HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: Back to Homeschool (was: Style vs substance)
Organization: mydog in exile
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 19:46:17 GMT

au500@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Linda Zinn) writes:
| 
| >In a previous article, gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) says:
| >| [deletions]
| >| >It is the children who should determine 
| >| >whether and when they go to school.
| >
| >au500@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Linda Zinn) writes:
| >| One-hundred children surveyed.....top answer: NEVER
| >
| Gordon responds:
| >Where?  When?
| 
| Back to LZ:
| It was a joke. Levity is allowed on this group occasionally, isn't it?

Sure, but humor generally comes from an assumption.  The
assumption is the authoritarian one that all children
automatically hate school.  There is a contrary anarchist
view that humans naturally desire to acquire information and
abilities, so they would be attracted to effective
schooling, although not necessarily to schools.

"School" actually is more about how certain people are kept
in order, rather than how they are trained and informed.
Otherwise they would not be compulsory, and would have much
different characteristics than they now do.

gf:
| >| >Unfortunately, as
| >| >a class, they are politically disenfranchised and will
| >| >continue to be used as markers by those who are more
| >| >powerful than they, simply because they do not possess
| >| >the mental and physical strength to resist those who
| >| >dominate them.  

lz:
| >|                      ... [T]hey need parents, asuming the parents are
| >| fit, to help guide them until they are capable of making their own choices.
gf:
| >What I said is exactly true.  Whether the state can
| >serve to defend them from their parents, though, is a
| >difficult question, since its personnel are drawn from
| >the same dubious pool.  Probably the best hope lies in
| >another direction.

lz:
| I agree that children are often far more capable than we give them credit
| for. Perhaps we need to qualify this discussion with an age? I don't claim
| to have all the answers, but in my opinion, fit parents remain the most
| likely candidates for providing love and protection and direction to 
| children.

Well, one's "parents" are pretty much those whom the state
defines to be one's parents, at least if anybody makes an
issue of it.  Is it not so?

I like what was once alleged to be Hillary Clinton's take on
the issue, since disclaimed: that we assume that all persons
be considered to possess all rights, except for those which
are removed by due process in a competency hearing.  Of
course, such a view is too radical for things-as-they-are,
but it's an elegant axiom which I think might be very 
productive in developing theories on the rights of children.

I injected myself into the discussion because I saw the
homeschool-versus-public school issue as an argument between
two dominant parties over the possession and control of 
disenfranchised persons (those who are to be schooled).  
No one spoke of asking them what they wanted, so I 
thought I would.
-- 

 )*(    Gordon Fitch    )*(    gcf@panix.com    )*(
( 1238 Blg. Grn. Sta.,  NY NY 10274 * 718.273.5556 )
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mosfet@avarice.mcc.com (Mosfeq Rashid)
Subject: Q: STORYTELLING groups in Austin, Texas?
Organization: MCC ISD, Austin, Texas
Distribution: rec
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:33:06 GMT


Is there any Storytelling group in Austin, Texas? NAPPS (National
Association   for  the    Preservation     and Perpetuation    of
Storytelling) is not aware any. Please use email.

- Mosfeq Rashid
  email: mosfet@mcc.com
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Most-anthologized English-language poem
Date: 28 Jan 1993 06:05:51 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

MICHAEL WISE writes:

	I'd guess Mending Wall by Robert Frost. I can't remember an 
	anthology I've seen that doesn't have this poem; I also can't 
	remember a student who hasn't read it.

Then you muist have read nothing but American anthologies and taught
none but American students. Very provincial, I would say.

						RABworm
From: spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Censorship
Date: 26 Jan 1993 00:02 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rigel.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

John McCarthy opines...
>I believe the Federal Government only banned books in that Customs
>could prohibit their import, and the postal service could ban their
>transmission through the mails.  Any bans on printing had to be
>accomplished via state and local obscenity laws.  The Federal
>Government became involved in these only when the Federal Courts were
>asked to declare the enforcement of these laws in particular cases in
>violation of the Fourteenth Amendment extension of First Amendment
>protections to actions by states.

+-----------------------------------SubG-------------------------------------+
`Terrible, we can't have that,' said Eisenhower (who, I'm afraid, I don't
like) about D.H. Lawrence's _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ in 1959.  In addition
to Lawrence, the works of Henry Miller, Jean Genet and even bloody John
Wilmot (Earl of Rochester) were librata non grata with Ike--confiscated at the
docks and burned.

The federal government only banned books in making them
effectively impossible to obtain in the U.S., which I think is a pretty
good definition of `ban.'

