Comments on: Ben Stein May Harm Your Computer

By: Stram

Stram — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:57:34 +0000

Wow, very interesting. Nice work guys.

By: elfasbrynja

elfasbrynja — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:18:46 +0000

Got it. :)

By: dumpendebat

dumpendebat — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:52:15 +0000

“Achmedinejad” is particularly jarring, because the sound we anglophones represent as (as in “church”) also exists in Persian (it does not exist in Arabic, at least not in Classical/Modern Standard Arabic). So, while you could represent the velar fricative /x/ in Arabic transliteration as , you can’t do so in Persian transliteration unless you want to be ambiguous and confusing.

By: dumpendebat

dumpendebat — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 23:47:01 +0000

In the case of “Ahmed,” the sound represented by is an unvoiced pharyngeal fricative /ħ/, not an unvoiced velar fricative /x/. The sound in “Ahmed” is not the same sound as Hebrew “Chanukah,” German “Bach,” Scottish “loch.”

In Arabic, these three letters of the alphabet represent three distinct phonemes:

ه unvoiced glottal fricative /h/
ح unvoiced pharyngeal fricative /ħ/ — this is the letter “h” in “Ahmed” أﺤﻣﺩ
خ unvoiced velar fricative /x/

In Persian, the first two of those letters both represent the unvoiced glottal fricative /h/ (the velar fricative /x/ is the same as in Arabic, though, and should be transliterated ).

You can at least see where the confusion on this point comes from, anyways; “Kharma” is just 100% wrong, of course.

By: elfasbrynja

elfasbrynja — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:43:18 +0000

Yes, dumpendebat, but there is some merit in that convention for the Semitic (or in Persian’s case, Semitic-influenced) languages, right? I mean, there’s a fricative sound there (?) A-chhhhh (white noise)-med, chhhhallah, Chhhhanukah or how?

No kh in kharma anyway.

By: dumpendebat

dumpendebat — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:46:27 +0000

Why ‘kharma’ in Stein’s article? He wrote it several times, so it can’t be a mistake.

It reminds me of the wingnut propensity to substitute for in words of Arabic origin (e.g. "Achmed" for "Ahmed," "Achmedinejad" for "Ahmedinejad"). These phenomena are almost certainly related.

By: elfasbrynja

elfasbrynja — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:28:58 +0000

Why ‘kharma’ in Stein’s article? He wrote it several times, so it can’t be a mistake. The Devanagari characters for that word clearly do not aspirate the ‘k’.

In any case, the combination of Seamonkey + Vector Linux == protection against the ancient spirits from long before by the dark forces from beyond the cauldrons of the cryptic winter-night == no worries about malware from greedy webmasters, ever.

Browse safe. :)

By: dumpendebat

dumpendebat — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:45:18 +0000

The sad thing, Gordo, is I bet you're right. Look at Crazy Pammy, who's busy hawking crap merchandise with her picture on it ("Look Mad Hot in Atlas Threads") when she's not producing febrile, analphabetic, vodka-and-Percocet-fueled rants about "Islamanazis" and "the Demoncrats."

By: gordo

gordo — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:09:03 +0000

I don’t know if “infected” is the right word to use. I’d be willing to bet the malware was put there by the publishers of the Spectator, and that they get paid by spammers to put spyware and adware on readers’ computers.

It fits right in with the right wing’s “greed is good” philosophy. I’ve also noticed that right wing bloggers like to create links in their essays that don’t lead to places to get more information, but to advertisers who pay on a “per click” basis.