3.565 Notes and Queries (138)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Tue, 10 Oct 89 21:02:49 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 565. Tuesday, 10 Oct 1989.


(1) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 17:14:57 EDT (6 lines)
From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM>
Subject: Re: 3.546 Notes and Queries (96)

(2) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 17:29:34 EDT (9 lines)
From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM>
Subject: Re: 3.552 Noteniks and Queryoids? (121)

(3) Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 22:38:00 EDT (18 lines)
From: Robert Kirsner (213) 825-3955 <IDT1RSK@OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: New entry for -NIK lexicon

(4) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 12:26:24 MEZ (17 lines)
From: Rudolf WYTEK <Z00WYR01@AWIUNI11>
Subject: Query about Hapsburg burial sites

(5) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 13:07 EDT (16 lines)
From: "David G. Durand" <DURAND@brandeis.bitnet>
Subject: Short Comment RE Ted Nelson and Techies...

(6) Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 16:31:00 EDT (35 lines)
From: NMILLER@TRINCC
Subject: shtiks, not niks

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 17:14:57 EDT
From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM>
Subject: Re: 3.546 Notes and Queries (96)

Re Charles Faulhaber's comments: the nik suffix certainly does not
owe its popularity to sputnik. Beatniks were around before sputnik.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------17----
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 17:29:34 EDT
From: Daniel Boyarin <BOYARIN@TAUNIVM>
Subject: Re: 3.552 Noteniks and Queryoids? (121)

Let's get it straight. -Nik is a Slavic derived Yiddish suffix which
means `one who belives in/adheres to something'. Thus in Modern Hebrew
which has borrowed it from Yiddish, a member of the Mapam party is called
a mapamnik. There is nothing derogratory about the suffix in Yiddish
nor in the Yiddishism in English viz:. beatnik.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------26----
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 89 22:38:00 EDT
From: Robert Kirsner (213) 825-3955 <IDT1RSK@OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: New entry for -NIK lexicon

This is just to report that an Anthropologist friend of mine,
upon discovering that a woman friend of his, a psychologist,
had just lead a Buddhist meditation retreat, remarked.
"But I didn't know that she was a sit-nik."
This is an interesting example because (a) it DOES demonstrate the
slightly pejorative flavor of -NIK which I tried to suggest for
Goethe-nik, etc., and (b) in combination with the verb 'sit', used
in the American Buddhist literature to refer to zazen, sitting
meditation, as in the expression 'Sit hard!', i.e. 'Mediate well,
don't space out.'

As Don Forman said: "Data! They are speaking it (sic) all around us!"
(OK. The rest of you can go back to Walter Benjamin's Theory of
Dandruff.)
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------25----
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 12:26:24 MEZ
From: Rudolf WYTEK <Z00WYR01@AWIUNI11>
Subject: Query about Hapsburg burial sites


I ask the following question on behalf of a student of history, who
has just learned to use our computer and would be very glad to
exemplify the good use of computers in the humanities:

He has to do in his doctoral thesis a thorough research about
all dead members of the Hapsburg families and their burial sites in
Austria and all other foreign countries (e.g. Switzerland, Italy,.
Germany, Spain, USA, Czechoslovakia etc.)

Does someone out there have yet such a file which he could make
usable for him? All kind of help or information would be greatly
appreciated. Many thanks, RWY.
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------22----
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 13:07 EDT
From: "David G. Durand" <DURAND@brandeis.bitnet>
Subject: Short Comment RE Ted Nelson and Techies...

Nelson actually used the term "technoids". The terms "technoid" and "fluffy"
were intended as unflattering nicknames to refer to those who would arbitrarily
restrict their interests either to the "real world" of technical matters or
the "real world" of cultural matters. His contention being that what are needed
are more humanists who understand technology and more technologists who have
a humanistic education.
I tend to use the term technoid to refer to anyone with a mainly
technological backround as in "I am a technoid, but I'm getting better." I
use the term "real technoid" in something more like the original sense
intended by Nelson. For the record, Nelson's suggestion for a label for the
properly balanced individual is "systems humanist." I find that term quite
unsatisfactory, so perhaps we Humanists can find a better self-labelling?
(6) --------------------------------------------------------------42----
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 89 16:31:00 EDT
From: NMILLER@TRINCC

Lew Golan is certainly right in nixing -nik as a suffix denoting
someone who isn't what he says he is. But I'm not too happy with
pseudo; it's a bit heavy and anyway worn around the edges.

I propose instead a new word that will give -nik a deserved rest but
which draws from the same bottomless well. The word is "shtik"
(piece}. A shtik ferd, for instance, means something of a fool.
Adding a diminutive suffix gives us a shtikl ferd, a bit of an ass
(English is obviously derived from Yiddish.)

Shtik has the great advantage of being (you should excuse the
expression) context-sensitive. A shtik doktor would mean a young
physician, perhaps an interne, but definitely a doctor. Sociologi-
cally speaking, this is a linguistic indicator of non-crystallized
status with age and occupation calling for different degrees of
deference. But a shtikl doktor is the kind of doctor most of us
are, Ph.D.'s nebekh. As the anxious mother asked her son: "By me
you're a doctor, but tell me, by the doctors are you a doctor?"

That's the basic idea. I leave it to others to come up with appro-
priate expressions for computer columnists (especially those with
Ph.D.'s who "make comfortable livings", etc.) and computer salesmen.


*****************************************************************************
* *
* Az Got zol voynen oyf der erd, Norman Miller *
* voltn im di mentshn di fenster NMILLER@TRINCC *
* oysgeslogen. Trinity College *
* Yiddish proverb Hartford, Ct. 06106 *