Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

One more day with music and language - and corona restrictions. I have watched a lot of TV, but it seems that the documentary and quiz channels have put a certain number of programs into the jukebox machine and then their employees left, so now they just repeat the same programs over and over. And most of the live programs are about corona without necessarily giving more information - just more talking heads that repeat the same things over and over. If there are new things then they are announcements of new restrictions or golden promises about help packages later (and of course all that expenditure will have to be paid by somebody after the pandemy has ended so expect your taxes to rise).

The programs that still are worth watching were of course all produced before the present calamity started - like reports about festivals and travels and cultural events in Italy (as in the medieval thing in the image below - notice the reference to a corona fund written acrosse the screen - the virus creeps in everywhere!).

I take a daily walk of a couple of hours every day (keeping a reasonable distance to other people) to see something different and to get some exercise, and I feel really sorry for those who aren't allowed to do that. And that raises a nagging question: if the incubation time is assumed to be up to two weeks, how can there then still be a rise in the number of newly infected people? Somebody must get closer than 2 meters to propagate the infection, otherwise the numbers would already now be decreasing. And if those people continue to kiss and embrace and do sport together, how long must the general population then be confined in their homes, and how long can our economies continue to survive?

Line_verde_RAIuno_22-3-20.JPG

I just saw a case on Danish TV where a hairdresser was denied a survival loan in her bank because she couldn't give the bank an economic status which normally only will be ready in June - and to boot the bank asked her for an assessment of her current business. Every idiot should now that that type of business has been closed down by governmental degree - but apparently some idiots don't watch TV. And now she has to close her shop for good. If the restrictions continue for maybe half a year (until the epidemy dies out by itself) then I wonder how many hairdressers and dentists and museums and travel agents there will be left.

I once wrote that there are two alternatives: either let the epidemy run its course and accept the fatalities or draw the process sufficiently out to allow the hospitals to keep step, which however will kill a part of the businesses and subject many people to restrictions that normally are reserved for criminals. Unfortunately we may end up with a combination: the epidemy will continue, but we will also have to endure the harsh cures that should have controlled it - and all that only because some people don't take the hygienic and distance rules seriously!

At least we still have the internet and our personal book and music collections, and those that wish to do so can continue to study languages.

POR: Eu tenho descoberto que tem muitas palestras e discussões sobre tópicos históricos e mitológicos em português no Youtube (principalmente nas variedades brasileiras). Por exemplo, alguns homens sob o nome coletivo conhecimentosadahumanidade discutem por uns 13 minutos a mitologia sumeriana, e posso estar bastante satisfeito por eu ter entendido quase tudo. No entanto, os mesmos caras também fizeram um video sobre o mito irlandês de Cúchulkainn, e lá riram metade do tempo, o que tornou muito mais difícil entender o conteúdo real do programa. Pelo menos eu ouvi o brasileiro falado, e isso acontece muito raramente. Mas, no menu à direita, descobrí uma palestra de uma hora e meia sobre o rei Artur, e a senhora que falava lá era naõ só divertida, más também séria. O principais problemas eram barulho do corredor do lado de fora e um indivíduo farejador demasiado perto do microfone, mas pelo menos o programa foi feito antes que ele pudesse ser tocado pela corona.

RU: Я также изучил википедийский текст на русском языке о первой египетской династии, которая началась с фараона Нармера или Менеса, который объединил Северный и Южный Египет. На самом деле там, были фараоны перед ним, как, может быть, король скорпионов (названный в честь скорпиона в его подписи) - я должен написать " может быть", потому что он может бы быть идентичен Нармеру Менесу. Во время первой династии все еще практиковалось человеческое жертвоприношение: в могиле Фарао Джера было найдено 338 трупов. Но эта отвратительная практика прекратилась в конце первой династии.

