HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Maddona's new book
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 16:16:24 GMT

In article <9211212332.AA12117@cfdev1.shearson.com> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
> 
>mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
> 
>> To me, the exceptional thing about the book is that Madonna could get away
>> with it. What other star of stage, screen, or music could have pulled this
>> off without damaging his or her career?
> 
>2 Live Crew.

You have a higher opinion of 2 Live Crew's likely appeal, when they're
photographed naked in a book of their sexual fantasies, than I do.


--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I can solve this Orient Express thing without
mnemonic@eff.org| breaking a sweat. It's that simple."
(617) 864-0665  | 
EFF, Cambridge  |                           --Hercule Perot
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:20296 soc.history:9508
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,soc.history
Subject: Re: Crystal Palaces
Date: 18 Nov 1992 13:31:57 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Steffan O'Sullivan writes:

	Michael Zeleny writes:

		Crystal palaces appear as an unselfconscious emblem 
		of bourgeois aesthetic ideals in the poems of Beranger.  
		Several decades later, Dostoyevsky is seen militating 
		against the project of constructing such a palace, 
		clearly meant as a derisive metaphor for utopian social
		progress.  As I recall, somewhere in-between (when?), 
		a crystal palace made an appearance at a Universal 
		Exposition in London.

		Would someone kindly fill in the blanks?

	I can't fill them in, but I have a friend . . .  who has an
	encyclopaedia called The Crystal Palace.  I *think* it's from 
	around 1850s, and was produced to accompany (sum up?) the 
	Exposition.  It is an amazing book, having facts I haven't been 
	able to find anywhere else (such as the fact that women in the 
	Welsh mines carried 170 lbs. on their backs each load!).

	The book is largely concerned with technological advances of the 
	times, not the arts, which leads me to believe the Exposition was
	technologically oriented.

Having watched the Crystal Palace burn down to the ground as a kid,
I feel protective. All that steel and glass burning...

First things first. It was the Great Exhibition. Sic. My guess is
1851, but I'll find out more. Misha's "unselfconscious emblem of 
bourgeois aesthetic" sounds right on the money, but crystal palaces
plural? Was there ever any more than the one? My guess is that it
was the brain child od the Prince Consort, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,
so, who was his mentor? It was the symbol for an outburst of culture
that gave us everything you see around South Ken. The V&A, the Science 
Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Albert Hall, the Royal College 
of Arts, Imperial College, the Royal School of Music, &c., &c.

More later.

							Fido
From: sbrock@teal.csn.org (Steve Brock)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Montgomery Clift: Beautiful Loser (Biography)
Date: 16 Nov 92 02:43:45 GMT
Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc.

MONTGOMERY CLIFT: BEAUTIFUL LOSER by Barney Hoskyns.  Grove
Weidenfield Press, 841 Broadway, N.Y., NY  10003-4793.  Illustrat-
ed, bibliography.  192 pp., $30.00 cloth.  0-8021-1512-8

                             REVIEW

     My favorite Montgomery Clift movie has to be one of his first,
"Red River," called by some the "Western Mutiny on the Bounty." 
How can you not admire someone who stands up to John Wayne?
     Hoskyns, in his second look at the life of a tragic Hollywood
life (his first was on James Dean), portrays Clift as "emotionally
disturbed, sexually confused, and physically destroyed by the use
of drugs and alcohol."
     Beginning with Clift's shy and introverted early years,
Hoskyns charts his introduction to Hollywood and examines his roles
in "Red River," "The Misfits," "The Search," "A Place in the Sun,"
"From Here to Eternity," "I Confess," and many others.
     Seemingly at his peak, but actually so badly depressed that he
could barely work, Clift was driving home from a party when his car
went out of control and he struck a telephone pole.  Hoskyns
describes his attempts at a comeback, finishing "Raintree County"
full of painkillers, but things were never the same.  One of the
most poignant photographs in the book shows Clift "resting," flat
on his back on the back of a horse.
     Clift, already down, continued to sink lower.  Never fully
recovered from his injuries, there were rumors of "gay cocaine
orgies" and his last ten years have been described as "the cinema's
longest suicide attempt."  Hoskyns titles the last chapter of the
book, covering the period 1960 to 1966, "The Inner Circle of Hell."
     Clift's last days were harrowing.  He seldom left his New York
Brownstone, eating raw steak and baby food, and died from a heart
attack caused by arteriosclerosis.
     This is a sad, although sympathetic, story of an actor "who
never knew what he was or what he wanted to be."  Don't give this
as a gift to a person that you want to feel better.
     Hoskyns, when he's not writing biographies, is a rock and roll
critic and performs in the band Cry America.  Speaking of Clift and
rock and roll, give a listen to REM's "Monty Got a Raw Deal" on
their new album "Drive."
From: bh419@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ted B Samsel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Ooooy vey!
Date: 16 Nov 1992 19:56:35 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


