HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: saarinen@sp1.csrd.uiuc.edu (Sirpa Saarinen)
Subject: Re: Cars, Cities and Choices
Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 18:16:59 GMT

jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:

here someone else (I could not identify the writer):
>	   I think that the name was the _National_ City Lines. The
>   GM-led consortium included Firestone Tire and Mack Truck. Firestone
>   Tire's excuse is rather obvious :-), most rail vehicles run on steel
>   wheels without rubber tires. However, there is less excuse for GM and
>   Mack Truck, which could have gotten into the trolley business without
>   too much trouble.

>I suspect this is a tale that has grown in the telling.  Where is
>the evidence.  Also did GM take over Adelaide too?
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305

Maybe JMC would like to check what happened to the Los Angeles, CA,
public underground rail system, which was bought by such a "tell-tale"
company? At least LA is in California, and not in Australia.

Sirpa Saarinen
saarinen@csrd.uiuc.edu
From: jym@remarque.berkeley.edu (Jym Dyer)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Different Transit Plans for Different Population Clusters
Date: 24 Jul 1992 16:37:46 GMT
Organization: The Naughty Peahen Party Line
	<1992Jul17.175627.29364@cco.caltech.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU's message of 17 Jul 92 17:56:27 GMT

>> In Boston (with 1/4-decent public transport system) people
>> can get along fine without a car if they are near a T line.
>> If not, they need a car.
> But, of course, if the population density is somewhat lower,
> mass transit doesn't work nearly as well.

=o= You speak of "mass transit" as if it's all the same.
Different types of mass transit serve different needs.  Think
of the _status_quo_, for example:  big roads for heavily-
travelled routes and smaller roads for lightly-travelled routes.

=o= It's not hard to apply this to, say, heavy- and light-rail
passenger trains.  The better mass transit systems follow this
approach.  The best one I've been on was in Munich, which let me
get almost anywhere I wanted to in Bavaria -- especially if I
brought a bicycle along.

=o= The system in Boston isn't that bad.  Heavy rail commuter
trains supplanted the highway spurs in and out of the city.
A not-quite-light-rail system handled the higher population
density within the city.  The outlying towns usually only had
buses, which are of course not so great -- but a series of
light rail lines would make the system almost ideal.
    <_Jym_>
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: ZERO Nuclear impact (was: Is car pooling for real? etc)
Date: 27 Jul 92 20:36:05 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <JMC.92Jul25195926@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>   >I dunno about Greenpeace, but Ralph Nader did try to ban microwave
>   >ovens for that reason.  If Nader is responsible for the slower
>   >penetration of microwave ovens in the U.S. as compared to Japan,
>   >he killed a lot of children.  No-one has been injured by a microwave
>   >oven, but the conventional cooking that might have been displaced
>   >partly by microwave cooking has proabably killed a few hundred

>What Nader was raising alarms about was not the ordinary accident of a
>child being scalded by hot food, which presumably is possible, no
>matter how the food is heated, but rather being injured by the

Wrong. Microwave ovens can heat food unevenly and can cause, e.g., baby milk
to be heated to a dangerous temperature in seconds. Thus, the article I
cited, the article which you were too busy to look up, concerned injuries
which were *specific* to microwave ovens.  When you write:
>   >he killed a lot of children.  No-one has been injured by a microwave
>   >oven, but the conventional cooking that might have been displaced

You are repeating a false statement.

>microwaves.  However, it seems to me that the probability of this kind
>of accident is reduced for microwave ovens, because there isn't the
>possibility of the child toppling the pot on himself by pulling on the
>handle while it is heating.  Nor is microwave cooking subject to
>accidents associated with open flames or with the fact that an
>electric burner is hot long after it has been turned off.

These kind of "probability" estimates, based on rigorous analysis of
what "it seems", are not particularly valuable.

-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.physics,sci.energy
Subject: Re: ZERO Nuclear impact (was: Is car pooling for real? etc)
Date: 25 Jul 92 12:48:29 GMT
Followup-To: sci.environment
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <1992Jul24.205505.14538@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>     Just an observation.  'Let's have' is a command economy (communist)
>     concept.  We do things a bit more efficiently 'round these parts.
>     It makes little sense to do such generation unless it is a priori
>     profitable or competetive with the utilities.  There is little
>     intrinsic worth in an expensive distribution of power production
>     to millions of sites, and there are many many drawbacks.

