Re: OT: Bloody Yanks up to their tricks again !

On 27 Oct 2006 02:10:56 -0700, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


John Fields wrote:
On 26 Oct 2006 09:34:47 -0700, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


John Fields wrote:
On 25 Oct 2006 17:55:51 -0700, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:

---
Geez, Bill, as it is (after we take out the ads) our newspapers
weigh about 20 pounds, and that's just to reporting our local news.
I guess we could stand to add another ounce or two to cover what's
happening in the rest of the world, but why bother? After all, it's
really so unimportant.
---

Your scientists tend to the same atitude - if something isn't published
in English, it doesn't exist,

---
It exists, but if it isn't important enough to publish in English,
how important can it be?
---

The fact that you can ask this question illustrates just how parochial
and ignorant you are.
As an undergraduate in Melbourne, Australia - a place which probably
vies with Texas for parochial self-satisfaction - I was expected to use
Le Nouveau Traite de Chimie Minerale as my basic reference in inorganic
chemistry, and the Merck index - then only available in German - as my
basic reference for organic chemistry.

The two earliest papers cited in Ph.D. thesis are both in German - the
first by Trautz and Dalal, was written by Dalal, who was from India and
wrote execrable German that I really couldn't translate, and none of
the native speakers that I found could do any better. We could broadly
understand what he intended to say and the experimental technique was
rubbish, so this didn't matter too much.

---
My point, exactly, and by your own admission it was rubbish.

had it been important enough to publish in English you wouldn't have
had the problems you did with it
---

and if it isn't published in a U.S. based
journal, it isn't likely to get read.

---
Well, it'll get read, I'm sure, and, if it's important, it'll
eventually get translated into and published in English.

English _is_ the lingua franca of the civilized world, you know.

A lingua franca. French is the original, obviously enough.

---
Something you have a remarkable grasp of, I've found.
---

Blame the Brits for that, since you seem to need to find fault with
someone... anyone.
---

Why should I bother? It does make sense to write in English is you want
a wide audience, but that's no excuse for ignoring work in other
languages

---
That's just foolishness. Let's say that you go looking for
something and you find (in an English language index) what appears
to be what you're looking for but it's written in, say, Swahili.

Now, are you going to learn Swahili or have the document translated
into English?

As for the index, if it weren't in English you'd have to have it
translated just so you could search it.
---

The Review of Scientific Instruments gets caught out on this from time,
not always by me.

The are exceptions to this sort of parochial thinking inside the U.S.,
but nowhere near enough. You may like to think that you live in God's
only country, but it isn't a good way to stay well-informed.

---
Not God's only country, but God's only Internet, brought to you
through the courtesy of the US and our military ARPANET, which
allows various malcontents, like you, to vent globally without going
postal.

Let's not ignore the contributions of people like Bill Davis at the
British National Physical laboratory at Teddington. And keep in mind
that what we are actually using is the World Wide Web (running on the
internet), originally invented by Tim Brenners-Lee when he was working
at Cern, in Switzerland on secondment from the U.K.

---
Usenet is the WWW???

I think you better read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
---

And, just think... because of that we no longer need to depend on
the vagaries of the data pipe from Nijmegen. That must be a _huge_
relief for you, no longer having to bear the responsibility for
disseminating what you might consider to be critically important
material.
---

Since you seem to feel absolutely no need for new data. and a positive
aversion to recognising it when it does arrive, your opinion on the
state of the data pipe from Nijmegen isn't exactly well-informed.

---
It's not that I have an aversion to new data, it's just that the
pipe from Nijmegen seems to be stuck in the past. I mean, all that
ever comes out of it is the same old crap.
---

Someone who still turns to the 555 to solve every problem in
electronics is something less than an authority on the dissemination
of new technology.

---
Ah, but being able to use the 555 to good effect in ever more
complex ways as the technology itself advances is the trick, Bill,
which you'll never learn.
---

I must say that it does make an amusing image - Angela Merkel (of all
people) goose-stepping in front of a resurgent German army. The
oppositon would probably be laughing too hard to do much in the way of
opposing, so it might just work ...

---
Ya think?

Regularly. You should try it sometime.

---
No, I mean really.

Do you consciously have to think about that your knuckles are
dragging before you pull yourself fully erect to keep them from
being rubbed raw, or is that an autonomic response?

It would seem that - by Texan standards - either my legs are too long
or my arms are too short.

---
More like you're too big for your britches.
---

My knuckles seem to be free from abrasion. At
the moment I'm suffering from a haematoma in my left calf, and it is
quite difficult for me to get my knuckles close enough to the ground to
let me put on my shoes.

---
Doesn't matter much; you're not going anywhere anyway...
---

The capacity to produce a knuckle-dragging gait
escapes me at the moment,

---
Well, hopefully you'll get healthy soon and then your memory will
come back.

useful though it is when discussing Texans
and the current U.S. administration. Check out the British cartoonist
Steve Bell sometime.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/0,,337484,00.html

---
Mean, and not a very good caricature, either.

--
John Fields
Professional Circuit Designer
.

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