[tungemål]

I take a daily walk of a couple of hours every day (keeping a reasonable distance to other people) to see something different and to get some exercise, and I feel really sorry for those who aren't allowed to do that. And that raises a nagging question: if the incubation time is assumed to be up to two weeks, how can there then still be a rise in the number of newly infected people? Somebody must get closer than 2 meters to propagate the infection, otherwise the numbers would already now be decreasing. And if those people continue to kiss and embrace and do sport together, how long must the general population then be confined in their homes, and how long can our economies continue to survive?

Good point.
I guess one reason can be so simple that more people are tested and more cases are discovered, but that there are not that many newly infected ones. Since as you say, incubation time can be up to two weeks, so many people can go around and be infected without knowing it.

Another thing is that shops and supermarkets are not closed. And it is enough to touch a door handle or a shopping cart, and then touch your face to become infected.

[Iversen]

The TV programs continue in the same groove - i.e. "news" has become "news about corona", and Swedish "Vetenskapens Värld" (world of science) has become "more about corona", the Italians and now also the Spaniards are dying in droves, and a commentary in Danish TV (or was it a newspaper?) has suggested that one reason could be the tendency for old old people to live with their younger family members - here in the North the tend to have their own homes, which has made it easier to keep them from being infected. And there a more infected men than women because men are dirty pigs that don't wash their hands (okay, it was said in more diplomatic terms, but the meaning was clear).

In spite of the restrictions the number of hospitalized sufferers continue to rise, but here you have to consider that it takes some time first to get infected, and after some days of mild agony it takes some time for the illness to spread to the lungs - and before that happens nobody is hospitalized. Mild and/or suspected cases are just told to stay at home in at least two weeks isolation (no walks), and because there is a dire lack of test kits nobody has a shred of an inkling of the true number of completely new infections. So we can't yet really assess the true effect of the restrictions yet - people have to get through the first infection phase before they become sufficiently ill to be tested and counted.

In South Korea they were better prepared and could test lots of people, which meant that they had reliable statistics - we don't. Actually one South Korean vendor offered to sell test kits to the Danish health ministry, but some jerk in the ministry declined the offer - and the responsible minister has now had to apologize profusely on TV.

My goodnight reading yesterday was a chapter of the book"Lost Civilisations of the Stone age" by R.Rudgle, which I managed to borrow from our main library just days before it was closed down - and since the closure will continue until the end of Easter I now have lots of time to read the rest. I mention it here because of the chapter about the precursors of Sumerian cuneiform writing. The general assumption has normally been that it developed from little pictures of goats and cattle and humans and whatever that developed into pictograms which became more and more stylized with time, and when the writing system was adopted by others the signs were more and more used for their phonetic value rather than as pictographic signs.

But that's apparently wrong. An archeologist with the unhandy name Denise Schmandt-Besserat was told to study some weird little geometric-shaped clay objects found in several old Sumerian sites, and she became so engrossed by these tiny objects that she spent the next fifteen hyears cataloguing and describing them. Then a chance find in Northern Iraq from the second millenium BC (i.e. long after the Sumerian period and far from Sumeria) - of a vessel with some clay thingies inside gave her a lead: the inscription on the vessel stated that there were counters for ewes with lambs and others ewes without lambs etc. etc. And the numbers on the vessel turned out to correspond to exactly the same numbers of clay objects inside - i.e. "49 something" meant that there were 49 clay somethings in the vessel. OK, back to the old clay objects: there now was a possibility that each kind of clay object meant that there was one item of a specific kind (an animal or some measure of grain) in a dispatch. And since the objects thus had begotten a meaning they were forthwith designated as tokens. OK, the oldest and most geometric tokens dated back to around 8000 BC, but some new ones were introduced around 4300-4400 BC, and from then on they came in ever more shapes.

