HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Nature's Rights and Muddled Dietz
Date: 12 Oct 92 02:21:44 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Department University of Rochester

In article <1466601799@igc.apc.org> alanm@igc.apc.org (Alan McGowen) writes:

>> You forgot the most obvious difference:  humans are humans, and
>> non-humans are not.  Why should this criterion be any less valid
>> than another?  Does it have to be justified in terms of other
>> criteria (and do those have to be justified, ad infinitum?)

> As I pointed out, any southern slaveowner of the 19th century 
> could (and did) employ the same reasoning: whites are whites, and 
> blacks are not: that is enough reason to withhold rights. Dietz's 
> only reply to this is demagogic irrationalism ala David Duke: 
> "how *dare* you compare whites (or jews) to animals!"
			  ^^^^^^

"David Duke"?  Tsk...

Let me rephrase the argument: it begs the question to equate the
"humans are different from non-humans" position to the "whites are
different from blacks" position.  We do not accept the latter.  This
is not because we accept that differences are ethically suspect.
The analogy can be accepted only if we accept that the mapping of the
objects of the arguments (whites --> humans, blacks --> non-humans)
are valid.  But, as I said, this begs the question.

Is Alan saying that *any* statement of the form "X has moral priority
over Y" is impermissible, because a slaveholder could have said
"whites have moral priority over blacks"?  If so, the theory is
vacuous.  If not, then a separate criterion for judging just which X
and Y are allowed has been slipped in.

So, I ask again, just why *shouldn't* I accept the "humans have
priority over non-humans" position?  The formal similarity of this
statement to the slaveholder's "whites have priority over blacks"
is insufficient reason.

I also make clear: one can accept priority of humans over nonhumans
and, even so, conclude that ecosystems should be protected, simply
because humans value them for their beauty, diversity, economic
utility, and so on.  And, moreover, even a benighted soul who sees no
beauty in a forest or a coral reef can agree with, on purely
anthropocentric grounds, many, perhaps most, actions being proposed
for resolving global environmental problems.

For example, a person who places no exceptional value on biodiversity
(apart from, say, useful chemical products or knowledge its study can
provide), would still agree that a system of ownership of rights to
exploit biodiversity would be equitable and economically efficient,
and that its wanton destruction entails an unknown loss to future
generations.  Or, that raising CO2 levels or emitting chemicals that
erode ozone will impose costs on innocent persons in other parts of
the world.

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Rights for Rocks! (battle of the dogmas)
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 20:46:15 GMT

In article <STEINLY.92Oct16120126@topaz.ucsc.edu> steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu (Steinn Sigurdsson) writes:
>In article <1992Oct16.150939.22099@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>
>   I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the newspaper simplified the reason
>   for the award.  As I said, it is a shrewd probe into the depths of
>   the obvious.  If a field of study considers a discovery that is
>   obvious to most people a significant achievement, then I think it is
>   pretty disconnected.  That this effort is needed is because 
>   economics is so disconnected.
>
>Actually, this is not obvious, as many people will say that their
>actions in certain areas are not determined by economic factors
>(I believe one of the examples was marriage and divorce). More
>brutally, to bring back the slavery analogy, this suggests further
>that slavery was indeed determined on economic basis and only
>abandoned when made too expensive, not because of a major shift
>in moral values. Depressing.

The article I saw said "everyday decisions such as marriage" were
determined by economic factors.  I would not consider marriage to
be an everyday decision, so I don't really know what types of
decisions the study was supposed to relate to.  If the economist
was suggesting that _only_ economic considerations are important,
then the study may be as valuable as the guy who postulated
asexual human reproduction in order to save his model.  Does one
fit the model to reality or the other way around?  Unless I read
a better account of what the Nobel Prize was for, I can't really
comment more on it.  Maybe the awarded work was not actually
proving the obvious.  Maybe it was proving the absurd to save a
model.
>
>
>No, Dingo, to go back to the rather useful religion analogy,
>consider an atheist listening to a lutheran and a catholic
>arguing over whether souls can do penance in purgatory or
>have their time in purgatory shortened by prayers/gifts,
>the atheist does not see the difference but the irreducible
>assumption that there are such things as souls. In the atheists
>context the whole discussion is meaningless as it is founded on
>uncontestable, wrongm assumptions.

