HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Laurie Mann)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Encyclopedia Help
Date: 29 Dec 1992 13:45:40 GMT
Organization: Stratus Computer Inc, Marlboro MA
Distribution: usa
Reply-To: lmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: ansible.pubs.stratus.com

Dan Tripp <tripp@taligent.com> writes
>For some time I've been considering buying an Encyclopedia Britannica,
>but have always been hesitant for fear of having to deal with a pushy
>salesman calling on me at home.  I'd like to find out the options and
>prices without the pressure. 
>
>I'd appreciate it if someone could briefly explain what the options and
>prices are.  Are discounts available?  Is it possible to buy last year's
>model at a reduced price?  How much should I expect to pay for a used
>copy a couple of years old?  Any suggestions, other than newspaper want
>ads, on where to look for a used copy?

I briefly sold EBs ten years ago, and the EB was the second major purchase my
husband and I made after our marriage.  I absolutely agree with you
about "pushy salespeople."

Your best bet may be to call the local EB office and explain what you want to  
do.  There are discounts if you are a teacher, and these discounts may well
extend to grad students and the like.  Since we bought our set when Jim was
a teacher, our set has the cheaper "educator" binding, which has held up fine  
over the last 15 years of frequent use.

Some sales reps are silly and don't respond well to "I don't want the pitch, I
only want to know how much it costs and can I afford it." which is why dealing
with a local sales manager can be helpful.  I don't know if you can buy last
year's edition at a cheaper rate, but it probably doesn't hurt to ask.

We may be buying another set in two years when our daughter enters high school.   
I know I plan to call the office and talk to a person in charge rather than  
return one of those post cards and take pot luck.

*  In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak *
*  because I wasn't a Communist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I *
*  didn't speak because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade *
* unionists, and I didn't speak because I wasn't a trade unionist... *
*Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.*
*  Rev. Martin Niemoeller     [Why to March on Washington in April]  *
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: need: books on Henri Matisse (was Re: Great gift books for me!)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 03:57:34 GMT

Francis Muir writes

>Keith Morgan writes:
>
>	By the way Fiona, have you got tickets for MOMA already? I hear
>	they're being scalped at horrendous prices due to the exhibit's
>	popularity. 
>
>I thought the scalping prices were rather reasonable. Less than $50.
>Now there are few places in New York where you can get a good dinner for 
>that price, so I'd say go; you'll never get another chance. MOMA should
>have upped the price, of course. 

	Well $50 is certainly a LOT less than the rumors I had heard.
Apparently MOMA sets aside a number of tickets for same day purchase,
2 per person, and when people begin lining up in the morning the
scalpers descend offering (as I've heard) up to $200 for an extra
ticket. 

>Oh yes. Books on Matisse. Forget it. Go and look at the pictures. Take
>a dam' good look and then, maybe, peek at the books in a year or two.

	I agree, more or less, the catalogue (Elderfield's) is very
expensive at $75 and seeing the art is the important thing. Still, as
I admitted earlier I know zip about art and art history anyway. 

	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
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: lmollett@lunatix.uucp (Laura Mollett)
Subject: Re: Born in Bethlehem?
Organization: Lexington Public Access Unix. -KY- (606) 255-9121
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 01:02:45 GMT

In article <1992Dec26.132402.7206@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>A. N. Wilson says in "Jesus: A Life" that it is extremely unlikely
>that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.  Even if one takes everything in
>the Bible as literally true, the birth in a stable remains pure
>myth.  It is not mentioned in any of the Gospels.

Some of the (fairly) early apocraphal works portray Jesus' birth as in a 
cave.  This corresponds to some "pagan" belief myths and are quite interesting.
If someone is interested, one might try _The Lost Books of the Bible_ or 
_The Oxford Annotated Apocrypha_.  _The Nag Hammadri Library_ is another
source for non-standard early "Christian" ideology as is _The Other Bible_
(both have lots of Gnostic stuff).
				Laura Mollett 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.news-media
From: pnh@panix.com (Patrick Nielsen-Hayden)
Subject: Re: Morally good hypertext
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 11:53:10 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC

Some of the problem with this kind of discussion is that the substantive
issues are being drowned out by a shouting match between Pessimism and
Optimism, an argument which will never end.  Both sides have good points. 
The charge of "scientism" is a little oversimplified, but it's certainly
true that a lot of hypertext's advocates talk as if knowledge was nothing
more than the sum of sufficient facts.  On the other hand, the idea that
social progress never happens and people are basically morons because
(drum roll, clinching argument) Reagan got re-elected seems to me lacking
in a certain rigor.  _I_ didn't vote for Reagan, but I don't think that
millions of people did so because they're mindless sheep devoid of
intellect or curiosity.  Of course, to believe that they are _is_ a great
consolation, and spares us having to make any number of tiresome fine
distinctions. 

One of the things that most worries me about hypertext is its means of
production, which would seem to me to constantly tend towards the
hierarchical: intellectual worker bees under the direction of a superstar
boss.  For hypertext to be interesting, the connections have to be richer
than those which readers normally make while reading plaintext -- more
surprising, more complicated, more suggestive.  Wouldn't they?  That's a
lot of work; more worrisomely, a lot of the wrong _kind_ of work, very
clerical and drone-like worker-bee stuff.  It all sounds awfully
overdetermined.

The fact of the matter is, we have this powerful information technology and
we're just _itching_ to find the means by which the endlessly-promised
transformation of society and consciousness can be accomplished.  It may
well be, though, that hypertext is fated to be remembered as one of those
unwieldly, top-heavy early attempts, not quite the right paradigm.  As if
people had struggled mightily to invent the automobile in 1868, and come
up with a railroad train that lay track in front of itself as it advanced
and picked it back up from behind.  
-- 
Patrick Nielsen Hayden      :     senior editor, Tor Books
pnh@panix.com : CIS 72701,1344 : GEnie PNH : opinions mine
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Impromptu
Date: 1 Jan 1993 02:46:36 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

After a morning's sail out into San Francisco Bay in a fresh breeze
and myself suitably wrapped up in foulies, I spent part of the afternoon
watching IMPROMPTU, a film largely about Armandine Aurore Lucie Dupin,
baronne Dudevant. Better known to most of you, perhaps, as the author
George Sand. It turned out to my delight to be quite superior entertainment,
and I recommend it both for a peek at a remarkable person and as a piece
of pleasant fluff. Quite early on it did occur to me that George Sand
was very Heather_Hendersonian, and I am looking forward to seeing HH
dressed up in that very fetching Louis Napoleonic outfit. In any case I
have marked down GS as an author to read more carefully in 1993. I hope
that I can do the same with HH in the very near future.

							RABworm
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 15:37:48 CST
From: Cole Kendall <U48073@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mangled Text (Was Re: Mangled Song Lyrics)

I had a friend who asked me if I had ever read anything by the
author Jerry Kosinski.  When I pronounced Mr. K's first name
with a "z", he was convinced that I had misread the name of his
favorite author.

Cole Kendall
From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Shouting at robots
Date: 3 Jan 93 06:42:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.1993Jan3.064200.10608
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA

In article <JMC.93Jan2141039@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>A $25 prize is offered for the best posting in the next week viewing
>this development with alarm, i.e. children shouting at robots.

I'll get worried when the robot starts shouting back meaningfully in
response to the child.  As it is, this seems just like a higher-tech
child's play.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,misc.books.technical,alt.internet.services,comp.org.eff.talk
From: tthiel@cs.uiuc.edu (Terry Thiel)
Subject: Re: The Online BookStore Announcement: The Internet Companion
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Distribution: inet
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 17:45:33 GMT

sean@cobra.dra.com writes:
>In article <kko.725012348@sfu.ca>, kko@fraser.sfu.ca (Samuel Ko) writes:
>> Yes and No ... A-W has produced two books on the Internet within a 
>> short period of time ... The other one is Internet System Handbook
>> by Daniel Lynch and Marshall Rose ... That one is far more technical
>> in nature than any other books in this field ... However, I think 
>> the marketing dept of A-W should do some promotion on the netnews ...
>After seeing the flamage generated by the rather modest posting on
>The Internet Companion, why would any marketing department want to
>even make the effort?  A rather vocal group has made it clear they
>don't want that kind of information.
>Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
>Domain: sean@sdg.dra.com, Voice: (Work) +1 314-432-1100

