HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bh419@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ted B Samsel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: All I want for xmas
Date: 17 Dec 1992 14:03:38 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


Fiona say:
I've had this distinction between "sci-fi" and
"sf" drummed into me until I'm blue in the face, so I'd like
to know if I've *still* got it wrong

~~~~
Well, I seem to recall a variant of this "distinction" called
scienti-fiction from back in the '60s. Anyone else recall this
bit of shaving with Occam's razor??
-- 
Ted....
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: joan@med.unc.edu (Joan Shields)
Subject: Re: Making a virtue of complacency
Organization: UNC-CH School of Medicine
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 20:14:13 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.181619.303@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
>In article <BzCrv4.478@dunaad.co.uk> ah@dunaad.co.uk (Alan Hunter) writes:

>>Mike Godwin said:

>>		In fact, it was to promote a sense of this obligation 
>>		that I first promulgated Godwin's Rule. 

>>That word *Rule*, sounds like coercion to me...

>I thought about calling it a "law" (and, indeed, it is often referred
>to as "Godwin's Law"), but wanted to avoid another recurring Usenet
>theme: that lawyers like passing laws. 


I don't believe in laws I didn't get to vote for.

(Anyone know where I got this quote?  A TV show, not a book but a TV show
that was almost as good as a book.)


Wet fishes and Christmas wishes (from hell),

Joan
From: maverick@mahogany.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Literary SF, Nabokov's _Ada_
Date: 20 Dec 92 18:15:43 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: mahogany.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <BzHtz3.1sw@wsrcc.com>, alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken) writes:
|> I, on the other hand, thought _Lolita_ was boring, and trash besides.
|> Did anyone really enjoy the second half, where Q. is leaving clues for
|> poor Humbert to track down?

Yes.  My memory is feeble, but I do think there was a late
zone of the book taking place (perhaps?) in Colorado, which
I lapped up like cream.

|>  What did all the obscure word games have
|> to do with the other primary themes of the book, namely the
|> innocence/shame dichotomy and the difficulty that teens and adults
|> have in understanding one another?

Does something like this need establishing?  I thought the
whole book was fun, for the word games, obscure and otherwise,
and for Nabokov's persona as sophisticated Eurocurmudgeon
in the most grotesque imaginable knotty-pine 50's America.

|> I consider CitR to be quite dated,
|> whereas the experiences of Alexander Portnoy are universal enough to
|> last for a few more decades.

Now *that's* universality!  :)

	Vance
From: june@csc.liv.ac.uk (June Cornelius)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Ngaio Marsh info requested
Date: 14 Dec 92 12:56:58 GMT
Organization: Computer Science, Liverpool University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]

Hi,

	Does anyone have a full list of all the books that Ngaio Marsh has
published.  I don't know much about her, just what I've picked up from
sleeves, but I believe she was (?is?) from New Zealand and has written
*lots* of Murder Mysteries.  I only seem to have found them second-hand
even though there is a new cover-format release of alot of her books in
some big Newsagents now.  Because all my books are second hand, they come
from different publishers and so I can't work out a full list.

Thanks loads,
	
		June
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Subject: Re: Rushdie in Canada
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 01:35:37 GMT

Salman Rushdie's appearance in Canada was a welcome reminder that most
western governments have been positively invertebrate about Iran's vendetta
against him. I would love to see Ottawa turf out the Iranian embassy and
seize Iranian assets to pay for the security costs of protecting Rushdie
while he was on Canadian soil. As long as these guys figure they can get away
with this kind of terrorism, they'll go on practicing it. And our political
leaders obviously prefer to deal with terrorists than defend people who run
afoul of terrorists.


--
Crawford Kilian   Communications Department   Capilano College
North Vancouver BC Canada V7J 3H5
Usenet: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca
Internet: ckilian@first.etc.bc.ca
From: ks@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Kevin Swaggerty)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: WANTED: Books on Warhol
Date: 18 Dec 92 23:29:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: pdxgate.6594
Distribution: na

My interest has been sparked on Andy Warhol.  I know very little about 
him, but would like to know a lot more.  

Can someone please send me some recommendations?  I'd also like books
that show his work as well.  Please send me email or simply post to this
group. 

Bundle's O Thanks,

Kevin
ks@cs.pdx.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------->8


ks@cs.pdx.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: Re: Books for Christmas
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 16:37:48 GMT


Tom Maddox (tmaddox@netcom.com) writes:
 
>       (And of course T*m M****x, H**o--that fabulously post-this-
> and-that, don't mistake it for a doorstop, cheap at half the price,
                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> log-rolling, snotty, cliquish work of don't call it sci-fi unless you
> smile, darling.)
 
Interesting that Tom should mention this.  I couldn't find HALO when I first
went looking for it, because the hardbacks had just been pulled off the
shelves, and the paperback had not yet been issued.
 
So, I bought a reviewer's copy at The Strand at half price.  It is, indeed,
cheap at half the price.
 
After the r.a.b.fest, tonight, we'll get beck to Tom about where to
put those *s.
 
Mark
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Subject: Re: Making notations in your books?
