HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gregory@flood.zso.dec.com (Peter Gregory)
Subject: Re: Seattle Newspapers
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation - DECwest Engineering
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 21:32:46 GMT

In article <1992Jul24.174107.2983@jazzie.com> sds@jazzie.com (Sean Shapira) writes:
>In article <62701@cup.portal.com> ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) writes:
>>should I get the Times or the PI?

>On the paper question, may I recommend two other alternatives?
>Both Charmin and Scott brand toilet papers are available in most
>Seattle area stores.  Both of these are much easier to flush
>down the toilet than either the Times or PI....

This is not far from wrong.  Take the Times over the PI, unless you need a
morning paper or you love the Hurst editorials.

Welcome, and thanks for not being a Raid loving law student.

Peter
From: bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Ayn Rand and Libertarianism
Date: 25 Jul 92 17:39:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: pdaxs.VVaHoB1w165w
Organization: Portland Public Access sponsored by TECHbooks Bookstore

The problem _I_ had (and have) with Rand is that her philosophy involves 
a number of false dichotomies. The most important of these is between 
serving one's own interests and serving the interests of others. In 
practice, there are lots of things I can do that promote the well-being 
of others as well as myself; when my interests are going to be attended 
to in any event, why NOT consider others?
 
It wasn't until encountering libertarians who agreed with me on this 
point that I was able to move out of my statist rut to my current 
position.
 
(As articles in LIBERTY point out every so often, she was also guilty of 
a number of basic logical fallacies. This hurts any claim to be running 
purely on reason. I much prefer Jan Narveson's approach in THE 
LIBERTARIAN IDEA, in which he establishes a political order not based on 
intuition, but goes on to recognize that what people _do_ in such a 
society will and should be based on non- and extra-rational 
considerations of virtue.)

---
bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce) (Public Access User)
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Xref: sparky pnw.general:1655 or.general:481 pdx.general:959
From: jean@verdix.com (Jean C. Jaiswal)
Newsgroups: pnw.general,or.general,pdx.general
Subject: Project Vote Smart
Summary: Obtain info about political candidates
Keywords: candidates, election, views
Date: 28 Jul 92 03:26:34 GMT
Article-I.D.: verdix.4580
Reply-To: jean@verdix.com (Jean C. Jaiswal)
Organization: Verdix Western Operations; Aloha, OR

(This article is posted to several newsgroups. Please trim the Newsgroups
line appropriately.)

The Mcneil Lehrer News Hour on PBS today (July 27) had a report on
Project Vote Smart, currently underway at OSU in Corvallis. It is
being directed by Richard (I think) Kimball, a former senate candidate
from Arizona.

With funding from various foundations, the project has set up an information
center, manned by volunteers from OSU. You can call the information center
and obtain the positions/views/voting-records of any candidate for the House,
the Senate, and Governorship.

The information is collected from public voting records, written position
papers, as well as candidates' answers to a questionnaire covering a very
wide range of topics of interest to voters.

The number that was given on the show is (800) 786-6885. I have not yet
obtained an address for contributions. Would someone from OSU or elsewhere
post more information about the project?

Feel free to re-ditribute this to any other newsgroups of interest.

Jean Jaiswal.

jean@verdix.com
From: davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: government still at large (was Re: FDA still at large)
Date: 26 Jul 92 23:28:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Jul26.232838.271
Organization: University of Washington

In article <1992Jul25.191500.4115@eskimo.celestial.com>, kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum) writes:
> In article <1992Jul24.121817.14027@linus.mitre.org> lewis@aera8700.mitre.org (Keith Lewis) writes:
> > [ re: Kurt's idea of "currency with a half life" ]
> >"Currency with a half-life" is equivalent to a constant rate of inflation.
> >(I can derive formulas for converting one to the other if anybody's
> >interested.)
> >Inflation is currently controlled by the Federal Reserve Board and the free
> >market.  I don't know what the LP position on the Fed is.  Personally, I'd
> >keep it.
> Here I must admit to being on tenuous ground, because I don't know all that
> much of the "dismal science", except that it's conclusions uniformly seem to
> be pretty dismal to those who don't have wealth.  They seem pretty dismal
> to me, at any rate.

(1)  Yes, "currenty with a half life" is indeed a form of inflation.

(2)  This is one of the reasons why it is considered desirable to have
     some inflation in an economy.  Note that this is _not_ the same as
     saying that all inflation is a good thing; there's a tremendous
     difference in what an inflation rate of 5%/yr does to an economy
     and what one of 1000%/month does.

--
David Barts  N5JRN                      UW Civil Engineering, FX-10
davidb@ce.washington.edu                Seattle, WA  98195
NIS hosts maps (n.) - Sun's way of making you pine for the good old
                      days of FTPing hosts maps from SRI-NIC.ARPA.
From: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: government still at large (was Re: FDA still at large)
Date: 27 Jul 92 04:20:13 GMT
Reply-To: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Organization: Zortech, Seattle

In article <1992Jul25.191500.4115@eskimo.celestial.com> kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum) writes:
/In article <1992Jul24.121817.14027@linus.mitre.org> lewis@aera8700.mitre.org (Keith Lewis) writes:
/>Assuming
/>the government does its job in preventing force and fraud, this idea doesn't
/>frighten me a bit!  Let them get wealth; they will mostly just re-invest
/>that wealth in bigger and better enterprises.  What's the problem?
/More leap of faith.

Not exactly a leap of faith. I know lots of rich people (> 1 million in
assets). My broker knows lots more. What rich people do with their money
is *invest* it. I don't know a single one who keeps it as gold bars in
a spare bedroom.

What do you think rich people do with their money? The ones who spend it all
on toys usually don't stay rich very long.
Newsgroups: pnw.general
From: kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
Subject: Re: FDA still at large
Organization: >>> Eskimo North (206)-FOR-EVER <<<
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 20:03:00 GMT

In article <855@nazgul.UUCP> bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
>In article <1992Jul25.041036.16207@fylz.wa.com> fyl@fylz.wa.com (Phil Hughes) writes:
>/As a person I feel I have the right to select whatever method of
>/"treatment" that I want.  I have no problem with a testing agency
>/(like Consumer Reports) collecting statistics and offering me decent
>/information on various treatments but I still feel I have the right to
>/select whatever treatment I want.

Right.  It's the coercive powers that have to go.  Nobody has a problem
(except bad guys) with the collection and dissemination of information.
Our government, by its repeated attempts to control the
collection/dissemination of information and it's intimately related concept,
privacy, has irrevocably branded itself as a bad guy (bad entity [*not*
person!]).

>I agree fully with you. But I feel compelled to make the point that with
>such individual freedom comes individual responsibility. It will have to
>be assumed that an individual making such a choice has made an informed
>choice. The current trend in America is that nobody is responsible for
>their decisions, if they don't work out, it is always somebody else's
>fault. This sad state of affairs would have to change in order to allow
>people to make their own decisions regarding their body.

Here's a start: define "person" to be individuals only.  That is, the
concept/label of "person" is no longer to be applied to collectivities of
any kind.  So, rights apply only to persons, as do responsibilities,
accountabilities, priveleges, and other such relations.  I don't want to
have the sort of situations where an individual is forced to go one-on-one
with collectivities; we think it's unfair when more than one person
physically attacks a single person, but in other areas of human relations,
it's OK.  In particular, the Supreme Dourt ruling of 1898 (I think) that said
that corporations were "legal persons" should be overturned.

Here's another: open the arbiter/judge/"institutionalized seat of wisdom"/
"resolver-of-conflict" selection process.  Everybody who aspires to one of
these positions should have an open Q&A period, of possibly indefinite
duration, where they are compelled to answer questions directed to them by
anybody who pleases.

