HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Date: Friday, 20 Nov 1992 08:52:18 PST
From: Bernard BELL <BERNARD@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,soc.culture.canada
Subject: Re: Canadian free speech in action
 <92324.1047372893684@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
 <1992Nov19.172355.23576@bmers145.bnr.ca> <19NOV199216570986@sscvx1.ssc.gov>



>>Chris Passier writes re- Laurence Godfrey:
>> But, surely, a man of his ilk need not be satisfied by whatever pittance
>> the NRC might deign to throw his way? Could he not live like a king on
>> the, undoubtedly huge, sums of money he must be getting from U.S. sources
>> for his priceless insights into the world of science?

> Godfrey replies
>I don't work for the SSC.  Also your English is confused - have you thought
>of attending a remedial class for grammer and writing skills?


Excuuuuse me, but who is it that needs to attend the remedial classes?
1. It's grammAr not grammer.
2. Passier's sentences parse just fine.
3. Many of Godfrey's postings are written in Yadallean.

Perhaps this has all gotten out of hand: on browsing through
soc.culture.british this morning the first 18 articles were ALL
about Godfrey.

Bernard Bell
From: ray@philmtl.philips.ca (Ray Dunn)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Splitting up s.c.b and debate on Uk.* groups going international, vo
Date: 20 Nov 92 00:05:39 GMT
Organization: Not Philips.

In refd article, cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn) writes:
>In article <1992Nov17.013155.2054@philmtl.philips.ca>, ray@philmtl.philips.ca (Ray Dunn) writes...
>>subjects in this group are one of the main reasons it's a delight, and the
>>volume is far from the heaviest in usenet.  Either you _want_ to read this
>>volume, in which case after a split you'd you'd have to chase it to
>>whatever other groups were split off, or you can handle what you don't want
>>to read perfectly well by kill files.
>> 
>You assume everyone has kill files or an equivalent.
>I don't.

If anyone has been reading news.groups recently they'll know what I mean
when I say "At the risk of starting a massive flamewar", but anyway,
although I sympathize, not having killfiles is not a good reason to start
splitting up groups.

BTW a newsreader that allows you to select by topic is just as effective as
killfiles.  Working for Digital, I would presume you have at least that
available to you.
-- 
Ray Dunn at home        |  Beaconsfield, Quebec  |  Phone: (514) 630 3749
ray@philmtl.philips.ca  |  dunn@cam.org          |  uunet!sobeco!philmtl!ray
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: cthorne@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Charles E Thorne)
Subject: Re: Crime rates in Britain compared
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 21:15:21 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.120946.16712@infodev.cam.ac.uk> rgep@emu.pmms.cam.ac.uk (Richard Pinch) writes:
>In article <1992Nov17.192529.8593@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> cthorne@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Charles E Thorne) writes:

>>From a local point of view, I can suggest that the violence and lawlessness
>>in the U.S. cities is largely due to the large number of urban poor who live
>>in the cities.  Unlike many cities around the world, the U.S. cities have a
>>relatively large amount of money on the streets, and thus lawlessness has its
>>benefits (to the lawless).

>I don't think that can be the only reason.  I have been perfectly safe
>walking around downtown Cairo late at night, an obvious tourist, clearly
>likely to be carrying a cash sum equivalent to several years income for
>the average Egyptian.  Can you imagine what would happen to someone who
>was clearly carrying several tens of thousands of dollars cash in the
>middle of the night in downtown New York?  Or central London?

I didn't expect my response to be a totally complete answer to all crime
and violence.  The original posting I responded to was comparing crime in
the U.S. vs. crime in Britain.  Two issues I mentioned were that the large
number of urban poor (who are the primary residents of major U.S. cities)
are a factor.  The fact that there are large amounts of money available in
the cities is an attraction to a lawless group of people.

Another factor, which I didn't dwell on, is that the U.S. has an official
aversion to outlawing weapons or giving police forces unlimited authority
to counter crime.  We have a basic concept (although not always realized
in a form everyone to agree to) that we believe in a fairly laissez-faire
community (both politically and socially) and the police forces can counter
this only with substantial proof that they're correct when they interfere.

I'm not sure about the relative population patterns in European countries
but in the U.S. in the last 1/2 century people who don't need to live in
the central cities don't.  People who can't afford to move out, or who
otherwise enjoy the city life are the major ones who live there.  Most of
the rising population prefers suburbs or small towns.

