HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<1b0q1gINNr98@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>
	<1992Oct8.200021.8115@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 9 Oct 92 00:52:03

I once had to review a book called "The Question of Artificial
Intelligence" for Annals of the History of Computing.  Several
of the articles said they were using a methodology called
SCOST - social construction of science and technology.  The
history cited in these articles was on a level a bit below
that of the history books offered for Texas high schools.
They made almost all of it up, rather than just a few tidbits.
Is other social construction stuff similar?
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: heidi@wales.net.com (Heidi Wolf)
Subject: Re: the Marko variations, I - III
Summary: Lhude sing cuccu 
Organization: N.E.T., Redwood City, CA
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 16:59:30 GMT

In article <1992Oct14.015602.17572@athena.cs.uga.edu> fuller@athena.cs.uga.edu
(James P. H. Fuller) writes:
 
>Imnell@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Marko Amnell) wrote [re: BEOWULF]:
>> Yo' mama!  Are you talking about the original Old English version?  I
>> had the language, not the content, in mind, my dear Tracer-bullet.
>
>     You mean you *don't* understand Englisc and Brytwylsc and Scyttisc
>and Pyhtisc and Bocleden?  My gracious.  You mean if I told you to bend
>over and mynte se manscatha manna cynnes sumne besyrwan in sele tham hean,
>and then wod under wolcnum to thaes the he winreced, goldsele gumena
>gearwost wisse, faettum fahne you wouldn't have any idea what I'd said?


I say it's firbolg, and I say the hell with it.


H. "Gimme that old-time philology" Wolf

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: lynch@ils.nwu.edu (Richard Lynch)
Subject: "New Joyce stories" followup
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 12:33:42 GMT

The NYT had a bit yesterday about challenges to Danis Rose's claim to
have made the textual discovery of the century... Based on some very
late letters that *were* in the Dublin trove unsealed last spring,
Rose is arguing that 7 early Finnegans Wake vignettes were originally
intended for an entirely different book, a collection of lucid short
stories to be called "Finn's Hotel".  That they ended up in FW was,
according to Rose, an afterthought-- recycling.

I was off by one in the "table of contents" I posted here last week:
Chapter 7 is not the persecution of HCE (20 pages), but the "Revered
letter", more like 3 pages.  What's special about this group is that
Joyce left them all untouched between 1923 and 1938... but to say they
were added as an afterthought just shows the state of utter chaos
that FW studies are floundering in.

The most overlooked clue is Joyce's statement in August 1922 (6 months
after the publication of Ulysses, 7 months before the first FW vignette
was drafted) that his next work would be "a history of the world".  Maybe
Joseph Campbell (in his "Skeleton Key to FW", the first full-length
study of FW) appreciated this angle better than anyone, for he followed
up Skeleton Key with "Hero with 1000 Faces", his own first try at a
"monomyth" that collapses all mythological story-structures into a single
cycle.

(Another killing blow to Rose's claim is that the "Berkeley" vignette
is anything but lucid-- it's got all of FW's linguistic perversities,
smack dab in the middle of so-called Finn's Hotel...)


There's a Finnegans Wake mailing list where we're looking at the text,
the drafts, and the early workbooks, trying to put together the clues,
but it's not for the fainthearted: we come off a lot of the time as
literary bean-counters!  If you want to check it out though, send the
message:

subscribe FWAKE-L [your name here, no brackets]

to

listserv@irlearn.ucd.ie
or
listserv@irlearn.bitnet

=======================================================================
jorn@chinet.chi.il.us    Jorn Barger, intellectual freebooter ;^)
=======================================================================
-- 
"TANSTAAFL"     lynch@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: gara@cs.toronto.edu (Gara Pruesse)
Subject: Re: Minority Booklists (Was Re: Native American Indian novels)
Summary: Anne Cameron
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: 16 Oct 92 20:53:29 GMT

rahim writes:
>
>	Could someone recommed some Native American Indian novels, in 
>	which native spirituality is encountered.
>

Ann (with an e?) Cameron's book, _Daughters of Copper Woman_, falls
into this category.  

There was some kerfuffle about this book.  Ann Cameron lives in 
Nanaimo, BC, and writes there.  Her book was printed in the US,
it seems; and the BC authorities confiscated a shipment of this
book *into* Canada, because of one story in there in which a bear falls 
in love with a woman.  Perhaps that would have gotten over the border, 
if that was all (after all, we have princesses kissing frogs, beauty and
the beast, and all that) but the bear was ... FEMALE!  (oh, outrage.)
I guess they thought it was lesbian porn.  

I liked the book.  Male readers might not feel addressed, as all the
main characters are female, but if you skip it for this reason, well
hey, your loss.

Come to think of it, there is a male character: Snot Boy, the first
male, made by Copper Woman out of her mucous.

Cheers,

Gara 

Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:18140 rec.arts.sf.misc:3095 aus.sf:555 rec.railroad:7904
From: mcia@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Mike Ciaraldi)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,aus.sf,rec.railroad
Subject: Re: SF Rails (was: Whats the title/Author of this story
Keywords: SF railways mars
Date: 11 Oct 92 01:32:06 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)

In article <1992Oct8.025329.5129@alchemy.ithaca.ny.us> cpf@alchemy.TN.Cornell.EDU (Courtenay Footman) writes:
>For a very futuristic railroad, try "Rails across the Galaxy", by Offutt and
>Lyon (Lyons?).  It was serialized in Analog, and I have never seen a book
>edition.

On the subject of railroads and SF...

(1)

I read a story recently that was somewhat connected to this.
It starts out not very SF-ish, in India, where some of the
old railroad equipment is being scrapped.  The hero meets
an old man who is very attached to one of the trains, and who is
something of a local celebrity.

Anyway, the train does get scrapped, and the steel is reused in a
space launching system.  The launch system is a giant vertical loop that spins 
continuously, with one end attached to the earth and the other
end above the atmosphere.  Cargo containers get attached to the 
circumference as it skims the surface, then detach at the top
and get flung into orbit.

I don't remember the author or title, but it was probably in 
either the Nebula anthology or Gardner Dozois' best-of-the-year
anthology, in the last 3 years.

(2)

Wasn't there a book called "Sacred Locomotive Flies"?
And one called "The Celestial Steam Locomotive"?
These titles both stick in my mind.

(3)

Also, there was a book about 15 years back, by Christopher Priest
(not sure why I remember the author, but not the title :-)  ).
The hero lives in a city that rolls across the Earth on railroad
tracks.  The city's engineers follow behind it and tear up the 
track, then rush ahead and lay the track before the city gets there.
One of the weirdest parts of the book is that as the hero 
moves away from the city, his body and perceptions distort,
because of some sort of space warp in the city (connected with
its power source, maybe).  So, by the time he is a few miles away,
he is like half a mile tall.  At that point I started to
wonder why they didn't just send someone ahead to grow, then
reach down and pick up the city!

Maybe someone has some follow-up to this....


Mike Ciaraldi
University of Rochester
mcia@cs.rochester.edu
From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: More Notes from the Decline
Date: 8 Oct 92 18:24:40 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1992Oct8.064638.2146@eff.org>, mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
> In article <1992Oct7.165438.28710@athena.mit.edu> kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan) writes:
# #	Very cute Mr. Maddox; however, are you merely extending Mr.
# #Morris's comment from Republicans don't read to an assertion that they
# #do but they only read piffle and twaddle? Let's see 48,886,097
# #Americans identified themselves as Republican enough to vote for Bush
# #in 1988. Do you think that among this group no one reads, or that they
# #only read piffle and twaddle?
# 
# Well, we can say this much: since they voted for Bush, they clearly
# have a high piffle-and-twaddle tolerance. We may surmise how they
# acquired it.
# 
# Mike Godwin,    |"Liberty resides in the rights of that person

I thought it was living under Jimmy Carter that caused it.

The four years of Jimmy Carter's little fascists trying to run
everyone's lives played a major role in radicalizing me.  ("Tell
me, Ms. Claybrook, how does having a speedometer that only reads
to 85 mph make me a safer driver?")
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Lesson learned from Gov. Wilson's signing of AB 2601: if you don't get 
your way, have a riot.  Next time, Gov. Wilson will cower appropriately.
From: maverick@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Literature Students/Small World
Date: 16 Oct 1992 00:11:15 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: fir.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <15OCT199215435638@portal.lasc.lockheed.com>, le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel) writes:
|> 
|> I overemphasized the temporal aspect because it allowed me to show that
|> the person did not enjoy it at first, but later.  And that would have
|> to mean an enjoyment of the work for something OTHER than its initial
|> experience.  This is what allowed me to distinguish between the
|> intellectual pleasure and the experiential one.

It's my memory that the first poster reported that her
(his?) class helped make a second reading enjoyable, not
that it helped her enjoy her memories of the first reading;
if so, we're still talking about experience.  Your hard
experiential / intellectual distinction is then only a
distinction between experiences under different conditions
-- different kinds of preparation for the reading -- a
difference which is hardly binary.  Another reader might
have approached the book "right", or at least fruitfully,
on the first go -- is this reader more intellectual, or is
the book less intellectual for him than for our first
example?  :)

Perhaps my basic disagreement with you is that I don't know
how to distinguish my intellectual pleasures from any other
kind.  *Every* pleasure improves if I give my mind to it
fully.  Not every pleasure, though, as you say, improves
upon repetition.  I was electrified the first time I saw
the computation of the area under a segment of a parabola,
and have never quite recovered that charge -- does this
mean it wasn't an intellectual pleasure?

	Vance
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: Clarification
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 22:38:33 GMT

Bill Turkel writes:

	In a recent post I requested book recommendations for studies of
	or by Rationalists, especially re modern thinkers.  I meant 
	'contemporary' not 'modern', since, of course, philosophers from 
	Descartes onward are 'modern'.  

You don't mean "contemporary" either. You mean "present-day". Plato & 
Aristotle were contemporaries.

						Philolog
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: Piffle
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 23:35:44 GMT

In article <MUFFY.92Oct8132631@remarque.berkeley.edu> muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>In article <1992Oct8.174025.8793@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) writes:
>> In Hugh Lofting's epic tales of Doctor Dolittle, [...]
>> ...Pollyana...
>
>Polynesia, I believe.

Oh my stars and garters.

You're right of course.

>blushing fiercely<

			Hare could plainly see that the others knew
			nothing about spectatickals.
				-- Jethro Tull


Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
From: mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Seeking: incisive essayists, any race, creed, or gender
Date: 15 Oct 92 13:25:50 GMT
Organization: Emory University, Dept of Math and CS

(Alison Chaiken recommends Ellen Goodman)

I both agree and disagree on Goodman... she has a razor-sharp
vision, but so often her newspaper pieces feel padded, as if
Lou Grant were standing over her shoulder saying, "Ellen, that's
great, but I need 1500 words, not 1000."  I have certainly
never gotten that impression of Orwell, however much it may
have been true.

My nomination for Oliver is CS Snow.  Perfect eyesight, great
skill with language, quiet demurral from the obvious and
overblown.

Rage away,

meg


-- 

 Meg Worley 				Internet:  mworley@mathcs.emory.edu
From: cb@tamarack13.timbuk (Chris Brewster)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: WANTED: "The Profit" by Kehlog Albran
Date: 15 Oct 92 18:51:39 GMT
Organization: pubs

Barbara Hlavin writes:

	Harish Devarajan writes:

		Hi all.  I'm looking for the book mentioned above 
		("The Profit" by Kehlog "Arguments with furniture 
		are rarely productive" Albran).  Was recommended 
		to me by a friend, but he doesn't have a copy, and
		(surprise) neither does MIT, where I happen to be.  
		Does anybody have a copy I can buy ?  Or know where 
		I can find one, in the Boston area ?

	The book you're looking for is called THE PROPHET.  It was written 
	by Kahlil Gibran.  (Kehlog Albran sounds like the name of a popular 
	breakfast cereal.) 

