HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Out of the pigeonhole (was: Poe's other stuff)
Date: 15 Dec 92 17:09:37 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (That's-a me-a!) writes:
> 
> Uh, perhaps you should know about a story, "Jane's Fighting Ships" by
> Esther Freisner, It will be coming out in an anthology edited by Mike 
> Resnick which I believe is called BY ANY OTHER FAME.  Alternate
> history, some of them quite whacked out.
> 
> It also contains a story about Helen Keller as a Broadway actress by
> the young lady named in my organization line . . . 

Oops.

Corection: the Friesner story will be in ALTERNATE WARRIORS, same editor.  
The Simner story is really in BY ANY OTHER FAME.

	Larry "fumble reference" Hammer
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu   \  For love all love of other sights controls,
GEnie: L.HAMMER2           \ And makes one little room an everywhere -- Donne
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: excellent reading!
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 18:51:01 GMT

Heather Henderson writes:
>Fiona, you don't want to psychoanalyze me; I'm far too superficial.  What you
>see is what you get.  Boring, dull, banal.  Everyone who knows me agrees.  So
>you should exercise your skills on someone more worthy.  Zeleny, for example,
>the depths of whose character are as yet unplumbed?  I'm sure there are
>others...

<silence>

<with my best ridiculously stereotypical psychoanalytic bland facial
  expression, accompanied by surreptitious chin-stroking>

					--Synedochally a Teensy Notepad

P.S. from Fiona:
I take it that any references to books would go unread, and in fact this
whole posting will go unread, which means I can say anything I want--hee
hee! (obviously I'm not taking full advantage of this opp'y) because
everyone's KILL files will search and destroy on the character string
"Zeleny."  I know mine should have.  ('Need to edit them a bit more...)
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:22329 alt.comedy.british:2749 soc.culture.british:17423 alt.fan.monty-python:10003
From: hnb5164@tamuts.tamu.edu (Heather Noel Bobbie)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.comedy.british,soc.culture.british,alt.fan.monty-python
Subject: Re: Git (was re: Et in Arcadia ego)
Date: 14 Dec 1992 02:10:13 GMT
Organization: ~/lib/organization
NNTP-Posting-Host: tamuts.tamu.edu


looka dis, guys, i kept the attribution and everything!

In article <Bz4tLG.FqE@news.cso.uiuc.edu> tara@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Lady Johanna Constantine) writes:
>My fave line that makes no sense to an American has got to be:
>"If you're cold, take a jumper from the press."

HA HA! i've got you there!  i know exactly what that means and
i'm a troooo 'merkun!!!  so there!  i've got you!

(of course my Master and Love is english but that's got
NOTHING to do with it.  i will admit the first time he
mentioned his "jumper," being the innocent flower i am, i
was quite perturbed.  i didn't think he was a transvestite..
but he Enlightened me.)

"press" i know from hanging out with Too Many Irish People.
not you, simon.  gwen and them.

leather aka feeling superior, oh, yes

________________________________________________________________________
\are you weary of the lengthening days?      | heathernoel             /
/do you secretly wish for november's rain?   | hnb5164@tamuts.tamu.edu \
\and the harvest moon to wane in the sky (now that it's dry),          /
/there is nothing in this world more bitter than spring.               \
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: alcoholics synonymous
Date: 15 Dec 92 16:20:54 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

>|> mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley) writes:
>|> >            What are your favorite books that are
>|> >sodden with booze of any flavor?

	Earlier one poster mentioned a mystery by Dick Francis
	which, although I do not recall the title, I do recall
	enjoying.  On a similar note (and hopefully it has not
	yet been mentioned) in the essay "Sayers, Lord Peter,
	and God" Carolyn Heilbrun mentions
		Montague Egg, wine salesman, Miss Sayer's other
		detective, being strictly commercial and lower-
		middle class, has a charm of his own wholly 
		different from Lord Peter's.  While he does not
		irritate, nieither does he entrance.  Perhaps
		Mis Sayers was trying, among other things, to
		make use of the knowledge of wines and spirits
		she had (one supposes) got up for Lord Peters's
		sake.
	I have not read these, but they sound interesting.

rms
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: Wandering through a bookstore at lunchtime.
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
	This is a partial repost since this question was tacked on the
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 17:18:19 GMT

	Mark  Taranto writes of his lunch hour bookstore expeditions:

>There was a book called WORDPERFECT FOR DUMMIES, and a lot of calendars.

