion.  
    I extend my condolences to his family and also to his wider "family" of 
students,
followers, and more remotely connected disciples in and out of the 
communities.
    JCB's passing forces me personally to confront the fact that I never 
forgave him
for his actions in 1984 (as I viewed them)  and that, after a rebuffed 
attempt in the midst of that conflict, I never sought to discuss his view of 
that situation until last week.  In the midst of clearing my office, I came 
on some material from the early history of Loglan and frame a letter to JCB 
asking about the disposal of the material and recommending that, if he had 
not done so already, he write -- or get a university oral history program to 
record -- his personal history of the Loglan Project.  Now that letter will 
go unsent and that history is probably lost forever, unfortunately.  How sad 
to lose an opportunity to understand and more so to lose the one to be 
understood.
    Jim Brown was a genius in many ways. In addition to Loglan, we should not 
forget The Troika Incident (name from memory -- go try and find a copy), 
Careers, the job market (a genuine test of classical economic theory) and his 
essays on the origins of language.  Like most geniuses, he was often 
impatient of more plodding folk and the need to stop and explain, to fill the 
gaps between the leaps of his thoughts.  That we plodders did not always 
catch on to the way the gaps should be filled -- and that our errors annoyed 
him mightily -- cost him and his projects both money and manpower throughout 
his time. But we now have the leaps and a variety of fillers for the gaps and 
are at least that much better off and can slog on to finish a version of his 
plan.

pc