The Profit is a parody of the Prophet.  I own a copy but it's not for sale.

Chris Brewster
cb@cray.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: scs@iti.org (Steve Simmons)
Subject: Re: Fictitious Fiction
Keywords: Morgenstern, Garp, Trout
Organization: Industrial Technology Institute
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 21:27:49 GMT

evanh@sco.COM (Evan Hunt) writes:

>nickles@sage.cc.purdue.edu (john a nickles) writes:

>>As the subject line says, I am looking for books (or movies or plays) in
>>which reference is made to a book, movie or play that does not really exist.

>These are incredibly common in fantasy - I think Robert Aspirin started the
>trend with his mock historical quotes at the beginning of the chapters. 

Preceeds Bob by many a year.  Certianly Lovecrafts "The Necromonicon"
is among the more famous in fantasy.

Tim Powers has made an interesting career out William Ashbless, quoting
him in almost all his novels and making him the centerpiece of one.
-- 
scs:  Tied for last on the Zwicky list with `zwicky'.
From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Once I put this book down, I could not pick it up again.
Date: 8 Oct 92 07:43:37 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <Bvs8Jy.9Kz@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, nickles@sage.cc.purdue.edu (john a nickles) writes:
> 
>  My choice for great yet unreadable book is (hands down) Thomas Hardy's
> Jude The Obscure. 

Has *anyone* ever said _Jude the Obscure_ was great?  I thought it was
considered one of his duds.

> I refer specifically to the Little Father Time incident.
> When I read "Becus we are too meny", I had to throw the book across the room.
> I eventually finished the book, but it didn't get any better.
> 
> There are other writers I have read and hated (Theodore Drieser) others
> I was bored by (Dorothy Richardson PILGRAMAGE (4 volumes of pure nothing))
> but Hardy remains the one writer I admire greatly but will not read.

Hardy's *poetry* is really worth reading (IMO of course; no doubt
eventually there'll be a thread on
great-but-yet-somehow-not-great-or-could-the-problem-possibly-be-in-ourselves
poetry... (boy did that bedazzle my editor...)
-- 
-Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> {Sometimes you have to look reality straight
 OPINIONS ARE MY OWN            {in the eye, and deny it. - G. Keillor          



Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 06:56:08 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.164801.20441@cmcl2.nyu.edu> cruz@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Nancy Cruz) writes:

>From what I've seen and heard of her, she considers just about
>thought she has profound.

I wouldn't say she had so high an opinion of her Madonna pieces. But she
does think *some* of the thoughts she has about Madonna are profound. And
on that point I'd agree, even though the essays themselves are not
"profound reads."

My current favorite Paglia passage is the one in SEXUAL PERSONAE when she
compares, in a quite instructive way, the personae of Lord Byron and Elvis
Presley. My second favorite, of course, is her passage about the cat,
which she calls the least Christian member of one's household.


--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"Liberty resides in the rights of that person
mnemonic@eff.org| whose views you find most odious."
(617) 864-0665  | 
EFF, Cambridge  |                           --John Stuart Mill
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.railroad
From: eravin@panix.com (Ed Ravin)
Subject: A Subway Named Mobius
Summary: great sf story, train related
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 03:13:53 GMT
Organization: Not Just Another Pretty Face

Someone on the net writes:

>Bill> While not the book you're looking for, another "intersection" of
>Bill> SF/Trains was a short story named something like "A Subway
>Bill> Called Mobius."  Don't remember the name of the author, or even
>Bill> where/when I read it.

Ah, a wonderful story.  It's in the anthology "Where Do We Go From Here?",
edited by Isaac Asimov, published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Library
of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-142033.

"A Subway Named Mobius" by A.J. Deutsch, first published in _Astounding
Science Fiction_, December 1950.

The principle of the story is that new additions to the Boston subway
have made every station only one stop away from any other.  But because
of topological complexities of the new system, a train disappears when
it travels through a singularity sending it to another dimension.  The
rest of the story is the attempts by the subway operators and mathematicians
to figure out what happened and to try to get the train back.