Next step: it became costumary to enclose the small objects in clay boxes (until then they might have been in bags of leather or cloth which has disappeared), and then some genius got the idea to make signs on the box to show what was inside. And years later another genius got the bright idea that with annotations on the boxes you didn't need to enclose the clay tokens - the signs on the box carried all the necessary information. And then a third genius got the idea that you also could use those stylized sign for things you didn't send .. and writing was born (probably in the town of Uruk). Then the use on soft clay prompted the geometrical signs to develop into true cuneiform, and when the Sumerians were conquered by the Akkads these found that this whole writing thing actually was really smart, but their language was very different (actually Sumerian counts as a linguistic isolate to this day) so they began to use the cuneiform signs as phonetic indications (read syllables), and a mixed system evolved - somewhat like the Chinese signs that had to be supplemented by phonetic signs and 'type' indicators in Japanese. Much later some Phoenician genius then replaced this cumbersome system with an alphabetical system, but that's quite another history.

In contrast the Egyptian hieroglyphs may have started out as ideograms that later were redefined and used for their phonetic value, but that's also quite another story.

Sumerian-tokens.jpg

PS: the standard theory (where the earliest Sumerian signs are assumed to be ideograms) is illustrated in the table below, which can be found in the English Wikipedia article. It is clear that the sign for a man and the one an ox resembles a man resp. an ox, but the other signs in the first column don't not really resemble their suggested motives that much. However the signs in question must supposedly have been found on ancient Sumerian objects since they are shown on Wikipedia, and the 90° turn between columns 1 and 2 must also be a historical fact, so now we are left with two very different explanations of where the Sumerian signs came from.

Sumerian-tokens (Wikipedia).jpg

[Iversen]

EN: When I roll through the channels on my TV then corona dominates everywhere, but many of the programs just repeat the same messages - which of course are essential: keep at a distance (at least 1½ meter, better 2 meter) , sneeze/cough/blow your nose at your elbow, not into your hand, don't touch things which others may touched with their snot infested hands etc. etc. If everyone followed these rules the virus spread would have ceased. But as simple as they may be, they haven't been observed everywhere - for instance I just saw a little film which based on mobile phone movements demonstrated how the participants in the traditional Mardi Gras of Miami had returned to their home states, and there they now are busy propagating the corona virus throughout the United States. Those programs that don't repeat these simple instructions mostly tell about new restrictions and other calamities.

SW: Sverige genomför för närvarande ett experiment: myndigheterna har utsent samma råd som alla andra: alla måste hålla avstånd, gå i isolering hvis man har någon sorts corona symptom och så vidare. Just idag har möten på mer än 50 personer förbjudits i Sverige, men annars år institutioner och företag och butiker är öppna där, och gränserna är inte stängda. Danmark har stängt institutionerna och gränserna fram till slutet av påskhelgen, men tillåter fortfarande medborgarna att gå fritt runt utanför sina hem. Men som bildet nedanför viser har antalet passagerare i kollektivtrafiken i Danmark sjunket dramatisk, och det finns färre människor på gatorna - och det har hänt genom frivillighet..

IT: In altri paesi è stato proibito ai residenti di lasciare le sue case - a meno che debbano acquistare cibo o medicine o andare all suo lavoro a condizione que questo sia una funzione vitale. Tra coloro che hanno le restrizioni più severe c'è l'Italia, e le hanno avuto da diverse settimane. Ma il periodo di incubazione è di circa una settimana (al massimo dieci giorni) e, a meno che non siano presenti ulteriori complicazioni, la malattia dovrebbe concludersi nel corso di due settimane. Quindi, se l'isolamento funziona, l'Italia dovrebbe ora vedere un drastico calo del numero di nuovi infetti. Non è quello che ho sentito - sebbene le cifre citate più frequentemente siano quelle dei pazienti ospedalizzati e dei defunti, le quale non mostrano molto sul nuovo afflusso di persone infette.

Per inciso, ho visto una buona spiegazione dal fatto che Bergamo è stata la città più colpita della Lombardia: metà della città ha viaggiato in autobus per Milano per vedere una partita di calcio che hanno vinto per 1-4 - e poi si sono baciati e abbracciati per un po' , e dopo questa esplosione di allegria si recarono a casa a Bergamo e infettarono l'altra metà della città.

