Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

[Andrew Sieber <absieber@eos.ncsu.edu>]

bob@megalith.rattlesnake.com wrote:
> Are you practicing using exercises written for the *Dvorak* keyboard?
Yes, I am.  Available at
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/jcb/Dvorak/dvorak-course/
I was interested to see that I'm not the only one on this mailing list
using these particular lessons.  (No, the "jcb" in the URL is not "James
Cooke Brown".)

Ron Kuris wrote:
> > Does anybody on this list happen to have an amateur radio license?
> > Just curious.
>
> I do.  KE6SHF.
I was just curious because it seemed to me that if a lot of us were, it
might be interesting to set up meetings on HF to allow realtime
communication and also spoken rather than written Lojban to be used.  I
don't know of any other form of communication that would be practical to
allow several people in geographically remote locations to communicate
in realtime by voice for no (or little) money.  I don't know of any
Internet programs that would allow this, either.  As far as I know,
Internet phones work only between two people (though I may be mistaken).
For me personally, any amateur-Lojban communications would have to wait
until a future date, partly because I don't have any HF gear (though I
will be learning how to build such gear sometime in the next couple
years), and partly because I need to spend at least a few months
learning enough Lojban to communicate effectively in realtime.  But it
is something I would like to do sometime in the future.  BTW, my call is
KD4JTV.

On a different topic:  I am quite concerned by the recent discussion on
this list about the difference in opinion about what certain phrases
mean in Lojban.  Although I'm not able to follow the specifics (yet), it
appears that it is not at all obvious what certain phrases mean,
particularly when relating to abstractions (but again, I don't have a
clue what the specific ideas being discussed are).  All I'm
understanding right now that there are ideas which should be simple to
express, but are not in fact easy to express in Lojban.  Well I
currently know English, and (possibly with some difficulty) I can
express anything I want.  It might be awkward, but I can express it.
The whole point behind wanting to learn Lojban is that expressions will
be easier and more logical.  If the language doesn't do this, then it
has no advantage over English.  What's going on here?

--Andrew