Since the book is sitting in my lap here, why don't I type in the first
paragraph or two...


     In a complex and ingenious pattern, the subway had spread
     out from a focus at Park Street.  A shunt connected the
     Lechmere line with the Ashmont for trains southbound, and
     with the Forest Hills line for those northbound.  Harvard
     and Brookline had been linked with a tunnel that passed
     through Kenmore Under, and during rush hours every other
     train was switched through the Kenmore Branch back to
     Egleston.  The Kenmore Branch joined the Maverick Tunnel
     near Fields Corner.  It climbed a hundred feet in two blocks
     to connect Copley Over with Scollay Square; then it dipped
     down again to join the Cambridge Line at Boylston.  The
     Boylston shuttle hd finally tied together the seven principal
     lines on four different levels.  It went into service, you re-
     member, on March 3rd.  After that, a train could travel from
     any one station to any other station in the whole system.
-- 
Ed Ravin            | I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology
eravin@panix.com    | where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature
philabs!trintex!elr | returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
+1 914 993 4737     | and all watched over by machines of loving grace
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: WEBER@JEDI.SSD.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM (Kevin Weber)
Subject: Re: 1992 Nobel Prize
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: 78-30
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 92 17:49:58 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.132210.28999@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>,
spg@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Stephen P. Guthrie) wrote:
> 
> Just announced: winner of 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature is
>  
>       Derek Walcott, from the Caribbean island nation of St.Lucia
> 
> My question: who the heck is this? I've never heard of him before?
> Is he a poet? novelist? Are his books in print? I don't recall ever
> seeing any?

He's a poet. Other than that, ???????

kevin
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: More Notes from the Decline
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 12:06:35 GMT

In article <12780@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:

># 	Neither of which I asserted.  I merely remarked that the fuckers
># are deranged, and hence I'm not sure what they read.  I should add that I
># can't believe that knowing this would be of much interest aside from its
># comic possibilities.
># 
># 				Tom Maddox
>
>The traditional liberal position: those who disagree with the
>pursuit of unlimited power over the individual, "are deranged,"
>and therefore belong in mental hospitals, such as Mr. Maddox's
>cohorts in the former Soviet Union found convenient to do with
>those who refused to worship at the idol of conformity.

Mr. Maddox's cohorts in the former Soviet Union? Next thing you know,
we'll discover that Maddox led an anti-Vietnam protest on foreign
soil!


--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I can solve this Orient Express thing without
mnemonic@eff.org| breaking a sweat. It's that simple."
(617) 864-0665  | 
EFF, Cambridge  |                           --Hercule Perot
From: igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Date: 7 Oct 92 15:33:55 GMT
Organization: Fulcrum Communications

In article <1992Oct6.173356.18577@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
> Could you name some plays that were left unperformed for *300* years?

Complete Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Troilus and Cressida.

I could also name some that should never be performed: Henry XIII, for a
start...

ian
From: ndrose@husc8.harvard.edu (Nathan Rose)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Help me settle an argument
Date: 16 Oct 92 20:04:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Oct16.160447.16457
Distribution: world
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

There really was an Omar Khayyam, and he did write a rubaiyat. however,
Fitzgerald's version is hardly a literal translation, and has itself gained
much wider currency than the original (which is at the disadvantage of being
in Old Persian.

Nathan Rose
From: mattb@ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: 1992 Nobel Prize
Date: 9 Oct 92 13:48:37 GMT
Reply-To: mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Organization: Cabletron Systems INc.

In article <1992Oct8.132210.28999@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> spg@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Stephen P. Guthrie) writes:
>Just announced: winner of 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature is
> 
>      Derek Walcott, from the Caribbean island nation of St.Lucia
>
>My question: who the heck is this? I've never heard of him before?
>Is he a poet? novelist? Are his books in print? I don't recall ever
>seeing any?

Currently a professor in the Boston University English Dept.
Cover story, Boston Globe 10/9
Lives in Brookline Mass

Matt
But honestly, never heard of him till the award 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books