We do things more efficiently around here? In what way is the AEC/NRC
an "efficient" organization? In what way have the major investors in
nuclear energy power supplies, e.g. WHOOPS and TVA, been either "efficient"
or not part of a "command economy". In what way have the major manufacturers
of US power plants been either "efficient" or under market discipline?
Is it your contention that when vast military/government
contracting corporations like Westinghouse and GE  make deals with the
TVA to construct power plants which will use fuel enriched by the DOE,
mined on Federal land, to be put in power plants regulated by the AEC/NRC
with liablity limits set by federal fiat, and to be operated
by legally mandated monopolies, under federal laws pre-empting local and
state oversight , that this process is
in any ways "efficient" or  "market driven"? Arguments which find 
mass transit and government subsidies for efficiency to be "big brother"
while finding the corporate/state organization of nuclear energy to be
"free-market" driven, are truly strange.


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu

Xref: sparky sci.environment:9864 sci.physics:11495
From: johncobb@ut-emx.cc.utexas.edu (John W. Cobb)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Cost of public vs. private transportation
Date: 23 Jul 92 18:34:49 GMT
Reply-To: johncobb@ut-emx.cc.utexas.edu (John W. Cobb)
Followup-To: sci.environment
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin

In article <21978@venera.isi.edu>, finn@isi.edu (Greg Finn) writes:
|>In article <1992Jul20.222201.27582@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I.
Petrich) writes:
|>
|>>... In constrast, bus fare to LLNL from my
|>>home is $7.50 a week, and a regular commute (5 days a week) to
|>>Berkeley by bus and BART would cost nearly $30/week, and BART never
|>>gets stuck in traffic jams. ...
|>
|>	I see.  There are no public subsidies of BART.  The system
|>	is entirely capitalized by the fees paid by users.
|>	This is a remarkable achievement.  You did determine this
|>	in calculating your costs, surely you didn't forget it?
|>
|>	Unlike auto/truck transportation and maintenance systems
|>	which primarily are paid by user fees and purchases, mass
|>	transit systems in most countries are extremely	heavily
|>	subsidized.
|>
|>	Not true you say ... (not for Honk Kong, I agree) but I
|>	challenge you to a cost accounting duel.  Please determine
|>	all the costs to the voters for BART then divide by the number
|>	of rider-years and compare it to your ticket costs.  If they
|>	are the same as your ticket + a percent or two then I apologise
|>	for being a fool.  Why might I be suspicious?
|>

And don't forget to include costs of additional road construction which is
obviated by the existence of mass transit facilities. This is probably
more important than you realize. Recent APTA literature claims that the
main use of mass transit is during peak commuting hours. That means the
roads are already packed full and that if you want to replace mass
transit with personal autos, that they are going to require immediate
increases in traffic capacity. The entire rationale behind both local
taxes and federal subsidies for mass transit is precisely to address
these public issues (everyone pays for roads, everyone has to breath
the carbon0monoixed from the cars, etc). These subsidies go to the
general welfare, not to the riders pocket. Sure mass transit can be a
fiasco wityh very little ridership, but I am convinced that if properly
managed subsidized mass transit has a positive impact on the community.

|>	Nothing succeeds like real data.  In LA the subway costs
|>	300 M$/mile, exclusive of maintenance charges. {...}

Also please include data on cost per mile of freeway construction
and factor relating mass transit utilization to decreased road
construction. Oh, and don't forget to include medical care costs
associated with auto emissions. Hmmm, maybe mass transit will save
money in a complete analysis?

john w. cobb
jwc@fusion.ph.utexas.edu
Xref: sparky sci.environment:9891 sci.psychology:3220
From: magnus@jaist-east.ac.jp (Magnus Halldorsson)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Whale rights - Science and sentimen
Date: 24 Jul 92 00:39:18 GMT
	<1992Jun29.180530.11377@techbook.com>
	<1992Jul2.103818.41228@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
	<1992Jul23.092233.8083@alf.uib.no> <BruM2H.4LD@apollo.hp.com>
Organization: School of Info. Science, JAIST Hokuriku, Japan

In article <BruM2H.4LD@apollo.hp.com> heff@ki.ch.apollo.hp.com (God of Thunder) writes:

   Given the native language
   complexity and capability that many whales and dolphins have, and the 
   complexity of their social interactions and relationships, along with 
   the complexity of interactions and relationships that people have been
   able to develop with these creatures, I would agree that they could be
   classified as having a 'high order intelligence'.  

   [...]But I have no difficulty saying that the complexity of their language
   and societies are at LEAST as complex as apes or gorillas.

The information I have is very much contradictory. I quote from [1]:

  "David Gaskin made a thorough review of all the evidence for social
evolution, communication and intelligence among cetaceans. He concluded
that observations of free-living animals at the time did not support
the idea that they have a complicated social life. He says there is
"little evidence of behavioural complexity beyond that of a herd of cows
or deer". 
   [...] studies of cetacean sounds do not even begin
to offer evidence that they have anything approaching a language.
There is just not enough variety in the sounds."