	I find the calendar/bookstore phenomenon fascinating. Does
anyone else remember when this deluge of calendars was NOT to be found
in bookstores? I vaguely remember the Tolkien calendars as the first
ones I ever noticed. This must have been in the very early 70s. Now
there is a calendar for every profession/obsession/digression.
Barillari Books in Harvard Sq. has tables and tables of them, while
Wordsworth has a separate annex that essentially just stocks
calendars. Are there any bookstore owners/managers/lurkers who can say
if this is a really profitable sideline? After all, calendars do take
valuable floorspace away from books. Of course, if they keep
bookstores in business that is all to the good.

	Keith


--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Morgan		 	|A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
kamorgan@athena.mit.edu  	|		Jonathan Swift
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,news.groups
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The word "homophobic"
Date: 11 Dec 92 19:09:23 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Dec11.140924.18400
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Dec11.031936.26188@spdcc.com> 
dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer) implores:

>Stop it, Mikhail; are you trying to render my comments superfluous?

That would be the height of superfluity.

>-- 
>Steve Dyer
>dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
From: bh419@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ted B Samsel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Wandering through a bookstore at lunchtime.
Date: 13 Dec 1992 13:23:00 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


I went to the new Richmond Barnes&Noble yesterday with my son
to do a bit of Xmas shopping and it seems that B&N has ringers
who go out and start up the new store. They really were not
too knowledgeable about the book industry.... They had never
heard of Borders and i was looking for some TinTin books so
my son could give them to his cousins and they were clueless.
(Even the mgr.).
  I was thinking that BnN might have staff who would have a
"bookish" interest, but these folks seemed to have gotten there
(oops their) marketing from Dunkin Donuts....
 Sigh, whimper... but they do have the best Science Fiction
section I have seen in a long time... lots of stuff I read 30
years ago plus new..got some for my daughter; she eats that 
stuff up.
  adios,
-- 
Ted....
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.politics.homosexuality
From: sheilah@wam.umd.edu (Danny-Boy)
Subject: origination of concept of toleranceRe: Making a virtue of complacency
Summary: question
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 16:07:35 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.153150.26361@athena.cs.uga.edu> fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu (James P. H. Fuller) writes:
>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>>remind you that, by your own lights, you have no ground for appealing to
>>that whore of dead white heterosexual males [tolerance], while rejecting 
the rest of
>>their baggage.  


This quote filtered down through an article posted by James Fuller.
I have no idea in hell what provoked it. What keen interest it
provides devoid of context.

Is Michael Zeleny stating that Tolerance orignates from western philosophy
and is not to be found in others? It's interesting, and I'd like to
know what replaces tolerance in other philosophies if anything, 
why they did not develope an idea of tolerance, why they developed an
idea of anti-tolerance, or why they concept was not breached in their thinking.
(which is the most interesting choice. if true. like making up a society that 
did not ever concieve of things as words, or blue. (poor examples))

I can easily see the idea of tolerance existing invented in someone's mind
and then have them taking a pro or con stance for various reasons (it
wasn't practical. it was).

but can someone describe the circumstances surrounding the not forming
of the concept of tolerance? (I suppose tolerance can be replaced by any type 
of abstract concept. I think I would be more interested in people who did not 
discover or invent an abstract concept due to something else besides not having
enough time to because they had to be concerned with survival and had no 
luxurary for philosophy.  I suppose this is all too damn hypothetical to be
real)



-- 
I am always wrong. Don't believe me ever.
stark raving sane  sheilah@wam.umd.edu
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: ee. ee. coomings
Date: 10 Dec 92 17:18:48 GMT
Reply-To: lnh@physics.arizona.edu
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

What if e. e. cummings had been from Sweden?