Tiene Vd Huevos? (Oeuff!)
   Ah yes, thought we were about to have us a platter of
mountain oysters (calf fries, to some) with all this ovoid
patter.
  My "eier" is raised....
-- 
Ted....
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel)
Subject: Re: The Secret Agent
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. - Rye Canyon
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 17:13:08 GMT

In article <1992Nov21.173448.6510@gw.wmich.edu>, cooneys@gw.wmich.edu writes...

>I think the rule is, the better the original being done on 
>t.v. or movies, the worse the result. I can think of only a 
>few possible exceptions: THE SPOILS OF POYNTON years ago 
>was, I thought, marvellously done. And a Russian movie of 
>Chekhov's "Lady with a Little Dog" was superb (I think the 
>director's name was Heifetz)


This could make for an interesting thread on books that trasnlated well
to the screen.  I tend to agree with the assessment above - that the better
the novel, the weaker the result on screen.  The exceptions I would put forth
are:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (PBS)
Smiley's People
Crime and Punishment (PBS)
Little Dorritt
Godfather
Lonesome Dove

So what do you others feel were well done translations of novels?

Ron
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:20291 soc.history:9506
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,soc.history
Subject: Crystal Palaces
Date: 18 Nov 92 12:11:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov18.071115.17565
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

Crystal palaces appear as an unselfconscious emblem of bourgeois
aesthetic ideals in the poems of B\'eranger.  Several decades later,
Dostoyevsky is seen militating against the project of constructing
such a palace, clearly meant as a derisive metaphor for utopian social
progress.  As I recall, somewhere in-between (when?), a crystal palace
made an appearance at a Universal Exposition in London.

Would someone kindly fill in the blanks?

While we are at it, is anyone game for a sci.history hierarchy?

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: Madonna's new book
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 13:21:50 GMT

Flame's Passion writes:
>I like Madonna's music and I think she has alot of balls to do what 
>she does, however, I don't plan on running out and buying it anytime 
>soon.

Fido writes:
>In fact, she has indicated that not having balls is a particular difficulty
>to her.

Gosh, what did she say about the disadvantages of balllessness (a word
with three l's in a row??)?

As for the "has a lot of balls" expression in general, I'm pleased
as punch to report that not only have I gotten completely comfortable
with using the expression "has a lot of ovaries" when referring to
women, last week I used it in reference to a man.  Ha ha!  Most of
the feminist newspeak has no music, but "has a lot of ovaries"--with
all those lovely feminine o's--is fun to say.  

					--ovijoyfully yours,

							Fiooooona
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.meta
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: Wittgenstein, P.I.
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
	<TORKEL.92Nov21194533@bast.sics.se> <1992Nov21.205719.5509@eff.org>
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 22:56:00 GMT

In article <1992Nov21.205719.5509@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
 writes:

   >If you can
   >demonstrate that Wittgenstein was not deeply critical of metaphysics, I
   >will happily admit my error here.

