HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sj_a107@titan.kingston.ac.uk
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Picnic, Cats, Robots, and tree wars.
Date: 8 Apr 92 16:02:38 GMT
Organization: Kingston Polytechnic

Anima steps towards the french windows, switching to her felicentaurine
form as she does so.

"Logos, we are going out. As a pair."

Logos rolls up his eyes, and follows suit. The two cat-centaurs pad out 
on to the grass, and over to the picnic.

"Bossy cow," mutters Logos.

Anima scratches him behind the ears.

"Stuck-up prig. Typical air sign intellectual."

"And you're a leo. I suppose that's why you're so catty."

Logos ducks, and the shower of peanuts hits Anima. She swipes at Logos.
Logos catches her hand, and wraps his arms around her. Cuddling, they 
sprawl on the ground. Logos takes an apple, and takes a bite. Anima leans
over and takes a bite out of the other side of the apple. Logos bites
again, and so does Anima. Logos takes final bite, and pushes the apple 
core in to Anima's mouth. Anima ejects the core from her mouth, and throws
it away.

"You shouldn't drop apple cores, especially around here."

"Why not? I don't see any 'No Littering' signs."

"That's why."

Logos points to the landing site, where several apple saplings are 
attempting to grow. Some apples form, and fall, and some more saplings
begin reaching for the sky.

"See what you've started!"

"Oh dear," sighs Anima.

Logos glances around.

"Rhodri, I'll see about coming to the party. I'll have to have a look 
 the train timetables and ticket costs. As for the origin of the term
 'robot', I think it might in fact have been coined by Carel Capek,
 of 'Rossum's Universal Robots' fame, and the word was taken from the 
 word for 'slave' in his native language - I forget which. Now, if 
 you'll excuse me, I must resolve this potential ecological catastrophe."

He lopes off in the direction of the the rapidly expanding copse, with 
Anima trailing behind.


 ////////////////////////////////////////|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
|                                        |                                |
|                                        | Lukin Brewer                   |
| A wise old owl lived in an oak,        | Science type student           |
| The more he farted, the less he spoke. | At Kingston Polytechnic        |
| The less he spoke, the more he farted, | Kingston-upon-Thames, England  |
| He wished he'd never even started.     |                                |
|                                        |  SJ_A107@Titan.Kingston.AC.UK  |
|                                        |                                |
 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\|////////////////////////////////
From: JMPIERCE@USMCP6.BITNET (JIM PIERCE)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: Rhetoric: The End of Morality in Society (?)
Date: 8 Apr 92 00:06:43 GMT


kitten writes:
[ much deleted so ucbvax will let my reply come thru...]
>and i don't think the government or ANY body else has the right to
>tell me or any of my sisters that i should have to bear an unwanted
>child or deprive me of SAFE medical treatment.
>
>abortion won't end if it becomes illegal again...it will just go back
>underground and it will cost the lives of many, many women."
>
>kitten looks down from the mountain of soapboxes thay have developed
>under her paws....."ack!

   NickD. moves faster than light..

"Here kitten, let me help you. I don't know why those soapboxes
 appeared. After all, you merely spoke the truth. I don't think
 or believe that the anti/pro choice fight is over abortion.
 I know that it is about whether or not Women are People or are
 Women are property. My .signature tells how I feel. And as far
 as I am concerned, certain beings have doomed themselves for all
 eternity because they think of Women as property, not People.
 { Take your pick: they go to hell or stay at the bottom of the
   karma ladder for alltime. This is the one subject that really
   makes me angry... } Sigh. If humans could only allow themselves
to be intelligent!" NickD.


* <JMPIERCE@USMCP6.BITNET> Jim Pierce; Bach. Sci. in Applied Computer Science
* USM Academic Computing on the Gulf Park Campus. Disclaimer: Standard.
* "Women are People, *not* property." me
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
From: pierce@navo.navy.mil (Jim M. Pierce)
Subject: Re: the best books to rebuild modern technology
Nntp-Posting-Host-[nntpd-16278]: spop.navo.navy.mil
Reply-To: pierce@navo.navy.mil (Jim M. Pierce)
Organization: POPS Operations
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 05:25:09 GMT

In article <bruce.702799013@harry>, bruce@harry.ugcs.caltech.edu (Bruce J Bell) writes:
|> seawasp+@pitt.edu (Ryk E Spoor) writes:
|> 
|> >	Can't argue there -- I still can't comprehend the SCAdians who actually
|> >WANT to live in that era. Me, only if I can bring the CRC and a couple sturdy
|> >bodyguards (and several firearms with lots of ammo) with me....
|> 
|> Well, the CRC has lots of useful general information, but if I had more
|> room, I'd take the Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology.  Math and physics
|> and engineering you can remember or work out, and are sort of intuitive
|> in the first place, but practical chemical engineering is the sort of
|> thing that takes years of long, tedious, and occasionally dangerous trial
|> and error to get right.  Though at 17 volumes, it would take a mule of
|> its own to carry around...
|> 
|> >                                 Sea Wasp
|> >                                   /^\
|> >                                   ;;;
|> 
|> 
|> Skeeve (I'm not a chemist, but I play one on TV)
|> 

    "Also a book on masonry. Many of the early cathedrals collapsed
  because those stone masons didn't understand all of the forces
  they were dealing with." NickD. 
-- 
     pierce@navo.navy.mil  Jim Pierce aka Nick D.
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Subject: Re: A business major catching up.
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 07:20:12 GMT

In article <1992Apr13.090947.1562@serval.net.wsu.edu>, eyoxthei@luke.eecs.wsu.edu (Eric Yoxtheimer - EECS) writes:
>In article <1992Apr12.114338.25001@cco.caltech.edu> lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU writes:
>
>>And management training alone is NOT SUFFICIENT TO ALLOW YOU TO ACCURATELY
>>ASSESS THE COMPANY'S INTERESTS.  You also have to know, at a fairly detailed
>>level, exactly what the company's business is, and how it works."
>>
>
>"Bingo!!  So StoM, what's your gripe?  The example you showed perfectly
>illustrates what heppens when you DON'T have managers that understand
>what a company is doing.  This is stuff that all the business course I
>ever took (and the managers that I've known) all stress.  If your 
>managers (or whoever is ACTUALLY in charge) don't have a clue then the
>company will eventually fail.  Common sense."

My gripe is that it appears to me that there are a LOT of people in this
country who seem to think that a management degree alone is sufficient
qualification for a manager.
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
From: mwhitaker@cix.compulink.co.uk (Mike Whitaker)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: I need to unwind....
Date: 14 Apr 92 03:25:57 GMT
Reply-To: Mike Whitaker <mwhitaker@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Organization: Gated to News by demon.co.uk


        The Bard unslings Princess and strums a few experimental
chords, the guitar sounding unlike the acoustic she is, and much more 
like a 50's Telecaster. He looks down at the guitar between his
hands, somewhat surprised. 
        "Since when have you been able to do that?" The guitar,
unsurprisingly, says nothing. The Bard shrugs. "Oh well. Anyone want
to dance?" His fingers move across the fingerboard, bringing forth a
familliar rock'n'roll lick....
--
The Bard: a.k.a. Mike Whitaker, Cambridge, ENGLAND
E-mail to: mikew@sdl.mdcbbs.com
Reading alt.callahans as: mwhitaker@cix.compulink.co.uk
Posting via: demon.co.uk or ucbvax.berkeley.edu
From: jwwalden@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (P'relan)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: Dr. Asimov
Date: 7 Apr 92 01:34:19 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Physics

P'relan looks rather shocked upon hearing Galadin's news.  It takes him a few
minutes to decide what to do, but eventually he finishes his glass and goes up
to the chalkline and hurls his glass *hard* into the fireplace, "To Isaac
Asimov, may his works continue to find new readers and new minds."

He sits back down at his place and searches for a few things to find to say
about Asimov, "I don't know that he was the first science fiction author I
read, but he was fairly close and I dearly loved his books, especially the
Foundations, when I was a child.  I loved his nonfiction science as well.
Eventually I outgrew both of those but then I found his other nonfiction such
as the critique of Shakespeare Galadin mentioned and my own favorite, his guide
to the Bible."

P'relan pauses a minute, then continues, "He's the first author I really loved
who's died so it's a strange feeling.  However, I don't think that science
fiction will suffer for the loss of many of its early greats.  They have
written their great stories and explored (created) much of the territory that
science fiction covers today, but science fiction has grown and attracted
people who I find to be better authors and better scientists.  Of course, part
of the reason they can accomplish that is because they are building on the work
of past masters (and another of the major reasons is that the past masters
created the genre for them which is certainly an accomplishment too significant
to be ignored.)  I guess it's that I find more depth in some of today's
writers, either in their science or their writing, that I don't find in many of
the classics where so much time had to be spend developing the genre, creating
new types of stories.  I certainly appreciate both types of accomplishment and
really won't compare them, but as a result, I find some of today's authors much
more readable and much more deep than some of the past masters who created the
field."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
P'relan (and Birith)		   "Suddenly - you were gone
jwwalden@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu      From all the lives
or jwwalden@miavx1.bitnet           You left your mark upon" - "Afterimage"
From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 23:12:02 GMT
Subject: Re: most passionate of the Signs ???
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Newsgroups: alt.callahans

In alt.callahans, pierce@navo.navy.mil (Jim M. Pierce) writes:

> |> I am a cancer, and I am NOT fucking passionate.  OK!?
> |> 
> |> And if anyone could see a video on MY forehead, they would
> |> run screaming.
> |> 
> |> doug
> 
>           "okay, I believe you. I guess I should have placed a
>        smiley on it. Myself, I sort of like the idea of a video.
>        Neither party would have to guess about what was on the
>        mind of the other and no lies would be possible. It might
>        also cut down on the 'Mr. Goodbar' types finding victims.
> 
> 
>          oh doug, another method of telling if someone is a cancer or
>      not is, how crabby they are !" :-) <- see, a smiley...

I know.  I was being ironic.  I do not know what the smiley symbol
for irony is.  It was not meant personally.  'Twas a joke.

doug
From: dgil@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.com (Gillett, David)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: DM Re: Potstickers
Date: 9 Apr 92 07:57:49 GMT
Reply-To: dgil@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.com (Gillett, David)
Organization: Reuters APL Software Division
X-Unparsable-Date: 8 Apr 92 19:09:53 UT


-----------Message forwarded from IPSA Mailbox-------------
no. 6134690 filed 19.03.06  wed  8 apr 1992
from dgil
to   locun
subj DM Re: Potstickers
ref  6134682

Mentor (me):
> Danger Mouse wants to know what a 'potsticker' is....
> Briefly, it's a chinese stuffed dumpling that is fried instead of steamed.

Danger Mouse (him):
> "Aha!"  Danger Mouse finally has some concept of what the US folks are raving
> about.  "Do you mean to say that you don't use the (much more appetising,
> IMHO) Chinese names of won-ton, shao-mai and dim-sim?"

Mentor (me again):
  Well, let's see.  In the restaurants I've frequented, won-ton has been a
  different sort of stuffed pasta thing, either fried crispy (potstickers,
  although fried, are never *crispy*!) or in soup.  One restaurant even
  'translates' won-ton as 'kreplach', which I believe is a similar concept in
  Jewish cooking.

  Dim-sum, on the other hand, refers here more to a style of serving than to
  any specific dish.  As I indicated, stuffed dumplings are usually among the
  offerings in a dim-sum place, but they're unlikely to account for more than
  40% of the choices available.  The offered dumplings will usually include
  both fried and steamed varieties.

  Shao-mai is not a term I've seen used in restaurants here.  I did see a neat
  documentary bit about the making of stuffed dumplings in China on one of our
  local stations (really!), but I don't know if shao-mai is a generic name for
  "stuffed dumpling", or a specific name for "dumpling stuffed with sausage,
  which has been fried" -- and the latter specific variety is what we mean by
  "potstickers".  (This slang term has entered the vocabulary of at least some
  composers of menus for Chinese restaurants, so we may never know what the
  Chinese would call them....)

--
"The terrorist is the logical incarnation of     | Mentor the Sage
 patriarchal politics in a technological world." | dgil@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.com
                     -- Robin Morgan             | 
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
From: sjane@bmers248.bnr.ca (sjs)
Subject: Re: Bear's story
Keywords: sports & injustice
Organization: Irrelevant, Ottawa, Canada
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 11:12:55 GMT

"Gee, all these folks who didn't want to play games & who had to.  Me,"
pipes up sjane, getting in her $.02 again, "I Wanted to play -- I 
wanted to play hockey with the neighbourhood  guys on the rink the Dad
across the street made in his back yard.  I wanted to throw a football
and play ball hockey in the summer on the street with all the others.
But they wouldn't let me because I was a giiiiiirrrrrllll."

AHGH!  You know, even after 20 years, it still bugs me!  Hmmmmmm... I
wonder what profession I'd be in now if I hadn't been surrounded by
dratted traditionalists telling me what I couldn't do because of being
a girl and me being bound & determined to prove them wrong... chances 
are, I might Not be an Engineer!   Ahhh, isn't childhood interesting.
Thank God I'm no longer in it!

-sjs   

--
It's not irrelevant; it's a hippopotamus.   sjane@BNR.CA
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
From: eyoxthei@luke.eecs.wsu.edu (Eric Yoxtheimer - EECS)
Subject: I'm back...briefly
Organization: Washington State University
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 92 07:28:07 GMT


The door to the Place crashes open, making the flames in the firplace
(actually that "fire"place ;-) dance wildly.  A drenched figure shambles
in...looking surprisingly like a damp rat.  The door slams shut behind
him.  A puddle of water is quickly forming around his feet...

"Hi folks!  It sure has been awhile since I last stopped by."

He (it's obvious now...) wanders over to the bar.

"Mike, one LARGE cup of hot chocolate.  It sure is gald to be back (however
brief my time may be).  I'd offer hugs to you all, but alas it seems to be
raining heavily where I'm at...and I've got a nasty cough in my lungs right
now (at least I don't cough in VR ;-).

Hi Kitten, Hawke (if you're still here), and all those other wonderful
folk that I keep forgetting about <grin>.  If you don't mind I'll just sit
here for awhile...until the danving starts again that is...<Wink>"

-Grayghost (Eric Yoxtheimer)
 The still, starving, poor, lost, and now confused Graduate Student

(*HUG* cards are still available ;-)

Newsgroups: alt.callahans
From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Subject: Re: Becoming a murderer
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 06:25:22 GMT

In article <4593@m1.cs.man.ac.uk>, pjc@cs.man.ac.uk (Peter Crowther (MIG)) writes:
>Peter steps through the door, looking tireder than when he left a few
>months ago.
>
>"Hi all. Sorry to come in on such a depressing topic, but I'll throw in
>my $0.02-worth, hopefully without causing a soapbox to trip me up.
>Believe it or not, I'm also not trying to cause more distress either to
>the victims of violent crime or to the people who have to judge. No
>doubt I will cause such distress, for which I apologise in advance.
>
>"These are all my opinions. In my opinion, it should be legal to kill
>someone yourself, but illegal to cause someone else to do it for you.
>In either case, the role of the law enforcers should be limited to
>publicising the name(s) of the murderers and murdered sufficiently
>widely that others can take any action they feel appropriate.

If what you're proposing is declaring the perpetrators of certain crimes to
be "outlaws" in the sense that term was used several centuries ago in England,
and for which the Norse had a similar status (i.e., that person is no longer
protected by ANY laws:  If you rob him, it's not theft; if you kill him, it's
not murder; etc.), then I certainly can find some merit in that approach.
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
From: aahz@netcom.com (Aahzmandius)
Subject: Re: Epistemological Question
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 92 10:53:58 GMT
Organization: Bill 'n' Opus for Prez

In article <1992Apr12.054456.25541@cs.tulane.edu> pierce@navo.navy.mil (Jim M. Pierce) writes:
>In article <1992Apr10.061655.19315@cco.caltech.edu>, lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals) writes:
>|> Sorry, I left out an even more important criterion:
>|> 	0)  Do the events in the account satisfy the laws of nature as we know
>|> 	    them?
>
>     "uhm, StM. Back in the 19th century, scientists said rocks couldn't
>   fall from the sky. Today we call them meteors. { And when they land,
>   they are called meteroites. For those who don't know the difference..}.
>
>     My mother told me a few years ago that an encyclopdeia that she read
>  about 1938 showed the length of time it would take for a diesel locomotive
>  to get from the Earth to our moon. Thereby proving that space travel,
>  even to our moon, was impossible." NickD. not being picky, I hope...

Your second example doesn't really apply: at that time, I believe most
scientists understood that it was theoretically possible, but didn't
think we would ever have the technological capability to do so.  Be
careful to make a distinction between "science" and "popular science".

A similar example from a New York Times editorial, poking fun at
Goddard: [paraphrased] "....but once it got into space, it would go
nowhere, for there would be nothing for the rocket to push against."
-- 
                         --- Aahz (the *other* Dan Bernstein)
                             @netcom.com 

Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6

Mothers are inventors by necessity
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Subject: Re: Natural Science, Natural Religion (was Re: Thoughts on Biblical...)
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 05:30:22 GMT

In article <1992Apr6.230609.24571@NCoast.ORG>, allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH) writes:
>As quoted from <1992Apr3.001647.10554@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> by dapetersen@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (Toothpick (-:)):
>+---------------
>| >>P'relan speaks one more time, "One more point.  You might think the idea
>| >>of God as the universe strange and wonder how such a being made of
>| >>planets, stars, space, people, everything could have consciousness.
>| >>Think upon the idea of how YOU have consciousness, a being made up of
>| >>trillions of cells of many different types organized into veins,
>| >>arteries, muscles, organs.  And you consist of more than that - the E.
>| >>Coli in your gut that help you digest are part of you as are the
>| >>mitochondria in your cells which may have been a different creature than
>| >>joined with the early unicellular forms billions of years ago.  And yes
>| >>I think that you think you're conscious and I, for one, would have had
>| >>serious doubts about such a strange creature made up of all those
>| >>diverse parts being conscious had I not been one myself..."

We've also got quite a few complex feedback mechanisms built into us.  The
universe as a whole shows no evidence of such feedback loops.  Also, if you
postulate some sort of cosmic consciousness, bear in mind that it would
typically take years for the equivalent of a single synapse to fire.  Also, if
the universe is expanding, it's literally impossible (unless everything we know
about physics is wrong) for a signal to travel from one side of this proposed
conscious entity to the other.  Talk about the right hand not knowing what the
left hand is doing!

>I grant that scientists are busy trying to track down the physical seat of
>e.g. artistic expression.  I personally doubt they'll find a chunk of "art
>neurons", or an "artistic electrochemistry", etc.  And we *still* haven't the
>faintest idea of where the fundamental attribute of *life* comes from:  there
>are too many oddball cases, like spontaneously assembling viruses.  (Carl
>Sagan would simply assert that there is a purely physical explanation.
>Personally, I consider that as great a leap of faith as that required to
>believe in a god or gods, ergo not the answer he claims it is.)

The primary difficulty in tracking down "where the fundamental attribute of
*life* comes from" is DEFINING the term "life."  It's when you've got someone
who says, basically, "I can't define `life,' but I know it when I see it," that
the difficulty arises.  The human mind is pretty good at devising questions that
have no meaning (What is the sound of one hand clapping? comes to mind).  That
ability shouldn't be mistaken for an indication that the questions make sense.
From: dgil@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.com (Gillett, David)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re:  Belated greetings, and other topics (was Re: Rhetoric: The.
Date: 7 Apr 92 02:10:07 GMT
Reply-To: dgil@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.com (Gillett, David)
Organization: Reuters APL Software Division
X-Unparsable-Date: 6 Apr 92 23:50:10 UT


-----------Message forwarded from IPSA Mailbox-------------
no. 6127084 filed 23.31.05  mon  6 apr 1992
from dgil
to   locun
subj Re:  Belated greetings, and other topics (was Re: Rhetoric: The.
ref  6124509

      Seawasp quotes me for suggesting something that an '*ideal*' society
'might' do, and throws up Nazi Germany as a 'culture' (we could debate whether
it qualifies, but why bother?) with which such an ideal could have a problem.
I don't think I've yet taken a position in this discussion that merits such a
bald-faced attempt to insert a straw man.
     However, he goes on to suggest that some cultures are not worth
preserving, except as histories.  I have to agree with that, and in fact tie
this thread back to the 'Mundanity' thread with the observation that the
tolerance of fandom keeps alive cultures that have perished elsewhere, and
that these are often cultures which (IMHO) *should* have been allowed to die
out.  (Check out the barbarians at your next con, and the people who are
looking forward to apocalypse because they anticipate the return of feudalism.)

      Later, he drags up Ayn Rand in refutation of Stumpy's idea.  That's a
bit odd, because Stumpy's idea was actually being preached by Thomas Paine,
somewhere right in the middle of the Golden Age of Randian Heroes, whose very
existence seems to have escaped Paine's notice.

     If there is no Objective criterion by which we can tell a Randian Hero
from a bum who has inherited a pile of money -- as Seawasp himself suggests
may be a problem -- then I submit that Objectivism is an intellectual fraud.
                                      Mentor the Empiricist
From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 03:06:03 GMT
Subject: Re: Rhetoric: The End of Morality in Society (?)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA