Stuffs and nonsenses, various and sundry:

[capri0mni]

Semi-Random thoughts on telepathic communication with aliens:

Way back here, somewhere, I wrote a bit about how I think the TARDIS's Translation Engine works -- how she's only able to translate for someone after she knows how that person's mind is organized. I'm now thinking, also, that, for the non-Timelord companion assistant, the experience of having one's mind read, and having to use telepathy every day to communicate with the Doctor, himself,* probably alters the wiring in the brain, creating brand-new neural pathways that never existed before. So maybe, after a while, people just naturally become telepathic, without the need for a technilogical go-between (which could explain how everybody is able to understand everybody else, even when the TARDIS is not around).

As for what that would feel like... I imagine it would be something like a mental version of subtitles: you'd hear each alien word or phrase with your ears perfectly clearly, but at the same time, that alien sound would trigger a neuron in your brain where the memory of the word you know is stored. So it would be a bit like simultaneous translation of interviews with foreign dignitaries on the radio: You'd hear the alien start to speak with your physical ear, and then, maybe a split second behind that, the alien voice would fade somewhat from your immediate attention, and you'd hear the words in your own language with your mind's ear... Maybe in a slightly altered version of your own voice, or the voice similiar to someone you remember, depending on your emotional response to the entity speaking to you (someone who reminds you of your high school assistant principal would trigger a similiar sounding voice in your head, etc.) Definitely freaky, at first, but because it becomes an automatic response to just about everything, you'd probably stop thinking about it, after awhile.

Jane Austen adaptations on PBS:

It's Pledge Time for PBS, this weekend, so instead of showing the next adaptation of Jane Austen, they showed a "Special Presentation," introducing The Complete Jane Austen (two-thirds of the way through the series? Seems a bit late for "introductions," but oh well). Part of the special included interview bits with Andrew Davies. The man may be great at writing screenplays, but much of what he said, regarding what Jane Austen's Work Really Means, had me wishing I could talk back at him, and say: "No, no, no-no, that's just wrong."

Such as: that simply touching hands is far too subtle for modern audiences --that the implied sexuality would just fly right over our heads without his wonderfully crafted, made-up, scenes of men being dashing and daring, and the women in their bedchambers, half dressed. I think that tension would still come through to modern audiences, in context... If the actors never touch each other for an hour and twenty minutes, but they still blush and stammer, and don't know where to put their sweaty-palmed hands when they talk to each other, and then, in the last ten minutes, they finally do touch -- the invisible bubbles they had around them finally broken, and they make contact. I think audiences, even those who watch HBO these days, would get that. Also, he said that Austen's advice to men is to be strong and reserved, and keep silent and don't talk, until you're overcome with emotion, and let everything spill out at once.... Um, as a woman? Can I just say: "No thanks. Bye," to that?

Her heroes may act that way, but I think that's mostly a literary conceit to build up the mystery behind the romance. As I said before, she takes great pains to distinguish between those with good manners and those who are good. So I take her advice (for both men and women) to be: "Educate yourself. Be interested in the world beyond your own ego, because stupid people make horrible partners. Forget about being Prince (or Princess) Charming. Be generous. Be honest. Be forgiving."

My sweet potato vine:

This Green!Critter is pretty fabu, really... It's like-- like-- you know, when you put two mirrors up facing each other, and the images inside them recur forever, getting smaller and smaller, but still the same? That's the way the leaves grow on the stem. According to official, encyclopedia-like discriptions, the leaves grow in pairs, opposite each other on the stem. And that's right, but only sorta. You see, the leaves stagger themselves through time. As one leaf grows, the bud for the next one appears a short way down the stem, across from it. As the first leaf reaches maturity, the second leaf starts to grow, and the bud for the next leaf appears on its stem.

Here, I made a picture to show it (but I realized, just now, I got the veining wrong...Oh well):


When Audrey first potted up the plant for me, she said to be careful not to overwater it, because the pot had no drain hole. But when I was conservative with the water, the older leaves would dry up and die as soon as the newest leaf got to its full size... And the roots were skimming very surface of the soil -- not even anchoring it in -- they were so hungry for the water. So now, as each leaf matures, I check the soil (it's often dry and powdery to the touch), and give it a good soaking. The plant is much happier now.

For a long time, now, the main stem, from which all the leaves are sprouting has been draping over the edge of the pot. At first, I thought it was wilting. But the stem is strong to the touch. ... Then I realized that the vine wants something to wrap around, and the edge of the pot was the only thing available. So now, there's a plastic bendy straw stuck in the soil, and the stem is propped up on that. When I first propped the stem on the straw, the leaves were pointed sideways; they were fully vertical within twelve hours... Seems like a good way, to me, to see how fast the plant is growing. ...Is playing with a plant by changing its orientation like teasing a cat with a flashlight beam? Just wondering...