  Sure thing! Wittgenstein was of course critical of metaphysics with which
he disagreed, but at the same time he had strong metaphysical convictions of
his own, which he put forward in his philosophizing. Here I mean by
"metaphysical convictions" strongly held ideas about what exists, what is
real, what it makes sense to invoke in explanations, what is or is not a
question of fact. In this sense Wittgenstein was as much an adherent of
metaphysics as Bradley or Leibniz, although his style of philosophizing was
rather different. Wittgenstein stated his metaphysical preferences most
plainly, perhaps, in his voluminous writings on the philosophy of mathematics.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: joan@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields)
Subject: Re: Balls &c. and numbers thereof.
Organization: UNC-CH School of Medicine
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 13:55:39 GMT

In article <1ebr60INNnha@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:

>Dani Zweig writes quoting John Blasik (whoever he is):
>	It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered
>	recently is four times bigger then the previous record.


>If it is indeed four times bigger, then it isn't prime.


Gee, Francis, nothing ever gets by you, does it?  


Wet fishes and kisses and black coffee in bed,

Joan

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen)
Subject: Re: "Authors in Popsongs" quiz
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 08:41:00 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.073328.19163@kub.nl> wietske@kub.nl (W. Sijtsma) writes:

  >(1) "You know I love you, I'll always be true."
  >(2) "The nice thing about true hopelessness is that you
  >     don't have to try again."

   >Now how about the first line? You didn't recognize it
   >either?

  Of course I did! It's so much more memorable than the second line
of quasi-literary junk, which I may or may not have heard before.
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: good novels about gay lifestyle
Date: 23 Nov 92 18:09:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov23.130934.17726
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <By6EMt.K5D@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca> 
msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:

>                                   Monday, the 23rd of November, 1992
>
>Francis chides Marko for hinting at details to come whilst he himself is
>
>                               about to dive into a knish which has been
>  baptised with some of Lee & Perrin's finest Worcestershire Sauce.
>
>Is this one of his anti-sexual personae?

Ahem.  Ask a Yiddish speaker, which precious (and eminently suitable
for diving) part of female anatomy is affectionately euphemized by the
term "knish".  Now, Worcestershire Sauce... Fido, you kinky cur!

>              Mike Morris
>      (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Yeats in Sweden
Date: 19 Nov 92 23:59:09 GMT
Reply-To: lnh@physics.arizona.edu
Followup-To: alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

What if Billy "Brother of the More Famous Jack" Yeats had been the
Swedish Chef?  I'm afraid the result would be something like this:


Der Folly of Being Comfurted
by  Villiam Butler Yeats

Von dat ees efer kindy saidy yaterday:
"Yoor vell-belofed's haur has dreads of grey,
Und leettley shadovs comey aboot her eya;
Timey can but makey eet easier to bey veese
Doogh now eet seems impossible, und so
All dat yoo needy ees patiencey." Heart cries, "No,
I hafey not a crumb of comfurt, not a grain.
Timey can but makey her beauty ofer again:
Becausey of dat great nobleness of hers
Der furey dat sturs aboot her, ven shey sturs,
Burns but murey clearly.  O shey hady not dersey vays
Ven all der vildy Summer vas in her gazey." 
Heart! O heart! eef she'dy but turn her heady,
Yoo'dy know der folly of being comfurtedy, bork bork bork!

--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu   \   One like a wombat prowled obtuse
GEnie: L.HAMMER2           \  and furry  -- Christina Rossetti
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Cormac McCarthy Wins National Book Award
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 18:36:32 GMT

	Cormac McCarthy's _All the Pretty Horses_ won this year's National
Book Award for fiction.

	In the article I read about this event, no mention was made of
beavers, muskrats, their scent glands, or possible lapses in usage.