It is true that there are fewer books that have been supressed that were
written in the U.S. (the exception that springs to mind is Dalton Trumbo's
_Johnny Got His Gun_, which was banned by the U.S. Army during the Second
World War [didn't want the morale of our boys to falter whilst they were
fightin' them book-burnin' Nazis], and of course those books published
by E. Haldeman-Julius---the first American mass-market paperbacks---several
of which drew unfavourable attention from the FBI, leading to their
disappearance), but that's more or less because most American writers were
writing overseas.  And, of course, the well-known victory of Allen Ginsberg
over the forces fighting to keep us stupid following the publication of
_Howl and other Poems_ in 1956 when apparently someone in the judicial
system took a laxative and decided that for the day the U.S. Constitution
was going to be something more than a joke with twenty-two punchlines,
which had by no means been a foregone conclusion since the Espionage and
Sedition Acts of 1917 (which spawned some real wonkers, from Schenck v.
United States (1919) and Abrams v. United States (also 1919) to the
one about the director of the film _The Spirit of Seventy-Six_ who was
sentenced to ten years beacuse films about the American Revolution might
stir up anti-British sentiment).

I'm sorry.  What what the question again?








-SubGenius





Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: Buried Treasure -or- So, whaddaya use for bookmarks?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 18:16:55 GMT

SubGenius Writes:

>    --- A postcard from Dresden, (what was then) East Germany bearing
>	a photograph of the ruins of the theatre where _The Tempest_
>	was first performed.

	Ah, Shakespeare in the original German! 

	Keith
--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
From: saint@cats.ucsc.edu (Daniel Ira Bodenheimer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: NEW: Book about The Saint
Date: 24 Jan 1993 05:30:22 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu



There is a new book out from McFarland & Company, Inc. called:
The Saint-A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film, and Televsion
of Leslie Charteris' Robin Hood of Modern Crime, Simon Templar,
1928-1991. (Now, that is a mouthful of words isn't it?)

The author is Mr. Burl Barer of Walla Walla, Washington, and the book
is 431 pages, with 58 photographs. In library binding it is avaiable
for $55.00 directly from McFarland at Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640
VISA and Mastercard orders can call (919) 246-4460 and I think it is
about $2.00 for postage. 

I have not seen the book yet, but I am sure that I will be happy with
it when it arrives. This is just the book Saint fans have been waiting for.

-- 
My only hope is that this works.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.meta
From: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Subject: Re: Relative clauses (was: Re: About Truth...)
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 17:42:14 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.144644.26694@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>I'm reminded of a story about a conference of linguistic scholars.
>[story deleted]
>To which a guy in the back of the hall immediately responded, "Yeah, yeah."

	I heard that this guy was Saul Kripke.  Can anyone confirm
or refute?
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:26040 rec.arts.sf.movies:9900 rec.arts.movies:38133
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.movies,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Harlan Ellison, 2001 and LSD
Date: 22 Jan 93 16:57:38 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

sbrock@csn.org (Steve Brock) wrote:
[ about HARLAN ELLISON'S WATCHING ]
> Most memorable of his opinions in this section are in his reviews of [...]
> "2001: A Space Odyssey" (he calls it "Kubrick's Folly" and tells viewers
> to watch it "stoned on acid").

I wonder if he actually tried that.  Like, I imagine, rather a lot of
viewers at the time it came out, I did.  Didn't work.  The nearest I ever
got to being *bored* on an acid trip.  It all seemed rather mechanical and
trite (and now I'm rather inclined to say that proves drugs can lead to
true insights).

"Solaris" might have been a better pick among SF movies of the time.  In
fact, the only other movie I saw in that particular state of mind was not
an SF one, but "Picnic at Hanging Rock", and that worked a lot better.
(Someone I knew went to see "Repulsion" in that condition.  Not a good
idea, particularly the bit with the knives coming through the walls).

Followups to rec.arts.movies.

