{Accept command: update to display properties
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>Accept fiducia: Doyle Phoebe Heejanus= }
Incidents yesterday = 776 above normal (increase of 717% over the day before)[normal Incident count
= 18.5]
Report on Ganj Dareh Meeting/will-be-heard participation (R=82%/W=38%):
Discussion Groups Active: 16,731 Forums & 22,361 Klatsches
Notable excerpts: Toll-gated Moderated Klatsch "Thumbs — Up or Down?" hosted by Gan Ni-JerPaul
Sephjo (Drop-ins just @G2.75)
Gan Ni-JerPaul [full-video — medium shot: he sits behind a cluttered office-desk]:
Come in! Come in! I am Gan Ni-JerPaul Sephjo and this is "Thumbs — Up or Down?" New times call
for fresh eyes — and fresh ways. Here in Ganj Dareh, we are certainly living in new times, and
I've put together this program to give you a fresh way of viewing those times, a way past the
lily-livered, unprincipled, look-the-other-way attitude that has plagued our fair direvnya for
far-too-long.
[Gan Ni-JerPaul stands and as shot drops back, saunters into the neater bay of his office]:
Today, in this, our first keen-eyed look at the underbelly of Ganj Dareh, we are going behind the
anshin's Incident Board. We are going to meet the people named in those Incidents. We are going
to ask them hard questions about their motives and actions. And we are going to judge those
people. Put ourselves in their places and decide whether they chose well or poorly. Thumbs Up!
Or Thumbs Down!
[Gan Ni-JerPaul pauses before a wall-sized foilscreen filled with the Anshin Incident Board]:
To start our first round, I will highlight three of yesterday's Incidents, then you will select one
for me to drill down into.
[Gan Ni-JerPaul swings up his left thumb and jabs it at himself]:
I will confront the participants for you, and then —
[Gan Ni-JerPaul extends his index finger below the thumb and jabs it at his audience]:
You will judge them. Thumbs Up —
[Gan Ni-JerPaul inverts his hand]:
Or Down!
Where shall we start?
[Gan Ni-JerPaul swings his pointing finger back, drawing his audience's attention to the Incident
Board, which fills the screen; Gan Ni-JerPaul continues in voiceover]:
There are so many Incidents to pick from, as you well know, maybe even from personal experience.
[Focus narrows to one Incident, takes its Location link to highlighted schematic of Ganj Dareh]
Here, in O Neighborhood, at Pangnirtung Park, a biology class of point-two Niners takes a zhuhndí
look at a pond. These are our children, Meine Damen und Meine Herren, out to learn about
our world.
It turns out that Gastarbeiterkinder are out exploring as well, a class from the so-called
Rendezvous of Futures. They approach the pond from a different direction and spread out along its
banks. One of them ventures close to a pair of einheimischer Arbeiter kinder who call for help.
Others rally to challenge the invader, followed by their teacher, who encourages her wards to stand
their ground. The Gastarbeiter-in-charge, though, dashes into the middle and knocks our children
down. Constables arrive to prevent further violence.
That was Incident Number One.
[Incident Board refreshes, links to another Incident, links to its Location highlighted on
Ganj Dareh's schematic]
Next, in U Neighborhood, Incident Number Two took place in the remote Park of Red Winter 2, where
the mighty Missouri changed its course during an earthquake, leaving us with a marvelous, natural
Sacred Site. You all know the place.
A congregation of Caudalists have reserved the park through the appropriate combine. In their
yellow sarongs and red sashes, they have begun their ritual cleansing in preparation for services.
A ruck of The Triality of All Continua approach. They carry with them, on travois behind a roan
pony, their Box of Learnings. They too have reserved the park. That such a disastrous mistake
could be made is only another sign of these trying times.
The two religious groups confront each other in a moment all the more jarring because of their
reverant moods. Tempers flare. Words fly, but only words. Their leaders step forward to seek an
accord. They make progress until ...
A Caudalist is discovered rifling the Box of Learning! By her outfit, she is unmistakable. Such
defilement is unacceptable, retribution unavoidable. A survivor staggers out long seconds later.
Only then do the anshin respond. Seven people narrowly avoid dying of their injuries. Only the
most advanced med-tek protects their life-expectancy. We can only thank ourselves for forcing the
anshin to stay abreast of the wave of medical technology.
That was Incident Number Two.
[Incident Board refreshes, links to another Incident, links to its Location on highlighted map]
Next, Incident Number Three, in Y Neighborhood, the Baffin Island Society of Weiqi starts another
tourney in the Nunavat Garden. Die Gastarbeiter enter here as well. They want to play in the
tourney. That is not possible, they are told, only members of the Society play in the tourney. We
will join then, Die Gastarbeiter declare. That is not possible, they are told, only Ganj-Dareh
Collective and from-North-America are eligible. Die Gastarbeiter back off.
Tourney play continues. Plink! A pebble falls on a table, disrupting the cross-hatched board.
Plink, plink, more pebbles. Die Gastarbeiter stand on the garden's perimeter, tossing in pebbles,
scattering weiqi stones. If they can't play, they seem to say, no one can play. The tourney's
sergeant-at-arms calls for deputies. Nearly everyone volunteers.
Constables happen by. They move Die Gastarbeiter along, show them a weiqi parlor open to
everyone. The tourney finishes as scheduled. That was Incident Number Three.
[Gan Ni-JerPaul appears in tight close-up, his face tense, his eyes bright]
Now, Meine Damen und Meine Herren, you choose an Incident to judge. Use your sense-poll buttons
and indicate 1, 2, or 3.
[Gan Ni-JerPaul requests sense poll: 87,006 active in klatsch return 2.38 = mildly against his
position]
[Gan Ni-JerPaul reacts with pleasure]
Ah, Incident Number Two, then. Good, good. Let's go talk to those Triality people first!
By: Tel PosBee Thanajon [Neighborhood Xref=A]
.voice-only: Hello.
[Gan Ni-JerPaul reacts with displeasure]
Gan Ni-JerPaul: What? Who are you? How'd you get in here? I'm running a toll-gated klatsch,
strictly multicast, one to many. You can't talk. I talk.
[Gan Ni-JerPaul stares angrily off-screen]
Tel PosBee: Outdated software, noodle-nose. If you'd kept up your contract with my
logiciel-maintenance company, you wouldn't have left a hole in your sense-poll broadcast that I
could tunnel down, you sloppy wannabe yellow journalist. But now I'm here and in front of your
thankfully tiny audience, I'm going to skewer you like the parasite you are.
Let's talk statistics first, get the context-setting out of the way. We had 776 Incidents
yesterday. Who cares what normal was — it's just a statistic anyway; how can we have .5
Incident? Since Har Norma set this whole Rendezvous of Futures on its track, we've had 1,594
Incidents, involving a total of 26,147 zhee-tely, residents and guests. Eliminating those
unfortunate enough to get involved more than once, we're looking at a mere 2.43% of Ganj Dareh's
population involved in any Incident. That does not constitute a pandemic, an epidemic, or even a
rash.
I'm not minimizing those of you involved. If you were there, if you were hurt, if one of yours was
hurt, you deserve sympathy and help — from our anshin, from your neighbors, from the entire
Collective.
But the rest of you, get a grip! Get your heads out of your foilscreen navels and get out into the
sunshine. Quit quaking at home and go help someone!
O.K., Gan Ni-JerPaul, let's ask your audience next. How many of you have been in Incident? Don't
forget: we can check your names against the Incident Board.
[Tel PosBee requests pulse: out of 78,133 active in klatsch, 2% agree with him, 12% disagree, 86%
abstain]
My point exactly. How many of you even know someone involved in an Incident?
[Tel PosBee requests pulse: out of 76,931 active in klatsch, 7% agree with him, 33% disagree, 60%
abstain]
So the rest of you are just ghouls?
[Gan Ni-JerPaul stomps off-screen]
[Tel PosBee requests pulse: out of 63,399 active in klatsch, 1% agree with him, 59% disagree, 40%
abstain]
Now let's ask you, Gan Ni-JerPaul, are you in this for the good of the Collective? Are you
in this for the money? Or are you in this for the fame — should I say "notoriety" — and power?
The power to lead a few thousand "supporters" into other people's lives and ridicule them?
[klatsch closes down; final audience = 39,005]
{Accept command: update to display properties
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>Accept fiducia: Doyle Phoebe Heejanus= }
Notable excerpts: Moderated Klatsch "Gimme Room, Gimme Time, Gimme Love"
By: Henk Otte Togbekorsi [Neighborhood Xref=Nostratic]
.full-video/visual interpretation=off: Are they talking to me? In that way? Why can't we all
just use the same words?
By: Fer Dinand Gakpetor [Neighborhood Xref=Ashiya]
.full-video: I agree, amigo. Why can't they call it 'karongo' instead of 'gully?'
Henk Otte: Yeah, or they use 'house-hill' when everyone knows it should be 'hill-house.'
By: II Ghana Dutchman [Neighborhood Xref=Machu Picchu]
.full-video: And they're always saying things the long way, like, like, 'gong-gong qi-che' instead
of just plain 'qi-che.' I mean, who needs all those words?
Monitor override proxied by: Sat Yendra Nath-Bose [Neighborhood Xref=Cwmystwyth]
.full-video: What's going on here?
Fer Dinand: What's it to you?
Henk Otte: Yeah, take your crack and the hole in it outa here, old man.
[Henk Otte requests pulse: out of 154,604 active in klatsch, 92% agree with him, 8% abstain]
Yendra: I was called to moderate this session. The will-hear moderator-personality seems to think
you need some guidance in your conversation.
Fer Dinand: Freep, frap, takes an automaton to carry that loada crap.
Yendra: From what I'm hearing here and from your previous statements, which I replayed before
joining you, I think I understand why I was called.
Fer Dinand: You don't like our language, is that it?
Henk Otte: Yeah, cyberspace is free country. If we can get in here, we can say anything we want.
[Henk Otte requests pulse: out of 154,604 active in klatsch, 97% agree with him, 3% nay]
Yendra: So right, pups, so right, but I'm not here to curb your mouth or your intellect, only to
leaven its content. You're complaining about how our direvnya's guests speak, correct?
Henk Otte: Yeah. On the job, on the promenade, on the turf. This will-hear is about the only
place we don't have to hear it.
II Ghana: Do we? Is that why you're here?
Yendra: No, it's not. Let's establish a few basics. Yeibichai celebrates diversity, does it
not?
II Ghana: Sure. I've heard those words since before I was allowed to watch Em-Deh's learning
channels.
Fer Dinand: We're not complaining about that, old man.
Henk Otte: Yeah, I don't particularly care what they do; it's how they pronounce it that I mind.
[Henk Otte requests pulse: out of 154,873 active in klatsch, 73% agree with him, 22% nay, 5%
abstain]
Yendra: Will you grant me that language is probably the greatest challenge for a society that
celebrates diversity? After all, if we cannot communicate, we cannot cooperate. Yet, we must
allow differences to occur in this, our most fundamental form of expression.
Henk Otte: Yeah, go on.
II Ghana: Didn't the Founders all speak the same language?
Yendra: No, they did not. They were refugees from a dozen or more civil wars, pogroms, natural
disasters. They had run away from people — man's inhumanity to man, really — and chose to flee
Gë when it was the only exit left them. They were thrown together for expediency, led by a motley
collection of rogues and geniuses.
II Ghana: Ooo! Tell us about them.
Yendra: That's another story. In this story, our ancestors realized how bound together
they really were only when they stood on this planet and looked around at all the
differences between it and Gë.
Standing here, after a long and exhausting struggle on Gë, followed by a short squirt through a
Backdoor, they faced a much larger task, one that overwhelmed their disparities and placed them in
perspective. They turned to each other and immediately discovered the obstacle of language.
Shades of Babel!
Henk Otte: What's that?
II Ghana: Don't you know anything?
Henk Otte: Yeah, I know if it isn't bleeping right here in my face, I don't care about it.
[Henk Otte requests pulse: out of 156,169 active in klatsch, 88% agree with him, 12% abstain]
Fer Dinand: Shut up and listen.
[Fer Dinand requests pulse: out of 156,176 active in klatsch, 83% agree with her, 12% nay, 5%
abstain]
Yendra: Thank you. A subset of the Founders' leaders — two of the rogues, two of the geniuses,
and one who was both — had foreseen this problem — and much greater ones of architecture, but
that's another story — and proposed a solution that, with some work, was accepted.
First, they found that English was the language most common among them, although it was hardly a
first language for many of them.
Second, so much of the information they needed to live — set up businesses, build a planetary
infrastructure, trade with the other Backdoor Planets — was written in English.
So, they chose English as the base of our planet's standard language. Of course, they encouraged
the continued use of all other languages.
II Ghana: Why did they call the planet 'Yeibichai?'
Yendra: The name invokes Navajo gods of healing, but that, too, is another story.