First of all meaningless is not dogmatic or ossified.  Secondly,
though I am not familiar with this debate, it would sound like
this _particular_ issue has not ossified.
>
>*  Steinn Sigurdsson   			Lick Observatory      	*
>*  steinly@lick.ucsc.edu		"standard disclaimer"  	*
>*  Just because there's a reason          			*
>*  Doesn't mean it's understood              Specials, 1979	* 


-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)
From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Lot of questions about hemp
Distribution: world
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 11:23:45 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Oct13.045310.18420@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com writes:

 > Although I am not the expert you are looking for, I believe a large part
 > of the knowledge about hemp comes from the fact that it was used so
 > extensively prior to its criminalization.  Many of the original
 > revolutionary documents are on hemp paper as is the original Betsy Ross
 > flag.  Hemp was a common crop and the criminalization of marijuana
 > supposedly caught hemp farmers by surprise.

Certainly finding new places to grow both hemp and flax to supply the
British Navy with rope and canvas down here in the Antipodes, provide
much of the impetus for exploring this part of the world, with very
large implications in the founding of the colony here.

Few varieties apart from *cannabis sativa* appear to produce sufficient
quantities of cannabis resin to make them attractive to dope-heads,
and it remains a mystery given the tremendous historical value of the
crop why the species itself was declared illegal. Perhaps more of the
type of hysterical superstition fueled by ignorance we see here in
"sci".environment . . .

There are trials being carried out again here in Australia for paper
production in particular.

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
Newsgroups: sci.environment,ba.transportation
From: dchung@efi.com (Daniel Chung)
Subject: [transport] CalTrain month pass for bus?
Organization: Electronics For Imaging, Inc.
Distribution: ca
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 15:45:21 GMT


     This article concerns San Franscisco Bay Area transportation, but
I post it with state distribution for exchange of opinion.  Pure talk
on the network is useless, and so I will be drafting a letter.  If
anyone is interested and wants to take over, welcome.

     I think CalTrain month passes should extend to busses, notably
Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San Francisco county transits.  Since CalTrain
pass holders use train for regular commuting, their bus rides are short,
mostly weekend rides or commuting between home or work and the closest
train station.  So, this will add little to the cost of transporting them
on the bus.  Moreover, this will make it convenient for many people
to take car--train--bus or bus--train--bus routes to work; they would
not have to pay for an extra bus ride from the train station to work.
So, more people will change from driving to this.  CalTrain will have
more passengers, and the extra money can be used to subsidise the bus.
(The government can regulate the bus.)

     The most important, is that we can all save automobile maintainance
cost and lower fuel consumption.  (If you ask me, I use a walk--train--walk
trip to work almost every day, but not all people live or work this close
to train stations.)

						Daniel Chung (Mr.)

Xref: sparky sci.environment:12026 talk.environment:4230 talk.politics.misc:52221
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Subsidies for Roads and Cars in the USA
Date: 16 Oct 92 03:49:47 GMT
Organization: LLNL

In article <1992Oct14.212931.12399@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> rvanderb@nyx.cs.du.edu (Rian van der Borgt) writes:
>gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman) writes:
>
$ I agree that transportation should be designed around what people really
$ like. Unfortunately for the mass transit boosters, what people really
$ like is cars.

>Unfortunately for "people" is that we must come to the conclusion that
>we cannot do _without_ mass transit, at least not here, in the Netherlands.
>Traffic jams are already too big and the last strike (and that was only
>the railway company) caused several hundreds of kilometers of traffic
>jams (in a country with only 15 million people).

>And, as has been said before, you just simply cannot add another road.
>There are enough of them already.

	One wonders if that will make the construction lobby support
public-transit projects. A possible example here in the Bay Area is
that of construction of some BART extensions, which has so far been
coming under budget. "The contractors are hungry", reported one BART
official.

>Another point is, that a lot of people just don't know what mass transit 
>is like, because they've (almost) never used it. They can't know if 
>they like it. Those people may need just a little 'push'.
>It must be clear that something has to be done to decrease car usage,
>especially during rush hour. The roads are just too damn full.

	Another Bay Area example:

	The Loma Prieta earthquake of Oct. 17, 1989 severed the Bay
Bridge, the principal San Francisco <-> East Bay road commute route;
one of its spans fell onto a support pier (it was still far above the
water). But BART's Transbay Tube, along essentially the same route,
had survived essentially intact, and BART had record service levels
until the Bay Bridge was repaired. But even after that, some of these
new riders stayed, for BART had a significant jump in ridership that
persisted.