-- 
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: 041 339 8855 x6854 (work)
INTERNET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk or via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk    FAX: 041 330 4913
BANG!net: via mcsun and uknet     BITNET: via UKACRL    UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:26532 talk.politics.soviet:10798
From: hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu (Mary Loveless)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Book-title modesty
Date: 26 Jan 1993 16:54:23 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

In article <1k20fgINNq51@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary
Stonum) writes: 
>In a previous article, spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius) says:
>
>[before launching into a truly classic SubG sentence, complete
>with rest stop and refreshments]
>>
>>It's bad enough when the book in question is by a honest-to-gosh real writer
>>who's guilty of nothing worse than allowing to publisher to garb his or her
>>work in gaudy rags--like my copy of Anthony Burgess' _The Kingdom of the
>>Wicked_ complete with cover depicting languid, bare-breasted Roman courtesan
>>beneath the raised gilt lettering of the title--but it is ignominity indeed
>>to have to fess up in public to buying some sorrid little novel by a
>>(literarily speaking) nobody.
>>
>Well, crikey, sonny, those of us old enough to remember the paperbacks
>of the 50s still recall with fondness  a panting, dusky,
>bare-breasted [this when Playboy covers were prudisher than Family
>Circle nowadays] African woman in the cover art and some verbiage
>about savage passions and lustful elemental stuff, all to promote
> . . . . what?
>Gary

The proper Spinsterly response to this dilemma is a "book cosy".  I don't
own one, but I have seen them on the bus, sometimes made from quilted
fabric with contrasting edging, sometimes embroidered, sometimes just
plain fabric, but all designed to slip over the gaudy cover and make it
anonymous.  The possibilities for a personalized 'cosy' seem endless.

Mary Loveless

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.soviet,soc.culture.jewish
From: kosinov@ceg.uiuc.edu (Greg Kosinovsky)
Subject: Re: Robert Conquest's _The Great Terror_
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:06:23 GMT

zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:


>GK:
>> All this hand-wringing over dead Anarchists is very touching, but is abso-
>>lutely irrelevant to my original posting. What I originally objected to
>>was Zeleny's statement that American public and governments supported
>>executions of people KNOWN to be innocent.

>MZ:
>I said no such thing.

 Well, let's see. I originally stated that leaders of War Communism said that
people known to be innocent so that the populace would be more scared, and
MZ responded that that is also the rationale of death penalty advocates in US.
Once again, Zeleny denies the idiotic statements he made before (even as he
continues to make new once).

>GK:
>>					    I maintain that the public
>>demands fair trial for murder suspets. Prosecution sometimes over-steps
>>the bounds of legal enquiry, and, at times, even knowingly misleads the
>>public and the courts. But these are imperfections bound to happen in any
>>legal system, which we strive to minimize. But to compare these cases, as
>>Zeleny does, with Red Terror, when the leaders openly gave orders to shoot
>>detainees whom they accused of nothing, is an act of intellectual masturbation.

>It follows that you, as a self-professed advocate of the death
>penalty, knowingly advocate the execution of wrongly convicted men,
>provided that you are unaware of their specific innocence, even though
>you admit that some innocents are bound to be so convicted and
>executed.  How touching.  How indistinguishable from Lenin & Co.

 Once again, Mr.Zeleny demonstrates his inability to read. As I clearly stated
in the paragraph he quoted above, I belive that we should work to MINIMIZE
wrongful convictions and official abuse. Furthermore, there is a very big
difference between "not being aware of someone's" innocence, and presuming (as
an outsider) the thoroughness of justice in a democratic society UNTIL abuse
of justice is shown in a specific case.
 Not being able to distinguish between these cases is part of the reason Zeleny
fails to see the difference between US and Lenin's War Communism.

 Greg K.
From: jahb@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JENNIFER A. HEISE)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Forcing the Spring
Date: 26 Jan 93 16:41:28 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

In article <1993Jan25.224112.13694@leland.Stanford.EDU>, stefan@leland.Stanford.
EDU (Stefan Michalowski) writes:
>Katherine M. Catmull writes:
>>Clinton talked about "forcing the spring" twice in his inauguration
>>speech. I thought it was a very pretty phrase, and evocative
>>of What Americans Do....
>Kate,
>
>I'm a Friend of Bill, but the phrase struck me as one of the ugliest
>that ever emerged from the mouth of a politician.  Forcing the Spring?
>Is that What Americans Do? The only thing that comes close in my
>experience is trying to replace the shocks on my old Volvo.
>
>The Spring should be cherished and petted and savored, not forced.
>

We force bulbs, don't we? And forsythia? (In fact, to get forsythia to bloom
nicely indoors, you have to force it. If you wait, it goes to pieces...)
-- 
Jennifer Heise                           Net: jahb@lehigh.edu
Reference Dept.,                         Phone: (215) 758-3072
Fairchild-Martindale Libraries #8A,  Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015
My opinions are my own. No one else would HAVE them anyway.