-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
		"The Reptoids eat humans like we eat chickens."
				Alex Alexander
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: foreground-valorize-praxis writers
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 17:55:29 GMT

                                   Monday, the 16th of November, 1992

Fiona recommends
                the Guillory essay, by the way.  Despite its occasional
  lapses into lumpy vocabulary, it's an incisive critique--from the
  *Left*--thus offering a needed antidote to D'Souza--of the liberal
  consensus whose name is "pluralism" and whose pedagogic agenda consists
  (so far) in "opening the canon."

I would comment that I think D'Souza (at least in _Illiberal Education_)
is not a good advocate of the canon. About the only thing interesting he says
is when, just after dismissing _I, Rigoberta Menchu_, he launches into an
aside about what it might take *really* to institute multicultural
education. Being Indian, he suggests studying the Ramayana, but then contends
that it is not the sort of thing the multiculturalists are really
interested in. Anyway, D'Souza is lightweight, a reporter.

Bloom might be a better advocate of ``The Western Canon'' but I think this
advocacy is implicit, not explicit, in _Closing of the American Mind_.
If I were to sum up that book in one concise thesis statement, it'd
be: Philosophy matters to the republic. Hence, it is implicit that the
best Western philosophical analyses deserve close study.
The best pro-canon arguments (best, both because they
address just this issue, and because they are willing break up
the ``multicultural'' side into a part which is reasonable and a part
which is not) are the essays by Diane Ravitch that have appeared in
the past couple of years in the American Scholar.
 
                Mike Morris
        (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: pwh@bradley.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman)
Subject: Re: Madonna's new book
Organization: Bradley University
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 22:07:19 GMT

In <1992Nov16.211958.27910@crd.ge.com> kassover@rumsey.crd.ge.com (David Kassover) writes:
>In article <78v1v-a@rpi.edu> kasprj@rpi.edu writes:
>> In recent years I've encountered a growing contingent who insist that 
>>the feminine equivalent of "balls" should be "eggs".
>Maybe.  But a longstanding Yiddish and Hebrew vulgarism for the
>testicular orbs is "baitzim".

Could someone reassure me that this isn't pronounced 
"bites 'em"?  :-)
-- 
Pete Hartman		       Bradley University	pwh@bradley.bradley.edu
        We've distilled the cheeky wide-boy essense of these characters
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: librik@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David Librik)
Subject: Re: "Authors in Popsongs" quiz
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 07:08:35 GMT

wietske@kub.nl (W. Sijtsma) writes:

>13.  I looked up in the sky, there was a phantom plane a-comin'
>     Shinin' in the dead of night, I heard the pilot saying
>     Poems that were written by John Keats and Robert Browning
>     But he didn't know the words so I suppose that it was nothing

Electric Light Orchestra, "Illusions in G Major", from _Eldorado_.
Wonderful album.  The same song refers to someone else singing "Tunes
that sounded like the Rolling Stones and Leonard Cohen" -- a combination
which boggles the ordinary mind.

- David
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,comp.music
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 21:48:13 -0500 
From: Chris Koenigsberg <ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: availability of Xenakis' _Formalized_Music_
	<1869@heurikon.heurikon.com>
Distribution: usa


davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.edu (John M Davison) writes:
>Did Iannis Xenakis' _Formalized_Music_ ever get re-printed like it was
>supposed to be about two years ago?

I don't have recent information, but in fall 1991, I called Pendragon
Press who said that Xenakis hadn't quite finished editing the new
revised edition. Then, at the November, 1991 ICMC in Montreal, I asked
Marie-Helene Serra, who worked at ceMAMU for Xenakis. She said he was
just about done with the new chapter of the book, dealing with their
recent work in "stochastic synthesis". I haven't checked on it since
then, and I've heard that Marie-Helene left ceMAMU for a job at IRCAM
recently. She didn't show up at the 1992 ICMC in San Jose, although she was
scheduled to deliver a paper there about more work with Xenakis.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher K. Koenigsberg : ckk@mills.edu,ckk@cmu.edu, ckk@cnmat.berkeley.edu
(510) 482-2311		: Graduate student in Electronic Music
P.O.Box 9785		: Mills College Music Dept.
Oakland, CA. 94613	: former Carnegie-Mellon systems programmer etc.
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Surreal Novels About WWII
Date: 22 Nov 92 23:06:25 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: rons@quads.uchicago.edu (Josh Ronsen)