I would be interested in references to conflicting results.

Magnus

[1] Dr. Margaret Klinowska. "Are cetaceans especially smart".
	New Scientist 29 October 1988, pp.46-47.
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: blagdon@engin.umich.edu (Kenneth James Clark )
Subject: Re: Is car pooling for real? (was Re: Are bikes really less polluting?)
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 09:56:20 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

In article <JMC.92Jul22195412@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>
>I have no objection to allowing people to work odd hours if they want to.
>I have done it whenever I have not had family responsibilities.  However,
>I believe that at present the number of people who work odd hours is
>larger than the number who want to - even with night shift premiums.

You believe.  Yes John, we know you believe.  Do you have any evidence
that your belief is based in fact?  

>Some of the proposals I have seen on these newsgroups are not at all
>voluntary.  In order to even out traffic they would compel people to
>work odd hours.  Let me point out that any manufacturing business that
>wants its employees to have shorter commutes can work odd hours if it
>wants to.  I believe that the reason they don't is that the employees
>prefer the longer commutes to working odd hours.

The current system has many facets that are not at all voluntary.  Just
like now, anyone who doesn't like the work hours can quit.  That's their
only option now, isn't it?  You believe again.  Do you have any evidence
that manufacturers are listening to their employees and not their bottom
line?  Why are there so many flex-time and modified work-week arrangements
if they're so unpopular?  Is everything and everybody coercive?

>Utopians are almost always coercive.

So is the current system and the social engineers who put it into place.

Ken
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.physics
From: ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards)
Subject: Re: Cost of public vs. private transportation
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 92 09:53:16 GMT

In article <1992Jul30.134701.942@sc2a.unige.ch>, cornell@sc2a.unige.ch writes:
|> In article <1992Jul29.073106.18630@leland.Stanford.EDU>, ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards) writes:
[.....]
|> > 
|> This isn't a flame, but I always find the type of comment "in europe they're
|> (almost) as advanced as us" to be amusing (I also realize that your posting 
|> in particular was not intended to be patronizing).

It was a *very* small attempt at some dry humor ... I should have used a
smiley face.

|> I agree entirely with 
|> the sympathies of your posting.

|> On Sunday, I'm going to take the 12-hour-or-so train journey to Berlin
|> (to a physics conference), even though I have a car that is capable of 
|> taking me there LEGALLY at faster than 110mph.  The stress involved in 
|> driving that distance is only part of the reason.

Yes, actually, having spent a fair portion of time in Europe over the
past 25 years I am always amazed when people say that the standard
of living is higher in the U.S. ... for the life of me I just don't see
it (of course I did spend most of my time in Switzerland... =-) ).

For me, the trains in Europe are more than just a way to get from
one place to another, the perspective you get from a train is unique.
The last time in Europe I was with some friends who persuaded me to
rent a car rather than take the trains ... I'll always regret
that decision.

Larry Edwards
edwards@sunrise.stanford.edu
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.physics
From: ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards)
Subject: Re: Cost of public vs. private transportation
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 07:31:06 GMT

In article <22060@venera.isi.edu>, finn@isi.edu (Greg Finn) writes:
|> In article ledwards@leland.Stanford.EDU (Laurence James Edwards) writes:
|> 
|> >Sure they are not pure subsidies, but on the other hand fuel taxes are not
|> >pure use taxes. I spend a very small amount of time driving on interstates,
|> >so a very small percentage of the federal gas tax I pay can be considered
|> >a use tax ... the rest is pure subsidy ...
|> 
|> 	The taxes are also used for local roads and intra-city
|> freeways ... not just interstates.  The use taxes are a very good
|> approximation to a fair use tax.  Those who don't drive as a rule
|> don't pay.  Those who do drive do pay.  If you used only private roads
|> you would have a gripe.

As I said, at the current time I spend almost all of my time driving on
non-interstate roads. The point was that, as a result, the great majority
of *any* money that comes out of my fuel taxes and goes towards
interstate highway development or maintenance is in fact a subsidy ...
a gripe made on this basis is just as valid as any gripe about subsidized
mass transit.

|> >About social engineering ... if I remember correctly some rubber company
|> >(Goodyear?) did a little social engineering in L.A. helping along the
|> >demise of mass transit down there.
|> 
|> 	The alternate press in LA tossed this into the dustbin a few
|> years ago. A study of timetables demonstrated the the Red-Line was
|> much slower than autos over most of the same routes.  Station waiting
|> time made it less convenient for the majority of users.  Timetable
|> data confirmed that this was true before and after the "conspiracy"
|> supposedly took place.