What flamage?  I posted saying Krol's book was better and asking how could the
Internet Companion be a best seller when it was just released.  I wasn't real
serious about the best-seller part.  Since then numerous people posted saying
the Internet Companion was better for beginners and Krol for the more
experienced.  I went back to the bookstore and looked at Internet Companion
again and agree with that opinion.  I don't recall seeing any other flamage.
I welcome AW's presence in this newsgroup.
-Terry
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken)
Subject: Wanted: decent one-volume Churchill bio
Organization: W S Rupprecht Computer Consulting, Fremont CA
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 06:33:46 GMT

Today I went to the library with the intention of checking out, among
other things, William Manchester's highly praised Churchill biography.
Then I saw it sitting there on the shelf in two mammoth volumes,
whispering, "You can't finish me.  You can't even carry me."  In fear
I examined the dozen other Churchill books, but they were either very
specialized (Churchill's speeches), covered only a short period of his
life, or were old.  Somehow I can't imagine getting a biography of
someone who's now dead that was written during their lifetime; I
imagine that it would lack the perspective of a post mortem.

Anyhow, can anyone recommend a well-written Churchill bio that covers
his whole life and is under, say, 1500 pages?  
-- 
Alison Chaiken 				alison@wsrcc.com
(510) 422-7129 [daytime] 		or chaiken@cmsgee.llnl.gov
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:23643 sci.lang:8570 rec.arts.sf.written:16860 rec.arts.sf.misc:3610 alt.fan.tolkien:1607
From: tolklang-request@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.lang,rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.misc,alt.fan.tolkien
Subject: Monthly posting: TolkLang - mailing list on Tolkien's languages.
Date: 1 Jan 93 12:00:10 GMT
Reply-To: tolklang-request@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield)
Followup-To: poster
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
Originator: jcb@campay.dcs.ed.ac.uk

This is an automated monthly posting to
rec.arts.{books,sf.{misc,written}}, sci.lang and alt.fan.tolkien.

TolkLang

    Contact: tolklang-request@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield)

    Purpose: Discussions of the linguistic aspects of 
    J.R.R. Tolkien's works. This covers everything from Elvish
    vocabulary and grammar to his use of Old English. The list is 
    (lightly) moderated.

    It is possible to receive TolkLang as a weekly digest; please
    say if you want this.
From: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mangled Text (Was Re: Mangled Song Lyrics)
Date: 3 Jan 93 20:04:11 GMT
Article-I.D.: ut-emx.86091
Organization: UT Art History
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1



In article <1i57moINNnhh@morrow.stanford.edu> Suzanne Mills,
GE.SPM@forsythe.stanford.edu writes:
>Is this a form of Freudian slip?  Evidence of creeping senility?  Or
>just that when reading cursorily the eye may sometimes go a little
>off-kilter?  I would be very interested to know if anyone else out
>there has had similar experiences.

All the time. There's no knowing when my mind (or at least the short
circuit between my eyes and my brain) will strike (or is that actually go
on strike?). I call the syndrome "mislexia," for an obvious resemblance.
A sort of reverse, uttering Freudian slips of a non-sexual nature, I many
years ago dubbed "Fraudian slips".
--

"They like sitting around reading all the books there are. And then they 
love arguing about them. Some of those arguments go on for millenium 
after millenium. It just seems to keep them young, for some reason, 
arguing about books." -- Julian Barnes          

Joann Zimmerman (jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 02:37:33 GMT

In article <1993Jan2.225827.2318@netcom.com> tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) writes:

>	Not a "neolog" (which I believe is itself a neologism, for 
>neologism, if you see what I mean) but a double typo ....