No one seems to have mentioned Joseph Heller CATCH-22 yet.  Or Kurt
Vonnegut SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Wittgenstein and metaphysics was: Wittgenstein, P.I.
Date: 23 Nov 1992 20:39:37 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Mark Taranto writes:

	So, too, has Metaphysics changed.  Consider Cosmology.  What 
	kinds of questions does one have concerning the nature of the 
	Universe?  Some are best answered in Physics and Astronomy, 
	others in Theology.

There is no need to stray from the meaning of the word itself. Meta Physics. 
About Physics. About those sorts of things that LudWit understood had to be
not discussed. Prop. 7.0. The bounds of Physics. Definitionally this means
that there cannot be logical systems of Metaphysics, but, so what? 

							Fido
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Subject: Westlake News
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 18:46:38 GMT
Organization: Austerlitz, Gershovitz, and Carmichael

Fans of  Donald E. Westlake should be pleased to hear that Mysterious
Press will soon release a paper back edition of his book _Humans_,
and will re-release 3 others : _The Fugitive Pigeon_, _Cops and Robbers_,
and _Brothers Keepers_. And in April, the latest adventures Dortmunder
and Kelp will appear: _Don't Ask_. (That will appear first in hardback.)
-- 
Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> My bad.     
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: Re: Why I am thrilled with the QPBC
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 18:21:41 GMT


yarnot@babbage.csus.edu (Jan Yarnot) writes
 
> Mark's father sounds like a man after my own heart (but I'm not the woman
> he's looking for, I'm already bespoke).
 
This is nice.  Too bad about the spouse, though.  I'd much rather that
my winter visits to my father were in California than in Minnesota.
 
> I, too, have lots of questions only answerable by Mitch or the
> book Mark got.  For instance, this has puzzled me for a while.
> We have this mental picture of a rain of stockbrokers on Black
> Tuesday (?Was it Tuesday?)  How many folks actually did defenestrate
> during the Depression?  Ten?  A hundred?  Thousands?  Does Mitch know?
 
Not only can I give Jan an answer, I can also mention a book while doing
so.  Yes, October 19, 1929 was, indeed, a Tuesday.  According to the book
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: THE STORY OF DOW JONES & THE NATION'S BUSINESS
NEWSPAPER by Lloyd Wendt, stories of mass suicides are apocryphal.
The records of the Coroner's office in NYC actually show that there
were fewer suicides in NYC during Oct-Nov of 1929, than there were in
Oct-Nov of 1928.
 
Also mentioned as apocryphal are stories of newsboys buying up blocks
of stock for $1.00 each, and becoming rich when the market gained back
a portion of what was lost.  Wendt does mention that Joe Kennedy was one
of the people who bought stocks at the bottom on Black Tuesday.  This
allowed him to dramatically increase the value of his fortune by 1933.
 
Why would I own a book like this, you may ask?  I worked for Dow Jones
when the book came out.  Each employee was given a free copy.
 
> I hope I wasn't the person who spoiled the ending of Anna Karenin for
> you, I seem to recall doing a bit of mouth-frothing on the subject
> last year.
 
Nope.  It was initially spoiled by a professor of my first wife's.  He was
talking about people who read for plot and those who don't.  He used
ANNA KARENINA as an example of a book where he thought the plot was
unimportant -- and gave away the ending.  He was unaware that Terry was
reading the book at the time.  I remember that she agreed with him about
his point, but still wished that she hadn't found out the ending.
 
A few months later, PPS showed the BBC dramatization of the book -- so I
actually know more about the story than just the ending.  I guess I won't
be reading it for plot.
 
Mark
 
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books