Tea Wiki?

Mike Petro wrote:

I believe he is dead wrong. However, the fact that he used this metaphor appears to be true. He used it in 2003 and early 2004, but does copywriting a metaphor even make any sense?

Anyways, below are the posts to which I'm referring.

Space Cowboy Jul 7 2003, 5:28 pm show options Newsgroups: rec.food.drink.tea From: "Space Cowboy" Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 15:24:49 -0600 Local: Mon, Jul 7 2003 5:24 pm Subject: Re: Ahmand Tea in UK and in Russia

On one box? I used the English+language as a Rosetta stone. It helped me understand the Chinese character terminology for tea. The Arabic and Sanskrit are a much tougher nut to crack even with the English equivalent. I'm not finding that much English+Russian.

Space Cowboy Feb 20 2004, 11:48 am show options Newsgroups: rec.food.drink.tea From: snipped-for-privacy@ix.netcom.com (Space Cowboy) Date: 20 Feb 2004 07:48:54 -0800 Local: Fri, Feb 20 2004 11:48 am Subject: Re: Poo Poo Puerh

I worked at a canning factory every summer doing college. The stories I could tell. I still don't eat canned vegetables. I'm going to insist my agricultural service update it assay profile for insect excretia. How do you know the websites aren't substituting snail sludge. My stomach trumps my palette. I only recommend taking a blow torch to the kettle. It wasn't always the case. If the elephant is still under the BigTop and since I found my contacts I did some more research and made a call. The Formosa oolong is called Bai Hai. My source said he got a call from Georgia once and the lady came back from Taiwan and wanted some BooHoo. This in response to my question why almost everybody seems to call it BaiHao. The real problem with transliteration nobody in Chinatown understands what you mean and we use it to confuse ourselves. I made a note to add the characters for BaiHao and BaiHai to my cheat sheet. The only way this works is find the rosetta can of tea in the store with Chinese and English and see what is inside. Or since I recently got my phone's company version of broadband high speed dsl I can go surfing for those UTF-8 webpages in Chinese. If it's 5 miles to the phone switch I'm sitting at mile marker 7 and not getting what I pay for with the babybell disclaimer your results will vary. Anyway better than 14.4. It's been too long since I've been to Chinatown. You'll get more hits on Lin Yun BaiHao. The rats are scurrying for cover since the Asian bird flu outbreak.

Space Cowboy Feb 23 2004, 12:48 pm show options Newsgroups: rec.food.drink.tea From: snipped-for-privacy@ix.netcom.com (Space Cowboy) Date: 23 Feb 2004 08:48:02 -0800 Local: Mon, Feb 23 2004 12:48 pm Subject: Re: Bai Hao Oolong. [UTF 8]

I woke up this morning expecting to do battle and came across a post discussing tea. All I can say to Kuri is thanks very much. This is a rosetta stone post resolving the use of BaiHao and a Chinese character is a thousand words. When I first saw the post with Google all I saw were boxes for unknown characters. You have to use View: Original Format for UTF-8. Only the second character from the left for Taiwan bai hao wu long cha didn't seem to translate (box). I'm not going to quibble but All the Tea in China by Chow and Kramer use the characters for "white hair" to describe Yinzhen Bai Hao. I'll use the marketing name Silver Needles and Oriental Beauty so not to confuse myself. My Japan reference is in my metro area you can immerse yourself in Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Spanish languages without leaving the US. Any travel required is just an exercise in geography. In fact we have the only University outside of Japan where all subjects are in Japanese. The students come here to immerse themselves in our culture and language.

Space Cowboy Mar 9 2004, 11:37 am show options Newsgroups: rec.food.drink.tea From: snipped-for-privacy@ix.netcom.com (Space Cowboy) Date: 9 Mar 2004 07:37:11 -0800 Local: Tues, Mar 9 2004 11:37 am Subject: Re: Where do you generally buy your tea?

The aisles I mention are my own metro area. I gave the example of finding commercial Chinese teas in Oakland versus SF because a poster in this thread and several others over the years who say you can't even find Chinese brand teas in VCBC. So is it simply they're not looking in the right place? Even at that Oakland doesn't have a great selection. So my favorites in Chinatown any generic Fujian oolong(Black Dragon), Wuji(oolong birthplace), Silver Needles(rarely), Foojoy. Plug in Foojoy tea into the Google search engine and you'll get other commonly available Chinese commercial teas with rosetta stone labeling of Chinese characters. The website for Mark T. Wendell should sort to the top which carries top of the line Foojoy in the tins which I can find locally. Over the years everytime there is a Chinese commercial tea thread someone asks where is the good stuff only to discover they like Indian and Ceylon teas well duh. If you like lichee then any off the shelve brand will do the same for gunpowder. If you don't like Jasmine try Lotus. Learn some lettering and look in the loose herbal section for kilo bags. I stay away from any HongKong export.

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that he was NOT the first person to use the term in this newsgroup. But we're also not accepting his assertion that this newsgroup is the only place from which Mike or anyone else could possibly have gleaned the idea.

I know that I've already acknowledged this fact previously, and I don't think Mike would disagree.

-- Derek

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence." -- Robert Frost

I'm still thinking about it ... I'll let you know Monday.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote:

I do not dispute that he published his use of a very common metaphor before I published mine. So what! About 50,000 people published their variation of the same metaphor before he did

Here is an interesting quote about metaphors: "Metaphor is often used as a teaching tool, or to convey difficult concepts. It is found throughout languages and is considered by many to be essential to language. Since metaphor allows for the substitution of ideas across differing areas of study, it is considered by some to be an interdisciplinary Rosetta Stone."

Now why exactly cant I use the term?

Just because he published the term before I did doesn't mean I got any of my ideas from him and it doesn't mean I even read his post. My idea is actually rather different and was arrived at independently, it was a natural feature to add to a website devoted to puerh. Researching and creating a genre specific translation sheet is a lot different than reading a tin in a supermarket. I actually put work and effort into my solution and shared it with the world, what did he do besides pick up a can from a shelf and log the fact.

The Rosetta thing is just another excuse to attack me, he started attacking me long before I published the Rosetta page on 3/13/2004. Just look at these:

All of this was prior to the creation of my Rosetta Page. Now what specifics have you seen him quote INCLUDING references? He doesn't because if he quotes accurately he cant twist my words around.

Mike Petro

I really don't care if you take the offer or not. I have already won in the court of public opinion. It would just be nice to get back to tea again without having to listen to all you BS.

Cheers,

Mike

Mike Petro

I absolutely agree. However, in this age of commercialism taking over society, it would not surprise me if precedent was set for copywriting methaphors. I'm not sure many people anymore care about the expressivity of modern language. Your pu-erh picture-word-list is double-plus-good, I must say.

Well, so anyways, I was in California a few months ago and discovered a Ten-Ren store. I found an opportunity to buy tea from a place (in person) that was likely not very commercial (it was right between an Asian Grocer and an authentic chinese food restaurant (which was exceptionally good)). So, I walked in and bought some mid-grade Pu-Erh. It was kind of strange. They had, I believe, four grade of it in large tubs, one each more expensive than the last (but still not too expensive). I bought a bit of the one that was one up from the bottom grade, which was called "OP-20" (not very descriptive).

I'd have to say the whole experience wasn't that special, because I really had no way of knowing what I was buying other than that it was Pu-Erh.

The tea isn't bad though. I've had better Pu-Erhs that I've purchased online.

Steve

I'd forgotten about Jim attacking you because you dared to include an active URL in a message to the group and how the mistyping of the URL (using backslashes instead of just slashes) let the link slip past his virus protection.

The tangential attempt to connect your link to the FCC Communication Decency Act was also a treat.

-- Derek

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it rocks absolutely, too.

I think you should withdraw the offer. If he's got to "think about it," then he's likely not serious. You're willing to give him what he says he wants and he has to think about whether or not he's willing to leave you alone?

Sounds to me like he's more interested in toying with you than in resolving the issue.

-- Derek

'On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time." -- George Orwell

I think you should all avail yourselves of the most simple and elegant solution of all: kill file his old angry ass. Then you only have to see his blather tangentially, when it pops up as quoted text.

Even that can get annoying, but it's periodic at worst.

For the last year or so, through a constant surveillance of tea discussion sites, I have enjoyed learning facts and opinions regarding tea in its numerous iterations. Further, I have taken delight in a lively correspondence that has sprung up with several other tea infusiasts who haunt the same posting sites.

At some boards I have hidden in the weeds, watching and studying, analyzing and classifying. At others I have, from time to time, opined a conjecture or narrated a tea experience. At this site, I have lurked for the most part, but nevertheless the discussions here have played a wonderful role in my trek.

I have realized I would not know one-tenth so much as I know about tea were it not for the resources available to me on the www. The sites have, in many ways, served as fantastic ROSETTA STONES in my filtering and making of meaning from what would otherwise be still a rather nebulous subject-not that I am anything near an expert now. Far from it!

