HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jon@cyclone.MITRE.org (J. E. Shum)
Subject: Re: Book Search Request
Originator: jon@cyclone
Organization: The MITRE Corp. McLean Va.
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 19:39:38 GMT


In article <8SEP199210362467@portal.lasc.lockheed.com>, le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel (x2025)) writes:
> I read a book more than 25 years ago that I would like to read again,
> but I can't remember the title.  The plot concerns a gentle humble
> priest who has ongoing comments and conversations with Christ who 
> has come off the cross to speak with him.  There are some very funny
> moments in the book, and we learn ultimately that everything is 
> really taking place within the thoughts of the little priest.
> 
> I believe he may have been a Spanish priest during the time of
> Franco??  And there may have been something in there about
> facists and communists???
> 
> The book is so dusty within my memory that when I blow off the
> cobwebs, all I can make out is _The Little World of..._  or
> maybe it's _The Strange World of..._ or _The Strange Little
> World of..._ something or other.  I think that the elipsis is
> in place of his name.
> 
> Can anyone help?


Just a stab in the dark, but you might have been reading Chapter 5, 
Book 5 of _The Brothers Karamozov_ by Fyoder Dostoyefsky (sp?).
-- 
<jon@mitre.org>|--------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------| Libertarian Party  
  Andre Marrou    Nancy Lord for  | 1528 Pennsylvania Avenue SE  (202)543-1988
  for President   Vice-President  | Washington, DC 20003         (800)682-1776  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 15:30:30 GMT

Clayton Cramer writes amusingly on the subject of schlocky paperbacks
common in the early '80's, the ones featuring swastikas and hammer-and-
sickle emblems on their covers.

I recall an article in about '81, in a glossy magazine (_Esquire_,
perhaps?), in which the author suggested an algorithm for composing
the titles of such novels.  It went roughly like this: choose
one word from Column A, one from Column B, and then combine them, as
in _The_Heimlich_Maneuver_.

	COLUMN A                  COLUMN B

	Hitler                    Agenda
	Nazi                      Assignment
	Boermann (sp?)            Files
	Kremlin                   Project
	Himmler                   Ultimatum
	Breshnev                  Briefing
	Stalin                    Imperative
	KGB                       Prerogative
	SS                        Conspiracy

...and so on.  :-)

						--Fiona
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: time for burgess?
Date: 9 Sep 92 18:18:23 GMT



William Sburgfort Smith (wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov) writes:
 
> One of my high school English teachers said that many people who
> love a particular writer or poet would not want to be around them, and
> would be shocked by their behavior.  I've thought of this often when
> I hear about how some artist or writer behaved.
 
Sburgfort's point is well made.  There is certainly no consistency in
my like or dislike of writers.  For example, I object to Bertrand Russell's
womanizing, yet find him one of the clearer headed philosophers.  
 
So -- maybe I'll get around to reading more Burgess, someday.
 
Mark
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: The White Man's Burden of Proof
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 03:27:44 GMT

Paul Roberts writes:

	John McCarthy writes:

		Indeed I hope someone will tell me what poem 
		"insidious intent" is from. 

	Haven't been following this thread, but it is from Eliot's 
	"The Waste Land". Or was Eliot quoting someone else?

Or are you just guessing? Sounds more like Brandeis to me. Mike? In
any case, it is absurd for Mark to sneer at JMcC for taking words at
their face value. It no particular virtue not to be academic, and one
wonders just which Vice Mark Presides over.

						Fido
From: klier@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Very Wonderful Life/Darwin Biography
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:41:05 -0500
Organization: University of Northern Iowa

In article <1992Sep15.124121.21611@hellgate.utah.edu>, speterse%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (soren--Ms. Jackson if you're nasty) writes:
> 
> Inspired by the r.a.babble, I just finished *Wonderful Life* last night,
> and I find myself motivated to do some further reading. 
> 
> Specifically, I'm looking for non-specialist works on 
> 
>    -- Chordate evolution.
> 
>    -- dinosaurs and their extinction (something current--I haven't
> 	done any reading on dinosaurs since I was Calvin's and Hobbes' 
> 	age).