Here's another:  Junk the adversarial paradigm of the law.  It assumes
0-sum games, winners and losers, resolution by conflict, convoluted and
arcane chains of reasoning, and favors ambiguity and obfuscation over
simplicity and clarity.  We really need better ways that don't have such
nasty fallout.

>Freedom and responsibility are two sides to the same coin.
>Slavery and irresponsibility are two sides to another coin.

I suspect that they are all sides of the same tetrahedral die; to some
degree all 4 attributes are present in all of us, and they don't seem to be
orthogonal.
-- 
kurt@grogatch.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum)
From: davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: Seattle Newspapers
Date: 25 Jul 92 07:04:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Jul25.070429.5366
Organization: University of Washington

In article <62701@cup.portal.com>, ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) writes:
> Moving day is fast approaching, and thus I will soon have to make that
> important decision: should I get the Times or the PI?

I get the Times, for the simple reason that when I moved to Seattle,
my employer had a 4-day work week and I'd be gone before the P-I
paper carrier came in the morning.  Since I was going to be reading
the paper in the afternoon anyway, I might as well read the more
current paper.  I've switched jobs since then (and no longer have
to get up at such an ungodly hour), but I've gotten used to an evening
paper so I've never switched.

> . . .
> What is the connection between these papers?  I notice that the phone
> number for subscriptions is the same for both of them.  That seems a
> little odd.

They are under what is known as a joint operating agreement (JOA).
Normally this kind of thing would be illegal under antitrust laws, but
newspapers were granted a special exemption.  Seattle is not unique in
this regard, other cities' major papers are in a similar arrangement
(e.g. The Albuquerque Journal and The Albuquerque Tribune).

--
David Barts  N5JRN                      UW Civil Engineering, FX-10
davidb@ce.washington.edu                Seattle, WA  98195
         In Hell, you can have whatever workstation you want
            (but it always comes with an LK-201 keyboard).
From: wood@eisley.akita.com (Ken Wood)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: government still at large (was Re: FDA still at large)
Summary: Net worth vs consumption.
Keywords: rich money wealth poor work economics
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 92 02:33:56 PDT
Organization: Mos Eisley Spaceport BBS

alpinist@eskimo.celestial.com (David Butler) writes:

>    Well, there is a difference in earning a million dollars in a lifetime
> and being currently worth a million dollars.  I still think that a person
> who is worth a million dollars is living a level of consumption that would
> take about 100 lifetimes of labor to produce, but I will round down my
> number (just to be agreeable) to between 10 and 100 lifetimes (depending
> on how one wants to define what the average wage should be).
> 

     Ok let me make two points on this.  First Being worth a million 
doesn't mean You have a million, it means your net worth is one million.  
For a buisnessman or factory owner most of this could easily be tied up 
in the buisness itself.  And in the case of a company that has public
stock the net worth figure is even more inflated.  That money is not 
accessible.  You could be worth many millions and still be living a middle
class lifestyle.  Of course you can theoreticly sell off the company but 
there is a fair chance that you won't get the "true" worth ( unless it's
pretty successful ) and then it would just be somebody else who had this 
net worth.

     Second A million dollars in and of itself is not that great a life 
style.  As I said before the average teacher makes ( and by deffinition 
lives on ) more than this in this state.  Do teachers live the lifestyle 
you speak of?  Do all the professionals?  If you pay your own expenses 
for 50 years that's only $20,000 a year.  It's not all that high, and 
that's for only 1 lifetime.

     Do you mean that if somebody can accumulate a million dollars in 
"cash" at one time then they probably live too great a lifestyle?  This I
might buy into to a degree but not in all cases and I still think the 
numbers need to be higher.  I'm really haveing some problems 
understanding what exactly you mean I think.  