After that, our society's architects, this Crew of Five, recognized that English, as spoken then on
Earth and the other Backdoor Planets, did not meet our needs.
For one, the language was just too cumbersome to describe some things — I'll give an example
later.
For two, English, despite — or maybe because of — its flexibility, just doesn't employ the full
range of human speech. It uses only 34 phonemes, plus a few others if you're picky, out of nearly
a 100 used across all our languages. Besides, it can be pretty ugly, euphoniously speaking. Why,
its third-person pronouns are gender-specific — how awkward. Suomea and American Sign, as well as
other languages, beat that.
For three, since we were here to preserve, even cherish, our cultures, we wanted our common tongue
to reflect them all to some degree.
For, er, fourth — you probably won't relate to this — to some of our ancestors, English
represented an oppressive society, and though they bowed to pragmatism, they wanted to tweak the
language for the hell of it, as they said.
Fer Dinand: Such language.
Henk Otte: Yeah, tsk.
Yendra: Some of that included stripping off layers of assimilation, what some called "linguistic
imperialism,", such as, calling qahwah "coffee" when that's not what its original developers called
it.
Henk Otte: What did they call it then?
II Ghana: Qahwah; it's Al-fuSHa, like the man said. Shut up if you're not going to pay
attention.
Yendra: In addition to these modifications, we required no specific compliance to Standard English
in these situations:
One: where it hardly matters how you say something because the concept is so basic. The word for
water, for instance, so easily interpreted through gesture. Did it matter whether it was "jalo" or
"agua" or "mizu" or "tanni" or "eau" or "Wasser" or "vatten" or all of the above in different
places?
Or the name for a channel dug by erosion, whether it be "gully" or "karongo" or "wadi?"
Two: where it hardly matters how you say something because the concept is so local. The name of
that tree, for instance, that grows nowhere else in the Universe.
Fer Dinand: What tree?
Henk Otte: Yeah, a cybertree is a cybertree is a —
II Ghana: I think I shall never see anything as beautiful as a ... gumwash?
Yendra: (sigh) So we formed a society from concepts — and used the right words to describe them.
In universal things like water, we could be sure that our Gë words applied well. However, we had
to acknowledge that using these words to name things here on Yeibichai, we too were twisting their
infrastructure. But what could we do, invent an entirely new language and break with our friends,
relatives, and customers on other planets?
An example: 'anshin,' whether you use the noun form 'anshin,' meaning 'peace of mind,' or the
verbal phrase 'anshin-suru,' meaning 'have peace of mind about' or 'feel relieved,' or 'anshinkan,'
meaning 'sense of security'. In English, the term 'public safety' hardly covers the concept, does
it?
II Ghana: Goanshin kudasai! Please don't worry about it.
Fer Dinand: I'll worry about it if I want to, thank you very much.
Henk Otte: Yeah, worrying is the only exercise I get. Worrying about which babe to cruise.
Worrying about which side of the bed to roll out of.
[Henk Otte requests pulse: out of 158,367 active in klatsch, 63% agree with him, 12% nay, 25%
abstain]
Yendra: If I'd had my way, there'd be a lot less English in our language — and more Swahili and
Hmong and InGuugu-Yimidhirr — that's the Aboriginal mother-in-law tongue from-Australia.
Henk Otte: What's a 'mother-in-law?'
Yendra: The same as a 'mother' if you chop it off.
Henk Otte: Is not!
Yendra: "Gong-gong qi-che" instead of "qi-che?" What's the difference? Perhaps those of us who
use complete names have been around long enough to perceive and resist ambiguities. I, for one,
understand and appreciate the difference between a "public bus" and any old "bus." And the
difference between my mother and my wife's. Perhaps, if you live long enough, you will too.
Fer Dinand: I'm going to live forever, Pops!
Henk Otte: Yeah, forever 'n' ever.
II Ghana: Ignore them! Tell me, where do I find those other stories? About the rogues and
geniuses? And the architecture one? Oh, yeah: Yeibichai?
[Ena-Maria requests pulse: out of 163,057 active in klatsch, 52% agree with her, 48% nay]
Yendra: Here're the cues/Em-Deh: Team of Five = . Global Architecture and the Language of
Patterns = . The Nightway Ritual = . Follow them.
And the rest of you, lighten up on Die Gastarbeiter. What if you were standing on their turf?
Think about it! What if ... [fade to black]