There is also an underlying anger among the poor which I think is a factor
in the crime issues.  We still have over 10% of our population who lack many
of the benefits of the "good life", and many of them are resentful of that
fact.  Many of the urban crime perpetrators are those who feel there is no 
other way for them to have "their share" of what others seem to have.  There
could of course be a large number of "professional" criminals, but I doubt if
this is a major factor in urban crime.

Charlie
From: jackson@soldev.tti.com (Dick Jackson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Split soc.culture.british
Date: 17 Nov 92 15:57:53 GMT
Organization: Transaction Technology Inc.

I agree with a split -- into two new groups:

soc.culture.british.shortandinteresting, and

soc.culture.british.longwindedandboringlypettymindedwithpagesandpages
offivedeepnestedquotationsfrompriorlongwindedpettymindedboringdrivel"Oh
you'vequotedmeoutofcontextjusttomakeacheappoint""IfyoureadwhatImeantto
writeinsteadofwhatyouthoughtImeant""DontcallitEnglandwhenyouarereferring
toBerwickonTweedand"wherehasFrancisMuirgoneanywaynotthathewasguiltyofsuch
longwindedpettymindedandbloodyboringpostings?

Dick Jackson
From: fofp@castle.ed.ac.uk (M Holmes)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Windsor Castle
Date: 23 Nov 92 16:33:51 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

barba@patty.gud.siemens.co.at (Barbara Nowak-Teufl) writes:

[...re the Fall of the House of Windsor....]

>My question to the british netters: 
>Do you all agree in paying for the Queen's private possess from your taxes?

Nope. Definitely not. 

Is there a British Taxpayers Union? Anyone want to start one?

>P.S.: I personnally would agree in paying for the restitution of the 
>      representation hall because it is used for official reasons in the
>      States interest (Banquettes for foreign Statesmen etc.).

The Queen could charge the State for using it. I'd suggest she charge
enough to pay her own insurance costs. That way we could decide between
that place and others depending on the actual price.

>      But I would 
>      also say that this depends on wether the annual appanage for the Queen 
>      is also for maintaining the complete household. If I had to pay for 
>      private rooms that are never show to the public I would be quite angry.

We should be paying the Royal Family just to *be* the Royal Family. They
could run themselves as a business, charging to cut ribbons, visit ski
slopes, give the Royal Seal of Approval, and sell tickets to see The
Changing of the Men in Funny Hats.

And, they could pay taxes on their business.

That way we wouldn't need to worry about value for money. If they make a
profit, we'll get the taxes. If they don't, they go bankrupt.

I'm sure that with the number of Royal Watchers around, they'd have no
trouble going public if they wanted to raise investment cash.

Of course, we wouldn't want a monopoly. We could have a Scottish Royal
Family, and even an English one, to compete with the German one.


>--
>Barbara Nowak-Teufl 		barba@patty.gud.siemens.co.at
>Tel. 0043 1 222 60171 5768	SIEMENS AUSTRIA  

FoFP

-- 

I wonder how long it will be before the Church of England will accept
AI's as Priests...
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: mzenner@hamp.hampshire.edu
Subject: Summer work in UK, Help!
Organization: Hampshire College
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 18:36:14 GMT

I am a student in the US who is graduating college in May, and very much
wanting to spend next summer working in the Lancaster area in Britain.  Any
information anyone might have about how to go about finding work would be
greatly appreciated.  It doesn't have to be professional or permanent work, I
hear bar staff is common, and that would be perfect.  If anyone has a sense of
how easy or difficul this may be, I'd greatly appreciate hearing about it. 
Visas and the like are taken care of, so what I'm mainly interested in is
finding out about the economic considerations...  Also, if anyone could provide
general information about housing, cost of living, etc., I'd again greatly
appreciate it.
	Thanks in advance,
	Michael Zenner
	Hampshire College
	Amherst, Mass.  01002  USA
	mzenner@hamp.hampshire.edu

Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:16268 news.groups:22692
From: yadallee@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Dave Shariff Yadallee)
Newsgroups: uk.net,soc.culture.british,news.groups
Subject: Re: Summary - should UK groups be sent to UUnet (yes).
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 92 06:39:37 MST
Organization: Edmonton Remote Systems #1, Edmonton, AB, Canada

ian@unipalm.co.uk (Ian Phillipps) writes:

  [technical stuff deleted]

- Against:
-
- dj@ekcolor.ssd.kodak.com
- gdb15@cl.cam.ac.uk
- jmessenger@cix.compulink.co.uk
- sue@netcom.com
-
- For:
-
- Christophe.Wolfhugel@grasp.insa-lyon.fr
- dominic@british-national-corpus.oxford.ac.uk
- emv@msen.com
- evansg@uproar.enet.dec.com (UK resident)
- Geoff.Arnold@East.Sun.COM
- hrose@eff.org
- jjf@dsbc.icl.co.uk
- malcolm@uk03.bull.co.uk
- Martin.Baines@sun-microsystems.co.uk
- streater@unixjr.SLAC.Stanford.EDU
- yadallee@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca
-
- Posting, but not commenting clearly either for or against:
-
- gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk
- joe@inet-uk.co.uk
- ken@aiai.ed.ac.uk
- --
- Ian Phillipps, Unipalm Ltd, 216 Science Park,         Phone +44 223 420002
- Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 4WA, England.             Phax  +44 223 426868
- ++ This is not a self-referential statement.

  Ian, you are correct about my stand, but on a MAJOR point of netiqueete here.
You can HARDLY call this a proper vote, and your sample size is to say the
least small!

  Because someone is debating for one side or another may NOT necessarily mean
that the person could vote accordingly.

  Looking back on net motions,I made a proposal to rec.video for splitting the
group up, but before the voting stage, it backfired and never got to the
voting stage.   Currently in rec.arts.drwho, an expansion vote is properly
taking place.  Stay tuned.

  In summary Ian, all I am saying is that a properly called vote should be
taking palce BEFORE names gettossed on the net.  Also, as proposed before, I
am willing to design a ballot for the such.

  That's all for now.

Dave Shariff Yadallee (B. Sc. (Econ/Math) (U of Alberta 1990) )
 (yadallee@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca, userLIBE@mts.ucs.ualberta.ca)
God Save the Queen, God Bless us All! Remember! Jesus Saves!!
American (n) - A person resident or born on the Continient of America
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Subject: Re: What's the name of the Cambridge bookshop?
Reply-To: gdb15@cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 08:57:12 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.034346.2724@netcom.com> prwr001@netcom.com (Robert W. Row) writes:
>I am trying to remember the name of the big bookshop
>in Cambridge in England.  I had an account there in
>the early 1970s but neither I nor an English friend 
>currently working over here who also bought books there
>can remember its name.  One of those memory lapses that
>gradually drives you mad.

All together now: HEFFERS!

--
Guy Barry, University of Cambridge | Phone: +44 (0)223 334757 
Computer Laboratory                | Fax: +44 (0)223 334678
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street  | JANET: Guy.Barry@uk.ac.cam.cl 
Cambridge CB2 3QG, England, UK     | Internet: Guy.Barry@cl.cam.ac.uk
From: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Splitting up s.c.b and debate on Uk.* groups going international, vo
Date: 19 Nov 92 19:22:47 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Co. Ltd., Reading, England


In article <Bxz1qH.9vB.1@cs.cmu.edu>, nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines) writes...
>If you don't have a kill-file, surely you can write a shell or editor
>script that does the same sort of thing? Trivial in emacs or any Unix
>shell.
> 
Neither emacs nor unix are installed on the system I am posting this from
(VAX/VMS)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Craig Cockburn, Digital Equipment Co. Ltd, Reading, England.     Suas
  Internet: cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com                           leis
  UUCP:..!decwrl!edieng.enet.dec.com!cockburn                      a'
                                                                   Gha\idhlig!
  Views here are my own, and are not necessarily those of Digital
From: zzassgl@uts.mcc.ac.uk (Geoff Lane)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: What's the current  US dollar/UK pound exchange rate
Date: 19 Nov 92 12:18:24 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre, Manchester, England, M13 9PL.

In article <1ee7lhINN88i@agate.berkeley.edu> sandell@chowning.CNMAT.Berkeley.EDU (Gregory J. Sandell) writes:
>
>Subject says it all...last I heard it was $1.9 to the UK pound...
>

What would you like it to be?


Seriously, ring your local bank.  They'll also tell you how much they would
charge to convert the money (a real ripoff usually) 





-- 
Geoff. Lane. | Internet: zzassgl@uts.mcc.ac.uk | Janet: zzassgl@uk.ac.mcc.uts
UTS Sys Admin,  Manchester Computing Centre,  Oxford Rd,  Manchester, M13 9PL
During a week's TV I want to be entertained, bored, delighted, disgusted, made
happy, saddened, enlightened, mystified, else they aren't doing the job right.
From: exspes@sunlab1.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Brit/Yank pronunciation [Was: How to insult a Brit]
Keywords: Merkun
Date: 16 Nov 92 11:49:58 GMT
Organization: University of Bath, England

In the referenced article, MDuPree@world.std.com (Micky DuPree) writes:
>Here's the tricky bit.  Each dialect has its own "rules" about what
>qualifies to be transcribed and what doesn't.  The rules of the
>Southeastern U.S. "drawl" have a very low threshold as to what qualifies
>as signal versus what is mere noise, especially in instances such as
>this.  Southerners hear what are to them genuine sounds and do not see
>how others could label these sounds as silent.  

Few things as linguistically fun in this life as listening to a recruit
from a 'high-speed' part of NYC trying to communicate with a drill
sergeant from a 'slow-speed drawl' part of Georgia.  The sergeant was
obviously having trouble separating the syllables at the New Yorker's
rate of speech; while the New Yorker's attention span was sufficiently
short that by the time he'd pieced together one word, he'd forgotten
what the previous one was.

>It has been remarked on, at least anecdotally by the members of the U.S.
>Armed Forces in my acquaintance, that a lot of American service
>personnel pick up a heavily Southern influenced "service dialect" no
>matter where they originally came from or where they received their
>training.  When under stress, fully half of them start to sound like
>drill sergeants from boot camp in Georgia.

Hey, how'd you know?  Fort Benning, to be exact.

>The British dialects that I have encountered through listening to
>British television have a habit of missing out some unstressed vowels
>entirely, at least to my "Merkun" ears.  E.g., secretary as SEC re tree
>instead of the American SEC re TAIR ee.  Do Britons hear something in
>that spot that I'm just not recognizing?

No, just that sometimes unstressed vowels vanish.  If you listen really
closely, though, you should find that it's not exactly SEC re tree, but
more SEC re t'ree.  There usually is a tiny pause after the 't', which
is what's left of that syllable.

>* Paul Smee for president.  Stephen Wilcox for PM *

I'll yield to Preznent Bill.  Having been born in North Little Rock
my very own self, I'm happy to give it to another Razorback, long as
it's not woss-name Rockefeller as owns the eastern half of the state.

Missed a bunch of this chain.  We're moving news to another system at
bristol, and I'm having trouble getting outgoing stuff working just at
the moment...
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: cthorne@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Charles E Thorne)
Subject: Re: Crime rates in Britain compared
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 19:25:29 GMT

In article <28240@castle.ed.ac.uk> cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>In article <1e6uebINNruu@morrow.stanford.edu> silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva) writes:
>>ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant) writes:
>>>In article <0S4SB5SX@cc.swarthmore.edu> ment@cs.swarthmore.edu (Andrew Ment) writes:
>>>>Crime in New York is bad, but really it isn't as bad as most people paint it,
>>>>especially tourists

>>	There are people from Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Djakarta, 
>>Medellin, Bogota, Lima, Calcutta, Cairo, Moscow, and Washington, DC
>>who live in cities of near equal to greater danger. You _are_ 
>>comparatively 'extra' safe in Britain. Life is _not_ as raw in
>>northern Europe (I'd forgotten to mention Palermo in the list above) 
>>as it is in the urban centers of _most_ of the rest of the world.

>Quite so. What is so apalling about the US to Northern European eyes
>is that this very rich and sophisticated nation tolerates a level of
>violence and lawlessness in the streets of its cities which otherwise
>can only be found in the corrupt metropoles of the Third World.

From a local point of view, I can suggest that the violence and lawlessness
in the U.S. cities is largely due to the large number of urban poor who live
in the cities.  Unlike many cities around the world, the U.S. cities have a
relatively large amount of money on the streets, and thus lawlessness has its
benefits (to the lawless).  There is also an inherent dislike of a government
wanting to prohibit the individual from owning firearms (this being a tradition
going back to colonial days).

The prisons of the U.S. are overflowing and subduing a large group of urban
residents who make at least a certain amount of their income from unlawful
activity is fairly difficult to deter without bringing on a complete police
state which would not be welcome.