Keywords: books notations 
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 15:25:51 GMT
Organization: Austerlitz, Gershovitz, and Carmichael

Both Benchley and Myles have funny bits about making notations in
books. I tried to do it [make notations] when I was a student but gave it 
up in favor of my impermeable memory. The only notations by Beeg Guys
that I've ever seen are those by Blake and these make him out to be somewhat 
more crank-like than the usual cherubic portrait from the memoirs of 
those who knew him.

I came across one of my few notations a couple of years ago: a telephone number.
It was a local call so, out of curiosity, I dialed it and found that it
belonged to a psychiatric clinic. Never having availed myself of their
services I was stymied. Had the clinic been in existence long? 25 years.
The only solution to the problem that occurred to me was that I had
possibly, feeling lucky, extracted the number from some young lovely
who, fatigued by attentions of this sort, had taken to giving out the
number as an emphatic up-the-sleeve put down. 
-- 
Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> Don't be a stranger.
From: rhogan@phakt.usc.edu (Ron Hogan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Yet another would be Xmas list
Date: 17 Dec 1992 23:45:10 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: phakt.usc.edu

Here's a list of books that either are on the Xmas list I sent
out to my grandmother, that I'm planning to get with the money
that the relatives who have no idea or worry what I want will
give, or already have and think are cool:

1) This is Orson Welles, Orson Welles with Peter Bogdanovich.
2) The Hacker Crackdown, Bruce Sterling.
3) The Embarassment of Riches, Simon Schama.
4) White Jazz, James Ellroy.
5) The Rachel Papers, Martin Amis (finally out in Vintage Int'l paperback).
6) Inner Views, David Breskin (interviews Coppola, Lee, Stone, Burton
   Cronenberg, Altman, and Lynch).
7) Murther and Walking Spirits, Robertson Davies (also finally in pb).
8) The Portable Beat Reader, various authors (Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg etc)

And if any paperback editions of either of the first two of William
Vollmann's Seven Dreams come out in paperback in this country, I'll
buy them then and there.

Also to be noted-- I may try to wade through Harlot's Ghost (in the pb
edition) over vacation.

And you can never go wrong with Lewis Shiner's SLAM.  I personally find
it reprehensible that Douglas Coupland seems to have become the literary
spokesman for our generation while Shiner's much better IMHO is virtually
ignored.

Shit, I almost forgot to put Et Tu, Babe (Mark Leyner) on that list.
Buy it now, while supplies last.  Leyner is one of my top five favorite
authors right now?

The others? Henry Rollins, Greil Marcus, Mike Davis, and James Ellroy.

Signing off at the first signs of disjunctive incoherence,
Ron Hogan
rhogan@usc.edu

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: (none)
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 20:49:57 GMT

NeWS	(setenv NEWSUP; chdir ; news_server-`mach`)
addpath	set path = ( $path !* )
bscSC	scinit -s SCI3278.!* -o SC3278.!* -t !* -d !*.dribble -r
cd	cd !*; sprompt
codeprint	/usr/5bin/pr -n4 -t !* | enscript -h -k -G -fCourier7 -FCourier-Bold7 -b!*
codeprint-d	/usr/5bin/pr -n4 -t !* | enscript -k -G -fCourier7 -FCourier-Bold7 -b!* -p - | rsh dprg-1 lpr
colordump	screendump -f /dev/fb | rasfilter8to1 | pssun -r -s 10.5 8 | lpr
copy	/bin/cp
dir	ls -F -l -t | grep /
dl	(ls -F -l -t)
dmp	/home/dgroner/paths/dump_paths
dprg-1	rlogin dprg-1
em	emacs -nw
emacs	emacs -nw
fis	rlogin fis1
fl	(ls -F -l -t)
h	history
how	answerbook &
ibmftp	/usr/sunlink/bsc3270/ibmftp
inc	cd /home/sfdev/include/mtg
isql	isql -U mbs -P mbs
land	enscript -rhb -fcourier8
ls	(ls -F)
m288	cd /home/common/mbs288
md	cd /home/mbs/data
monodump	screendump -f /dev/bwtwo1 | pssun -s 8 10.5 | lpr
movedir	tar cvf - . | (cd !* ; tar xfBp -)
news_server	news_server-`mach`
path	echo $path
post	mail rec.arts.books-news@newsbase.cs.yale.edu
post2	mail rec-arts-books@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
psg	ps -aux | egrep '!:1|USER' | grep -v grep | more
psql	isql -U rmarathe -P arjun -S MTGDEV
run_p	/home/sf/sftest/bin/portfolio
sccsdev	sccs -d/usr/newyork/DEV/icass
setterm	set term=!*; trset
sprompt	set prompt = "[${hostname}] ${cwd} \!${pchar} "
src	cd /home/sfdev/src/mtg
trash	mv !* ~/.wastebasket
trset	set noglob; eval `tset -Q -s`; unset noglob
ver	expr "`cat /etc/motd`" : "\(.*\)("
what	ps -uax
when	date;cal
where	pwd
who	whoami
why	echo because we like you
x	xloadimage
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Wandering through a bookstore at lunchtime.