DA: Smitten kom tildels til Danmark fra Italien, men den vigtigste smittekilde var en enkelt corona-befængt beværtning i Ichgl i Tyrol, hvor man fejrede 'after ski' med druk og tæt fysisk kontakt. En rejsegruppe kom tilbage til Island, og ALLE var smittede med corona. Det meldte man tilbage til Tyrol, og der skete intet som helst (!!) i en uge, og i den uge rejste masser af smittede turister hjem til deres respektive hjemlande, herunder Danmark. Og da ingen havde rubriceret Tyrol som særligt farligt område, kunne de hjemvendte turister smitte masser af andre danskere. Nu er problemet erkendt, men for sent.

GR: Τις τελευταίες μέρες, ανανέωσα την ελληνική μου γλώσσα, διαβάζοντας τους στίχους στο Teach Yourself Greek (στην παλιά γαλάζια έκδοση). Μάλλον δεν έχω μάθει κάτι νέο, αλλά εκπαιδεύω τις βασικές δεξιότητες αυτής της γλώσσας.

F60_Almost-empty-train.jpg

[tractor]

En stor andel av nordmennene som brakte med seg koronasmitte hjem til Norge hadde vært på den samme afterskibaren i Ischgl i Tyrol. Her er en artikkel i den norske avisa VG: https://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/i/8m ... rona-baren

[Iversen]

I have been working with revision of the thematic catalogue attached to my music collection for some time now. It has taken a lot of time, but I basically finished the job this afternoon. This should leave me with some more free time to delve into language studies. I have still been able to watch TV programs, but since I also have been jotting down themes I have for much of the time been limited to programs with subtitles - in Danish or some other language. And listening to podcasts and Youtube lectures have become rare activities because I was listening to music instead. Basically I only listened to other things when I was making fair copies in black ink of my scribbled notes and later when I scanned these copies and patched the result into my digital files. But from now on I'll only need to run through these things again if I discover a gross error or add new items. And since the bulk of my favorite composers are dead and my collection already is 'big enough' there isn't much reason to search actively for new items.

Yesterday was a 'black ink' day, and today has been a 'integrating scans' day so I have in principle been able to listen to other things than music for a couple of days, and I have used the opportunity to listen to both TV programs and Youtube lectures. Time for text studies have been limited since I can't both write notes/work with scans and do text copies by hand, but I expect to resume that activity with a vengeance now. I have just read Jiwons paper on the migration from HTLAL to LLORG, but that was in English so it doesn't really count as language study.

More about that later, but right now I can only report on listening experiences. And today I have been listening to television in Danish, English, Montenegrin, Italian, Spanish and German, and while working with my scans I also listened to a series of Youtube lectures in Spanish.

SP: La serie en cuestión se llama "Peró eso es otra Historia" y se trata de una revisión rapidissima de la historia y los universos mitológicos de diferentes culturas antiguas. Por ejemplo, hay una sección sobre el Egipto predinástico y las dos primeras dinastías (que encaja perfectamente con el texto ruso que estudié hace una semana). Hay material sin limite sobre Tut y sobre las pirámides, pero no tanto sobre las primeras dinastías. Personalmente he escrito sobre el período aquí varias veces en este hilo, por ejemplo, sobre el faraón Seth-Peribsen, que incorporó el nombre del dios más odiado Seth en su nombre, casi como si una majestad europea o el papa hubiera cambiado su nombre a Satanás. Pero los sucesores dejaron a Seth y regresaron a Horus como su dios patrón.

También hay dos secciones sobre la mitología nórdica, que cuentan, entre otras cosas, ampliamente sobre los dos hermanos de Odin (Vile y Ve - dos nombres de sonido divertido en español con las b bilabiales) y la creación de trolls y gigantes ('jætter'): no es frecuente que se explica estas cosas. E incluso, hay una sección sobre las primeras especies humanas. Y una vez mas, con obvia justicia propia, puedo alegrarme de haber comentado sobre los asuntos in cuestión en este hilo o en HTLAL. Pero me doy cuenta de que las cosas que escribo aquí descenderán como el plancton hasta el fondo del océano y se transformarán allá en capas de sedimentos muertos. Después de todo, lo crucial es que siempre hay temas nuevos y que estos temas pueden estudiarse a través de otros idiomas además del danés y el inglés.

