When I spent my days puzzling over why only John licenses NPIs and then I read that real scientists are successfully cloaking objects and teleporting bits of matter over non-negligible distances, I do start to wonder whether I shouldn’t just go into gardening. Why don’t we get to do fun stuff like that?
Just kidding. Once they get us to some distant inhabited planetary system, they’ll need on-board linguists who can establish communication with the 8-legged aliens. So, back to Strawson Entailment …
Amusingly enough, one of the few Next Generation Treks I can stomach any more is the episode “Darmok” where Picard has to work out how to communicate with a species that uses only metaphors. One of the few eps that was real science fiction IMHO.
November 28th, 2006, at 3:50 pm #