     Ken Wood



+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| wood@eisley.akita.com           :     Don't eat the rocks.              |
| eisley!wood@polari.online.com   : -The First Law of Bovine Cogitation.- |
| wood@seanews.akita.com          :                                       |
| wood@pismo.wa.com               :     Who let the pigs play poker?      |
| (In above order of preference.) :     Evo Shander was right!            |
| "Don't look back, someth'in might be gaining on ya."  -- Satchel Page   |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
From: davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: Panhandling
Date: 28 Jul 92 15:59:57 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Jul28.155957.14213
Organization: University of Washington

In article <TZmLoB1w165w@pdaxs.techbook.com>, bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce) writes:
> To David Barts: Just out of curiosity, are you now or have you ever 
> lived on the streets yourself? I haven't, but my past and present circles 
> of close friends include quite a few who have, for periods ranging from 
> days to years.

Fortunately, no, I have not lived on the streets.  I am also white,
middle-class, a computer professional, and I live 1/2 block outside of
Seattle City Limits (so I live in the suburbs, too).  Guilty as
charged.

> Since this thread came up, I've talked with four of them. All four of 
> them agreed that most of the money _they_ had raised through panhandling 
> went for alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. When they wanted food or 
> physical resources, they didn't go out panhandling, they went scrounging 
> behind supermarkets in the wee hours of the morning (when a fair number 
> of employees will make sure that discarded but still good food doesn't 
> end up buried beneath mounds of trash, they say), or to shelters, or 
> wherever.

Did they consciously decide "YES!! I *want* to live on the streets!",
or did they somehow just end up there by following the path of
least resistance?

How representative was your sample?  Does it include any of the
mentally ill who were kicked out of mental hospitals during the
"deinstitutionialization" movement of the 60s and early 70s?
Statistics I've seen indicate that a sizable fraction of the homeless
come from this population.

Regarding the use of money they panhandle, I'd *much* rather they get
it by panhandling than by mugging people or burgling local shops
and residences.

--
David Barts  N5JRN                      UW Civil Engineering, FX-10
davidb@ce.washington.edu                Seattle, WA  98195
From: michaelh@endeavor18.tek.com (Michael Herbert)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Good PNW backpacking spots?
Date: 24 Jul 92 00:38:11 GMT
Article-I.D.: shaman.1471
Reply-To: michaelh@orca.wv.tek.com
Distribution: pnw
Organization: Tektronix, Inc.

I'm planning to do a short backpacking trip in late August in either the 
Oregon Cascades or Olympic National Park, but I'm not very familiar with 
those areas.  Can anyone recommend some nice spots?

Some of the people in my party will not be in real good shape, so I'm not
interested in strenuous climbs.  Ideally, a hike of 6 miles or less with an 
elevation gain of 1000-1500 ft. to a mountain lake (with trout fishing).
Then the opportunity to take day-hikes from there.

Thanks in advance for any pointers,

Mike Herbert
Tektronix, Inc.
(503) 685-2145

michaelh@orca.WV.TEK.COM
From: mnb@voodoo.boeing.com (Mike Burr)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: government still at large (was Re: FDA still at large)
Date: 31 Jul 92 00:00:02 GMT
Organization: Boeing Graphics project, Bellevue WA

In article <1992Jul29.232202.1406@Happy-Man.com> Joshua_Putnam@happy-man.com writes:
>In <1992Jul29.183815.9874@eskimo.celestial.com> alpinist@eskimo.celestial.com (David Butler) writes:
>
>
>>Production as a whole hasn't increased in this country.  Possibly the
>>opposite.
>
>Strange -- do you have any statistics demonstrating this declining GNP
>or GDP?  Apart from the slow growth during the Bush administration,
>the last decade has seen enormous economic growth.  That's why I find
>it hard to believe that the value of the nation's assets has increased
>less than 15% over the last decade.  
>
>What support do you have for this unlikely claim?

Yes, cough it David - I too find your claim hard to swallow.


-- 
Michael Burr   mnb@voodoo.boeing.com  | Boeing Computer Services, Bellevue WA
From: bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Panhandling
Date: 28 Jul 92 01:51:04 GMT
Article-I.D.: pdaxs.TZmLoB1w165w
Organization: Portland Public Access sponsored by TECHbooks Bookstore

To David Barts: Just out of curiosity, are you now or have you ever 
lived on the streets yourself? I haven't, but my past and present circles 
of close friends include quite a few who have, for periods ranging from 
days to years.
 