No, but I will recommend Mary White's *wonderful* book, _The Flowering
of Gondwana*, on evolution of southern hemisphere plants.
> 
> 
> Secondly, there's a new biography, *Darwin* by Adrian Desmond and James
> Moore, just out, which purports to be the first major biography to consider 
> Darwin in his political and social context.  According to the introduction, 
> a huge amount of primary material (letters and diaries) has just been made 
> public within the last few years in which Darwin struggled with the moral
> and philosophical implications of evolution.  Apparently, this is the first
> time that this side of Darwin has come to light.
> 
> So:  has anyone read it? 
 In process.  It's fascinating.  I'm particularly pleased with the way
Desmond and Moore handle the contributions of family life to Darwin's
intellectual life.

 Are there reviews?  

Haven't looked for any, but Gould gave it a rave review on Science Friday
on NPR.  I bought it on the strength of a stack of them near the checkout
at Prairie Lights Bookstore (it just leaped into my pile!).

Does it live up to my summary
> of the introduction?  

Seems to.

Am I really descended from an ape?

You share common ancestry with modern apes.  Unless you happen to be
one of my students who wants to memorize instead of understand.  They
seem to be phylogenetically linked to computers, not humanoids... :^)

Kay Klier  Biology Dept  UNI
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: markmc@sierra.com (Mark McWiggins)
Subject: Re: Why I've stopped reading The New Republic
Organization: Sierra Geophysics Inc.,  Kirkland, Wa
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 01:36:42 GMT

I de-subscribed a few years back when they killed an article critical of
the tobacco industry to protect their revenue from cigarette ads. 

This was reported in The Washington Monthly, which as I recall ran the
offending article. I still subscribe to the Monthly.
--
Mark McWiggins           +1 206 822 5200x377 days      Box 31356
markmc@sierra.com        +1 206 632 1905 24 hrs.       Seattle WA 98103-1356
From: sstover@sumax.seattleu.edu (Maven o'Mirth)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Date: 11 Sep 92 18:28:22 GMT
Organization: Seattle University, Seattle WA

In article <10SEP199214172325@zeus.tamu.edu> spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius) writes:
>
>I do think that one can make general statements about the Beat artists
>because (dig this) they are Beat artists.  If there wasn't some common
>denominator between them (feel free to gag on the diction), we wouldn't
>be referring to them as a group.
Indeed.  Refer to the comment I made about a difficulty with the *thought*
behind the genre, and I think you will find we have reached some modicum
of agreement as to why I like Kerouac as Kerouac and why you do not like
Kerouac as a Beat writer, and perhaps, *the* Beat writer.  I do not see
him as such primarily, but rather see him first as an author I enjoy and
second as a Beat writer.  I therefore do not exclude myself from something
I might potentially enjoy because it belongs to a genre I previously
decided I disapproved of.  Which is not to say necessarily that you do,
but it seems that way to me from the tenor of your comments.  (There are
some excellent country-western artists out there who do not play a steel
guitar or sing with a twang :), which I am hoping was exactly the point
you were trying to make.)
>
>>Sorry to be a lurker for so long, and show up only to get into an argument
>>with SubG here...let us keep this intellectual, if we may.
>> 
>>Sheryl Stover
>
>+-------------------------------------SubG---------------------------------+
>Intellectual lurking, eh?  Better, I suppose than intellectual lurching,
>which seems to be more the fashion.

Actually, I was hoping we could keep the *argument* intellectual.

>
>Anyway, pardon my two penn'orth of cudgemudgeonry (spell it yerself) on
>intellectualism, but I find that the lads and lasses that make the biggest
>productions about being intellectuals generally have the least to be
>making noise about.
>
>See also Sam Johnson, Sir Richard F. Burton, u.s.w.
>
>That is to say, intellectualism exists in two forms:  First as a byproduct of
>discourse between two or more informed individuals who are concered with
>what they're talking about, and alternately as a chief product of boneheads
>with a fistfull of catchphrases they're tring desperately to inject into their
>conversations with like-unminded addlepates before they dislocate their
>shoulders trying to pat themselves on the back or break an ankle when
>their knee is jerked by their companion's jingoisms.
>SubGenius

I myself am concerned with the prior.  And concerned with keeping this
"intellectual" in the sense that it not creep over into the personal. 
Which, undoubtedly, was quite a bit to ask.  

