HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: origin of a quote
Date: 21 Jan 93 21:35:31 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

chbaumga@jupiter.cse.utoledo.edu (Chris Baumgartner) wrote:
> Can anyone tell me who said this:
>            "The world will only truly be free when the last king
>             is strangled in the entrails of the last priest"  
> I was told that it was probably Voltaire, also
> what book (if any) was it from? Thanks

I have heard it ascribed to Durruti or the Spanish anarchist movement in
general, only with "capitalist" substituted for "king".

-- 
--  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
From: sph0301@utsph.sph.uth.tmc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Where is well met in Huston, TX?
Date: 25 Jan 1993 17:09:07 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Texas School of Public Health

In article <24JAN199315352343@rigel.tamu.edu> spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (
SubGenius) writes:
>That's `Houston,' mate.  `H-town' if you're ethnic.
>
>As for a r.a.b. meetin', I'd guess anywhere in Southpark or the Fifth Ward
>would be appropriate.
>
>SubGenius

a Houston rabfest?  count me in...

kate
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Literary knock-offs. Was: Fan Fiction--&c.
Date: 22 Jan 1993 03:30:23 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

John A. Nickles writes:

	...the original author breathes life into a character while the 
	subsequent writers merely animate a corpse. Robert Goldsborough's 
	Nero Wolfe, Thomas Chastain's Perry Mason, etc. etc. ad nauseum.


Not always so. As a counter-example let me recommend Tom Holt's *LUCIA
IN WARTIME* and *LUCIA TRIUMPHANT*, which continue E. F. Benson's saga
beyond the point where Benson left them. Perhaps that is the point. 
There was no natural ending to the series -- Benson just upped and died.
Holt's two skillful pastiches are published by Harper & Row in the same 
series as Benson's own. 

						RABworm
From: lsc@chryse.Eng.Sun.COM (Lisa S Chabot)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Chopin's THE AWAKENING--criticism
Date: 27 Jan 1993 01:49:04 GMT
Organization: Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae
NNTP-Posting-Host: chryse


There are some tidbits in Joanna Russ's _How_to_Suppress_Women's_Writing_
(University of Texas Press, 1983).

-- 
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Book-title modesty
Date: 26 Jan 1993 00:26:24 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: gxs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Gary Stonum)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc5.ins.cwru.edu


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.
>
[examples of similarly adorned SF titles deleted]

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?




^L


Why, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, of course, (bundled with "The
Secret Sharer")  Eleven-year-old ogler I, finding Dad's copy on
a shelf that had little else than this book, Thorne Smith, and
a zillion Reader's Digest condensed books, was mighty puzzled
not to be able to locate the good parts.

Still fairly puzzled,
Gary
From: mossman@dipso.Berkeley.EDU (Amy Mossman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Book-title modesty
Date: 25 Jan 93 17:25:53 GMT
Organization: CEA
NNTP-Posting-Host: dipso.cea.berkeley.edu

A related subject that's been zinging around in my head for a few weeks.

As I'm reading my latest classic or piece of schlock on the subway in the
morning, I occasionally look around to see what other people are doing/reading.
Lots are poeple in suits and trenchcoats with briefcases reading the paper.
(I live in dreaded suburbia). But the ones reading books I notice many reading
either pulp fiction like Danille Steel and that genre or the horrifc style
ala Stepehen King or the even more horrific self-help book. Actually the most
amusing one I saw was a woman reading The Autobiography of Malcom X and holding
in her lap The Sevem Habits of HIghly Effective People. Weird. But, I began
to think more on this, should I think in some literay snobish way, "Oh, Isn't
it horrible that these people can't find something decent to read?". Or, is it
just a major breakthrough that people are reading at all? Reading is becoming
so frighteningly non-exsistent, and adult illiteracy is on the rise. No conclusions
to this just thoughts for another free-wheeling, always polite and curteous
r.a.b discussion.

Amy Mossman
(currently not hiding the title of Nostromo on my commutes)
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: For Thine is the kingdom
Date: 28 Jan 1993 06:19:34 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Helen Johnston writes:

	Yes, yes; after you get to the "...deliver us from evil" bit, the
	congregation stops and the priest says "Deliver us, Lord, from every
	evil..." (mumble mumble: I haven't been to Mass THAT recently!), after
	which the congregation continues "For the kingdom, the power, and the
	glory are yours, now and for ever" (in the new, nasty Catholic
	translation). You weren't hallucinating.

This thread is not about Helen Johnston's remebrances of What They Said Last
Sunday but about Grahame Greene, and a title of a novel. In his day there
was no English Mass, and the Lord's Prayer that he knew and recited was NOT
the KJV. If you want the text, go look at a Penny catechism from GG's times.
The thread is a bookish one and we are not concerned with SubG's personal
beliefs. I once criticized that person for his use of white space, but I'm
beginning to think that its the brightest part of his postings.

						RABworm

Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:25892 sci.philosophy.meta:3118
From: nichael@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Relative clauses (was: Re: About Truth...)
Date: 21 Jan 93 13:16:21
Organization: BBN, Interzone Office
	<1993Jan21.065037.46579@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
	<1993Jan21.144644.26694@eff.org>
Reply-To: ncramer@bbn.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: kariba.bbn.com
In-reply-to: mnemonic@eff.org's message of Thu, 21 Jan 1993 14:46:44 GMT

mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
   I'm reminded of a story about a conference of linguistic scholars.
   One linguistics professor was delivering a paper on the use of negation in
   natural languages. He concluded with this finding: "Thus, it can
   be seen that while in some natural languages, like French, a double
   negative is a negative, while in others, like English, a double negative
   is a positive. But there is no natural language in which a double positive
   is a negative."

   To which a guy in the back of the hall immediately responded, "Yeah,
   yeah."

(Shortened form of) a related story:

Big Name Computer Expert is (somewhat obnoxiously) holding forth to a
group of linguists, explaining how trivial their field is and how easy
it would be to do automatic parsing.  At one point in his presentation
BNCE makes the statement "Every complete statement requires a subject".

Voice from back of the room: "Fuck you!"

N
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (William R. Smith)
Subject: _Halo_
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 93 18:24:47 GMT


About 1/3 of the way thru _Halo_ I got so hooked I had to stay up last
nite and finish it.  By the r.a.b. resident published fiction author,
Tom Maddox, _Halo_ probed the questions "Who am I" and "Why am I".
There are other philosophical issues as well, but I was especially
interested in these.

These questions struck a responsive chord for me.  A couple of years
ago I started wondering where *I* was.  How much of my body could I
lose and still be me?  A partial answer for me was in my memories,
what I experienced made *me* who I am.  Tom's characters also get
this as a partial answer.  And more...

There were some scenes in the book that I particularly liked.  One had
to do with a machine learning to behave like a human.  The sam, as they
are called, watched human and chimpanzee non-verbal communication for
clues.  This tied in with one of my other Christmas books, Jared
Diamond's _The Third Chimpanzee_, where Diamond looks at what makes
us uniquely human.  He is talking about other animals, notably
chimpanzees, and not machines, but the parallels are there.

Much of the action takes place on a space station called Halo.  At one
point there is a discussion about not understanding how all of Halo 
works.  If you alter one part, it affects all the other parts.  For me
this was a metaphor of natural processes here on Earth.  Warning: tinker
not.

Finally, I was struck by an instruction coding technique used by Halo's
main computer Aleph.  It reminded me of the beginning of Genesis in the
Bible:  "In the beginning was the Word".  The coding sort of kicks
everything off.

Tom must have had some wild parties while learing about mushroom hunting
in the Pacific Northwest.  A movie could be pretty trippy;  _2001_ meets
_Naked Lunch_.

All in all, an enjoyable book.


William Sburgfort Smith
Intel, SSD
From: spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Censorship in the USA
Date: 26 Jan 1993 11:07 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rigel.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

Jeffrey A. Del Col writes...

>The recent thread on censorship in the USA is based on the paranoid
>assumption that there is a conspiratorial form of government in this
>country and what seems to be a nearly perfect ignorance of this country's
>legal system.  If you think that the US as a whole is in a straitjacket of 
>covert official censorship, you are sadly misinformed, as a visit to the 
>bookstores in large cities or near universitys would demonstrate.

+------------------------------------SubG-------------------------------------+
Thanks for the tip on the bookstores--I'll have to make a note to visit one.

But you are, in a nutshell, completely wrong in assuming that my opinions are
`based on the paranoid assumption that there is a conspiratorial form of
government in this country...' u.s.w.  All the cases I've seen mentioned
weren't presented as evidence of a conspiracy but rather as stupidity (if
you'll pardon me, a conspiracy of dunces).

Everytime the bluenoses and the bluehairs get together routinely to protest the
fact that America *does* by and large have permissive publication and press
laws (although that wasn't always the case), some bit of usually quite good
literature or film or whatever gets banned, boycotted or burned.  This isn't
a clandestine effort or a secret agenda, just exhibition of typical 
jesus freak tomfoolishness that sez that since they've got the lawd gawd's
bloody telephone number they can tell us what to read, what to watch, and
to what we should listen.
+-------------------------------------SubG------------------------------------+

[deletia]

>Efforts at prior censorship have been very few and have
>generally failed; Nixon's efforts to stop the Pentagon Papers being a case in
>point.

+----------------------------------------SubG---------------------------------+
Well, considering he didn't know they were being leaked until he read the Times
like everyone else, there wasn't a hell of a lot he could do about it, was
there?  It wasn't like Ellsberg, Sheehan and the Times asked Dick politely,
`We'd like to slip some classified documents to the press.  Is that okay
with you?  We were thinking June-ish...' and Dick gave the idea a great
big Sherman T. Potter `Okey-doke;' everything Dick did was an attempt at
retribution, not at prevention.









-SubGenius
From: spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: "Harlan Ellison's Watching" by Harlan Ellison
Date: 22 Jan 1993 12:44 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rigel.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    


Stewart Tame writes...

>>Ellison had great hopes for television, and I believe that his hopes
>>took some time to die, but die they did.  For an utterly fascinating
>>look at the underside of series television I recommend the book 'The
>>Starcrossed' by Ben Bova I think, or by Ellison himself, I can't
>>remember, and the copy I had has been lent out once too often.  An
>>interesting account of the thrills of making a TV series.
> 
>Pretty sure it's by Bova, though Ellison *did* write the pilot for the TV
>series in question ("The Starlost.")  There's an amusing essay about
>the whole business by Ellison himself in _Stalking the Nightmare_, though
>the title eludes me for the moment.  I remember it being a _Wizard of Oz_
>reference . . . 

+-----------------------------------SubG-----------------------------------+
There's a novelization of the first n (I'm not sure how many) episodes of
the series called _Phoenix Without Ashes_, in which the essay alluded to
above appears.  The books is attributed to some author whose name I recall
only murikily (Edward Bryant?) and H.E., although the actual text was 
written by the former based on the screenplays (including the one that
one the Screenwriting Award of Unusual Size [I don't recall the name of
the award, in short]) written by the latter.







-SubGenius




Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: nickles@sage.cc.purdue.edu (John A. Nickles)
Subject: Re: Censorship
Organization: Purdue University Computing Center
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 03:45:37 GMT

In article <25JAN199319221271@rigel.tamu.edu> spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius) writes:

>_Ulyssess_ was admitted into the U.S. after the landmark decision of the
>United States District Court of the Southern District of New York, delivered
>by the Hon. John M. Woolsey (of no relation to Sir Bernard Woolsey) on
>December 6, 1933.



I must write here Judge Woolsey's literary critique of ULYSSES (paraphrased
from memory):

For those who wonder at the number of times sex crosses the minds of
the characters, it must always be remembered that the locale was
Celtic, and the season, Spring.

Further, deponent sayeth not.

John A. Nickles
(Editor and Publisher of the Ashbee Press)
Standard Disclaimer:
From: ah@dunaad.co.uk (Alan Hunter)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Buried Treasure -or- So, whaddaya use for bookmarks?
Date: 25 Jan 93 19:28:48 GMT
Organization: Dunathad

SubGenius treated us al to a catalogue of objet de bookmarks, but ended with:

	(and, incidentally, to extract confessions from those villians that
	fold over the corner of the page). 

Whilst it is, of course, a most grievous sin to turn over the corners
of pages as a means of noting one's place in a book; there is no more
satisfying feeling than to come upon a tome which was deemed essential
reading years ago, but which one couldn't stand. In particular I have
in mind Marcuse, One Dimensional Man, which I have just examined and
discovered approximately 75 of the first hundred pages are victims of
this disgusting habit, many attacked from both sides by the looks of
it. The second 100 pages are virgin, and available for hire by anyone
with similar feelings to vent.

But corner turning isn't all bad, many thousands of pounds have been
raised for schools by people who believed they were joining Page Turners
Anonymous.

Yours, usw

Alan

-- 
Alan Hunter
Johnson Hunter Ltd
Isle of Islay, Scotland
A.Hunter@dunaad.co.uk          fax: +44-496-2336         voice: +44-496-2286
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Deconstructing Angelou
Date: 21 Jan 1993 23:29:59 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Mike Godwin writes:

	I'm afraid I too thought of fossilized reptile turds. 
	Which is to say, I was reminded of Michael Zeleny's prose.

Are you insinuating that Shit Happens even in the vicinity of Hahvahd
Squayah?

							RABworm
From: pamela@sscux1.ssc.gov (pamela gurd)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Help with name of children's story
Date: 26 Jan 93 16:40:24 GMT
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory

In article <1993Jan26.152346.16670@eecs.nwu.edu> ian@nasser.eecs.nwu.edu (Ian Sutherland) writes:
>I'm looking for the title/author of a children's book I read as a
>child.  Here's what I remember about it:
>
>- It won the Newbury (sp?) medal.
>
>- It was about a city of magicians whose magic was not "real", that is,
>  it was stage magic, and the arrival of a person who could do "real"
>  magic.  This person is greeted with great hostility, except by the
>  daughter of the leading magician, who gets a lot of grief for being
>  the "real" magician's friend.
>
>- I think the "real" magician had some sort of talking animal
>  companion.
>
Paul Gallico: The Man who could do Magic.  Wonderful.  I used to have
a beaten-up paperback, and read it to my son.  He was enchanted, and
referred to it recently, about 5 years later.

Pam.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: swolfson@nyx.cs.du.edu (sabina)
Subject: Re: Why I signed off this list
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 21:30:41 GMT

In article <C17yLu.Er@fc.hp.com> daq@fc.hp.com (Doug Quarnstrom) writes:

>I think my mileage may vary.  I think that most meaningful criticism is,
>by its very nature, somewhat rude to the person on the receiving end.

I don't understand this.  Why can't meaningful criticism be polite?
I see that it might be "hard to swallow" or something, but I don't
see why most must be (somewhat) rude.  Then again, maybe I am just
misinterpreting what you mean by "somewhat rude".  Can you give an
example of a recent thread inwhich you think the participants were
"somewhat rude"?

-- Sabina

-- sabina@cns.nyu.edu - sabina@well.sf.ca.us - swolfson@nyx.cs.du.edu --
    When the light is green you go.  When the light is red you stop.
              But what do you do, When the light turns blue
           With orange and lavender spots? -- Shel Silverstein
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: evanh@sco.COM (Evan Hunt)
Subject: Re: Biggest Disappointments and Surprises
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 12:00:56 GMT


crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford) writes:
>
>_Dicey's Song_ by Cynthia Voigt.  A teacher friend of mine recommended it;
>I was apprehensive.  It's a "young person's" book, so I suspected it would
>be typical of the genre -- simplistic, stereotypical, mamby-pamby.  Boy, was I
>amazed.  They didn't write stuff like this when *I* was a kid.  It starts
>out with three siblings being abandoned by their single mother in a store
>parking lot, and follows their attempts to survive.  Gripping stuff.  I
>ended up reading the three sequels as well.

I read the replies to this message before the message itself, with the
descriptive parts taken out, and I was thinking to myself, "How come I'm
the only one who liked _Homecoming_ better than _Dicey's Song_? 

Guess what - the book described here *is* _Homecoming_, not _Dicey's
Song._ ;-)

-- 
Art forms I'd like not to see, #419:  Abstract bowling.
From: crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L. Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Deconstructing Angelou
Date: 21 Jan 93 20:48:08 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

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

>	... the mastadon, the dinosaur 
>	who left dry tokens of their sojourn 
>	here on our planet floor ...

>William Sapphire, of the New York Times, remarked that this conjured 
>up for him an image that he was not certain Angelou had intended. 

This is the first time it has occurred to me that she was referring to
bones.  And here I thought she was being so wholesomely earthy ...

-- Lauren "Dung Patties, Not Fossil Fuels!" Crawford



-- 
The trick of reason is to get the imagination to seize the actual world --
if only from time to time.     -- Annie Dillard, "An American Childhood"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lauren Crawford  //  crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dstein@oak.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Subject: Re: Tom Maddox's _Halo_ (was Re: The WORST novel ever written?)
Organization: UCLA Department of Confusion
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 15:15:22 GMT

Matthew P Wiener to Maddox:
 
>Oh come on.  You've got all of USENET to vet your mathematical sallies.

  Amen.  Even a lowly graduate student like Debil could help out here 
and there.

>Whether you trust any of us to not set you up for a highly sophisticated
>embarrassment--like Robert L Forward's floozies--is another issue.

  Let's see....

   Aleph-Null is the lowest kind of the tranfinite numbers--one less then 
   Aleph-One, but one more then the largest natural number.

 - Debil

--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Debil, on the shores of Bohemia.
################################
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,misc.writing,rec.arts.int-fiction,comp.ai
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 22:38:16 -0500 
From: "Jonathan R. Ferro" <jf41+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: The language of music
	<1993Jan26.113427.6811@desire.wright.edu>

jakobs@utrurt.uni-trier.de (Oliver Jakobs) writes:
> I'd say the analogy is not of the right order. I've heard that scales are
> more like phonemes or letters, and that there are groups or patterns of
> scales which could be regarded as ``words of music''. There has been done
> some work trying to apply linguistic knowledge to musical ``texts''. I don't
> remember the scientist's name, but I could look up some references if someone
> was interested.

A well-known sourcebook for this area is _A Generative Theory of Tonal
Music_, by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, a part of the MIT Press
series on cognitive theory and mental representations.

-- Jon Ferro               Einsprachigkeit ist heilbar
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books