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July 11, 2004
Hrönir
In Tlön, Uqbar and Orbis Tertius [ES] Borges describes archeologists' use of hrönir, secondary objects multiplied from lost originals, to augment and improve the past.
Google returns no definition, yet. The Wikipedia article seems painfully premier degre, although admittedly Rome wasn't built on Internet time. Of the languages invented for the Web, perhaps only Perl would allow you to say something like, "Upa tras perfluyue lunó." (Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned.)
"Occasionally a few birds, a horse perhaps, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater," so imagine in what dilapidated state this blog maintains... what?
MovableType has an enticing little utility down the left-hand edge of this browser page:
By sheer force of will, and hours of editing, could one polish this into something more archetypical?
Hrönir like Lovecraft's Necronomicon (recursive hrönir?), Eckel's Thinking in Java, even ordinary novels preserve interesting shadows of the ideal. But could one through carefully maintained hrönir preserve the dull, everyday Brownian boredom of our lives? Through painstaking editing, discipline, and unyielding regimen of creation preserve the second law of thermodynamics itself?
Posted by Mark at July 11, 2004 07:28 AM