--
Sheryl Stover				|  How passing fair is youth,
*>sstover@sumax.seattleu.edu<*		|  Forever fleeting away;
and Hemingway, feline philosopher	|  Who happy would be, let him be;
Watch this .sig for news of the		|  Of tomorrow, who can say?
upcoming album from Seattle's 		|	-Lorenzo de'Medici
premier band, the Medici!		|
From: nadel@aero.org (M.H. Nadel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Marcia Muller's books
Date: 10 Sep 1992 19:52:33 GMT
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aerospace.aero.org

In article <2wtnay@lynx.unm.edu> cs3631ae@triton.unm.edu (Jim Tanzola) writes:
> Dates are added
>courtesy of the Albuquerque Chapter of 'Sisters in Crime' a group of Ladies
>dedicated to the reading and discussion of mystery books by female authors.
>

This is not quite an accurate description of Sisters in Crime.  First off,
most of the members I met would bristle at being called "ladies," which
implies certain manners that are hardly compatible with expertise on weapons
or poisons.  But, more significantly, Sisters in Crime was actually founded
by a group of women writers (I think of Sara Paretsky as the guiding light
of the organization) to counter the problem that women writing mysteries have
in marketing and publicity.  For example, even though over half of the
mysteries published in the U.S. and Britain are by women, you'd never know
that by reading reviews of mysteries.  (For example, the Bloody Sunday 
column in the L.A. Times typically reviews 5 or 6 books and it is rare for
more than one to be by a woman.  20-30% women authors seems to be typical
in other review columns I've seen.)

The local chapter is very definitely geared to authors, not fans.  The 
meeting topics focus primarily on technical aspects of detection.

Miriam Nadel

-- 
"You make it in this world for one reason and for one reason alone: because the
King of the Orangutans likes you and grants you success."   - James Powell
						    
nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: NPR & Freedom of the Press: Part II
Date: Sun, 06 Sep 92 00:10:05 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

mc@cs.Stanford.EDU:
>The scene fragment can be fitted into almost any movie of
>contemporary life.  It would normally require no additional actors and
>no additional scene.  The take could have been written in advance by...

The generic pro- or anti- *anything* scene is for one of the
characters to be reading the paper (or, given the context, watching
tv, more likely) and to feel impelled (by the script) to comment.

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

   If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down.  It's going to be the
   best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills
   you! -- Dorothy Parker
From: egpv29@castle.ed.ac.uk (JHenderson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: books to avoid
Date: 11 Sep 92 09:06:14 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1992Sep10.180638.25521@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
=>Mark Taranto writes:
=>
=>	Mike Godwin responds to me:
=>
=>		I doubt Dr. Webster would insist on the distinction 
=>		between her persona and her "self," whatever that is, 
=> 
=>	On the other hand, Ms Courtesy writes in a very different style 
=>	from Fiona Webster or Fiona Oceanstar.  It might be true that 
=>	all of these personae share the views of the writer/psychiatrist 
=>	who created them -- but they do express themselves differently.
=> 
=>There is a question of net etiqutte which we should settle. It seems to me 
=>that something posted under some name -- whatever it is -- should be
=>treated as coming from that name and not necessarily from the person behind
=>the name who may or may not share that name. When Mike Godwin posts 
=>something, then I take it that it is "Mike Godwin" and not Mike Godwin
=>who is a lawyer and holds a job with some company in Boston.  I beleive it
=>is particularly important that we do not confuse this. Fiona posted
=>something that pissed off Mike. Fair enough. he should then explode and
=>atteck Fiona. He did not. He attacked Dr. Webster. This seemed then and
=>still seems on reflection to be a breech of netiquette whch i regret. 
=>I'd like to make the further point that I believe that while we may
=>flame in public as much as we care to, it is a gross breech of good manners
=>to carry on a flame in private.

I'd like to agree with what Francis writes here, but what would a judge
say if I posted something libellous, and then claimed "It weren't me,
yer onner, it were Phullovit as done it!!"


-- 
=======Jeremy Henderson========egpv29@castle.ed.ac.uk===============
Q: How many user support people does it take to change a light bulb?
A: We have an exact copy of the light bulb here and it seems to be
   working fine.  Can you tell me what kind of system you have?  
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Contest winner
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 14 Sep 92 20:00:43

John A. Nickles writes:

     Okay, here's my idea. The artist who commits suicide in the
     screenplay was a Vietnam veteran. He feels that he has
     already sold out once to the system by fighting in a war he
     did not believe in etc. etc.


     This could be established in a few lines of dialouge by the
     writer.

     As for the rightist propaganda, the most obvious action,
     especially in a film called "Mistresses" is for one of the
     backers to suddenly undergo a spiritual conversion, leave
     his "jaded harlot" ant return to the bosom of his family,
     vowing never to stray again.

I award him the $25 for the first one, but disqualify the second
one on the grounds that it involves a major change to the plot
rather than just a gimmick that can be thrown in.

The actual bit of business was rather close to Nickles's idea.
One of the backers is of suitable age to be a Vietnam veteran,
and when his mistress accuses him of being an S.O.B. replies
that he was in the Special Forces in Vietnam and did all sorts
of dirty deeds there.  He adds that no-one should believe that
the U.S. could have won in Vietnam, saying something like "the
little yellow bastards beat the pants off us" although I can't
swear to the politically incorrect phrase "little yellow bastards".
Anyway the phrase is probably politically ok in the context,
where it establishes the speaker as a GI type and not a leftist
intellectual - unlike the fellow who cooked up the bit of business.
The whole thing only took about 20 seconds to do and didn't
interrupt the action in any way.

I don't know whether it was related in the screenwriter's mind,
but at the end this particular backer rehabilitates himself
by proposing marriage to his mistress.

My idea for a right wing bit of business was to have the tough
black woman say in response to some sympathetic leftist remark
that she had made it on her own and so could anyone else.
It requires a somewhat successful black, but that's rather
common in movies these days.  It could also be done in 5 to 30
seconds, depending on how loyal the screenwriter was to the
cause.  Actually two 10 second bits would be more effective than
one 30 second bit.

If Mr. Nickles will send me his address, I'll send him a check.
None of the other candidates did as well, and no-one else tried
the right wing bit or the anti-nuclear bit.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mgibson@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Gothick)
Subject: Re: Books on Disc
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 18:20:56 GMT

In <lastutINN23g@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR]) writes:

> >Aside from the size and resolution constraints of a CRT, what is it that  
> >people dislike about reading books on a computer?  What would be the  
> >features in a book-reading program?  Bookmarks, tabs, dog-eared pages?

[..]

>  There is no satisfying "thunk" when you drop it onto a
>  table

Wanna bet?


>Dano

Matt xxx

-- 
------- Matthew B. M. Gibson --- "Gothick" --- mgibson@dcs.warwick.ac.uk -------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-"I'll take what fate brings, eternal and desire/I'll change their faces, then -
-"I'll take their smile" - Fields of the Nephilim, "Last Exit For The Lost"-----
From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: A Pleasant Afternoon's Reading
Date: 14 Sep 92 18:02:56 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Sep14.171636.22774@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
>Lauren L. Crawford writes:
>
>	Well, he can't have been writing about Sierra Leone, then.  
>	Lepers, yes; yachts, no.  Lots of nice beaches, though.  What's 
>	the name of the book?
>
>One more statement like those two and you strike out. Hansen's Disease
>may have more victims in Louisiana than it does in Sierra leone. 

Twaddle.

As to
>the yachts, Sierra Leone has one of the finest harbours on the West Coast 
>of Africa in Freetown, and several other smaller ports and navigable 
>estuaries. I would not hesitate to anchor a yacht off some of those 
>glorious beaches if I felt like a dip and the swell was reasonable.
>
Help yourself.  You'd be in a teeny, weeny minority.  Count the yachts
in the bay sometime.  Then count the lepers lining the streets of
Freetown.  

