Newcomer's questions

[MG <mguy@imaginet.fr>]

coi mi'e martn.
First, let me state the obvious and say that I'm completely new here and not
 very advanced
in Lojban.
My interests in the domain of communication are languages (I teach English in
 France),
linguistics, and literature.
I've been looking through the archives, and there are a couple of points I'd
 like to address, if
you'll bear with me.
1 PRACTICAL
        1-1 To what extent is it safe for me to treat the draft textbook as a learning
 tool?
        1-2 LogFlash, which I downloaded from Finland, won't run: it just sends a lot
 of
control codes and hangs. What have I done wrong?
2 THEORETICAL
        2-1 Re the Chinese Whispers with the Le Carre passage. OK, we're talking
experimentation here. But I find it worrying to see that, where the original
 said "_to_ the
hotel", *all* of the translators of the Lojban version understood "_from_ the
 hotel". This was
not mentioned in the commentary, and seems to me a more fundamental problem than
 some
others which were (from the point of view of communication).
        2-2 A major part of your explicit rationale in working on this tool is to
 develop a
means of testing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This I take to mean constructing a
 language
which, if its learners internalise it well enough, will (or not) force them to
 think in a certain
way. Then I come across a long thread concerned with fuzzy logic and how Lojban
 can be
squeezed into this way of thinking. Either there's a contradiction here, or I've
 again missed
something.
3 WHIMSICAL
        3-1 (I've only just thought of this) Lojban, see 2-2, intends to give a tool
 for logical
thought. Maybe if you re-named it Vulcan you would attract more learners :-)
martn.