cartesian-heights.org

[jack]

How about cartesian-heights.org? It's distinctive, it's a nice name, it looks fairly easy to type.

Are hyphens sane in domain names? I know many sites automatically reject[1] any email address with a "+" in, is a "-" likely to be a problem?

If you saw it, would you remember if it had a hyphen, dot, underscore or nothing between the words? If I said "cartesian heights dot org with a hyphen" would you understand it?

Are you familiar enough with the adjective "cartesian" to be able to remember it if you hadn't heard it before?

[1] See standard "why go to such an effort to make life more difficult for people?" rant

Comments

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

I thought daemon was the 'more intellectual' spelling of demon, so it sounded logical?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty accurate afaik. In actual fact, I picked "daemon" as a reference to the operating concept (a program which stays in the background and serves requests from other programs), but there's no evidence of that other than my saying so, it's not inherent in the name.

Pullman put the supernatural meaning quite definitely back in people's minds. "intellectual spelling of demon" sums it up; I would have said to distinguish "daemon" meaning a supernatural out-of-this-world creature from a "evil" demon, but that's just the impression I picked up from people using it in books.

A quick look on wikipedia interestingly gives the original etymology: "dæmon, are Latinized spellings of the Greek δαίμων (daimon),[1] used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Ancient Greek religion, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" (see Plato's Symposium), from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans"