Marc H. wrote:
SPS: btw “daemons” is not the same as “demons”
What do you mean? How is the spelling significant?
Hal
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 05:55:51AM +0900, Hal F. wrote:
Marc H. wrote:
SPS: btw “daemons” is not the same as “demons”
What do you mean? How is the spelling significant?
The term “daemon” is primarily a variant of “daimon”, which is (in the
words of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language) an
“inferior deity”, or an “attendant spirit; a genius”. Meanwhile, a
“demon” is (in the same dictionary) an “evil supernatural being; a
devil”. There’s some vagueness in the delineation, however, because of
the fact that the term “demon” grew out of the early Christian tradition
of turning good things in “competing” religions into terms for bad
things
in Christian religions. Just as Baal, a term that essentially meant
“lord”, and Ba’al, which referred to the lord of heaven, was in
Christian
tradition turned into the name of a duke of Hell, so too did “daimon”
get
turned into “demon”, and become synonymous with “devil”, in Christian
terms.
I refer of course to the cultural history of these terms, and in this
case suggest no value judgments about the various involved religious
philosophies themselves.
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 06:04:52AM +0900, Hal F. wrote:
Michel B. wrote:
Or Largely Used Cyber Implementation For Executing Runnables Silently.
Doesn’t sound very biblical to me.Ok, it would be a mouthfull too. Perhaps initialed ?..
Good idea… Lucifer (“light-bringer”) is an old name for Jesus…
News to me. In Christian tradition, so far as I’m aware, Lucifer has
always referred to the first among angels (until he “went bad”, that
is).
Gregory B. wrote:
i’m in ur computer. lernin’ ur C++.
I can has video game?
Could you speak in proper English? I can’t understand you if you talk
like a drunk teenage girl who spends too much time IMing.can has irony? kthxbye.
Thank you, Greg. 
As Leslie Neilsen said, “Irony can be pretty ironic.”
Hal
Michel B. wrote:
Or Largely Used Cyber Implementation For Executing Runnables Silently.
Doesn’t sound very biblical to me.Ok, it would be a mouthfull too. Perhaps initialed ?..
Good idea… Lucifer (“light-bringer”) is an old name for Jesus…
Hal
On 7/16/07, Sy Ali [email protected] wrote:
On 7/15/07, Chad P. [email protected] wrote:
On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 07:13:45AM +0900, Joe W. wrote:
Lol. Could have gone on forever with that one.
No need. I already got the point: you have very thin skin.
And either no grasp of paragraphs or a broken enter key. =)
Actually that’s excellent news!
If his enter key is broken, there might be hope that the others will
break too
Robert
Chad P. wrote:
the fact that the term “demon” grew out of the early Christian tradition
Certainly correct. But it’s a question of meaning and usage.
“Daemon” was an older spelling of “demon”; any modern attempt
to ascribe different meanings to the different spellings is
strictly arbitrary in my book.
Hal
Hal F. wrote:
always referred to the first among angels (until he “went bad”, that is).
Common usage, yes. But there are old Christian hymns (by “old” I mean
well over 1000 years) that use the term according to its meaning rather
than as a name for any evil entity.
I don’t know that that’s actually true of the Latin word “Lucifer”. Some
of the underlying Hebrew and Greek, very probably, but “Lucifer” seems
to have been nailed down almost as soon as Jerome used it in the
Vulgate…
Hal F. wrote:
Chad P. wrote:
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 05:55:51AM +0900, Hal F. wrote:
Marc H. wrote:
SPS: btw “daemons” is not the same as “demons”
What do you mean? How is the spelling significant?
The term “daemon” is primarily a variant of “daimon”, which is (in the
words of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language) an
“inferior deity”, or an “attendant spirit; a genius”.
Well … since you brought it up … ‘genius’ comes from ‘djinn’, an
Arabic word quite often corrupted in English into ‘genie’ – yep, the
guy that comes of out oil lamps and grants wishes, sometimes in
off-color jokes.
A djinn is a spirit, often sealed into a container by some magical
force, as was the case in Aladdin. And it isn’t necessarily a good idea
to release one, nor does the story usually have a happy ending when one
does so.
Chad P. wrote:
always referred to the first among angels (until he “went bad”, that is).
Common usage, yes. But there are old Christian hymns (by “old” I mean
well over 1000 years) that use the term according to its meaning rather
than as a name for any evil entity.
John Carpenter today may not be a carpenter, but at one time, a person
with that name likely was. Probably a similar thing.
Hal
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 08:41:26AM +0900, Hal F. wrote:
devil". There’s some vagueness in the delineation, however, because of
philosophies themselves.Certainly correct. But it’s a question of meaning and usage.
“Daemon” was an older spelling of “demon”; any modern attempt
to ascribe different meanings to the different spellings is
strictly arbitrary in my book.
