Subject: [lojban] Re: Official Statement- LLG Board approves new baseline policy

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 14:58:34 -0500 (EST)

On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Steven Belknap wrote:

> lojbab has told us the decision of the Board, but not their reasoning.
> Lojban is Loglan? Bah, humbug. Vacuous nonsense. Vigorous assertion
> convinces me of nothing. Loglan is dead, long live lojban? Well, maybe.
> But those who do not remember their past are condemned to relive it.
> There is a substantial body of written Loglan text extant, which
> despite flaws should not be completely ignored. I memorized every
> blasted one of those Loglan predicates. I was pretty damned irritated
> when I learned that this was all for not due to the fracture in the
> Loglan community, and the subsequent moribund state of the parent
> language. I can not support a lojban baseline policy statement which
> does not cover Loglan. A joint lojban/Loglan toggling cmavo would
> satisfy me. So would a formal autotranslate utility of some kind
> (although some syntactic problems in Loglan would still have to be
> fixed, if they haven't already been fixed.)

So you're upset at the historical fact that Loglan is moribund, and you
want a Lojban baseline policy to "cover Loglan" but offer no justification
except possibly to recover your lost hours learning Loglan words, and then
you call for a toggle cmavo which exists already but yet was never once
seriously used (to my knowledge), and you imply that the Lojban community
is somehow responsible to steward the Loglan community's corpus. And
finally, you close by calling for someone else to build software which
you're not sure is possible to build at all because of your lack of
familiarity with current Loglan.

> What is the point of ignoring Loglan? This seems like pointless spite
> towards a dead man. Whatever his shortcomings, JCB's memory deserves
> better than this. In my conversations with him I was impressed by his
> boundless optimism and creativity. I liked the guy. If this issue is
> not resolved, I swear a mighty oath to use (wherever appropriate) the
> word "simba" for "tiger" in all lojban communication henceforth.

I don't actually recall ever seeing any Lojban communication from you. I'm
sure JCB was a wonderful man and a role model for us all, but Lojban
baseline policy is not the place to eulogize him. Some of us (I can speak
for Nick and I) are seriously UN-interested in Loglan, and we vigorously
resisted any hint that Lojban would twitch for that ancient dream of
rapproachment.

-- 
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.