Wednesday, February 08, 2006

A columnist with the nom de plum of Spengler compares and contrasts the Western and Islamic worlds as to their cultural evolution to give perspective on the current humiliation. Heine's poem in footnotes is good. More interesting columns are found at side left there, click 'The Complete Spengler.' Also, Nathalie, not only do you have my sister's name but you are going ahead and making sense.

Al Jabar taught us that there can be placeholders x and y in a statement such that, for any random value of x, we can calculate the value of y. Thus we don't have to memorize or create a table. Similarly, a phrase like 'Yankee, Go Home' conveys a message to Paul Hamilton or Michael or any other person, male American citizen, not inclusive of people, if there are any, just with the name 'Yankee,' and conveys also a sentiment about that class to a nonmember except to Tom Hanks in the character he portrayed who knew he wasn't being talked about. Similarly, there is a class of people with the name Mohammed and their name is associated with being a member of a religious class which is called Mohammedan or Muslim. This class might be represented by a member Mohammed, x, which we might translate into the category, y, of being Muslim. Now when a picture, let us for the sake of argument call it a cartoon, is made of Mohammed, or x, that depiction is not of a particular historical person but rather is taken as an instance of a person in class y, Muslim. Thus no image of the person for whom Mohammed is named is made.

5 comments:

Nathalie Klein said...

First of all I am very honored to share my name with your sister. Does she spell it Nathalie or Natalie?

I find your X to Y analysis quite to the point. Today I found cartoons to illustrate the recent articles posted on my blog (the one in English) - maybe that was working from Y to X.

Anonymous said...

She spells it as you do, after my mother's French great garandmother but with an anglicized 'th' pronunciation.

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