Folder: webmail-ic-2008-11-18/A-2005-06
From stolfi@ic.unicamp.br  Thu Jun 16 22:36:08 2005
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:34:04 -0300
Message-Id: <200506170134.j5H1Y4ug000478@belem.ic.unicamp.br>
From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@dcc.unicamp.br>
To: "Jacques Guy" <jguy@alphalink.com.au>
Subject: [Voynich/Piraha] News from back behind down under



Hello Jacques, what is new?

I got the CD-ROM with the Rongorongo stuff: many thanks! Your copy of
the Pirahã book should have arrived by now. Did you get it?

Otherwise, I have nothing new of substance to tell. It has been many
months since I last checked the VMS list, and my new VMS interlinear
is still 98% ready, just as it was in March. I have been kept busy by
administrative work --- many meetings, spreadsheets, minutes,
regulationsons, contracts, buying orders, what should be the proper
spacing of urinals in the men's washroom...

I have even suffered an attempted coup d'état of sorts, by the
'fessors who run the paid extension courses --- which I quite foolishly
(but quite righteously!) tried to regulate. (Paid courses of any sort
in public universities are forbidden by our Constitution, but hey,
this is Brazil...) But I managed to survive the "coup", albeit by one
vote. Things are now quieter, and the problem of the paid courses has
been solved by the standard method, namely we formed a committee 
to study the question and possibly propose something, eventually.

No news on Pirahã itself, either. However, that brief and innocent
conversation with Prof. Charlotte has cost me dearly. Unicamp has been
undergoing a lengthy evaluation process, and a month ago we got to the
stage where the deans of each area had to form a sub-committee to
evaluate and combine the internal responses to the external committes'
evaluations of the schools' quinquennial reports. Each committe had to
include two out-of-area deans. Now, which nerdy Scientist would the
Humanities deans invite to join them? "Why not professor Stolfi?",
proposed you guess who. The other Hum deans, knowing no better,
agreed...

By the way, that committee had its first meeting last week. It seems
that all the Hum deans will spend the July vacations in France. Who
knows, if you delay your return a bit, you may even run into Prof.
Charlotte (who appears to be French by birth). She had to rub it in:
"One advantage that the Humanities have over the Sciences is that our
committee meetings are held in Paris"...

All the best,

--stolfi