HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Who ignores science?
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 18:35:34 GMT

In article <JMC.92Dec29101327@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>In article <1992Dec29.173620.28293@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>   In response to those who only complain about environmentalists ignoring 
>   science:
>
>	   WASHINGTON - U.S. Forest Service officials are suppressing a
>	   report they had requested of their own wildfile biologists
>	   on the Tongass National Forest in Alaska in order to allow
>	   timber companies to continue logging the largest and oldest
>	   trees.
>
>	   The report, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,
>	   concluded that unless logging operations are scaled back by
>	   nearly a fourth, several species of animal, including
>	   goshawks, owls, brown bears and wolves, are at risk of
>	   disappearing from large parts of the forest.  All are found
>	   nowhere else in the world.
>
>	   The biologists, who have worked for the last two years to
>	   document the wildlife species that need mature, old-growth
>	   forests to survive, say they have been given poor performance
>	   reviews, directed to water down their findings and told not
>	   to release their report.
>   -- 
>   ==============================================================================
>   A thought for the holidays:
>      "Wine is living proof that God loves us and likes to see us happy"
>	   - Benjamin Franklin			dean@vexcel.com
>
>One possibility is that the report is good science being ignored by
>the administration for the benefit of its friends in the lumber
>industry.
>
>The other possibility is that the report is biased by the fact that
>most Government employees are quite a ways to the left of any
>Republican administration.  This phenomenon always generates tension
>between the holders of the 6,000 policy jobs that an administration
>controls and the rest of the 6,000,000 Federal employees.  The policy
>makers control the issuance of reports, but the underlings can always
>leak them to sympathetic media or tell their friends what to ask for
>using the FOIA.
>
>Is it clear which is true in this case?

As to the employees being to the left or right
of the policy makers, how is this relevent to "good science"?
Is good science left-wing or right-wing?  Are the 6000 political
appointees more likely to know good science than then biologists
they employ?

In any case, whether they ignore the report
because of policy preference or favoritism, it would still be
ignoring "good science".  There may even be acceptable economic
reasons to ignore science for a while, but it should be recognized
as such.

>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
>


-- 
==============================================================================
A thought for the holidays:
   "Wine is living proof that God loves us and likes to see us happy"
	- Benjamin Franklin			dean@vexcel.com
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Subject: Re: Development policies
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 20:03:16 GMT

In article <1hni12INNnna@gap.caltech.edu> carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU writes:
>In article <1992Dec21.224026.28946@vexcel.com>, dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>>By "giving to those who cannot [produce]", I assume you are referring
>>to corrupt inefficient people.  These people are the minority in such
>>countries and collectivist policies are usually designed to help
>>the majority.
>
>Sure, they're "designed" to help the majority.  How many succeed in doing that?
>The road to hell....

I specifically used the word "designed" because such policies are not
necessarily successful.  While you and Gary are needlessly rubbing in
this point, you ignore my point.  World Bank policies are designed to
provide a market for the industries in the developed world that 
provide its funding.  To the degree that they are supposed to help
common people these policies are trickle-down at best.  Such policies
that purport to help the poor people in undeveloped countries are
hardly collectivist any more than a capital gains tax cut is - 
whether or not it does what is claimed by its proponents.

>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Carl J Lydick | INTERnet: CARL@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU | NSI/HEPnet: SOL1::CARL
>
>Disclaimer:  Hey, I understand VAXen and VMS.  That's what I get paid for.  My
>understanding of astronomy is purely at the amateur level (or below).  So
>unless what I'm saying is directly related to VAX/VMS, don't hold me or my
>organization responsible for it.  If it IS related to VAX/VMS, you can try to
>hold me responsible for it, but my organization had nothing to do with it.


-- 
==============================================================================
A thought for the holidays:
   "Wine is living proof that God loves us and likes to see us happy"
	- Benjamin Franklin			dean@vexcel.com
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 01 Jan 93 06:53:27 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Dec31.203947.18044@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp writes:

 > Excuse me, but in many situations a 22 year plan is clerly impossible.
 > For example, do you think that Germany in 1939 could have come up
 > with a 22 year campaign plan?

Actually, they had a 1,000 year plan if you care to read just a little
grade-school history, and were hell-bent on achieving it through armed
might.

Like the Japanese, they ended up being bombed out of that idea of
using armed might, and said thank you very much to the Americans for
all that timely Marshall Plan aid and military protection instead.

Comments have already been made on the vintage of German industry.

All this is not intended to "win" an argument with you, Mr Friedman,
merely to your edification and hopefully to the long term (600 year)
viability and prosperity of Oracle Corporation, yes?

Gil

Xref: sparky sci.environment:14006 talk.environment:5277
From: 471-1@air.atmo.arizona.edu (E. Shane Jimerfield)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment
Subject: Re: Why do they hate us?
Date: 30 Dec 92 00:13:01 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson

In article <1hnh05INNnna@gap.caltech.edu> carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU writes:
>In article <1992Dec21.225740.20062@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>, 471-1@air.atmo.arizona.edu (E. Shane Jimerfield) writes:
>>You are right. I admitt error. However, I still have a problem with the
>>large build up of waste. Until there is a working solution to this
>>problem we should consider an alternative, and I don't mean the burning of
>>fossil fuels.
>
>Well, fine.  Then do us a favor and die.  After all, that will reduce *YOUR*
>use of resources.
>
Also, what about the WASTE?>>>>>>>>>
Inaddition I am not an English major, therefore, I find it hard to
combat your witty use of the English language. So, please try not to
humiliate me in front of all these people.
thanks 


-- 
Take 'er easy.... Shane
.watch out for the lightning (a large-scale high-tension natural electric
discharge in the atmosphere)......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
..informal... a sudden usually improbable stroke of fortune.......
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker)
Newsgroups: sci.environment,ca.environment,ba.transportation
Subject: Re: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Date: 21 Dec 92 21:25:16 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Greg A Buechler (gb@cup.portal.com) wrote:
: I'l add my $0.02 worth on this one.
: 
: If we were to charge the full economic cost to ALL items used, mined,
: manufactured, etc. we wouldn't be in the present condition at all.
: 
: Not just autos, everything is to some degree paid for at costs far 
: below their tru economic cost if you factor in the environmental cost/
: damage.  

	You read Al Gore's book.


	Jim Acker
	jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Development policies
Distribution: world
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 92 15:49:34 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Dec18.164247.17939@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP writes:

 > This type of increasing deficit financing would be seen as a red flag
 > by any rational private investor. This kind of government borrowing and 
 > international (government financed) lending is a recipe for disaster as 
 > the above quote shows. The World Bank and the IMF have few success stories 
 > they can claim for their policies which are founded on collectivist and 
 > statist thinking by academic financiers playing with money for whose steward-
 > ship they are not held responsible.
 >  
 > The alternative, of course, is for countries to make themselves attractive
 > for private foreign investment and development. This brings new jobs and
 > income to workers, tax revenue to the government, and a climate of prosperity
 > that fosters other investors, domestic and foreign, to start more businesses
 > catering to the new found flows of wealth.

Hm, this alternative has already been tried, giving rise to the desire
for "collectivist and statist" intervention. In those days, however,
countries attracting such "private foreign investment" did so quite
unintentionally, and there is doubt that with hindsight they would do
it intentionally today.

Some choice between incompetence and greed you have to offer. I think
I shall just take relative prosperity including the outside dunny (my
dear wife's ensuite notwithstanding), thank you very much.

--
Gil Hardwick                          Internet:  gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au
Consulting Ethnologist                              Fidonet:  3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                         Voice:  (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.energy
From: miller@hmsp04.wg3.waii.com (Griff Miller X7114)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Why do they hate us?
Date: 22 Dec 92 22:38:28 GMT
Organization: Western Geo. - Div of Western Atlas Intn'l Inc., Houston, TX

In article <1992Dec22.063847.17417@truffula.sj.ca.us> cls@truffula.sj.ca.us (Cameron L. Spitzer) writes:
>In article <b7PS02gG2ft901@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> jjh00@diag.amdahl.com
> (Joel Hanes) writes:

>>No one.  The reactor accident at Three Mile Island cannot be shown
>>to have harmed any person in any way whatsoever.  Fact.

>Clearly, Mr. Hanes is not a General Public Utilities ratepayer;
>that group is still paying.
>The financial damage to the community served by the reactor was
>substantial: electric rates rose by over 40% as the operator passed
>some of the costs of the failure to its consumers.
>A reasonable person might conclude that community was harmed.

A reasonable person would more likely conclude that utilities in
general tend to pass such costs to consumers, not just nuclear
power plants.

Besides, who can say that all the increases were due to the TMI
incident?

>Nor, it seems, is Mr. Hanes an investor in nuclear power.  (Excluding 
>emotional investment, of course!)  That coverup (you do remember the 
>coverup, don't you, Joel?) and its failure dealt a crippling blow to 
>the dying nuclear fission business: 

So what's that got to do with the viability of nuclear power? The
coverup was not caused by a faulty reactor, it was caused by people.
You talk as if it were a direct result of nuclear technology.

>A reasonable person might conclude the GPU bondholders were harmed.
>Then again, we could say their loss was a well-deserved lesson.

Talk about emotional investment. You're saying that people that
had nothing to do with the coverup got their just desserts? Good
grief.
--
Griff Miller > miller@monarch.wg3.waii.com < use this for email.

          *** My opinions are mine, not Western's. ***

   "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but 
    fools despise wisdom and discipline."   - Proverbs 1:7
From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Sheep in Organizations
Date: 1 Jan 93 19:06:37 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <1992Dec31.164654.9755@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>In article <58022@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>>In article <1992Dec25.163305.1@acad3.alaska.edu> nsmca@acad3.alaska.edu writes:
>>>> Because many of us value the preservation of some wilderness on the
>>>> north american continent, and we would like *our* public land to be used
>>>> that way. 
>
>>>Well many off don't care for your ideas of "public land" if you so much want
>>>public land and parks, then spend some of your own money and buy land and make
>
>>Sigh. We already own the land. You want to change the ownership, put up
>>some money. It's really sickening how many people want to get something for
>>nothing.
>
>Victor, your lack of reading comprehension is truly amazing.  The
>original proposal, which you, of course, deleted, was to auction off
>the land.
>I am not an official Oracle spokesman.  I speak for myself and no one else.


Is it really true that you are employed by a competing data base company
to create ill-will among potential oracle customers?
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu
From: ad376@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Patricia Dedula)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: pollution from woodburning fireplace
Date: 30 Dec 1992 02:20:45 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc10.ins.cwru.edu



My neighbor has a woodburning fireplace which he burns from 
morning to night.  It is polluting the air around my house to the
point where I ca
can hardly breathe when I am outside and it is getting into m
my house.  Could anyone tell me what could be causing this 
pollution.  Could he be burning the wrong kind of wood?  What 
could my neighbor do to eliminate or cut down the strong smell
that his coming from his fireplace and surrounding my house.
I noticed even his chimney is getting black.

-- 
Pat Dedula 
May you have Peace, Love, and Happiness forever ...
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker)
Subject: Re: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 15:11:01 GMT


	With this interesting thread having degenerated to a near lock,
I had the following thought, to put some numbers on the issue.

	If the gas tax were increased by $1.00/gallon, would this induce
you to change your driving habits substantially?

	If so, how?

	If your driving habits did not change, how much would the
increase cost you in a year?

	(I'm curious as to where the "can't take it any more" point
lies, and it may be different in various regions of the country.)

	For me:  such an increase would cause me to attempt to
carpool at least twice a week, increase transit use for weekend
jaunts to the city, and lobby for an improved community bus service.
The current service is mainly utilized by the elderly.  I might
also try to buy groceries daily (one bag) instead of weekly (four
bags).  And thank God I'm getting married in March (no more 45-mile
drives to my beloved's home!)

	Cost (getting out my calculator)

	About $800 per year.   Somewhat less if marriage decreases
my average mileage.  I'm getting much more than that back this year due
to a home purchase in 1992, so the immediate need is not a strong
incentive.

	Any other perspectives?

	Jim Acker
	jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 01 Jan 93 06:44:29 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1hvbc8INNa6h@spim.mti.sgi.com> mpolen@suntory.mti.sgi.com writes:

 > Who said its a secret.  Only you seemed to have missed the point that they
 > have adopted strategies that run for decades.  In the US, long-term means
 > till the end of the fiscal quarter.  In Japan it means till the objectives
 > are achieved.

Indeed, Toyota have invested over $US1 billion entirely rebuilding
their Australian operation with *no* prospect of any return at all
for more than ten years. Their plan is to be top dog as competitors
pursuing inherently sort-term goals finally run down through the
combined effects of technological redundancy and depreciation at a
time when the technology the Japanese are installing now will be at
its most productive.

Australia has already suffered from that mistake, thinking we were
clever getting hold of so much European manufacturing plant as part
of the spoils of war, only to discover very quickly that we then had
to compete on the world market using old technology against the new
up-to-date of the so-called vanquished. Now we invite the Japanese in
to ensure a local base for the supply of automobiles we need on other
economic grounds, but we still keep one another at arms length.

Our acute embarrassment might have been lessened had we deployed the
war time plant as the basis for research and development of new plant
as the Japanese had done initially, but we did not even do that and it
all just began falling apart in the end.

All the astute investors of the day knew just where to put their money
then too. They do again today, but with a little more hindsight.

Gil
From: louis@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca (Louis Schmittroth)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: NYT article on Japanese breeder
Date: 22 Dec 92 03:10:42 GMT

jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker) writes:

>John McCarthy (jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU) wrote:

My advice to the Japanese:  start buying Candu reactors from Canada.
Safe, cheap, proven.   I would like the two of you to tell me why
they shouldn't.  I think I know why they don't, and it lies deep in
the psyche of Japan.  

