META : Who is everyone (and what are they saying)

["G. Dyke" <gordon.dyke@bluewin.ch>]

coi rodo

[I hope you don't think this post to be of no use whatsoever ; if you do,
exercise your yoga before flaming - LOL]

Having been following the discussions more closely than usual these past few
days (hey! waiting for college to start gets pretty uneventful during the
last months, I've got a lot of time), I've come to the conclusion that I'm
missing a lot of the discussions because I've got no background on this. For
instance, are these words specific to americans and those who've known them
a long time or have they come about through lojban : "fiat" (as in "fiat
decides..."), "glorking", "glorkjunkied" (aha! the latter two are related),
elephant. Why do some people support and reject {gumri} ? (Don't you dare
tell me to go to the wiki, last time my telephone bill had trouble coming
out alive %^). I'm also puzzled by Nick (who, if I've got it right has spent
one hell of a lot of time learning lojban) having views such as lojban never
succeeding, rafsi not being a good idea and ... what else?

I'd appreciate anyone who could help me by adding their beliefs and desires
for lojban (and who could give any other information that might be relevant
to newcomers - life around lojban-beginners is good but we want to graduate,
there isn't the same element of risk involved in posting there as there is
on lojban :-) Are there others who read the lojban-digest (not individual
mails? surely!) avidely hoping to better their lojban, but not often
putting their opinions forward because they're bound to lose against the
sheer bulk of emails coming from opposers...

An example of something that took me ages to understand : xod no longer
signs his emails so and doesn't have xod in his address ; how's a newcomer
supposed to work out who is referred to in the sentence "xod said...".
Another thing... it took me a month to work out that pycyn was lojban for
PC - who's name I eventually found in the reference grammar. This is NOT
your fault but it should give you an idea of how complicated life is...

Anyway, here's the list of information about me that might be useful, and
that I'd like to know about you (so far I've worked out that you don't go
arguing maths with pycyn - if you can help it - but knowing such things in
advance might be useful)

all of these are of course optional (as if you wouldn't tell me if this was
not information that you'd put on www)

Name: Gregory Dyke (greg.daik.) (which means sex : M ; what happenned to all
the girls? I don't seem to have seen many! lol)
DOB:84/26/02 (see? you can put it whichever way you like)
Occupation: student, IT, EPFL, Switzerland
Hobbies (things I do when I'm not doing smth else): skiing, programming,
tolkien, his languages, lojban, working my way through w3c proposals (yep,
the geeky type)
What I think of lojban : hopefully, will help me uderstand what I'm saying
and thinking if I'm not sure, gives an introduction to logic (I never
realised that "a if b" was "a or not b"), makes for very powerful
expressions - can't think of any right now %^) ; not likely to succeed for
sapir-whorf, or as an international language. great potential though for the
semantic web, for translating and for computer-human communication ... oh
yes! and as a conlang worth learning. I wish I could teach my kids (If and
when I have any) lojban, but it would be a bit cruel - so I probably won't.
I aspire to becoming competent at communicating in the language (but I've
got to get through the gismu and cmavo first).

mu'o mi'e greg.daik.