Otra_historia.jpg

PS: nowadays Homo heidelbergensis is commonly seen as the ancestor of both the neanderthals and us sapientes - and maybe also the denisovans, though nobody has claimed that yet.

[Iversen]

GER: Ich habe in den letzten Tagen ganz viel Fernsehen gesehen, darunter eine Serie mit einem Virologen, Professor Drosten von der Charité in Berlin, der sich am NDR zur Korona äußert. Das Gute an dieser Serie ist, daß er es wagt, auch technische Details von Viren zu erwähnen. Es gibt viele andere Sendungen des gleichen Typs in verschiedenen Sprachen, aber normalerweise versuchen die Experten dort, sich allgemein verständlich zu formulieren und dann manchmal die spezifischen Details zu opfern, die es mir ermöglichen zu verstehen, wie die Dinge eigentlich funktionieren.

Zum Beispiel wurde mir hier zum ersten Mal klar, daß es zwei Arten von Antigenen gibt: einige mit algemeiner Funktion, die vielleicht erklären könnten, daß manche Menschen gar nicht oder nicht besonders krank werden, und andere strikt gezielte, die nur auf eine Sorte Virus wirken. Nun, vielleicht könnte mann dann eine Impfung basierend auf Kopien des letzten Typs produzieren. In dieselber Serie wurde mir auch klar, warum es so gut ist, sich die Hände zu waschen: Seife löst Fett auf, und die ansteckenden "roten Dinge" des Viruses sitzen auf einem Fettball. Wenn die Leute stattdessen Alkolbasierter Händedesinfektionsmittel jagen, ist es daher nur gerechtfertigt, weil diese an anderer Stelle als an einem Wasserhahn verwendet werden kann - beispielsweise in Geschäften (und ja, die meisten Geschäfte in Dänemark sind noch geöffnet -, jedoch nicht bestimmten Ketten und Geschäften in Einkaufszentren).

DA: Vores statsminister Mette Frederiksen har i øvrigt på et pressemøde sagt, at der MULIGVIS bliver lempet på restriktionerne i Danmark efter påske - men kun hvis vi opfører os pænt. Baggrunden er at vores smittekurve er relativt flad - og altså ikke vokser eksponentielt som for eksempel i Italien og Spanien. Det må betyde, at vi danskere er gode til at holde afstand - og at det dermed var fornuftigt, at vi ikke blev spærret inde i vores egne hjem. Svenskerne har også en forholdvis pæn kurve, selv om de har endnu mindre restriktive regler end Danmark. I Spanien, hvor man har strengere regler, vokser kurven stadig eksponentielt. I Italien er der meldinger om svagere tilvækst, men det skulle man også gerne have efter adskillige ugers nedlukning og husarrest.

EN: So the Danish prime minister has suggested a slow and gradual return to normal after Easter (IF WE CONTINUE TO BEHAVE !!!!!), and of course some people have suggested to open certain things before others. I'm however slightly puzzled to see that the schools should be among the first things to reopen - although many tired parents probably see forward to getting rid of their kids for some hours during the day. It could however be a cunning plan to get around one problem, namely that only a small part of the population will have acquired immunity to the disease if we open society again too early. But young people are generally more likely only to experience weak symptoms, and maybe this is an attempt to get as many people under 50 or 60 as possible infected while still protecting the elderly and vulnerable.

You may remember that I a few weeks ago mentioned two alternative strategies: the brutal and quick solution where you let the pandemy run its course and accept the ensuing fatalities, and the slow course where you impose strangling restrictions on people to keep the infection rate at a level where the hospitals can cope. OK, now we have followed the second track for some time by imposing some rather drastic measures on people's lives, so while we still wait for some efficient cure to appear the best thing might actually be to let the young ones develop natural immunity - or in other words: to get them to infect each other and their parents (but NOT their grandparents, because they may die).