	[for non-Bay Area folk, BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit
system, which serves San Francisco and the East Bay]

>And who says mass transit _can't_ be designed around people?

	Good point.
From: tffreeba@indyvax.iupui.edu
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Request from Siberia
Date: 11 Oct 92 22:55:25 -0500
Summary: info exchange with Siberian group

I have come into contact with a research group in Kemerovo in the Kuzbass
region of SW Siberia.  The West-Siberian Center for Ecological, Medical,
and Biological Research, a branch of the World Laboratory, would like to
share information with environmental scientists and advocacy groups.

The center is working on:

1.)  Water, air, soil, and food pollution and how they effect human
health.

2.)  Working on methods and equipment for environmental contamination
control with a great interest in rapid bioindication methods

3.)  Research into the relationship between environmental contamination
and morbidity.

4.)  Levels of backgroud radiation such as indoor radon levels and dissolved
radionuclears in water.  (I have paraphrased here because of the language
problems between me and my contact.  If any of this seems garbled or turns
out not to be absolutely accurate, lay the blame at my feet.)

My contact is Andrew V. Kravchuk  IN%"andkrav@medi.kemerovo.su"

If anyone does contact the center, please forward me the message also.

Thanks in advance,
Thomas Freebairn   TFFREEBA@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU

Please feel free to repost this where it may do the most good.
From: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Rights for Rocks! (battle of the dogmas)
Date: 16 Oct 1992 23:12:58 GMT
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Reply-To: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <1992Oct16.204615.25404@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>Maybe the awarded work was not actually
>proving the obvious.  Maybe it was proving the absurd to save a
>model.

Dean, can't you get it through your thick skull that it's NECESSARY to
demonstrate that the "obvious" is, in fact true?  What's "obvious" to you may
not be at all "obvious" to someone else.  Just listen in on a conversation
between any economic debate between a Marxist and an economist from the
University of Chicago.  Since you think it's all obvious, why don't you go to
Washington and tell them how to solve all of our economic (both micro and
macro problems.

Or, you might want to learn at least a little about the field you're
criticizing before mouthing off.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL

Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My
understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below).  So
unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
organization responsible for it.  If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<STEINLY.92Oct15122800@topaz.ucsc.edu>
	<1992Oct15.203732.402@vexcel.com>
Date: 15 Oct 92 17:40:16

dean@vexcel says:

However, if people work
>   more hours, whether they want to or not, and if productivity
>   continues to increase, then we _will_ have more people without
>   work to do, and this unemployment will be structural, not the
>   result of business cycles.

Not if people want more goods and services.  The first approximation
to the results that will follow is obtained by looking at how people
with greater than average incomes spend their money as compared to
people with lower incomes.  Typically, the income has to get to several
times present average American incomes before people take shorter
work weeks.  Indeed for many people longer vacations, time off for
personal business and earlier retirement take higher priority.

I'll bet the presidents of major corporations work longer hours
than most of their employees.

Steinn Sigurdsson suggests that people waste their higher incomes or
that there are an increasing number of make-work jobs.  I don't agree
with either.  He probably has higher than average income.  Does he
consider it wasted?  There are useless and harmful occupations, but
they are not the result of an effort to make work.  The pathology has
different sources.  Much poorer countries often have even more of
their people in useless occupations.  Consider East Germany or the
Soviet Union.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Subsidies for Roads and Cars in the USA
Organization: LLNL
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 00:11:55 GMT

In article <1992Oct14.164033.26412@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>In article <2927472659.0.p00004@psilink.com> p00004@psilink.com (Michael Smith) writes:
$ 
$ Perhaps it's selfishly person-centric of me, but being, myself, a person 
$ rather than a highway, I am inclined to believe that transportation 
$ should be designed around people and what they are really like, not the 
$ other way around. (Members of the Highway Liberation Front will no doubt 
$ flame me vigorously for this grotesque example of organic chauvinism.)

>I agree that transportation should be designed around what people really
>like. Unfortunately for the mass transit boosters, what people really
>like is cars.

	No, what people _really_ like is easy access. And cars are
less than ideal for a number of reasons.

	1. Expense

	2. Time and attention occupied by driving

	3. Low safety

	4. Dependence on foreign oil

	etc.

	I will acknowledge some of the difficulties of public transit,
such as not being able to make everyone happy (a rather crude summary
of a lot of routing and scheduling problems).