The story I was thinking of was that some company(ies) involved in the
automobile industry bought up the trolley lines in LA, I never considered
it to be a conspiracy story, just a shrewd business move ... i.e. buy
out your competition.

A study of timetables eh? Now, why would a company want to buy a trolley line
if it was evident from a quick study of the timetables that it would be going
out of business anyway?

Sure, an automobile probably got you there quicker ... if you happened
to own one. I'll grant that mass-transit would probably have withered away
as a privately run enterprise, but I still assert that its demise was
quickened ... so it is still social engineering. Also, I'd just like to point
out that convenience is in the eye of the beholder, if you like to read the
paper on the way to work then a car is not very convenient unless you have
a chauffeur. Last time I was in Europe (1988) I didn't notice any lack of
people riding the mass-transit systems although their automobiles are just
as fast as ours, and certainly faster than trolleys. 

Larry Edwards
edwards@sunrise.stanford.edu
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Clinton, Gore, and the End of the Automobile Age
Date: 29 Jul 92 01:49:42 GMT
Organization: LLNL

In article <1992Jul28.205614.11664@aero.org> foy@aero.org (Richard Foy) writes:

>Of course the main reason that there is no impact is that no one can
>go anywhere in LA anyway. The freeways are a parking lot. The trains
>are non-existant etc.

	Well, trains are on the way :-)

	Three commuter lines to the northern suburbs should be opening
in October, the Red Line subway will be opening in March 1993, and the
Green Line will be opening sometime in 1994, if everything goes well.

>I go out to go somewhere besides the two blocks to the local store
>and at almost any time of the day the freeway traffic is moving quite
>slowly.

	One experiment that would be most interesting: clock your
trips, and find your average speed. It would be interesting to compare
that with the average speed of the Blue Line (try riding the whole
system, just for the Hades of it). This experiment can be repeated for
any other new rail lines that open.

>Give me a good public transportation system any day over the freeways
>of LA. I have lived here a long time and seen many billions of dollars
>spent on freeways and seen the traffic problems almost monotonically
>getting worse.

	I've never lived for any significant length of time in LA, but
I do have a relative who had gotten asthma from the smog there.
From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: ZERO Nuclear impact (was: Is car pooling for real? etc)
Date: 28 Jul 92 17:23:24 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <1992Jul27.171047.4560@aero.org> foy@aero.org (Richard Foy) writes:
>In article <1992Jul27.065946.20057@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>#
>#For once you are absolutely right Victor. Government interference in
>#the power market *has* been a disaster. TVA should be sold. The NRC
>#scaled back. Military and civilian nuclear programs should be
>#totally separated. And all lawyers should be shot. Unfortunately, it's
>#not a perfect world, and we have to deal with what we've got.
>#
>#Gary
>
>I wonder what you would do after all lawyers were shot, and someone burned 
>your house down because of your political views.

Shoot them too.

Gary
Xref: sparky sci.environment:10320 sci.psychology:3357
From: tkelley@hel4.brl.mil (Troy Kelley)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Whale rights - Science and sentimen
Date: 30 Jul 92 18:53:57 GMT
Followup-To: sci.environment
Organization: HEL


> (Note that a very simple way to comunicate with us would be to kill
> swimmers and recreational boaters near whaling centers.  Real simple
> and doesn't require similar environments or anything.
> 
> >But I have no difficulty saying that the complexity of their language
> >and societies are at LEAST as complex as apes or gorillas.
> 
> I challenge you to present eveidence for any language on the part of
> either cetaceans or apes and gorillas.
> 
> In general, I have no difficulty saying anything I want.  The more
> imortant question is whether or not your beliefs approximate reality.
> Given that you seem to believe that whales, apes, and gorillas have
> languages I think most of us can dismiss you as ignorant.

The top statement here is totally ridiculous. First off it implies that
killing another species is somehow intelligent. Secondly, you are 
using your measurement of intelligence to judge another creature.

There is substantial evidence that both cetaceans and apes use language. 
In fact, I have seen documentaries that show apes and chimps which have learned
American Sign Language. The apes have even been teaching their offspring
the sign language. I have seen evidence of dolphines being taught to
press different symbollic buttons in there tanks to form sentences to 
communicate with their trainers. So I think this would be at least
as intelligent as a person learning a foriegn language.

I think the point here is that there are different kinds of intelligence.
If you look at human intelligence it is shaped because we are at
odds with our environment. We have learned to build houses and make
clothing and weapons to protect ourselves from our environment. A naked
human is dead in the wild. Dolphins don't have this problem, and apes
and chimps are both considerably stronger than humans, and climb trees
much easier than we do. We have a huge inferiority complex based on our
physical inferiority. We make up for it mentally, or perhaps we
overcompensate.
Newsgroups: sci.environment