I would probably appreciate it even more if I were not monogamous...

Jacek

If you read the Wikipedia link you provided, you'd know that they never ... so no need to get wired .

Nanna

That's right (you never know until you have checked it out...), love does not have to be physical. After all, coming to translation, one of the meanings of the word "romantic" is

Hence all the innocent "romantic evenings," "romantic moonlight rides" and "romantic adventures" of the kind idealized by Cohen:

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river ....
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy ....
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

No need to get wired! Since most western countries do not recognize polygamous marriages, one is bound to remain monogamous before the law anyway!

Jacek

Some Concepts

Translation

Central to ANT (some times referred to as Sociology of Translation) is the concept of translation, in which innovators attempt to create a forum, a central network in which all the actors agree that the network is worth building and defending. In his widely debated 1986 study of how marine biologists try to restock the St Brieuc Bay in order to produce more scallops, Michel Callon has defined 4 moments of translation. These four moments are derived from studying:

1. Problematisation

What is the problem that needs to be solved? Who are the relevant actors? Delegates need to be identified that will represent groups of actors. So, a union head represents workers or a Member of Parliament represents his constituency. During problematisation, the primary actor tries to establish itself as an obligatory passage point (OPP) between the other actors and the network, so that it becomes indispensable.

2. Interessement

Getting the actors interested and negotiating the terms of their involvement. The primary actor works to convince the other actors that the roles it has defined them are acceptable.

3. Enrolment

Actors accept the roles that have been defined for them during interessement.

4. Mobilization of allies

I trust that you are now totally unwired - welcome back, Jacek.

I am too lazy at the moment to do much else besides sit in a wonderfully comfortable lawn chair in my courtyard while re-reading Eco's The Name of the Rose, slowly this time, checking the many Latin words and sentences, reaching for my tea and enjoying the sun-dabbled breeze.

I have never enjoyed reading anything as much I do this - a slow savouring of words and life - that I was too busy to enjoy when younger. I just feel so good!

Nanna

And a good evening to you, too.

While reading Eco, I don't feel constrained by his words such that I am left me with just one way to interpret the meaning. I am free re-invent, so to speak, to play with or re-interpret the Latin inscriptions above the door frames in the diabolical library, before I check what they actually mean. I now wish I had learned Latin, for it's clear that there are layers of linguistic subtleties that I totally miss. But there's so much else to enjoy in the Name of the Rose, so ... that's what I do ... enjoy it!

Thank you, especially for the Melk link.

Nanna

Love in translation

[snip] The worst accidents in life are accidents of language." While anyone who has just been run over by a bus might beg to differ, Amélie Nothomb illustrates this authorial sentiment with a deft, droll touch.

Although the novella is categorised as fiction, the young narrator of Tokyo Fiancée is also named Amélie, suggesting a hefty element of memoir. A Belgian teaching French in Tokyo, Amélie takes on a single student who soon doubles as her boyfriend. Wealthy, naive, and terribly sweet, Rinri is the classic bundle of contradictions of a contemporary Japanese youth. He subjects Amélie to a torturous multi-course Japanese dinner with his friends, through which she is obliged to carry the whole conversational ball, but left to his own devices, he prefers spaghetti.

Since this is a story about language, naturally the plot turns on a cataclysmic failure of grammar. Owing to the Japanese propensity to frame questions in the negative, when Amélie says no, it is received as yes, and lo, she has accepted Rinri's proposal of marriage - a point of confusion she is too polite to correct.

Tokyo Fiancée

is a light, lovely little romance, winningly told and entertaining. It's a fine primer on the way in which language mirrors culture. ...

Yet for young aspirants, love is a trap - a potentially crippling snare that would chain them in place before finding their destiny. This is a trap that Amélie escapes, if without much consideration or grace, at least with efficiency.

Like her narrator, Nothomb was born in Japan, which she left at the age of five. The child of Belgian diplomats, Nothomb grew up in a host of countries, providing her with an eye for what makes cultures truly different, and for the ways in which we're all secretly the same.

She is astonishingly prolific, and among the 10 of her books translated into English since 1993, the slender Tokyo Fiancée is almost a throwaway. But let's not throw it away. It's charming. ... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f51ceab2-ef36-11dd-bbb5-0000779fd2ac.html

This Baby Translator Demeans Us Both

The baby translator WhyCry was invented to help confused parents decipher their children’s cries. It may end up doing more harm than good. The $100.00 device analyzes pitch, rhythm, and volume of cries to help parents figure out the child’s needs with a reported 98 percent accuracy. It shows one of five icons, corresponding to one of the five reasons why babies cry: They’re usually either stressed, sleepy, annoyed, bored, or hungry.

When a parent figures out what the child needs, a bond is created between parent and child. WhyCry may be able solve the problem, but it could hurt the parent-child bond. According to Psychotherapy Networker, “a parent’s voice is critical in establishing an empathetic bond between parent and baby,” and the WhyCry device could take that parent’s voice out of the equation. “WhyCry may tell parents what their baby needs,” according to the article, “it may also interfere with their instinctively empathetic vocal response.”