	Not everyone is a carhead, and not everyone enjoys being stuck
in traffic jams or going on long drives. I enjoy not having to drive
to SF or Berkeley or wherever I might want to go.

Xref: sparky sci.environment:11936 talk.environment:4198 talk.politics.misc:51564
From: donb@crash.cts.com (Donald Bowen)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Sustainable lifestyles
Date: 13 Oct 92 20:20:52 GMT
Organization: CTS Network Services (crash, ctsnet), El Cajon, CA


	Doing as much as possible for your self has other rewards.  Some
have been mentioned, such as taxes.  If I take my car to have its oil changed
I will pay around $25 and spend a half an hour driving and waiting.  If I
do it myself, I pay $3 for a filter and $4 for the oil for $7 total and a
savings of $18 to start.  I am salaried so I cannot make more money by working
overtime so that is $18 I would not have had otherwise.  With withholding
and other govt thiefts, $18 of income nets to me $13.50 so that $18 is now $24.
The net result is that the iol change is now free.  It takes me less that 15
min to change the oil so I have saved some thing more valuable than money, time.
Some time is lost because I have to go buy the oil and I take the old oil in
for recycling at the same time.  Meanwhile my cars last longer because I don't
skip oil changes.

	Another reward is that I can build things.  A few hours in the garage
resulted in a doll house that my daughter treasures above anything else.  All
told I spent about $25 and 10 hours on the doll house and it will be aaround
long after the plastic $100 one from the toy store is fouling our landfills.
4 hours over a weekend and $5 of wood built a toy that is asked for by every
kid that comes into the house.  $20 of wood and 8 hours built an end table
that my wife has to show to everyone and they all want a copy.  That has 
earned me about $150 this year.  Tax free or about $200 if it came from 
employment.

	A few hours of work every 3 weeks nets me about 240 lbs of honey
each year.  I sell most but we keep all we need.  A few hours in the
garden gives a lot of fresh chemical free food.  More than we can eat.

	You may ask about the time but what else should I be doing?
Watching rich boys sweat and pat each other on the ass on TV.  No thanks,
I would rather have more control over my life than that.

	DonB
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Rights for Rocks! (battle of the dogmas)
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 15 Oct 92 17:18:48

I note that this very long article about people who believe present
society can't be sustained and people who believe it can mentions
no concrete problem of sustainability.  Name two, and those of us
who consider the present standard of living sustainable, including
individual transportation, will undertake to showw that they are
solvable.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: --UCS Offers New Energy Policies
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 14:40:24 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.054331.26269@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>In article <1992Oct7.175956.4223@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>>
>>I'm not aware that the UCS is strictly against nuclear power. I believe they
>>want a restructuring of certain aspects of the industry that has nothing to
>>do with the technology.  The same for the NRC.  I have a technical report
>>prepared for the UCS that examines the "inherently safe" generation of
>>reactors. It points to various problems ans lists some critiques but never
>>says they shouldn't be used.  They do call for an official moratorium on
>>construction of plants until a waate-handling system is online nad _proven_
>>safe.
>
>In other words a million year test. To those of us with shorter lifespans
>that's essentially equivalent to forever. I'm satisfied with safer and 
>don't expect the impossible ideal of safe. Good odds is all we can get,
>sure things don't exist in the real world. We do know that the proven
>routine hazards of current fossil generation are higher than the experienced 
>hazards of nuclear power. We do have some confidence that defense in depth 
>works.  And we do have some confidence that 500 year storage times are 
>possible.  Beyond that we are dealing in probabilities. The odds favor 
>the nuclear option, but there is always the long shot that we'll lose. 
>Playing long shots is sucker betting.
>
>Gary

Proven safe does not necessarily mean absolutely safe.  I am not sure
what their definition of proven safe is, but mainly they want to see
that some waste repository is available with some level of actual
experience.  While its clear that fossil has a worse record than
nuclear in deaths and injuries, our current reactors are starting to
get old and brittle, and there is little experience with this
factor.  Further, the UCS does not advocate fossil-fuel construction.
There is plenty of evidence that short-term efficiency retrofitting
moving towards renewables as efficiency gets played out can remove
the need for major building of fossil-fuel _or_ nuclear power plants.
The continued ignoring and/or refusal to accept (or rebut) these
facts demonstrates a bias or tunnel-vision among many of the same
people who complain about representations of nuclear power.

-- 

		dingo in boulder	(dean@vexcel.com)