sincey feeling ees furst
vo pays any attenshoon
to der syntaxy of dings
vill nefer volly keess yoo;

volly to bey a fool
viley Spring ees in der vurld
my bloody approfes,
und keesses arey a better fate
dan veesdom
lady i svear by all flovers.  Doon't cry
---der best gesturey of my brain ees less dan
yoor eyelids' flutter vich says

vey arey fur each oderr: den
laugh, leaning back in my arms
fur leefe's not a paragraph

Und dead i dink ees no parendersees

--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu   \   Hidden harmony is better than manifest.
GEnie: L.HAMMER2           \      -- Heraclitus, #47
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: lew@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (lewis.h.mammel..jr)
Subject: Re: Making a virtue of complacency
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:28:04 GMT
Summary: Godwin rules

In article <BzCrv4.478@dunaad.co.uk>, ah@dunaad.co.uk (Alan Hunter) writes:
> 
> Mike Godwin said:
> 
> 		In fact, it was to promote a sense of this obligation 
> 		that I first promulgated Godwin's Rule. 
> 
> That word *Rule*, sounds like coercion to me...
> 
> Alan

Well after all, he IS the r.a.b Gauleiter.

Lew Mammel, Jr.
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:22774 sci.philosophy.tech:4587
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: A note on Modal Logic that has nothing to do with Ikky Sex
From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Date: 18 Dec 92 11:42:43 EST
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Dec18.054419.26501@u.washington.edu> 
joechip@hardy.u.washington.edu (Erich Vandenloos) writes:

>Michael Zeleny says

MZ:
>>>>Sounds like emotivism to me.  Too bad it got so discredited; it would
>>>>be nice to have a license to go around, referring solely to your
>>>>private beliefs.

EV:
>>>It must be nice, too, to think you have a license to go around talking about
>>>possible worlds.

MZ:
>>I find it no more problematic than talking about sets.  It gets a lot
>>easier if you regard it as no more than a convenient way to account for
>>counterfactuals and other instances of "subjunctive reasoning".
>
>>To me, Taranto's comment simply reeks of bullshit obscurantism.

EV:
>But there are other ways of accounting for counterfactuals which do not
>commit one to the existence of possible worlds (see Grice's "Studies in 
>the Way of Words" and Strawson's " 'IF' and '>' ") , and I do think that using
>possible worlds to account for counterfactual conditionals does commit
>one to that.

The approaches of Grice and Strawson intrinsically lack the rigor
required for analyzing the semantics of anything but ordinary
discourse (in fact, I believe that they fail even in that case).
Surely the language of science stands in need of a more certain
foundation.

EV:
>I take issue with possible worlds because of my ontological scruples. They
>may be convenient; it is convenient too to account for physical occurences
>by saying they were caused by spirits, but that doesn't mean it's a good 
>thing to do. (As Wittgenstein says, just because there's no fence along 
>the cliff doesn't mean you have to go jump off).

Three hundred years ago, you might have taken issue with imaginary
numbers because of your "ontological scruples"; a century ago, you
would have rejected transfinite numbers.  Face it, -- your attitude is
not conducive to any sort of progress in human knowledge.

EV:
>If appeals to ordinary language are obscurantist, how much more so are 
>appeals to possible worlds!

Appeals to ordinary language reduce the expressive capacity of human
speech to its lowest common denominator, the canaille.  Appeals to
sets and possible worlds raise it to the certainty of mathematics.
You are most welcome to your preferences; I prefer to stay with my
own.

>Erich Vandenloos

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Nothing can be said truly of what does not exist."

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: Git (was re: Et in Arcadia ego)
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 04:50:40 GMT

Graham Redgrave writes:
>What if Adam, naming the animals as they proceeded by him,
>could only think of names like "tall motherfucker," "slimy
>bastard," etc.