Since this thread came up, I've talked with four of them. All four of 
them agreed that most of the money _they_ had raised through panhandling 
went for alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. When they wanted food or 
physical resources, they didn't go out panhandling, they went scrounging 
behind supermarkets in the wee hours of the morning (when a fair number 
of employees will make sure that discarded but still good food doesn't 
end up buried beneath mounds of trash, they say), or to shelters, or 
wherever.

Now, it's possible that those four -- who were on the streets in, 
respectively, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Seattle and Cleveland -- all had 
experiences that were unrepresentative in the same way. It's also 
possible that they're all lying to me to reinforce my prejudices, even 
though one is a socialist and another extremely liberal. But I don't 
think so.

At least one other person involved here (Mark Crispin) mentioned that he 
often gives to buskers. So do I. I also give often to people offering me 
flowers, or nicely hand-painted postcards, or any of a number of other 
things of value (usually aesthetic rther than monetary). I appreciate 
their effort to offer me in exchange for money. I don't appreciate those 
who want my money without either something in exchange or any 
accountability for how it's going to be used.

Lots of folks are on the streets for reasons that are far from being all 
their own fault. But this does not amount to license.

---
bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce) (Public Access User)
pdaxs gives free access to news & mail. (503) 644-8135 - 1200/2400, N81  
Send to info@techbook.com for more information.
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Newsgroups: pnw.general
From: bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce)
Subject: Buckaroo Banzai
Organization: Portland Public Access sponsored by TECHbooks Bookstore
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 16:11:18 GMT

After years of looking, I _finally_ found a copy of the book here in 
Powell's. I'd read it years ago under circumstances I can't quite pin 
down in memory, and was fascinated to find how much I'd 
forgotten...including it being essentially a William S. Burroughs story, 
what with the Nova Police and all.

---
bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce) (Public Access User)
pdaxs gives free access to news & mail. (503) 644-8135 - 1200/2400, N81  
Send to info@techbook.com for more information.
Public access users are <NOT> affiliated with TECHbooks.
From: bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce)
Subject: Risks
Organization: Portland Public Access sponsored by TECHbooks Bookstore
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 16:00:44 GMT

It's worth noting at this point that every vial of chemotherapy chemicals 
comes to the doctor labeled "For Experimental Use Only" -- no test has 
ever shown it to have more than placebo value (about 30% success). I 
learned this from Mom, who learned it from a supportive oncologist she 
dealt with some years back for breast cancer. He felt that the therapy 
did have value, but he wanted her to know what was demonstrated and what 
was mere wishful thinking.
 
I don't hear much talk of prosecuting mainstream doctors for the failures 
of establishment therapies, even with success rates like that.

But then I have strong feelings about the matter right now, being a 
former patient of Dr. Jonathan Wright and the Tahoma Clinic. There are 
other doctors I've dealt with over the years that I would have preferredt 
to subject to the kind of door-breaking, take-everything-whether-it's-
nailed-down-or-not treatment he got -- including the Beverly Hills 
neurologist who told me and my parents, back when I was sixteen and had 
developed really bizarre problems, that he "knew the moment I walked in" 
that my problems were all psychosomatic and that he really hadn't paid 
attention to the results of his examination because of that insight. He 
sure felt comfortable billing us just the same, though.

It would be one thing if the government-endorsed treatments really were 
vastly more effective than their unendorsed counterparts. But they 
aren't, and it
's unreasonable to compare the alternatives to utopia rather than to the 
realities.

But then I'm already a libertarian (more precisely, became one in large 
measure because of my experiences with the AMA).

---
bbaugh@pdaxs.techbook.com (bruce) (Public Access User)
pdaxs gives free access to news & mail. (503) 644-8135 - 1200/2400, N81  
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Newsgroups: pnw.general