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[allichaton]

Oh man. Anthro2A ROCKED today. We spent about the last half of the class watching an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", as an example of incommensurability--when a culture is soooo different from your own that it becomes impossible for cultural translation to take place. The episode was a GREAT example of it. Captain Piccard gets thrown into the wildernees with the captain from the ship of another species, and even with the Universal Translater, they're completely incomprehensible. It sounds like they're just speaking gibberish. And eventually he realizes that it's because they speak entirely in metaphor from their history and mythos. For example, when the alien gives Piccard a dagger to protect himself from a beast that's about to attack them, he says "Shaka, with arms open." He says the same thing that night, when he gives Piccard a burning log, because Piccard can't get his fire started. So, Piccard realizes that "Shaka, with arms open" equates to "Here, take this", or similar--arms open in generosity, etc. And "Treshar, when the walls fell" represents failure, etc. And they end up having a whole conversation, where Piccard ends up realizing that the other captain beamed him down to the planet's surface in an attempt to make friends between the two of them. Man, that was a filking COOL conversation. The other captain keeps saying, "Darmok, on the ocean." So Piccard picks up a stone, says "Darmok", puts in on the ground, and draws a circle in the dust around it, and says, "The ocean." "Darmok at Velar. Velar on the ocean." "Velar on the ocean? Oh, Velar's an island!" "Darmok at Velar. Telmat at Velar." "They came separately?" "The beast at Velar. (some reference to success that I can't remember...:p)." "Victory. They were victorious." "Darmok and Telmat, on the ocean." "They left together...they became friends..." Which is pretty much what the other captain does to Piccard--beams the both of them down to the planet, his ship has some gadget set up that makes it impossible for the crew to beam him back, and the two are forced to battle some weird flickering electromagnet beast together, and in the process, become friends. It was a very, very, very cool episode. :D Even though it did make me late to my HumCore discussion... :p

Man, I am going to LOVE this class. :D

Had my first Interpersonal Relationships class today, too. That seems like it's going to be a really neat class, as well. :) About 16 people, compared to the 400 or so in my other lecture classes... :) Will have more on that as I have more classes--didn't do much but intro to the course stuff today.

Comments

excellent

[(Anonymous)]

that's one of the classics. I love that ep. Sounds like an excellent beginning!!

- Keri