Around here we call 'em "tyops."


--Mike



-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I'm waiting for the one-man revolution
mnemonic@eff.org| The only one that's coming."
(617) 864-0665  |                           
EFF, Cambridge  |                   --Robert Frost
From: jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Making notations in your books?
Date: 23 Dec 92 18:04:34 GMT
     <20DEC92.02063367@vax.clarku.edu> <1992Dec20.091759.27869@netcom.com>
Organization: UT Art History
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1



In article <1992Dec20.091759.27869@netcom.com> Tom Maddox,
tmaddox@netcom.com writes:
(Paul Callahan says:)
>>Nevertheless, all of these people I criticize are quite intelligent,
and if 
>>they would stop acting so *goddamn* smug, and stop to think about what
is
>>of *general* interest, and what is *not*, then the quality of this
group would
>>be improved enormously.

There *is* no general interest. There are only particular interests. The
readership being about 70,000 the last time I looked, it seems unlikely
that we could ever agree on what our general interests might be; we
certainly could not do so within a reasonable amount of time. I've been
reading a thread where there seems to be more than a bit of disagreement
over whether there should be quotations and wordplay in books; what we
are seeing here, Mr. Callahan, is the same argument as applied to
newsgroups. If we worried about what was of general interest, we would
never post anything at all. Of course, this may be what you actually want?

>
>	Indeed.  If you were to be put in charge, no doubt the trains
>in r.a.b. would run on time.  
>

Trains? We don't need no stinkin' trains ...
"Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion
borders on the chaos of memories" 
                                                -- Walter Benjamin
 ...!cs.utexas.edu!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!jzimm
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dmandl@shearson.com (David Mandl)
Subject: Hakim Bey's _TAZ_
Reply-To: dmandl@shearson.com
Organization: Lehman Brothers, Inc.
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 16:37:10 GMT


Hakim says it's OK for me to post the text of _TAZ_ to the
net.  This is the real thing, not a transcription.  I can get
the file into Word for Windows format with all typesetting
commands stripped out, but I'll need someone to convert that
to generic ASCII--that is, change italics to _this style_ as
well as add spaces after titles, add carriage returns, and make
whatever other cosmetic changes are necessary to make the thing
look decent in plain ASCII.  I don't have the time to do this.
Is there a volunteer in the house?  (Please, someone who has the
time and  desire to do it right, as well as a copy of the book
itself.  This could be a lot of work.)  Email me at

dmandl@shearson.com

and I'll pick someone.

---
Dave Mandl
Editor/Girl Toy
Autonomedia
Somewhere in Brooklyn

Lehman Brothers has absolutely nothing to do with this.
From: ian@spider.co.uk (Ian Heavens)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: need: books on Henri Matisse (was Re: Great gift books for me!)
Date: 27 Dec 92 16:03:45 GMT
Organization: Spider Systems Limited, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Dec27.154500.10114@spider.co.uk> ian@spider.co.uk (Ian Heavens),
bemused by seasonal overindulgence in whisky and Irn Bru, writes:

>
>
>"Matisse in Morocco" is a very interesting book.  I forget the author
>and publisher, but it is one of those coffee-table size art books (Phaidon

					^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
				only if you have an art-book size coffee table

ian

easy Xmas quiz question:

"A bowl of kif before breakfast gives a man the strength of a hundred camels in
the courtyard"

appears at the front of which book?
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.news-media
From: dasher@well.sf.ca.us (D Anton Sherwood)
Subject: Re: Morally good hypertext
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 02:23:05 GMT

In article <BzoFKz.B26@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk> jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>
>....  And you expect transnational communications corporations to
>make universally available a technology that would get them caught out
>lying?  ...

Isn't that a bit like saying the Apple II could never happen because IBM has
no reason to bring it to market?