No, not really. “Daemon” is particular to the Greek meaning, as it
specifically referenced that usage, whereas “demon” is associated with
the Christian cultural usage. The difference is similar to the
difference between “camber” and “chamber”, which have (even more)
distinct meanings despite deriving from the same etymological source and
having strikingly similar spellings. Just as “demon” is entrenched as a
Hell-denizen, a spirit of evil and torment in service to the devil, and
“daemon” is primarily a helper “entity” (in modern usage, composed of
electrons rather than whatever spiritual stuff composed the daimons of
old), so too are camber and chamber distinct terms with differing
meanings that originated, as words, in the same etymological ancestry.
There is a reason separate words, with separate spellings, derived from
the same ancestral origin, exist at the same time in the same language.
One is not simply the kewler spelling than the other. The cultural
ignorance of some people looking for an excuse to be offended by the use
of the term “daemon” in no way implies that it’s meaning is identical to
that of “demon”.
It would take a pretty extreme linguistic descriptivist to try to argue
otherwise, armed with a complete disregard for much evidence to the
contrary.
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 11:57:01AM +0900, Chad P. wrote:
No, not really. “Daemon” is particular to the Greek meaning, as it
[snip]
My original attempt at this email was better written, but I lost my SSH
connection from the coffee shop to the computer with this email address
on it in mid-composition. Darn it.
On 7/19/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [email protected] wrote:
Well … since you brought it up … ‘genius’ comes from ‘djinn’, an
Arabic word quite often corrupted in English into ‘genie’ – yep, the
guy that comes of out oil lamps and grants wishes, sometimes in
off-color jokes.
‘Genius’ seems to come from Latin, whereas ‘Genie’ comes from Arabic
(via French). (According to the dictionary in my MacBook and some
other resources : GENIE : Etymologie de GENIE).
Cheers,
On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 11:57 +0900, Chad P. wrote:
There is a reason separate words, with separate spellings, derived from
the same ancestral origin, exist at the same time in the same language.
One is not simply the kewler spelling than the other. The cultural
ignorance of some people looking for an excuse to be offended by the use
of the term “daemon” in no way implies that it’s meaning is identical to
that of “demon”.
+1
-mental
From: “Chad P.” [email protected]
My original attempt at this email was better written, but I lost my SSH
connection from the coffee shop to the computer with this email address
on it in mid-composition. Darn it.
screen -r ?
On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 11:41 +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
A djinn is a spirit, often sealed into a container by some magical
force, as was the case in Aladdin.
While there are cultural stories about djinn being trapped and enslaved
through sorcery, it’s not a defining characteristic.
If I remember correctly, in Islamic cultures the djinn are not
considered spirits per se but a race of powerful, long-lived (though
mortal) creatures whose bodies are made of invisible [subtle/smokeless]
fire. Living in societies parallel to our own, most are hostile or at
best ambivalent towards humans, save the few djinn who have converted to
Islam. All are considered perilous, and Shaitan (Satan) is believed to
be first among the hostile djinn.
-mental
On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 12:30 +0900, John M. wrote:
‘Genius’ seems to come from Latin, whereas ‘Genie’ comes from Arabic
(via French). (According to the dictionary in my MacBook and some
other resources : GENIE : Etymologie de GENIE).
It’s sort of in-between. French ‘genie’ did come from the Latin
‘genius’, but it was used to translate the Arabic ‘djinn’.
-mental
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 02:57:40PM +0900, MenTaLguY wrote:
On Thu, 2007-07-19 at 11:57 +0900, Chad P. wrote:
There is a reason separate words, with separate spellings, derived from
the same ancestral origin, exist at the same time in the same language.
One is not simply the kewler spelling than the other. The cultural
ignorance of some people looking for an excuse to be offended by the use
of the term “daemon” in no way implies that it’s meaning is identical to
that of “demon”.+1
I think I’ve about broken even, with the minus one for that bizarre
lapse
in my apostrophe discipline. Thanks for providing me the insulation
against slipping into negatives.
Hm. That almost sounds like a justification for an argument in another
discussion about arrays that’s going on in the ruby-talk list right now.
On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 03:03:39PM +0900, Bill K. wrote:
From: “Chad P.” [email protected]
My original attempt at this email was better written, but I lost my SSH
connection from the coffee shop to the computer with this email address
on it in mid-composition. Darn it.screen -r ?
Yeah . . . immediately after the connection dropped, I thought “Damn! I
should have used screen!”
On Jul 18, 2007, at 22:57 , Chad P. wrote:
and
ignorance of some people looking for an excuse to be offended by
the use
of the term “daemon” in no way implies that it’s meaning is
identical to
that of “demon”.It would take a pretty extreme linguistic descriptivist to try to
argue
otherwise, armed with a complete disregard for much evidence to the
contrary.
Excellent exposition Chad.