Hmmm...this thread has evolved a fur piece from the discussion
of Scotch whiskey, but nonetheless, I'd like to contribute that
although I was initiated to Scotch-love via Glenlivet, I favor
the peatier ones such as Glenfiddich and Laphroaig.  My husband
brought Laphroaig (have I got the spelling right?) to a very formal
Summer Solstice ritual conducted by the Archdruid of Ar' nDraiocht
Fein, Mr. Isaac Bonewits, and the Archdruid was sufficiently pleased
with the gift, it was used as the "waters of life" in the ritual.
That seemed to me a fairly impressive endorsement, as American neo-
pagan druidic-revivalist endorsements go.  We are also enamored of
MacAllan, which a friend from Edinburgh brought as a house present
about a year ago, but our current libation is Dalmore, which has
the nifty dividend of coming with two attractive snifter-type glasses
embellished with etchings of Irish elks.

Now.  Tell me how vulgar we are.  Come on...pull out the stops!!

							--Fiona :-)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: marcy@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca (Marcy Thompson)
Subject: Re: Wandering through a bookstore at lunchtime.
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Surrey, British Columbia, CANADA
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 19:19:26 GMT

In a recent rec.arts.books article, Francis Muir, writing as "Fido", wrote:
>
>I'd rather
>see a thread on extraordinary knowledge among bookstore personnel that
>the rabble might have come across. 

Well, the other day, I was calling various used bookstores around town
in an attempt to find books about the culture which flourished in the
Indus River valley circa 2500 BCE - 1500 BCE.

I was doing this because the public library and the local university
bookstores had nothing, and because since it was Reading Week at the
aforementioned universities, I could not get into the university
libraries. 

I had called most of the bookstores which I had any hope might have
something, and been faced with clerks saying things like "Oh, yes, we
have *lots* of stuff about the Sumerians and Babylonians". 

I finally called a store which I figured would have nothing, since he
specializes in military history and out-of-print new age books. However,
as soon as I mentioned the subject of my search (in the same words I
used in my first paragraph), the store owner said "Ah, yes. Mohenjo-Daro.
Fascinating civilisation."

He didn't have anything, but I was so impressed I almost didn't care.

Marcy

-- 

Marcy Thompson		
  SoftQuad (West)			
    marcy@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca (preferred) or marcy@sq.com
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: All I want for xmas
Date: 17 Dec 1992 20:03:25 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Ralph Marrone writes:

	I think Hugo Gernsbach coined the term "scienti-fiction" back in the
	'30s or '40s.  I believe he's considered the father of science fiction, 
	and the man whose name adorns one of the sf awards.

We have art and artifact so why not science and scientifact? or science
and scientability?

							fido
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: crosby@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Matthew Crosby)
Subject: Re: Wandering through a bookstore at lunchtime.
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 09:48:29 GMT

In article <1992Dec13.171819.19795@athena.mit.edu> kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan) writes:
>	I find the calendar/bookstore phenomenon fascinating. Does
>anyone else remember when this deluge of calendars was NOT to be found
>in bookstores? I vaguely remember the Tolkien calendars as the first
>ones I ever noticed. This must have been in the very early 70s. Now
>there is a calendar for every profession/obsession/digression.
>Barillari Books in Harvard Sq. has tables and tables of them, while
>Wordsworth has a separate annex that essentially just stocks
>calendars. Are there any bookstore owners/managers/lurkers who can say
>if this is a really profitable sideline? After all, calendars do take
>valuable floorspace away from books. Of course, if they keep
>bookstores in business that is all to the good.

My mother, who works in a bookstore (The Tattered Cover in Denver) says that at
the right time of year (Christmas, mainly, due to the end of year) Calendars
sell in huge quantities--certainly a significant fraction of total sales.  That
does not, of course, translate necessarily into profits, but is a strong
indication that this may be so.  

I suppose that it is yet another example how aliterate our society really is.


-- 
-Matt
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the net!!!!
mcrosby@nyx.cs.du.edu     or     crosby@cs.colorado.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: RE: The Lay of the Li'l Minstrel
Organization: Clark University
Date: 12 DEC 92 00:31:45 GMT

kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan) writes:

>The Dec. 7th New Yorker has the peerless Roger Angell's survey of 
>baseball's past, present, and future. 

Thanks for mentioning this.  I hadn't seen that issue, and was beginning to
get a little nervous, since Angell's usual post-season wrapup had not yet
appeared -- did Tina, in some devious British plot, convince him that the
"new look" New Yorker no longer required his baseball columns?  That perhaps
he should write about cricket, or darts??  What a relief to find that he's
still on the baseball beat.

