John Hudson wrote at 3:17 PM on Friday, May 21, 2004: >Dean Snyder wrote: > >>>those who oppose the encoding would better spend >>>their time querying that need directly to the people who have expressed >>>it than making >>>silly, repetetive arguments about fraktur on this list. > >> Silly, it is not; repetitive, only because the argument is apropos, has >> never been countered, and the same, non-analogous arguments along these >> lines are being brought up repetitively. > >And is swaying no one, hence silly. Someone -- anyone remember who? -- >once defined >stupidity as repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting a different >result.
But hammering on the same nail with the same hammer can drive it home. Nevertheless, even though I may be stupid, I do not accept the characterization that I have been "doing the same thing". I have brought up a multitude of different arguments over the past few weeks against this proposal. What I have repeated has been directed against those arguments that have been made over and over on the same point. Are you accusing THOSE people, too, of being stupid in their repetition? >Dean, I happen to agree with many of the points you have made from your >expert position, >i.e. regarding the historical uncertainty regarding the origins of the >so-called >Phoenician script and its structural identity with Hebrew regardless of >the entirely >superficial glyph variation. Having spent much of the past year and a >half working with >semiticists and Biblical scholars, I've come to the conclusion that they >know a heck of a >lot more about semitic writing systems than typical Eurocentric writers >of generic texts >on the history and classification of writing systems. I think the expert >comments of >semitic scholars should be taken very seriously in considering proposals >to encode semitic >scripts, including objections to such proposals on grounds of script identity. > >I do not think, however, that you are now achieving anything other than >annoying people. I >am not objecting to what you hope to achieve, only pointing out that you >are failing to >achieve it with your current strategy. My strategy has been to try to have good, objective, and reasonable discussions with encoding and script experts on the various points pro and con for this proposed encoding. If that is not how to proceed, I don't know how. What else should I do? I've been told, in essence to shut up and "accept the inevitable". I was hoping for better from this group. What do you suggest I, or others, do other than have such discussions? Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