And even after the quota of immune people has been reached (some 60-70 % of the population should suffice) it would still be a good idea to keep after-skiing party monkeys under control - we don't need another Ischgl, and there will be new pandemias in the future.

IT: A proposito, ho menzionato una partita di calcio per spiegare i problemi particolarmente gravi della città di Bergamo. In Danimarca abbiamo sofferto qualcosa dello stesso genero: all'inizio dell'epidemia c'era un enorme evento equestre a Herning in Jutlandia, e gli organizzatori hanno rifiutato di annullarlo. Ora la situazione è che la maggior percentuale delle persone infette stanno naturalmente a Copenaghen (che potrebbe avere qualcosa a che fare con la mentalità laggiù), ma Herning - che è solo una città mediana di provincia - è diventata un epicentro per l'infezione in Danimarca, anche se fortunatamente su un livello molto più basso rispetto alla Lombardia.

GER: Im Log von Kanewai gibt es zurzeit eine Diskussion über Probleme beim Erlernen der Endungen der Adjektive auf Deutsch. In der Vergangenheit habe ich irgendwann ein grünes Blatt erstellt, das sich mit diesem Thema befaßt. In den meisten Grammatiken werden die Formen von Artikeln, Adjektiven und Substantiven in separaten Kapiteln behandelt. Auf meinem Blatt habe ich jedoch beschlossen, alle drei Arten von Flexionsformen zusammen zu zeigen, um die Logik dann besser erkennen zu können.

Der-die-das.jpg

[Iversen]

This will be a very short message. I have been visiting my mother for a couple of days, and when I returned home to my flat I saw the mayhem scene below. I have no idea why a row of books shelves decided to tumble over during my absence, but now I know what I'll be spending the next couple of days on - putting the books back on the shelves. Of course I can - and will - listen to lectures and other podcasts and maybe some TV, but one of the objects that were buried by the avalanche was my comfy chair where I normally study texts and do wordlists. It is a miracle that my TV set survived (and the cables that connect me to the internet), given that it was that apparatus that blocked the fall of the leftmost shelf, but two lamps were smashed. It could however had been much worse.

F6015a03_crash.jpg

[slowmoon]

They say "knowledge is power," but I've never seen it demonstrated so forcefully. Well, at least no one was hurt.

[Iversen]

Well, I did step on a splinter from a broken lamp, but wasn't seriously hurt. But no time left to study today, and after two days of hard work alternating with deep thinking and planning I have still not finished the job. The problem is that I want to have my book collection distributed on my shelves according to genre and language and country, but I also have to take size and numbers and the laws of gravity into account which makes it hard to invent a layout that heed all those factors. I still haven't placed all my guide books, nor the books in minor languages (like Sardic, Romantsch, Scots, Irish and Bahasa Melayu), and I'll definitely have to improve on the sorting order on each shelf - but things are nevertheless moving ahead, and during the process I have come over a number of items which I totally had forgotten I had bought, so there should be basis for choosing some interesting goodnight reading stuff in the time to come.

FR: D*ailleurs je viens de lire l'article de Wikipédia sur la mort du pianiste Charles-Valentin Alkan, mais non, il ne fut pas écrasé sous le poids d'une étagère:

"(...)contrairement à la légende, ce dernier n'aurait pas été écrasé par sa bibliothèque en voulant saisir le Talmud. Alkan aurait été retrouvé prostré dans sa cuisine sous un porte-parapluie auquel il se serait tenu avant de s'évanouir. Il aurait été transporté dans sa chambre et serait décédé plus tard dans la soirée. Alkan meurt dans un oubli presque total. "

Du moins quelqu'un était là pour le transporter. Il était tellement réclus qu'il aurait pu être attrappé sous une étagère pendant des semaines avant que quiconque ne remarque l'odeur ou le manque d'activité sur le piano.

Alkan.jpg