VMs: Sex from gravity in the VMS (was: Leo Levitov)

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

14/10/2004 9:24:10 PM, Giuliano Colla <copeca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>Just to understand your point of view.
>Why do you suggest a fifth-floor window, when a fifteenth-floor one 
>would provide a more prolonged time to speculate on the contentious 
>nature of socially described "facts"?

Gravity first, sex later.

An excellent question. My choice of a fifth-floor was reasoned
on there being far more fifth floors (you find them even in 
buildings with six or seven floors and more) than fifteenth 
floors, so that finding one would likely require less searching 
about. 

However, you have an excellent point: a more prolonged time
to speculate. Having thought the matter over, I now favour
a second-floor window (or balcony--in a pinch, you can even
make do with the roof of a plain old house). Two-floor falls are 
seldom lethal. You just end up crippled for a while (1),
after which, having recovered, you can carry out your 
gravitational experiment again. Yes, two floors, definitely.
Remember: the hallmark of a properly designed experiment is
_repeatability_. And then, in your wheelchair, you can take
a diversion studying Luce Irigaray's claim that Einstein's 
equation is sexist, cf:

http://scibooks.org/sciencewars.html

Irigaray's closing words are, again, pearls of wisdom
("again" because, like a Brahmin's mouth (2), her pen
dribbles nothing but pearls of wisdom):

"And if, by chance, you were to have the impression of not 
having yet understood everything, then perhaps you would 
do well to leave your ears half-open for what is in such 
close touch with itself that it confounds your discretion."

Reminds me a lot of St Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians
--drat, I can't find an English New Testament when I need one
so here it is in French: "Au reste, si quelqu'un veut ergoter,
tel n'est pas notre usage, ni celui des Eglises de Dieu"
(1 Co.11:16)

Now the Voynich manuscript is clearly a forerunner of
Einstein's "e=mc2" because its subject is also sexist, 
see:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8389/phallic.htm

The "nymph in a scrotum" operating a penis is the personification
of the _social_ image of masturbators, the solitary vice 
causing you to go blind (3) and to shrink in the Eye of God
(which has been proved to be the object of the Manuscript--
at least in Ukrainian). It is significant of the low social
status of women at the time that the masturbator should be
represented as a tiny woman. And her being imprisoned in
a scrotum is the illustrative parable of the social subjection
of women in phallocratic society. Sorry... this makes _some_
sense (barely). But I'll do better next time. Promised
(even if I have to call MONKEY to the rescue).

(1) "Je suis tombé par terre, c'est la faute à Voltaire"
See? Victor Hugo was the grandmother of the Postmodern
Theory of Gravity. 

(2) "a Brahmin's mouth". I have it from a Brahmin himself,
Ramesh Krishnamurti, who was doing a degree in computer
science when I was doing my PhD in linguistics: "Every
word out of the mouth of a Brahmin is a pearl of wisdom".
And then he'd burst out laughing.

(3) "go blind." Or deaf. It's all the same. For, to quote 
the immortal words of Russell Sadd, the deep wisdom of which
graced this unworthy list on Sunday 10 Oct 2004 about 16:06
(which, BTW, happens to be exactly 6000 years from the
Creation of the World)

"we might agree that an apple is red, but how do I know 
that what you see as red is not what I see as green?"


Mutatis mutandis: "we might agree that Dick is blind,
but how do I know that what you understand as blind is
not what I understand as deaf, and so Dick is in reality
deaf?" (or a one-legged bonobo, or a bat in a belfry,
or... yes! a Brahmin--it's all the same).



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