>Freetown was founded by freed slaves whose descendants, the Creoles, still
>form about 25% of the population of Freetown.
>

And their primary language is Krio, which includes the charming phrase
"Lef me, bo, you 'umbug me plenty-o."


-- 
Lauren Crawford  //  crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu

I believe we are on the irreversible trend toward more freedom and
democracy -- but that could change.   -- J. Danforth Quayle  
Newsgroups: alt.fan.douglas.adams,rec.arts.books
From: spb0457@zeus.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Subject: Naked strangers to avoid  -or-  Johnson on Miss Manners (cough)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 15:54:00 GMT


Mr. Goodwin:

		Sir: your mother, under the pretense of
		maintaining a bawdy house was the 
		reciever of stolen goods.

						--Sam Johnson


Ms. Manners:

		Sod off!

						--Sam Johnson


SubG [That's me-SubG]:

		Bugger.  I've trod in a pile of horse shit.

						--Sans Johnson




Although I can't exactly see what all the fuss was about, I'll point out
that neither did I take offense at the comment in question, nor did I intend
offense by my own comments (usually it's reasonably obvious when I'm trying
to cop an attitude with someone--my diction gets distressingly intricate).







Yours etc.,






SubGenius

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: utopias and distopias
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 07:35:02 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

In article <25.X92001@ramona.com> jwest@ramona.com (Jim Western) writes:
>We? Are "we" pregnant, sir? 

	Now that's *witty*.  And the "sir" is especially nice.  I have
no doubt this sort of labored sarcasm makes you the hit of the halfway
house.

>Hasn't the r.a.b FAQ list of people who are
>still on speaking terms with you reverted to the null set? 

	Better and better:  "reverted to the null set."  You really
should write stand-up.

>Maybe we should
>take up a collection to buy you a neoprene butt plug...for your mouth.

	Borrow your mother's.

	
-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		   "I swear I never heard the first shot"
                Wm. Gibson, "Agrippa:  a book of the dead"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: loosemore-sandra@CS.YALE.EDU (Sandra Loosemore)
Subject: Re: thoughts on recent books
Organization: staff hacker @ Yale Haskell project
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 18:13:59 GMT

rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:

   _The True History of the Conquest of Mexico_, Bernal Diaz del Castillo
	   The best first-hand account book I have ever read.

I'll second this recommendation.  I picked this up in an abridged
Penguin edition about five years ago, and it was a delight to read.
It's written in an unassuming, colloquial style and is *much* easier
going than Prescott's account of the same events.

-Sandra
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jmo@fns-nc1.fns.com (John Otteson)
Subject: Re: Books on Disc
Organization: Fujitsu Network Switching
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 15:38:01 GMT


>In article <qwmnr3#.dani@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:
>>Can you imagine having to read these books from a computer monitor?
>>
>Aside from the size and resolution constraints of a CRT, what is it that  
>people dislike about reading books on a computer?  What would be the  
>features in a book-reading program?  Bookmarks, tabs, dog-eared pages?

Well, the smell of a freshly opened new book would be one thing I
would miss.



>In article <qwmnr3#.dani@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:
>>Can you imagine having to read these books from a computer monitor?
>>
>Aside from the size and resolution constraints of a CRT, what is it that  
>people dislike about reading books on a computer?  What would be the  
>features in a book-reading program?  Bookmarks, tabs, dog-eared pages?

Well, the smell of a freshly opened new book would be one thing I
would miss.

-- 
John Otteson      uunet!mcnc!fns-nc1!jmo
------------------------------------------------------------
	"We can know everything in nature
	 except that which knows nature."   --- A. B.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: pas@kepler.unh.edu (Paul A Sand)
Subject: Re: Tomes for 'Tweens (Was:  thoughts on recent books)
Organization: University of New Hampshire
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 02:10:58 GMT

_'Twixt Twelve and Twenty_, by Pat Boone. (Prentice-Hall, 1958).
-- 
-- Paul A. Sand           | [S]erious people flinch from being associated
-- Univ. of New Hampshire | with the intellectual slum that is the Bush
-- pas@kepler.unh.edu     | campaign, with its riffraff of liars and
                          | aspiring ayatollahs. (George F. Will)