Effete?
Indeed. After all, Thomas Aquinas (a brainiac if there ever was any) did spend some time pondering whether or not two angels could dance on the head of the same pin (not really - but he did work on whether multiple angels could occupy the same physical space).
Which is about as nerdy as wondering who’d win a Batman vs. Spiderman fight.
And I forget which saint if was, who was mocked by the whole convent because that nerd could read without uttering the words out loud, as was the custom at the time. Instead, that show-off would just look at the page silently and knew what it said !
(after quick google-fu, that was Saint Ambrose)
I have sometimes wondered, though… Some people really do have an inherent aptitude for, say, computer programming. Computers themselves are new, but presumably that sort of aptitude, being part of human nature, has been around for as long as humans. Back before computers, what would someone “born to be a programmer” have done? And, for that matter, are there people alive now who were “born for something” that hasn’t been invented yet?
An aptitude for computer programming is an aptitude for languages, just “talking” to a machine. So maybe a translator, or decryptring dead languages.
Not quite: An aptitude for programming is an aptitude for clear, unambiguous language, something hardly ever found in ordinary human communications. It might mean a lawyer, perhaps, but probably not a translator.
As an aside: One of my pet peeves is people complaining about “legalese” compared to “clear, plain English”, when it’s actually the other way around: Legalese is clear, plain English. It’s ordinary, common English that is unplain and unclear.
Yeah, but that “clear, unambiguous language” comes after trying it again and again and again until you get it right. And adjusting for the quirks in the programming languages for the particular computers.
I have long argued that legalese is a programming language. So, for the period from the point when bodies of common law become common to the advent of computers, “lawyer” (or perhaps “legal clerk”) seems like a good guess for people born with that aptitude.
Yeah, I saw that pointed out once by someone on this board (probably you), and it was thinking about that that led me to the complaint about misunderstandings of “legalese”.
Of course, as with any technical jargon, there are some lawyers who misunderstand the purpose of legalese, and think it’s supposed to be some sort of shibboleth, a way of recognizing the “real lawyers” as compared to the ignorant masses. You also see this sometimes with scientific jargon, which attitude usually leads to technobabble. Though I can’t say how common it is, relatively, in the two fields.
I’ve used the analogy of comparing legal drafting to a wiring document, for example in this very old thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=360315&highlight=Wiring+diagram.
However, there are limits to the comparisons to programming language and wiring diagrams: languages are inherently ambiguous because of the multiple meanings of words, and, unlike programming languages or wiring diagrams, legal writing may be the subject of adversarial disputes, with each side arguing for their own interpretation of the piece of legal writing.
Well, to start off, while I can certainly appreciate an effort to avoid anachronistic (or anacosmological) language in a story, I readily acknowledge that this isn’t always completely practical, or even possible.
And depending on the tone of the story, might actually be more distracting and detrimental to the work if it tried—going the full “Uncleftish Beholdings” route (a “scientific article” written by Poul Anderson in a form of “English” with all or almost all non-Germanic loanwords deliberately stripped out) isn’t suited for every tale.
Ask Leibnitz. He invented binary computations long before there were computers, planned on classifying the whole of the universe with them, as well he thought up a “universal language” that could unambiguously encode any information.
Well, truth be told he didn’t do much of the actual plate-stamping, as he was forever chasing busy work to get paid by some patron or other. But he did come up with the concept and rough outlines of how it would be implemented.
I agree with Dioptre.
Something that comes along with the lack of word is the attitude/understanding about what that word describes. Maybe the character who is asexual themselves has realized the distinction you make above, but I would figure that most of the other characters wouldn’t understand it - they’d be wondering why anyone wouldn’t be interested in sex. So maybe there’s no easy word for it, but instead just have a conversation where one character asks if they’re into boys or girls and keeps getting “no” for an answer.
If, on the other hand, asexuality is something that’s widely understood in this world, then it stands to reason there would be a word for it, so you’d probably need to come up with some silly fantasy-ish term like “non-luster” or something.
How about simply “I have no interest in such things.”
Beyond that, IMHO this is part of world-building (and perhaps also character construction). You have to know what’s considered normal in your world, and what the “acceptable” or common deviations from that “normal” are, and how people are viewed who deviate in common and uncommon ways. This may not show up in the story directly, but it’s going to inform the way characters refer to themselves/each other.
True, but a law-writer will naturally seek to prevent such disagreements. One might perhaps say that well-written legalese is akin to a programming language.
And Kobal2, I would not say that Liebnitz laid the groundwork for an unambiguous universal language. At most, I would say that he hoped for one, since centuries later Gödel would prove such a language to be impossible.
That’s what I was trying to get at. We have the same person with the same lack of desire for sex. In one society this desire is seen as virtuous and praiseworthy, and is easy to explain because everyone else, even though they aren’t asexual themselves have been taught that this this the way everyone SHOULD be. If they are unmarried they are expected to abstain from sex, even though many people wouldn’t actually follow this supposed rule.
In another society the asexual person is considered crazy and frakish. There is no easy cultural category for this.person to explain themselves.
And not ethanol in both cases the character might not understand themselves either. The asexual person believes they abstain because God commanded it, not realizing or caring that what God wants aligns exactly with what they want.
And the asexual in another society might not even recognize that their level of sexual desire is different, and that everyone else is just making a big show out of nothing
Quite the contrary; it looks like your computer has had too much ethanol.
I should stop trying to post from my phone.
In a single word? What’s the mythical creature equivalent.
In too many words:
Asexual - One who’s drawers are stuck/jammed shut/under lock and key; free of fancy for the fairer pleasure; offers cupid no sport
Emo - gone dark elf
Nerd - the very hobgoblin of little minds
I guess the problem with “asexual” is that not enough modern-day English speakers understand the concept; in a story with an ace character you pretty much have to stop and give some sort of explanation.
Okay, I like that one. 