So I rushed out immediately in the blinding snow/sleet/drizzle to locate
this article.  It's pretty interesting.  Besides the usual discussion 
of post-season play, Angell talks about the owners.  There's a quote from 
the White Sox' Jerry Reinsdorf that was new to me: he said, apparently,
that the job of the next commissioner will be to "run the business for the
owners, not the players or the umpires or the fans."  Just about says it 
all, doesn't it?

>In the article he notes the 
>"affectless condition of dissociation or pixillation that steals over 
>me after two or three innings of [Phil Rizzuto's] logic and 
>loquations, as injected via WPIX." But Roger has discovered that there 
>is nothing wrong with him, or with his "Phil-receptors", or with the 
>Scooter. "What's been coming out of the booth all these years has been 
>poetry - an explanation that has not dawned on me until I recently 
>read some transcripts of his game-work set down into its natural 
>vers-libre lines and stanzas." 

[poetic ramble from the Scooter deleted] 

>From the forthcoming *O Holy Cow! The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto* 
>ed. Hart Seely and Tom Peyer. 

Definitely a volume I'll have to include in my baseball library.  I'm a
natural-born Yankee-hater, but love Rizzuto.  

Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu

PS.  Apropos of this, there's a good takeoff of Angell in the New Yorker 
parody, SNOOZE, that came out a few years ago.  It's about bowling, and 
it's entitled "The Rumbling of the Ball"...
From: spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Backhanded compliments and other things I get
Date: 17 Dec 1992 02:21 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rigel.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    


The other day I got called "Falstaffian."

Personally, I think Sir Jack was a hell of a guy and is right up there as
a role model, but candor insists that I observe that the bloke what opined 
the above wasn't exactly intending it as praise--methinks he was hinting
(if that could be known by any phrase so subtle, quoteth Mr. Jonson) that I 
was a drunken sack [cough] of likker and wind [cough.  cough], and therefore 
intended the term as an aspersion or diversion or derision or whatever upon my 
erstwhile unsullied character [if indeed it could be called that.  
`character,' that is].

(Actually, this makes a charming break from the usual comparisons people make  
 of me, sending the Ancient Bearded Myth to make bail for their veracity--
 Neil Young is a common comparison, although I, not knowing what Mr. Young
 looks like, am not sure how to take it;  Gilligan is another prominent figure 
 (if prominent is indeed the word) that is mentioned to me, although I think
 that's primarily due to the hat;  the name of Elwood Blues is oft dropped, 
 I think that's just the shades;  various bits of anatomy also figure 
 prominently [cough], but I think that's mostly sarcasm, and in any case is
 irrelevant to the discussion [if indeed it could be called that] at hand
 [cough].)

Which, belatedly, brings me to the point of my commentary, the crux of my 
query--can anyone else think of, or has anyone else been the subject of 
comparisons that could be interpreted as either praise or condemnation?







Yours etc.,




SubGenius

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech
From: joechip@hardy.u.washington.edu (Erich Vandenloos)
Subject: Re: A note on Modal Logic that has nothing to do with Icky Sex
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 22:20:00 GMT

Michael Zeleny says:

>Also note that Russell's reasoning does
>not in any way vitiate the possibility that the collection of all
>possible worlds is a set, given a reasonable approach to semantics.

Could you elaborate a little on "a reasonable approach to semantics?

  Mark Taranto says:
 >>I mentioned that there is a third way to deal with modal operators.  This is
 >>through Linguistics and the Philosophy of Language.  When we say "X is
 >>possible" or "X is necessarily true" what do we really mean?  Part of the
 >>problem is that we don't mean the same things.
 >>
 >>Often it comes down to "X is possible" means that "I am unaware that
 >>X is inconsistent with what I know."
 >>
 >>I believe that this is a more fruitful avenue of study.

>Sounds like emotivism to me.  Too bad it got so discredited; it would
>be nice to have a license to go around, referring solely to your
>private beliefs.

It must be nice, too, to think you have a license to go around talking about
possible worlds.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books