Subject: Varia

From: Andre HECK <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Apr 94 17:18:25 +0200

Dear Friends,

It seems that Don and I have a similar taste for digging out of
dictionaries and the literature detailed meanings of terms and 
expressions. I am glad you liked my `perennity', Don. Remember
that I am not French, but Belgian, and considering that the best
lexicologists and grammarians of the French language are Belgians,
one could wonder whether there is something in our culture favoring
this kind of exercise (or just maybe because we are multilingual by
birth).

Don, when I said `over here' about the word `consortium', I meant
rather on this side of the Atlantic since this word is used here in
English about ESA and ESO, as well as in the Hipparcos context, for
instance. To be brief, I would say that `consortium' is used here 
for a group of entities or organizations (countries in the case of
ESA and ESO, institutions for Hipparcos) joining efforts in specific 
projects.

I appreciate Bob smiling about this kind of discussions, especially
because of the context of his own institution and because he has been
collecting these URLs for a long time on an individual level. But all 
collaborations and projects begin at this level. And as he let 
understand himself, it does not make any harm to use `consortium'
for AstroWeb. Actually it is always good policy or politics to make
things look a bit more serious than they are compare to a rigorous
mapping, in view of `officializing' them or getting some funding one
day for instance.

In the same vein of remarks, I noticed in a list from one of our 
sites that `UK' was listed separately from `Europe'. Yesterday,
in a report at the Sky News channel, John Major was forcefully
claiming that `... now [that] UK is definitely part of Europe ...'
So finally he looked at a map! Well, do not take me too seriously,
but I am sure you got my point: if Europe starts well on
Eastern part of the continent now, it does not stop at the
Channel either. The political entity that is closest to the
geographical Europe is called the `Council of Europe'. It includes
[UK of course and] already quite a few countries from the ex-communist
block.

All the best,
Andre.

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