-- 
Anton Sherwood                                       dasher@well.sf.ca.us
+1 415 267 0685              1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA
"We all hate poverty, war and injustice, unlike the rest of you squares."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mara@panix.com (Mara Chibnik)
Subject: Re: Sjowall & Wahloo and other series
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 17:42:06 GMT
Organization: (getting there)

joan@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields) writes of Sjowall and Wahloo
(following a comment by Miriam Nadel):

  >>To be fair, Sjowall and Wahloo were journalists who set out to use the
  >>crime novel as a way to explore what they saw as the deterioration in
  >>Swedish society caused by the welfare state.
 >They did a damn good job of it as well.  I enjoy the series because of the
 >well-developed characters they aren't always one way or another ie:
 >sometimes Lennart Kollberg can be an ass and sometimes you just want to
 >shake Martin Beck - Gunvald Larsson is a very interesting character, a lot
 >more complex than most of his fellow policemen realize.

I like this detail too.  What I particularly like is the way the
series develops as a series.  The irony against the state and the
police force as its representative gets increasingly bitter, with 
quite an obvious turning point in the middle, roughly coinciding
with Beck's injuries.  (I'm trying to avoid serious spoilers, here.)

In the early books, it's clear that the crimes are heinous and that
the police owe it to society to catch the villainous criminals.  By
the time you get to the last two books this is no longer the case.

(High on my list of what I want to read when the bookcases come so
I can unpack the rest of my cartons are these ten books, in
sequence.  At the moment, they're in a carton at the bottom of a
four-deep stack and this discussion is making me hungry.  Oh, yes:
next week, and thank you for asking. ;-))


-- 

  Mara Chibnik
  mara@panix.com                Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: blaisec@sr.hp.com (Blaise Cirelli)
Subject: Re: Winter Book Recommendation
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 18:04:43 GMT
Organization: HP Sonoma County (SRSD/MWTD/MID)
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1.9 PL6]

 Larry King's radio talk show had the two American
 general authors on last evening.

 WOW! What an interview. 

 What really got me was the description of their
 meeting with a North Vietnamese general and opponent.

 He peeled bananas for his American guests and served them.
 One of the American generals removed his watch and gave
 it to the North Vietnamese generals. They all embraced
 and wept.

 Quite moving. One caller said that the best anti-war
 spokespeople were the men who actually faught the wars.
 I agree.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: _All The Pretty Horses_
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 03:35:21 GMT

In article <1992Dec18.170205.15338@gvl.unisys.com> rafem@gvlf7-e.gvl.unisys.com (Ralph Marrone) writes:
>I was about to buy Cormac McCarthy's _All The Pretty Horses_ the other
>day until I read the title page and found out that the book is the first 
>of a trilogy.  Is this trilogy really just one big book split into
>three volumes a la _Lord of The Rings_?  Or will each book be self-
>contained?  I've read so much praise for this book in r.a.b. that I'd
>love to read it, but not if I have to wait years for the resolution to
>appear in the latter novels.

	Self-contained, absolutely. Still, I imagine McCarthy will
work the original people/themes into the next two. Go! Buy it now!

	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
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
Subject: Re: Anne Rice Fan
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 02:52:08 GMT

In article <1992Dec30.220640.628@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>In article <1992Dec29.220637.16608@lunatix.uucp> lmollett@lunatix.uucp (Laura Mollett) writes:
>
>
>It was a pleasant diversion, but I see no reason not to wait for the
>paperback.
>
The paperback came out in 1988.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: drinkwat@adobe.com (Fred Drinkwater)
Subject: Re: non-fiction reading (was Re: _Dog Soldiers_ by R. Stone, a wild ride!)
Organization: What organization?  I have 2 kids.
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 19:14:50 GMT

In article <qkfrv5+@lynx.unm.edu> rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
>In article <1992Dec21.175019.5560@u.washington.edu> twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin) writes:
>>
>>ADAM'S TASK: CALLING ANIMALS BY NAME, Vicki Hearne.
>>.  This book is her attempt to share her perception 
>>of how humans and other animals communicate with each other,
>
>	You might take a gander at _King Solomon's Ring_,
>	by Konrad Z. Lorenz.
>
>>--Barbara 
>
>rms

A gander?  A * GANDER * ??  Aaughh!!

	fjd