[Buddha-l] Your contact info

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 25 October 2006 12:39, d f tweney wrote:

> Oops. Everyone please ignore this message. I sent it to the group by
> mistake, and I am profoundly embarrassed by the error!

The English language needs a word to denote the emotional state that arises 
from having lost control of a computer and thus doing something really 
mindless a large number of times. Maybe something like hypocyberdysdaemonia 
would do the trick. I take it the word mean unhappiness (dysdaemonia) 
resulting from too little (hypo) control (cyber).

One of my favorite instances of this phenomenon is in Paul William's book 
Mahayana Buddhism. Somehow, he appears to have done a global change, 
replacing vocalic 'r' with the string 'Me.rton'. So the Sanskrit 
word 'Madhyamakah.rdaya' comes out in his book as 'MadhyamakahMe.rtondaya' 
and "paraav.rtti' comes out 'paraavMe.rtontti'. The result looks like some 
strange dialect of Pig Latin.

When Paul discovered this mistake in the final copy of his book, he must have 
experienced hypocyberdysdaemonia to an even greater degree than Mr Tweney's 
upon discovering that he had sent an automated message out to everyone in his 
address book, including buddha-l.

Do not feel profoundly embarrassed, Dylan. Your gaffe is minor compared to 
that of someone who started an unendable war as a result of thinking that a 
former ally had become a foe with weapons of mass destruction.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes