tIEDbit

[Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>]

Andrea got it going:

>...........  Unfortunately I was not part of this group when IED first 
>appeared and so now that he has returned it has occurred to me that I don't
>know what IED means/stands for.  :-) (very sheepishly)  Can anyone be so 
>kind as to tell me without laughing too hard.  I don't see anyway that it
>connects with Kate's name or a song, but I'm probably missing something.

Evan Welsh did the set-up:

>To the best of REW's knowledge IED has never divulged this secret to any
>but a trusted and privileged few, of which REW is sadly not one.
>
>Previous attempts to guess the meaning behind The Symbols have proved
>fruitless, with IED refusing to be goaded into either confirming or denying
>theories presented by numerous intrepid philocanines. If REW casts his mind
>back, one particular theory--not his own--springs to mind: In Excelsis Dea
>which, if REW's total lack of latin education fails to expose him for the
>charlatan he is, means Goddess in heaven.
>
>Here's hoping that after all this time IED will TaKe pity on his fellow
>gaffans (would that REW was worthy to be called such) and realise that the
>world is ripe for this knowledge.

|>oug Alan, in a position to know, purported to present the facts:

>Don't bend your mind too much -- I, E, and D are just the first three
>letters of his old username, IED0DXM.  His account was probably on
>some godawful IBM mainframe, where the system managers felt they must
>give users account names with apparently random sequences of numbers
>and letters, just so that everything would look proper and
>businesslike.

       All Doug's facts are correct, and in an earlier post that I can't now 
find, someone else had also recalled that IEDODXM was at UCLA.  The problem 
is, in the phrase "his old username," who is the antecedent of the pronoun 
"his"?  The thread concerns *IED*.  Doug is only reporting what Andrew 
Marvick would tell you:

EMAIL>       First, the little matter of "IED". There is no single correct
EMAIL> answer, though your suggestion is an excellent one. I have had 
EMAIL> several suggestions from Love-Hounds over the years. Among the
EMAIL> best, I think, are: "In Excelsis Dea" (is that the correct case-
EMAIL> ending for "goddess", by the way?); Identity of Editor Deleted;
EMAIL> and I Encourage Devotion. The "truth" is actually much less
EMAIL> interesting: the letters were three among the thousands that 
EMAIL> UCLA computer account users were randomly assigned upon gaining
EMAIL> access to the mainframe. I much prefer the fans' alternative
EMAIL> explanations.

       'My suggestion' had been this:

EMAIL>        May I share with you my assumption about the identity of IED?  
EMAIL> Just to see those letters put me in mind of the medieval scholastic 
EMAIL> QED.  QED = quod erat demonstrandum, "which was to have been 
EMAIL> demonstrated," the somewhat self-congratulatory way in which 
EMAIL> scholastic argumentation would conclude itself.  If that's the model, 
EMAIL> then IED would be "id est demonstratum" or "<thus> it has been 
EMAIL> demonstrated!," an even MORE assertive claim about what has been 
EMAIL> presented.  This may not be right, but is entirely in character for 
EMAIL> IED, who makes sure that everybody knows the exact and correct truth 
EMAIL> of any matter.  

       Andy Marvick's opinion of what IED means is of course well-informed, 
but as Evan Welch so correctly stated, "Previous attempts to guess the 
meaning behind The Symbols have proved fruitless, with IED refusing to be 
goaded into either confirming or denying theories presented by numerous 
intrepid philocanines."

       IED still has never said.  But it is IED's view, we all know, that 
Kate Bush is God.  She is his creator, therefore.  (If there had been no Kate 
Bush, there would be no IED.  I.E.D.)  In the cosmos of any competent 
creator, nothing is meaningless.  So the quest continues.  Probably IED 
doesn't know the secret himself.

       "In excelsis deo," from which "In Excelsis Dea" derives <case is 
correct if recognized as dative>, comes from the first line of the Gloria in 
the Latin Mass:  "Gloria in excelsis deo," "glory to God in the highest".  
The problem with 'in excelsis dea', taken as a stand-alone phrase, is that it 
makes the word 'dea', goddess, appear to be nominative.  That would translate 
more like "Goddess in the highest <degree>" than like "Goddess in heaven." 
Perhaps that's why Andy includes it first in his list of favorites.

       But that's just Andy's view, not IED's.

............................................................................
                                                            Peter Manchester
"C'mon, we all sing!"                          pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu
                                                     72020.366@compuserv.com