*I mean, we don't really know, do we, if he really speaks English (since everyone else, from Marco Polo to the Cybermen also speak English)? And now that I think about it, I really doubt it. He's probably just talking Gallifreyan all the time, but we just hear English. Maybe that's why he dropped the posh accent after he met Rose: we're hearing what she heard, in her head.

Comments

[ionlylurkhere.livejournal.com]

Oh, Andrew Davies is supremely irritating. And he's definitely wrong about the Need For Explicitness. The BBC are currently adapting Lark Rise to Candleford and last night's had this incredibly sexy scene between the postmistress and the new schoolteacher that consisted of nothing more than some really very innocuous dialogue on the surface, but the acting completely sold the subtext.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yeah. They said, in this special, that he was once a Lecturer on Jane Austen at some university.... Which I take to mean: "He stood up in front of a crowd, and told them all about how his interpretation was the correct one."

As opposed to, say, leading workshop discussion classes about Jane Austen.

That said, I liked his adaptation of Northanger Abbey. It's his newest one, so maybe he can learn....

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

I imagine he's probably speaking English by now. If he wasn't before his extended exile to Earth, collaboration with UNIT, he almost certainly would have been by the end of it. I would think.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true.

Except he might slip back into Gallifreyan when he's tired, or distracted.

[rob-t-firefly.livejournal.com]

I tend to imagine the TARDIS' telepathic link as basically putting full knowledge of a language permanently into your head instead of continuously translating, if you need it for more than a certain length of time.

Thus Rose couldn't understand the Sycorax with the new Doctor out of commission, since she'd only just met them, yet all the other times a companion has been able to converse with the aliens of the week while the Doctor was unconscious still make sense.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Well, the TARDIS starts out continually translating...

But then, after a bit, it's your own brain that does it (So now, Sarah Jane can travel all over the world and understand any language she hears, in her head).

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking it's like learning a new language and becoming absorbed: eventually you'll just start thinking in that language, even though some of your linguistic logic might still work to the patterns of your mother tongue, etc... which is kind of interesting. Except with the TARDIS and travelling all over the universe it must feel way more chaotic just because there are so many languages. I'm thinking Gallifreyan is incredibly complex and entirely based on mathematics, so I wonder if when translated to English, all of that will sound hopelessly blunt. Like compressing a symphony into a three-note punk song or something (and I like punk)...

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

If you're on a planet for an extended period of time, sure, it would start to enter your thinking.

But for day-trips around the galaxy, I think it might be subtitle-like.

As for Gallifreyan, disagree with you on the mathematics angle. After all, the Timelord culture of Rassilon is a more modern imposition over the Sisterhood (and although Timelords are the ruling elite, it's not the elite that forms the backbone of a language). Now what the Timelords talk about, and the turns of phrase they introduced into the language, that might be more blunt and dry mathematics.

All I know is, I'd hate to have to work at untangling all the verb tenses! ;-)

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

The maths angle has bugger-all to do with the matriarchy/patriarchy stuff (is this NA/EDA crap?), I'm just basing it on Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts saying the Doctor's real name is a mathematical formula. And for a people who deal with time and space, mathematical language would be apt. Even though I hate mathematics myself, for obvious reasons.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

No... my ideas aren't from NA/EDA... I haven't read any of that. I was thinking of Brain of Morbius, and that the Sisterhood of Karn are a magic-based culture, rather than scientific, also, the hints in Invasion of Time of a whole population of people who are not time-travelers. and are not in the elite... But presumably still speak the language of the planet.

And I had not heard that idea of Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts, either... I know just about nothing of background commentary (almost typed "background comedy," there... my Freudian almost slipped).

My (absolutely private) theory on Gallifrean is this: the very fact that time acts strangely around Gallifrey, thanks to the black hole at its core, the experience of time would be different for all Gallifreyans than it would be for an Earthling. So I always thought (not knowing the "mathematical formula can be a proper name" thing) that the language would be much more fluid than a human language, rather than more rigid.

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

Haha. Her advice to men? That's not advice, that's almost 'what not to do'.

Maybe one of the most relevant messages from these books, for modern audiences, is that since we can speak up and ask for what we want, without as many gender and class restrictions as Austen's characters had, we should.

I think Austen was aware of the absurdity of all that, even in her own time, because so much of the heartache in her books comes from a lack of communication between two people who love each other but can't or won't say so for one reason or another.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I think Austen was aware of the absurdity of all that, even in her own time

Oh, most definitely. Her books are almost a "theater of the absurd of Manners," balancing on the brink of tragedy.