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On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Nick Nicholas wrote: > You know, I really should be going over my backlog of jboske. But my > backlog of jboske is close to 1000 messages; and I'm serious that I > cannot keep doing this. Bob just mused that jboske is SW and wonderful. > No, Bob. jboske is a load of shite, precisely because we either don't > know what we're talking about, or can't communicate what we do know to > anyone else. My sleep is shot, my work is shot, I didn't sign up for > this, and I'm not going to stick around for this. > > And what's galling me the most is that there are, what, five different > debates going on at the same time? And one human being is meant to tune > in to all of them? And extract sense out at the end? And this is > helping?! > > Well vented. Now then. > > Masses and groups are different. Masses are basic by definition. loi > stays a mass. Groups get a LAhE cmavo. I don't have a damn clue what the difference is between masses and groups. So let me propose something, fundamentalist-style, so that you can use a naturalist argument against it. Masses (gunma, lei, loi, lai) represent multiple individuals, emphasizing their collective, synergetic, and emergent properties. The canonical definition shall be the Three Piano Guys. No one of them can carry the Grand; piano-carrying is an emergent property of the mass. If there are no emergent properties, then there is no difference between le and lei. This is the case with substances. But to use lei would imply that emergent properties exist and you are referring to them (as per my above decree), so le is preferred and lei is meaningless for water. A multiplicity of items without emergent properties, or with emergent properties that you aren't discussing, should be referred to with le. (When I say "le", I mean le, lo, or la. Leave me alone and focus on the issue, please.) My goal is to cut through the haze, end some of these 5 discussion threads *ahead* of where we left off, and attain simplicity, clarity, and elegance. I hope the same values will inform the responses. And, finally, if anyone uses the word "group" in any response, they are obliged to define it clearly. -- // if (!terrorist) // ignore (); // else collect_data ();