Steven D'Aprano posted on Sat, 09 Jul 2011 10:19:36 +1000 as excerpted: > Beartooth wrote: > >> But I do claim the blind hen's occasional grain of corn : we need >> to optimize against the likely abuses of the twenty-teens, whatever we >> can guess of those. > > I don't know what this means.
Twenty-teens... roughly translates as 201x... which should give you a clue on that (if you need another, the current year is... 2011). The hen/chicken imagery really needs a bit of familiarity with the behavior of same. Perhaps you can find a youtube video or the like if necessary. However, in words, they walk around, looking at the ground, until they find something interesting to peck at. Interesting, to a chicken, means something that looks like food. Obviously, a blind hen is going to have some problems with this and a totally blind hen would likely die, without care. However, "blind" can also mean simply incredibly near/far/whatever sighted, as I am without correction. But I can still sort of see and so could a hen with a similar problem, perhaps enough to get the occasional grain to eat, and to survive. So the image is one of rather uninformed stumbling around, randomly "pecking" at stuff one really can't understand, occasionally finding something of value, none-the-less. And the time-frame is one of out to a few years, either now thru 2019 or 2013-2019, depending on how one interprets "teen" (does it include 10-12 or not). He's saying he doesn't really understand the technical debate, but is none-the-less still worried about pan and how it will rise to the challenges of and continue interacting with the rest of (special parts of) the news community over... the next few years. The rest of the post confirms that interpretation, filling out his assertion and putting it in the context of various specific worries. I already replied with my own opinion on the issues he raises, so no need to repeat it here. But, as is probably evident from my replies, I do really enjoy his quotes and analogies, as they represent a type of learning many of us more technical types don't get so much of, a much broader but often not as deep a grasp of society, including historic and foreign, than the highly specialized expert, technical or otherwise, often has a chance to achieve in today's society. I'm probably more experienced than many, with a background that includes time in Kenya as a kid, travel thru Europe there and back, experience with a number of cultures including a very tiny bit of Eastern culture experience, and years of residency in various parts of the US northwest, southwest, plains and mountain states (unfortunately not much east and south US, and no journeys to Asia beyond the mid-east, either), so I /do/ generally get his references, but they're often a stretch and a challenge, tho a very enjoyable one. =:^) but I understand how the allusions could be well beyond the experiences of many, so that they sail well over their heads. Thus the time to try to explain them, when asked. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
