[OT] Sparta (was Re: Metacard support)

[Wilhelm Sanke]

After my timeout I had to focus on a number of other important issues, so my reply to Richard's post comes a bit late. Considering however the historic dimensions of the aspect in question, the delay is negligible.

On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com> <mailto:ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote (quoting me in the beginning): 

>>> I have looked up "spartan" in the Britannica World Language Dictionary
>>> (part of the Encyclopedia Britannica). Here is the entry:
>>> 
>>
>>>>> "Spartan":
>>>>> Pertaining to Sparta or the Spartians; heroically brave and enduring.
>>>>> A native or citizen of Sparta; hence, one of exceptional valor and
>>>>> fortitude.
>>>
>
>While noted for their valor, Sparta is also a good argument against the
>macroeconomics of militaristic societies.
>
>Sparta was an expansive military culture, (snip)
>


Richard,

well, so are even modern nations.
Sad as it is, this more or less holds for all nations in ancient and modern history - with really very few exceptions - so this is by no means a distinctive feature of Sparta.

>Most of the contributions to modern culture attributed to the ancient Greeks
>(theatre, literature, philosophy) were specifically from Athens; 
>
>(snip)
>
 
Sparta was a civilization and a nation that existed for about one thousand years. Platon is said to have been very much impressed by the political structure of Sparta.
The Greek-Roman historian Polybius assessed the Spartan constitution to be second-best only to the Roman constitution (he could ill afford to state it was the best, because he was in Roman employ).
The Spartan constitution and its practical implementation seems to have been much less prone to manipulation than those of today's superpowers - from voter registration to ballot counting.

Even newly introduced electronic voting does not prevent - indeed rather invite - manipulation. See the article by Marcia Pally "Vote early and often: Electronic voting machines make it simple" of Dec 15.

>
>  Hence this definition from Dictionary.com, which is probably what my 
> client
> was referring to:
>
> # Simple, frugal, or austere: a Spartan diet; a spartan lifestyle.
> # Marked by brevity of speech; laconic.
> # Courageous in the face of pain, danger, or adversity. F
>
> (snip)
>
> Richard Gaskin
>

Apparently we have two different definitions of "Spartan" here that even 
somewhat overlap.

The differences result from the complex relation of language and reality 
(whatever the latter "really" may be). Language and its particles, 
words, are a means of communication, not a point-to-point representation 
of reality. The meanings of words and their definitions may reflect 
reality somehow, but evolve within societal groups carrying specific 
intentions.

When Mr. Rumsfeld recently spoke of the "old Europe" he did so while 
criticizing nations that were opposed to the intentions of his 
administration. On the other hand, a few days ago "old Europe" was 
chosen as the so-called "word of the year" here in the center of Europe 
(this is done every year), implying the connotation of something one can 
be proud of.

To understand the relationship between language and reality it is useful 
to study the writings of linguists and philosophers like those of a 
fellow-Californian of Richard, namely Senator S. I. Hayakawa (by the 
way, as it were, a colleague of mine, as we were both teaching at the 
University of Wisconsin - he some 50 years earlier than me).-

So my intention to describe the values of Metacard is best served by starting from the definition of the Encycopledia Britannica, containing and pointing to the attributes of Spartians

"disciplined, enduring, efficient, and powerful"

which I then translated to describe Metacard  (still in these respects as opposed to Revolution) as

"disciplined": concise and relatively short scripts; fewer parts of the 
IDE that are interrelated and interact, organized surface

"enduring": can handle a substantial amount of objects, e.g. controls

"efficient": despite the material load the Metacard IDE maintains its 
speed etc.

"powerful": can be relatively easily customized to one's own needs; 
quicker development because of fewer bugs etc.

"autonomous": deserves to be preserved as an alternative IDE.---

Kevin Miller in his post of Dec 6 (subject "Metacard support") acknowledged these attributes in so far as he wrote:

>
>Revolution has been around for 7 years less than the MC IDE, and has many
>more features.  So we're not there yet on a raw efficiency or uncluttered
>scale. 
>

Now, I do not really insist on definitions or attributes for Metacard, my responses in this part of the thread were just triggered by Richard's mentioning a clients opinion.

I hope that the "golden nugget" Metacard which the Rev folks have acquired will be indeed exploited by them to improve the Revolution IDE by integrating parts of Metacard into Revolution or maybe by adapting paradigmatic ways of programming.

Regards,

Wilhelm Sanke