[blml] Herman

[David Burn]

[JE]

"...when I twice cannot answer a question, it is because the question does
not make sense." Not a claim of superior wisdom?

[Lewis Carroll]

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice -
What I tell you three times is true."

[DALB]

What was good enough for the Bellman ought to be tolerated in Herman's case.
After all, he has been arguing a minority position at long odds, and the
fact that he continues to do so almost without rancour is a tribute to [a]
his sincerity; [b] his integrity and [c] his grasp through thick and thin of
the difficulties involved.

I don't deny that L20F5 creates a serious problem (just as L27 in the new
code is about to do, and the infamous L25 in the 1997 code did). I think
that Herman has been unresponsive to the arguments advanced, especially by
those in positions of authority, to resolve the problem (which is to say
that I can well understand why Grattan Endicott and Ton Kooijman are a bit
fed up with him). I think, as I have said many times, that he is wrong to
rely on the "principle" that creation of UI is more to be avoided than
creation of MI; and that he is wrong to say that the Laws are somehow
"hierarchically" based on that principle.

But if the anti-dWS amendment, or appendix, or whatever, actually makes its
way into the Laws, then Herman will have done the game a great service by
recognising that there was a difficulty in the first place. If it does not -
well, he will continue to do the game a great service by insisting that the
matter should be resolved one way or another. 

Of one thing I am sure: it is not good enough for those who make the Laws to
say, ex cathedra, that it is obvious what those Laws mean. In truth, that
wasn't good enough even when Kaplan was Archbishop; as recent correspondence
has made clear, if bridge really is to be a global game, the Lawmakers ought
to listen very hard to people such as Robert Geller, who does not know how
to translate the Laws into Japanese because he does not know what they mean
in English. And the Lawmakers ought also to listen to Herman de Wael.

David Burn
London, England