The CBB

Whereas I think that, rather than deciding what would be said in the Hypothetical Coffeehouse you share with Eddy, we should approach the world from the perspective of what things actually appear to be the case. that is correct, which is why I point out why it would not seem to be the case that med...

But the problem is, you approach the world by working out what's fashionable to say and then saying it (oh, sorry, working out what's not 'problematic' from the point of view of fashion). Whereas I think that, rather than deciding what would be said in the Hypothetical Coffeehouse you share with Edd...

Yes. And even if a species is sufficiently human that you can understand their concepts and relate to them, that doesn't mean you can relate to their ambitions . Ambitions spring from biology, but find their full form only in a social context, meaning that what motivates one person may not motivate ...

I'm writing a sci-fi book at the moment, and I think the idea that readers will not be able to identify with your "alien" species is absurd, especially if the culture and customs of said species are well explained (subtly and within the plot of course) during the beginning of the book. On...

I have a SF setting which has radically non-human species... but i'm not sure what actual stories could be told in it. You can't really make alien aliens into protagonists, because their motivations, assumptions, etc, are so completely different. You can have them as antagonists, of course, but then...

I keep hearing this overall theme: "heterosexuals are considered better/more esteemed/normal etc. than homosexuals because they make children". This may all be well and good, if it's a *cultural understanding*, but it sucks if its a *scientific* one. Homosexuals can make children just as ...

A couple of briefer notes on other concultures: - Handorians very much base their concept of sexuality on the idea of proper and inverted gender. There are two genders, male and female - the first, associated with power, dominance, penetration, the second with the inverse of these. However, an unfor...

It was a dismissal, nothing more. Have a good day. Oh, a dismissal is never nothing more than a dismissal! Certain things act as 'dismissals' for certain reasons - you didn't pick a random set of words, now did you? Indeed, I think you're being too dismissive of yourself by waving it away as a 'dis...

Regarding the OP, speakers of Rawàng Ata have no concept of 'sexual orientation' in our sense. They do, however, have a more complicated concept of gender, which may overlap with our 'orientation'. They recognise six 'genders' oriented around position within our outside the family structure (which m...

Cool story bro. You should tell it at a party some time. I don't follow - there was no story, only a conversation about lexicography. I take it that this is a gesture aimed at conceding that you're wrong while at the same time attempting to gain higher social status by demeaning me through mockery?...

Err... I don't think you really understood my point there. Which is that, yes, subcultures may reutilise words in novel ways, with semantic drift, and there's nothing wrong with that per se, but that doesn't invalidate the general, non-specialised use either. You don't own the language - and even if...

Ah, tribadism. Scissoring. So awesome. Scissoring isn't the only form of tribadism. In fact I think I've only seen it once and read about it once (now twice). It's the rarest form to go by my extremely limited and almost certainly unrepresentative "experience". Also, I don't see how that,...

If everyone hoards all the money there is no money left for anyone to use and the economy breaks down. The point of money is to use it. But: economies can work without money, and people can hoard goods other than money. They can, but any commodity is worthless to the economy if its horded No - the ...

I quite like the Worgel experiment idea of making money have an expiration date to prevent hoarding, but I'm not sure how to use it in a conworld. What's wrong with hoarding? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding_(economics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6rgl#The_W.C3.B6rgl_Experiment Yeah, bu...

The problem with using cereals as a currency is that they're just plain too common - cereals, with widespread use and cultivation, would likely lead to an incredibly volatile currency. That said, I believe spices have been used as currency in some areas, and having two spices would makes just as mu...

Sounds interesting. Some points: - the plagiarism makes me very queasy. Thank you for acknowledging it, but wouldn't it be better to avoid it altogether by changing the name? Perelandra is, as you know, already the name of a well-known world that somebody else has created. And I'm not sure about the...

I suppose I belong to a different generation of conlangers than many or most of the members here. I started creating my first language in 1983, and I've been on the CONLANG email list since the mid nineties. I was also a member of the now defunct LANGDEV list. As such, my list of favorites goes bac...

The problem arises because you're working in a demand-driven model. Where do you think supercomputers and massage parlours came from in the first place? ...I think they came from investment , which is what you don't have if you're Spain. They don't just pop into existence out of nowhere. The supply...

Spoken like a good neoliberal. But it's plainly false. Imports do weaken an economy, pro tanto, because they crowd out domestic supply. The neoliberal theory is that if those imports contribute to a restructuring of global production along the lines of comparative advantages (and/or technological pr...

Bimetallism (that is, if you're not clear, allowing two different metals as legal tender simultaneously, with a fixed exchange rate between them) was largely, probably entirely, extinct by 1900.