Hi I'm new here, but I'm an old fan of Douglas Adams. Please excuse the following as shallow attempt to draw attention and introduce my self to a community of good people who revel in the writing and sublimely quirky and logical thinking of Douglas Adams.
As I was searching for a moniker for a screen name for this sight I was delighted to come up with BABELHORN. Well imagine my surprise when I put an Adamsesque definition of what a BABELHORN would be. Unlike the BABELFISH the BABELHORN expresses (rather than interprets) the sound of music in the voice of a trumpet so that it translates "for all life forms who would here it" a completely intelligible version of what the trumpeter is trying to express. Usually a very high and impressive note. Oddly enough the instrument has no ability to effect whether the listener will enjoy the expression or not. It does, however, seem to evoke the same reaction from those beings of differing opinions as too the quality of the performance. That is too beat senseless those of differing opinions of a given performance in much the same spirit as the Tower and Court trumpeters of the late Middle Ages would beat those trumpeters that were playing in a high register that was out of their station.
The idea of the BABELHORN is not with out historical president in a statement by music theorist Claude-Francois Menestrier (1631-1705). It turns out that:
"Trumpets are the most suitable instruments to make the horses dance, because [the horses] have time to take breath whenever the trumpeters breathe. No other instrument is so pleasing to them, because it is war-like, and because the horse, born grand, loves this sound, which urges it on."
How wonderfully does Adamsian logic fit into our world? I mean apparently my idea for the screen name BABELHORN is not original. Even though I concede immediately that a BABELANYTHING is now and forever the intellectual property of Douglas Adams, the concept of a BABELHORN horn has a historical legacy extending back into the Middle Ages and Baroque. If it turns out that all of us atheists are wrong Gabriel will certainly have to wind a BABELHORN in order for all of us to hear it whether we like it or not.
Regards
Tom
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babelhorn
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