"The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
The butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to that toad."  Kipling
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.answers,news.answers
From: biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel)
Subject: Re: Hare Hare? (Re: Geometry = the mind of God.)
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp.
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 19:49:58 GMT

Please take this discussion to sci.lagomorph where it belongs.

Regards,
       H. Biesel
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,comp.graphics.visualization
From: eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Re: Book Review: Tufte
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 00:02:37 GMT

In article <1jodr5INNo1@lynx.unm.edu> rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu
(Roger Squires) writes:
>	On this subject, I've always wondered how good
>	the book(s) advertised in SciAm and SciNews are.

I think they are generaly okay, depends more on the reader.
I suspect they are more for a general interest audience, so really
hard-core science books might not be found there.

>	The ad I'm thinking of is the one with the graphic
>	of Napolean's Russian campaign.  As I recall the
>	price is reasonable, and am curious how it compares
>	to the high dollar books in these reviews.

This is Tufte's Display of Q Data book which is in the c.g.v FAQ.
1) Nice coffee table book.  If teaching a class, a copy or two
should be on Reserve for students to view. Not a text book.
2) Minimally critical of computer graphics (too early).
3) Has some good general principles (heuristics) without being too arty.
You will get new meaning to the word "Duck."
4) The example you cite is a 5-dimensional map (including temperature,
date, and manpower of N's forces).
5) The book has a successor: Envision Information which is usually
seen as left overs from the earlier book (also coffee table.  Amusing to
me because I have a paper tetrahedron for discussing performance
measurement [which someone turned to postscript which I can post], which
Tufte also has as a pop out).
6) The former local Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH had some discussion of the book
and a few hard cores felt Bill Cleveland's book The Elements of Graphing
Data was more "hard core."  In the context of this and 2) and 3),
the professoral bed side reading might include Don Norman's The
Psychology (or paperback Design) of Every Things (POET) including
the parts where he is critical not only of designers but also
computer graphics.  Don Norman is speaking locally Feb. 9 at Stanford
(he just left UCSD and became the latest Apple Fellow [BayCHI meeting]).
It was noted by one esteemed colleague that Don can be a really good
speaker or really bad 8^), either way I recommend this talk.  He's going
to start off looking around the room for things like lighting interfaces,
doors, etc.  But I diverge.

P.S. If any one is interested, I am certainly accepting book reviews
and software reviews, and I also have books and software to review.
Easy publication for grad students looks for first publications.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Associate Editor, Software and Publication Reviews
  Scientific Programming
  {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
Seeking Books to buy:	Bongard, Pattern Recognition
			3 down 1 to go.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.meta
From: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman)
Subject: Re: Relative clauses (was: Re: About Truth...)
Reply-To: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU
Organization: UMASS DARTMOUTH, NO. DARTMOUTH, MA.
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 02:00:36 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.204801.6194@eff.org>, mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>In article <1993Jan21.174214.11640@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan21.144644.26694@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>>>I'm reminded of a story about a conference of linguistic scholars.
>>>[story deleted]
>>>To which a guy in the back of the hall immediately responded, "Yeah, yeah."
>>
>>	I heard that this guy was Saul Kripke.  Can anyone confirm
>>or refute?
>
>I can refute, I think. I got the story from a New York Times Magazine
>article about Kripke, but the story itself was not about Kripke.
>Or so I recall (the article appeared in the late '70s).
>
SG	 Which of the possible Kripkes do you mean? By the way, my grandmother, 
bless her soul, used to make some delicious kripkes for the holidays. We dunked 
them in the chicken soup.
________________________________________________________________________________
	"In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit
you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and cer-
tainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe."
                                                              AYN RAND
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Grossman <PMSC13SG@UMASSD.EDU>
================================================================================
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.president.clinton
From: jsl7@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (J. Shawn Landres)
Subject: Re: Forcing the Spring 
Reply-To: jsl7@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (J. Shawn Landres)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 05:11:47 GMT

In article <1993Jan25.190122.6751@cactus.org> kate@cactus.org (Katherine M. Catmull) writes:
>Clinton talked about "forcing the spring" twice in his inauguration
>speech. I thought it was a very pretty phrase, and evocative
>of What Americans Do, or try to do, for good or evil. Two questions:
>
>2. Is it a quote, or did our own new president make it up himself?

I, too, liked the phrase. It is what a dictionary might call an "archaic"
use of the world, most commonly referring to the practice of forcing flowers
to bloom early (in mid-winter, etc.) with light stimuli and other techniques.

Thus, to "force the spring" is to make it happen -- like jumpstarting the 
economy, but more poetic.

/Shawn