Re: The first 4 JLs (was Re: Cucaracha)

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

All JLs are still available. I cannot say that I agree with Nick that the
first 4 JLs are an interesting read.  If you want to know how we got where
we are, and my longwinded summary yestertday intrigued you rather than bored yoy
, you might indeed be interested.  But at that point, the writing was less
informed of linguistics and more oriented towards developing enthusiam for
the language and the project, and of course became ever more heavily affected
by the politicization and then polarization of my relation with JCB and the
Institute.  There were no language design issues in those days since the
assumption was still that JCB's language was 'done' and all we had to do
was get the damned thing documented properly.  It was only when we decided
to recreatethe language with the basic assumption that the language was
complete and that therefore not in need of change, that we came to realize that
our assumption was false in terms of some specifics.

The assumption is still that the status quo is by default 'good enough'
and that 'thats the way JCB did it' is almost single-handedly a siffic
ufficient
arguyment for the ststus quo unless there is a countering argument that
JCBs way defied common sense AND rational analysis (it is arguable that the
entire language defies the former, but only by assuming the supremacy of the
latter; likewise vice versa).

(Note that a complete set of JLs isn't too cheap - thats 18 issues
at an
average in excess of 40 pages per issue - see you last order form for the
exact page count, and 10c/page as the base price.)

We may end up making back issues of JL available on the net, and indeed wanted t
o at one point, but the PLS did not have enough space.  The total is several

MEG with formatting, and I have no idea how much with the formatting removed as

it would have to be.

lojbab