Declan Murphy wrote:
<snip>
>> significant strain for my Japanese. (For tomorrow's
>> lesson, I'm planning to give my little speech about it...)
>
> All I pray is that the little speech be (a) little and (b) delivered
> somewhere else.

Gee, thanks for the kind and encouraging words. Not.

It actually went better than average. At my lunchtime "rehearsal", I found
it's possible to do the title as a kind of twisted haiku, which makes me
think Matsuda-san is a pretty good translator...

<snip>
> Investment in traditional libraries is still growing. There are
> important equity and downward linkage considerations, and until
> authors and others producing research and content can be appropriately
> compensated for their intellectual capital the web is going to tend to
> follow not lead. Google indexes what? 4.something billion pages? The
> sum total of which if print would probably fit into the library at
> Berkeley with room to spare, and the quality of which varies
> enormously. Sure someone can start research using the web, but there
> are many limitations.

Not sure what you intend by "downward linkage", but the intellectual capital
issue is pretty deep. My employer has big hang-ups about the IP aspects.
However, to give you a recursive view of the problem, at
http://www.publicknowledge.org/content/links/Link.2004-05-03.8653484120 you
can download Lessig's latest book on the topic. (In the small world
syndrome, their senior attorney turns out to be an old acquaintance of mine
from before he entered law school.) I converted the book and I'm reading it
on my CLIE--no paper involved. Central thesis (and greatly oversimplified)
is that copyright law is supposed to serve two parties, the creators and the
larger society, but the law has instead been co-opted and completely
rewritten to serve the purely monetary purposes of another group, the
publishers.


> Perhaps you should think about the following - "Its not what you ask
> for, but how you ask for it" and "You only get one chance to make a
> first impression". If the way you asked about the menu is in any way
> similar to your communication skills here, I'm not at all surprised
> that the staff thought there was a major problem.

Certainly not a first impression, but you can believe whatever you like. You
certainly don't seem particularly qualified to be giving lessons. Right now
I see no particular reason to care what rumors and gossip you like.


>> With regards to your other post, I'm sorry to inform you that I'm
>> distinctly independent and thick-skinned, even by American
>> standards, and I pretty much go where I want.
>
> People who are thick skinned don't throw hissy fits at hapless
> librarians, nor react with stupid comments such as "Is that because
> you don't know what a library is, or just because you're such a
> colossal loser? Or perhaps most likely because you're another sucker
> for BushCo?" etc etc. If you were thick-skinned or mature, it would
> have washed over like water off a duck's back.

At the time, I thought it was a quite appropriate reaction to an unprovoked
rudeness from whoever it was. On the other hand, I admit the main reason was
to fish for a reaction on the BushCo aspect, but I didn't see any other way
to "introduce" the second sentence "appropriately". Reports from my friends
back in the States definitely suggest that Dubya has failed to unite, to put
it softly.

And I don't regard the librarians as hapless. More like cowardly and face
saving--but I've never particularly liked tatemae/honne games. The American
delusion is to seek to unify them. If the book was too hot for them to
handle, then they should have said so.


>> (Oh yeah, I'm also honest to a major fault.) Maybe I've been in
>> Japan too long?
>
> If you really have been in Japan as long as you say and are having
> trouble reading アホでマヌケなアメリカ白人 then what have you been
> wasting your time on? Maybe it is time to go home, or at least break
> out of what appears to be a personal English language ghetto.

I didn't say, and regarding effective usage of time, what are you doing
here? I do understand you're trying to be rude, but do you have any other
point? Or are you just trying to provoke a rudeness war? Sorry, but my
soccer hooligans are out of their office just now, so I can't warm up
properly.

I already commented on your motivational skills. In conclusion, I consider
myself fortunate not to be one of your students, especially if you're a
language instructor.

(That was just peevishness. You probably don't want to encounter me in a
foul mood, like a couple of days last October.)