Response?  And, John, we both favor using the nuclear fission option
as a *partial* way to avoid the possibly disastrous effect of CO2 build
up.
--
Louis Schmittroth louis@cs.athabascau.ca
NW 1/4 18 67 21 W4 Alberta.
From: mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Save the Planet and the Economy at the Same time!
Date: 21 Dec 92 15:03:46 GMT
Organization: NCR Engineering and Manufacturing Atlanta -- Atlanta, GA

In <1992Dec21.041755.4485@pbhye.PacBell.COM> mjvande@pbhye.PacBell.COM (Mike Vandeman) writes:

[Much drivel about how the world would be better off if only we could get
someone else to pay, deleted.]

>                                   Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.

Mike, you are a perfect example of how earning an advanced degree does not
stop somebody from being a perfect and absolute idiot.

-- 
Mob rule doesn't become any prettier, just because the mob start to call itself
a government.
It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money.
Mark.Wilson@AtlantaGA.NCR.com
Newsgroups: sci.environment
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Sheep in Organizations
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<JMC.92Dec23184831@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <58002@dime.cs.umass.edu>
Date: 24 Dec 92 18:02:45

In article <58002@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:

   In article <JMC.92Dec23184831@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
   >Victor Yodaiken's Massachusetts is in much better shape than Alaska in
   >that almost all of the land in Massachusetts is in private hands.  It

   This is such typical right-wing "my eyes are closed so you can't see me"
   nonsense that it boggles the mind.  There is essentially no wilderness left
   in Massachusetts, but there is an extensive state park system which
   preserves much of what we have left. Of course the Feds have done a terrible
   job managing our national parks, but it is foolish to draw from this the
   lesson that private ownership is more likely to preserve wilderness and 
   open space than public ownership.


   >is unfortunate that so much land in the West is in the hands of the
   >Federal Government.  The Federal Government should auction off 3/4
   >of its land in the Western states including Alaska.

   To what end? Instead the government should start acting to preserve the
   property of the general public, instead of allowing it to be degraded for
   the profit of a few well connected welfare ranchers, miners,
   loggers, and tourist concessionaires.

   >Alaskans should get their Congrressmen to introduce a bill to do that.
   >Even if it doesn't pass the first time, it will be fun to hear the
   >statists like Yodaiken howl.

   Statist? Your logical deductions are not truth preserving.

Well, Yodaiken wants to keep the land in Government hands, and he
regards people who might buy the land as "a few well connected welfare
ranchers, miners, loggers, and tourist concessionaires."  That's
pretty statist.  Also his posting is as close to a howl as we commonly
get on Usenet.

--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Distribution: world
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 11:20:15 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Dec28.170740.17094@oracle.us.oracle.com> mfriedma@uucp writes:

 > The one for my department identifies one key technology and 3 key
 > markets that we should become leaders in.  I have target dates for
 > beginning development of our flagship products for each and target
 > dates for beginning sales in the US/Canada, the rest of the First
 > World, the NICs, and the Third World.  I have also identified the
 > market segments which we can expect to sell into most easily and the
 > companies which I think are most likely to compete with us.  Despite
 > its vagueness it is the most confidential document I have produced
 > while at Oracle.

Perhaps we should send you to Hong Kong for ten years or so, to learn
about doing business. There you will learn how patiently to build up
relationships, such that anytime you come up with a product they will
buy from you anyway. Because they know you, and how you can be trusted
to look after them during whatever transactions take place.

 > The one for my career identifies three strategic products that I can
 > position myself to build while at Oracle.  Each succeeding one is
 > larger than the last.  Each will leverage sales of other Oracle
 > products.  Two of them will allow Oracle to enter new markets that we
 > are not currently a player in using our existing products as a base,
 > both to build the technology and to provide a receptive audience.

Well, in Hong Kong they will probably also teach you not to be so
self-interested, to sit their pulling levers. They will want to know
more about your eldest son, what education he is receiving, and what
position he will take up with what enterprise when, and the extent to
which he during his lifetime will act to fulfil your own incompleted
life's work. That will require a plan from you of 50-60 years, and
people will be watching how you are settling down to fulfilling it.

 > Those are effective long term plans.  I think your own description of
 > a 100 year plan shows just how ludicrous a 100 year plan would have to
 > be.

Effective in the short term, perhaps. But who cares about the short
term when you must work to position your generations to benefit from
the long term?

How will all your grandchildren, and their children and their children
after them fare long after you are dead and gone? Doesn't that concern
you at all? Don't you leave something for them, that they will honour
you for your longsightedness, generosity and wisdom?

Gil