I think at least he would appreciate the wordplay, and that the comparison furthers the communication of science to even one mind which may have lacked it.

There’s a movie, stars Val Kilmer as a Fed (aside: he went on to play Batman!) talking with an elder Dineh through an interpreter. He asks for something from the older gentleman, who then talks and talks and talks and talks (while the interpreter stays silent). Kilmer’s character demands the interpreter tell him what the gentleman said. The interpreter says “He said ‘No.’ ”
He literally said that he needed to bring the sheep in off the mountain, and get water, and shear the sheep, and cull them, and card the wool (all things that would not happen for quite some time) — because, among cultural Dineh, saying “No” outright is a nasty insult – it denies that the other person’s request and their motives have any merit, which is tantamount to labelling them a purely evil force.

A good amount of context (and an understanding of culture and canon) is often needed to understand Navajo. It’s why they were used in WWII as Code Talkers, and it’s (one of the reasons) why you can’t pick it as an option in Google Translate. Or pretty much any translation software.

Some Dineh who have faith in the origin tale find the science-based assertions of evolution and of a round planet circling a sun, to be offensive.

Linguistic analysis has shown that the Dineh language classes shapes into points (sand), lines (snakes), planes (earth/land), round/cylinders (hogans being an example), among others.

Humans (Dineh) are neither sand nor snakes nor earth nor hogan nor this nor that — When they came here from the Fourth World, there was neither Sun nor Moon, and no stars.

This world is a “blanket”, and at every edge, the blanket rises and becomes the sky.

By their reckoning, the stars are ancestors who lived in this world and who have ascended/passed on/risen — and became the stars. There was a boy who carried the sun and a boy who carried the moon; they were the first to go up. Just as they came from the Fourth world, so still they rise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuCRjjE1eSY&t=1m20s

(If the video’s region-locked, it is, of course, “We Are All Made of Stars”.)

*Hint: They are made of something which comes steaming out of cows (and I’m not talking about the Isle-of-Wight ferry).

“Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.”

Genesis 3:19

Definitely looking forward to this one as well if you decide to post it!

That’s it, I’m naming my firstborn Nancy Maryboy, regardless of gender.

Obligatory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1BJfDvSITY

I never noticed before that she says molecules burning in stars. Well, dammit Jim, I guess JMS is a writer, not a physicist.

Remind you of anything?

It definitely reminds me of something.