6.0700 Rs: HyperGlot; KanjiMaster; GrammarChecker; Calvin (4/95)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 4 May 1993 16:43:17 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0700. Tuesday, 4 May 1993.


(1) Date: Fri, 30 Apr 93 12:20:14 BST (13 lines)
From: frsdjt <D.J.Thompson@french.hull.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 6.0681 E-Qs: S/W; Mac Hardware; OCR; E-Bibliography

(2) Date: 30 Apr 1993 15:49:29 -0500 (CDT) (22 lines)
From: CHURCHDM@VUCTRVAX
Subject: KanjiMaster

(3) Date: Sat, 01 May 93 00:20:55 EDT (18 lines)
From: "Anne F. Garreta" <GARRETA@PUCC>
Subject: Re: 6.0691 Qs: Network Histories; Nodes; Fonts; E-Texts

(4) Date: 29 Apr 93 14:13:00 EST (42 lines)
From: "DAVID WILLIAMS" <DRWILLIA@gmuvax.gmu.edu>
Subject: Calvin&Hobbes

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 93 12:20:14 BST
From: frsdjt <D.J.Thompson@french.hull.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 6.0681 E-Qs: S/W; Mac Hardware; OCR; E-Bibliography (7/142)

Re KanjiMaster

The number I have for HyperGlot is 615 558 8270. It's also available in
the US from Cheng & Tsui Company, 617 426 6074, fax 617 426 3669, and in
the UK from Guildsoft. I have had generally good reports about it from
those who have tried it.

June Thompson
CTI Centre for Modern Languages, University of Hull.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------37----
Date: 30 Apr 1993 15:49:29 -0500 (CDT)
From: CHURCHDM@VUCTRVAX
Subject: KanjiMaster

I am relatively sure that HyperGlot is still distributing KanjiMaster.
Here is the most recent information I have:
The HyperGlot Software Company
PO Box 10746
Knoxville, TN 37939-5087
Orders : (800) 726-5087
Information : (615) 558-8270
FAX : (615) 588-6569
AppleLink : GLOT.MKT

By the way, our Japanese coordinator thought that the program was
excellent and asked us to order it for their use. But then, neither
he nor any of the other Japanese instructors here have ever instituted
its use in their classes! Go figure!

Dan M. Church
Director, Language Laboratory
Vanderbilt University
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------24----
Date: Sat, 01 May 93 00:20:55 EDT
From: "Anne F. Garreta" <GARRETA@PUCC>
Subject: Re: 6.0691 Qs: Network Histories; Nodes; Fonts; E-Texts (5/100)

In reply to Tim Unwin's query of April 29:
You may be referring to the Grammar Checker included in Microsoft's latest
version of MS Word (5.0). I do not know whether they developped one for
French grammar (I only have the English version). But a call to Microsoft's
customers' support would do it.
N.B. Using this English Grammar Checker is both infuriating and hilarious
(like any machine prentending to know what you mean, it fufills Bergson's
definition of the comical: "du mecanique plaque sur du vivant"): the program
is still rather crude in its hndling of the complexities of natural languages.
It is time-consuming and some of its routines look more like an enforcement
of stylistic 'norms' than grammatical correctness proper.
Anne F. Garreta GARRETA@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU
Dept. of Romance Languages
Princeton University
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------52----
Date: 29 Apr 93 14:13:00 EST
From: "DAVID WILLIAMS" <DRWILLIA@gmuvax.gmu.edu>
Subject: Calvin&Hobbes

I am new to Humanist and was drawn in by the discussion of Calvin & Hobbes.
Some years ago while teaching early American Lit, I was interupted during
a discussion of Mather's Magnalia by an older student, a returning ex-marine,
who loudly said that this stuff was boring, that he preferred funb stuff like
Calvin & Hobbes. Isaw my chance and asked if he knew who Calvin was. He did
since we had just been discussing Calvinism. I had to explain who Hobbes was.
But after that they became a regular feature of my class even showing up on
exams. After getting some grief from colleagues in the English dept I wrote to
Watterson asking him about the origins of the names. He confirmed in writing
that yes he did name his characters after the philosophers, but he said, "I
don't want to get in any more trouble than that." Fair enough.
But the parallel goes beyond the obvious viciousness and selfishness of
little
Calvin's personality. He is clearly an example of Calvin's image of humanity,
his sins readily apparent. But for Calvin the theologian sin began in our
preference for the illusions of our own vanity over the otherness of God's
reality: "The mind is a factory of idols." Here is little Calvin's Calvinism,
in the fact that he prefers the fantasy world of his own imagination over
what his parents and teachers would call reality. His make believe tiger friend,
spaceman spiff, the dinosaurs devouring his enemies.....these are what he
believes until in the final panel Miss Worwood, his teacher, smacks him up
alongside his head with "reality." And we laugh. Why?
There seems to be an identification of the rader with little Calvin, with
his sins, and with his stubborn refusal to accept "reality." In the final panel
it is thus us along with him who gets smacked over the head. Watterson is
using the comic strip again and again to score theological points, to show
us to ourselves, to present the world in different perspectives than the
usual, to point us outward to the other beyond the illusions of our vanity.
In this, he follows a noble tradition of Americans who have used this pop
culture medium to present theology. His own hero, Walt Kelly, was known to
indulge in serious humorous explorations of the human psyche in Pogo.
Charles Schultz's use of religion in Peanuts has been well documented in "The
Gospel According to Peanuts," a very serious work of theology indeed. And there
are of course more blatent uses of religion such as the Rev. Will B. Dunn in
Kudzu, a strip which runs appropriately in "The Christian Century."
Interestingly, religion remains our dominant form of discourse, like it or
not, and sneaks up on us even on the comics page.