Vitanuova for 2005 August 12

The Latin name for parsley

In answer to Robert Browning's question, the Latin name for parsley is apium.

I'm just back from the Rusticatio Californiana in Petaluma, where I spent a week speaking only Latin. (I can count the exceptions on one hand.) The Rusticatio spoken Latin immersion course was one of the best things I have ever done. As I remarked on the last evening, it's hard to know how to explain the Rusticatio experience to people who weren't there -- not least because all our jokes and conversations have to be translated from Latin into modern languages. But I would wholeheartedly recommend the Rusticatio, which is an annual event, to anyone interested in spoken Latin.

Not only did I have two dreams in Latin during the Rusticatio, but I experienced moments of genuine Latin fluency toward its end, in which I forgot momentarily that I was speaking Latin and conversed for perhaps minutes at a time without consciously struggling for vocabulary or grammar. And my fellow attendees (pretty much all academics, except for me) were wonderfully geeky. The kinds of arguments I overheard and participated in -- and the kinds of jokes I heard and perpetrated -- well, I suppose I can only say mirabile dictu.

Immersion is a wonderful way to improve one's knowledge of any language, and I was amazed to feel, as Annula predicted, my Latin knowledge become "activated" over the course of the week -- supplemented with lots of everyday vocabulary from the classes -- so that I ended up with no doubt in my ability to express myself. A highlight of the event was that we planned, rehearsed, and performed a rather absurd comedy, all in Latin. (That included a trip into town where we bought props at Walmart and produced documents at Fedex Kinko's. That is, apud Kinkonem Fedecis. More literally, it might be apud Fedecem Kinkonis, but in point of fact it's Fedex who possesses Kinko and not the other way around.)

Also, you would not believe how many songs have been translated into Latin.

A lot of people produced very apt versions of English sayings and proverbs. One effort of mine was:

"Propinquus" nihil valet nisi in ludo solearum vel pyrobolis.

On a more literary note:

Praelusio modo erat: nam ubi libros incendunt, incendant in fine etiam homines.

(Heinrich Heine)

Frigidissime hiemavi aestate Franciscopoli.

(Mark Twain)

There is a standing challenge now between me and a Latin teacher from Santa Monica to see who can first produce a version of the saying Liquor ante cervisiam, numquam timeas / Cervisia ante liquorem, numquam aegrotior [sc. eris], but (1) in rhyme and (2) using a double dative.

Finally, I had no end of amusement with the phrase ablativo absoluto facto. ("The ablative absolute having been made...")

When I returned from my week of Latin yesterday, speaking English was surprisingly difficult and foreign. I kept wanting to use ablative absolutes, ablatives of instrument, relative clauses of characteristic, and so on. Twice I accidentally started a sentence in Latin when I had meant to speak English, and once I actually had to ask how you say something in English because I could only remember the Latin word. I never thought such a thing would happen, but it did. Re vera. I think my immersion managed to saturate me.

The DRM story

Fred has just posted a concise summary of the incentives of people involved in the DRM struggle, accounting, I think, in large part for why they act as they do. If you follow DRM and want some depressing but well-considered analysis, have a look.

When I was at WinHEC, I asked a bunch of people why they put up with this status quo, instead of fighting the DMCA. Why did they, the indigenes of the new world of technology, accept the movie industry's Treaty of Tordesillas? I didn't get any satisfying answers, but here are three conjectures:

1. For Microsoft, the licensing game is a great anticompetitive opportunity because it can use its dominance and mindshare in one area to get dominance and mindshare (and licensing revenue) in other areas, and then keep going round and round with this strategy in subsequent technology generations. A permission-required culture for innovation looks less scary when you're on the inside of the barriers to entry looking out, instead of on the outside looking in.
2. For Microsoft and other technology companies, momentum (one might say inertia) and sunk costs make the idea of changes in the legal framework distressing. Most technology companies that make products that play Hollywood movies have already wasted tons of money on DRM and associated legal advice, and the idea of rendering either the technology or the legal advice obsolete is distressing. People in the industry have decided that the DRM game is the game, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course, but there are many of those in the technology industry. Having something other than the DRM game be the game would be a source of uncertainty and upheaval.
3. For smaller technology companies, there is no clear upside to upsetting or gainsaying either Microsoft or Hollywood. (It can be worse than this. I once spoke to an engineer at a technology company that had considered making a public statement against the broadcast flag. A movie studio immediately threatened to stop buying the technology company's products -- for its own internal use -- unless the technology company remained silent about the broadcast flag. That was the end of that. Think you know which company it was? I was just kidding when I said "once" above.)