I doubt if this situation will change anytime soon.

Charlie
From: ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Crime rates in Britain compared
Date: 15 Nov 92 18:46:14 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England

In article <0S4SB5SX@cc.swarthmore.edu> ment@cs.swarthmore.edu (Andrew Ment) writes:
>Crime in New York is bad, but really it isn't as bad as most people paint it,
>especially tourists who, reasonably, tend to feel more threatened then they
>really are.

My father had to visit someone in New York once and walked half a mile
from the subway to their office. When he got there he was told that he
had done a very silly thing and was very lucky not to have been mugged.

>I think that it's people who come from extra safe places who get shocked by
>New York.

On the contrary, it's people from New York who can't imagine a city where
one doesn't have to take daily precautions against extreme violence.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,soc.culture.canada,sci.research.careers
From: sue@netcom.com (Sue Miller)
Subject: Not Re: Canadian free speech in action
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 02:15:08 GMT

>>
>>If Mr. Godfrey were female, I'd say he had a good case of PMS: not pre, or
>>>post, but permanent.
>>> 
>>>-- 
>>>Ken Breadner          |Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada
>

HEY!!  I'd better not see any more of this kind of rancid
nonsense floating around.  It's bad enough that good old Laurence
has managed to get the fur flying around here, but then you have
to go and slime the half of the human race which DOESN'T generally
start flame wars on usenet.

It has been said (by me) that women are always getting sh*t for
behaving for several days of each month the way that men do
all the time.  


Oh, all right.  :-)
From: sue@netcom.com (Sue Miller)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: English English
Date: 23 Nov 92 19:31:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: netcom.1992Nov23.193106.6060
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <1992Nov23.135942.22438@pixel.kodak.com> dj@ekcolor.ssd.kodak.com (Dave Jones) writes:
>Chris Cox  W0/G4JEC (chrisc@biggus.moron.vware.mn.org) wrote:
>> The company that I previously worked for had an office in Rochester, NY,
>> and that was the first place I heard the term used.
>> 
>> The operator would announce over the tannoy, for example,:-
>> 
>> 	"Fred Bloggs, you have a call parked on line two..."
>> 
>> This was an American company, so I always assumed that it was another
>> Americanism.
>> 
>If it was an American company, you can bet they didn't have a tannoy....
>
>(ObClarification: tannoy is a UK nounification of a brand name, the Tannoy
>name being proudly displayed on loudspeakers in times gone by.  It came
>to mean any public address system.)
>

Just as an aside to this:  we had a houseful of Brits earlier this
year.  We didn't plan to, they just seemed to arrive all at once.
We decided to drive them around for a week, a little western trip
of about 2000 miles (Yosemite, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Grand
Canyon).  During the trip we had to go through a lot of discussion
about how weird the US is. :-)  Or *I* did, since I was the only
full-blooded American there.  One of them made an extremely condescending
comment that "Americans are always making words out of brand names."  
I got a laugh out of that one.  He'd just used tannoy in his
previous sentence.
From: mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: The vagaries of electoral politics (was Re: Rule Britannia)
Date: 17 Nov 92 09:50:42 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London, UK.

From: gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry)
>Let me see now... (consults program)... in Sutton the Tories got
>55.2% of the vote and the LibDems got 33.8% .  Thus it would
>need a 10.7% swing to the LibDems next time for them to take
>the seat.  I'm not saying this is impossible -- there were
>bigger swings at the last election -- but it does mean that
>the LibDems are unlikely to take Sutton in the near future.

This has to be put in the context of the media, including the
supposedly neutral BBC, failing to report the Lib Dems' case
properly. Not once on the BBC during the election did I ever
hear discussion of the fact that in a substantial part of the
country it was a Tory-LibDem fight, not a Tory-Labour fight,
the election was discussed entirely in Tory v. Lanbour terms.
The BBC even brought back the "swingometer" which totally
discounts the LibDems.

As an example of its bias, the supposedly neutral BBC will
frequently run the "Any Questions" or "Question Time" political
discussion programs from parts of the country where the Lib
Dems are the main opposition party, but not have a Lib Dem
speaker. Imagine the outcry if they were to run it from
Scotland without an SNP speaker.

If the situation in places like Sutton were fairly reported, my
feeling is that the vote would be a lot closer.

Matthew Huntbach
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british