I have also realized that the making of meaning, the connecting of symbols with thought, creates ROSETTA STONE moments throughout our lives. Great teachers have been, in my experience, ROSETTA STONES. Even naturalistic observations can be ROSETTA STONES moments. I noticed how a tree cast a sprinkler shadow in my yard, and I realized at last how one mountain, Mt. Rainier, creates a rain shadow and a desert. That was a ROSETTA STONE moment.

The horrible experience of those poor people in Mississippi and Louisiana helped me, as I watched their awful tragedy unfold, understand better the nature of humanity as a whole. That was a sad ROSETTA STONE moment.

I would like to develop a blend of tea that I shall name ROSETTA STONE. In fact, I might go over the top and call it Imperial ROSETTA STONE Blend.

I shall, from time to time, search the Internet to determine whether anyone has used the terms similar to my using them above after I post these sentences here at this site. If any person does such a thing, then I am entitled, by previous practice of another poster here, to harp and burble and insult and attack and whine and defame, and far, far, worse, to do so in language which, after careful study by readers, makes no sense because it lacks any semblance of coherency.

Perhaps I will not carry on in such a fashion, because to do so would mean more than simply that I have big ROSETTA STONEs. They would see in me a microcosm of a world of sorry people in a dark, sad state: I would have labeled myself a crank and an obsessive, one who lashes out at the world, one who attacks what others build through great effort and for charitable reasons, but will not himself build anything at all.

All the best, ~grasshopper

I'm inclined to agree with you, but the problem is that Jim seems to revel in bullying people off of this forum, which we all lose from, and that won't change until it becomes very clear that the majority of people people find this unacceptable. I've dealt with bullies for a long time, and I know that they thrive on other's passivity. So you, and preferably many others, have to tell them that what they're doing is pathetic and no one is impressed.

I think we all lose out from the environment that Jim has fostered in this forum just as much as we gain from having helpful folks like Mike around. And as long as I make use of this forum I will do what I can to make it a better place. For the moment, that involves holding BSers accountable for their BS. I hope I have been effective in this to some degree.

I agree. I don't think it makes sense to appease irrational bullies, because they'll almost certainly do it again.

I would really like to have something cleared up. Does anyone else think that it's innappropriate to post URLs? There certainly isn't anything in the charter.

As I see it, the WWW exists and is the primary location of a lot of information. It just doesn't make sense to me that this forum, simply because it's in another realm, should be isolated from such a wealth of information. I have yet to see anyone but Jim voice this complaint.

I realize that in any media format there tend to be insiders who expect a code of behavior that new people don't understand. So if, somehow, I am out of touch here than I'd love to know about it. But, being that many clearly knowledgable folk have yet to agree with Jim on this matter, I assume it's just an excuse to bully people.

Nico

Your assumption is correct.

Mike Petro

NO. I rely on it.

Intriguing proposition. Though a big fan of Stilton, durian and pickled herring, I recognize these as acquired tastes. (Still trying to find an importer for surstromming.) My impression is that nearly everyone is born with a predisposition against stale/decayed odors. So while there is a huge range of tea styles, to me stale tea will taste mediocre (at best) to anyone who's had the fresh stuff.

On the other hand, I live in a country where some people prefer Tang to fresh-squeezed orange juice, sow ho knows.

-DM

Lorraine110920052120332303% snipped-for-privacy@aol.com/11/05

I only object when the poster is the vendor and tries to hide the fact by pretending to be a tea drinker who "discovered" the site, or some such. Otherwise, I encourage vendors to put their site URL as part of their signature for easy access, if so desired.

Michael

When somebody gives me a take it or leave it ultimatum I always walk away. It means there is nothing on the table. I didn't do that in this case and gave it some more thought over the weekend even while the taunts from you and the peanut gallery continued. In this case you want me to 'shut the hell up' while you make a 'concession' denying any culpability. Okay I can live with that if your changes are done in good faith literally and figuratively. But before I accept I also want you too include a message board on your website. That should also be a 'concession' because it is SOP for the WWW. I still reserve the right to raise issues not pertaining to your website directly or indirectly. I will do that in good faith so we can still agree to disagree.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote:

Take a hike, no deal!

I will NOT, under any circumstances, allow some cantankerous blowhard wannabe Newsgroup Moderator (aka Troll) to tell me how to run my own website.

Enough Said,

Mike Petro

The beat goes on.

Jim

Mike Petro wrote: