Re: [lojban] Re: Alice - the xorlo version

[Alan Post <alanpost@sunflowerriver.org>]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 08:29:39PM -0700, Lindar wrote:
> I don't mean to sound rude, but we are two native English speakers
> (myself and Robin), and you are not. The meaning of the phrase, in my
> native understanding of English, is that she grew bored with it. I
> promise that it does not mean that she grew fatigued as a direct
> result of being bored. "I tire of this." means "I grow bored with
> this." or "This no longer interests me." Especially in this sense
> considering what kind of person Alice is. One could definitely argue
> that she could have grown tired as an indirect result of being bored
> (boredom leads to depression, depression leads to stress, stress leads
> to physical fatigue, physical fatigue is {tatpi}), but that's not what
> is being conveyed in the original English. One could also argue that
> in certain instances, tiring of something could be annoyance, but this
> is definitely not the case as it does not fit the situation at all. In
> the sense that it's used, I believe it's a metaphorical extension,
> which does not translate very well/at all into Lojban.
> 

I'm not directing this e-mail specifically at Lindar, but replying
at this point in the thread seems as good as any.  I can't be the
only one that saw the "Bike Shed" thread start to get attention
again:

  http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=506636+517178+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd-hackers/19991003.freebsd-hackers

  Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and
  get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar
  atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will
  be tangled up in endless discussions.

  Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast,
  so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and
  rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody
  else checked all the details before it got this far.   Richard P.
  Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point,
  examples relating to Los Alamos in his books.

  A bike shed on the other hand.  Anyone can build one of those over
  a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV.  So no
  matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with
  your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is
  doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is *here*.

The converstation so far is exclusively about bike sheds.

I'd like to propose the following instead:

  http://www.liveingreatness.com/the-core-protocols/perfection-game.html

Jorge has just given us a performance, and by definition it is the
best answer we currently have.  If you can't give his performance a
10, you have to explain what it would take to make it a 10.  You
can't withhold a 10 on the belief that something better will happen
later, and you can't withhold a 10 on the basis of not liking it.

Give it a 10 or make it a 10.

-Alan
-- 
.i ko djuno fi le do sevzi

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