Date: 14 Dec 1992 02:52:04 GMT
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
NNTP-Posting-Host: oas.stanford.edu

Fiona Webster writes:

	Ted Samsel writes:

		...i was looking for some TinTin books so
		my son could give them to his cousins and 
		they were clueless.  (even the mgr.).

	Here's an idea for a thread: what's the most curious 
	display of ignorance you've ever encountered on the 
	part of a bookstore employee?  

I think I see Fiona's point, but looking around at the sorry state that
r.a.b finds itself, and bearing in mind that 'tis the season, I'd rather
see a thread on extraordinary knowledge among bookstore personnel that
the rabble might have come across. Its also a chance to show off, since
the extreme arcana must also have been recognized by the rabworm reporting.

							Fido
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,misc.books.technical,alt.internet.services,comp.org.eff.talk
From: tthiel@cs.uiuc.edu (Terry Thiel)
Subject: Re: The Online BookStore Announcement: The Internet Companion
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 00:29:21 GMT

bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>The first simultaneous electronic and print publication of a major new
>book: The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking
>by Tracy LaQuey with Jeanne C. Ryer (Addison-Wesley, $10.95).
>Online copies of Vice-President-elect Al Gore's Foreword and the first
>two chapters of this best-selling book are available via anonymous FTP
>from:

How can it be a best selling book when it just came out?  Ed Krol's Whole
Internet looks much better anyway.
-Terry
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: NYC r.a.b.fest -- final call.
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 19:41:56 GMT


This is the final notice that a r.a.b.fest will be held in New York City.
 
The request was made by Mike Godwin, who is visiting New York.
So far, about 10 people will be coming -- including lurkers,
occasional posters and frequent posters alike.
 
Here are the details:
 
 
        White Horse Tavern
        11th & Hudson
        Wednesday, January 16, 1992
        7:30 - ?
 
The White Horse has a nice selection of beers and ales, as well as decent
burgers (for those who might want some food).
 
Upon entering the tavern, turn left, and head for the back room.
 
If you feel that you need my description to discover the r.a.b table,
I'll tell you that I will be wearing a dark button down shirt, black
jacket, that I am 40, have blue eyes and -- how do I put this -- am
not as thick-haired as many individuals.
 
To make Francis jealous, we might discuss a boating expedition up the FDR,
or some of the newly formed canals, which used to be streets.
 
Mark
 
 
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: vince@cadence.com (Vince Gibboni)
Subject: Re: Every spinster has her day
Organization: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 01:01:56 GMT

jahb@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JENNIFER A. HEISE) writes:
>
> I suspect that the score
> differential has to do with the number of students who in the '60s and '70s
> would have taken "College Alegebra", a course that no longer exists at most
> schools, since most schools give their college-bound a pre-calc courat most
> colleges.  Students are being TIME TESTED on basic arithmetic & algebra that
> they studied the previous year. 


    Actually, I'd take this one step farther: most high schools give their
    college-bound students a year of pre-calc _and_ a year of calculus - 
    the math on the SAT is generally stuff you learned when you were still 
    reading Dr. Seuss (sp?) books (and, by the way, I found _One Fish, Two
    Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish_ to be extremely trenchant). However, I'm not 
    certain that this wasn't always the case. Can anyone who went to high 
    school during, say, the Eisenhower adminstration comment on this ? 
    (I'd ask my parents but they both went to catholic school and are
    therefore only vaguely of the entire math concept).

    And, on the subject, I seem to remember that - at least at one point in
    time - SAT scores were defined so that 500 was the mean and 100 points
    the standard deviation (which pretty much makes the whole SAT-scores-going-
    down thing seem a bit silly). I think that at some point they must have 
    changed scoring systems (the mean is certainly no longer 500). Does anyone
    know when (or if) this happened ? Certainly if they changed their system
    of scoring any comparison of the old and new scores is meaningless.


--
                                                         vince@gda.cadence.com

    Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe
        - John Lennon
From: jcollier@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU (John Donald Collier)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The word "homophobic"
Date: 16 Dec 1992 01:16:41 +1100
Organization: University of Melbourne
NNTP-Posting-Host: ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au

Steve Dyer writes:

>Is this the Suzuki as in "David Suzuki" who appears on CBC in Canada
>and occasionally on PBS in the US?  I must say that his TV persona
>is one of boundless self-satisfied liberal sanctimoniousness, and that's
>means he's pretty intolerable, inasmuchas I consider myself rather left
>of center.

The same. I agree on the evaluation of Suzuki's character. I got 
peeved once when he told a journalist about his family and the
house he had resided, and how attached he was to them, implying he
had been with them all his life. In fact, Suzuki and a friend of mine
swapped families (perhaps better to say the families swapped Suzuki
and my friend) not so long ago. 

>Of course, he might still be right.

His personal character is no reflection of his expertise in genetics.
I mean that as an empirical claim. 

Incidentally, Dick Lewontin was one of the et al. I once walked out on
a hypocritical talk of his on getting the people involved in science,
and I am pretty far to the left, Chomsky style. Perhaps that was the
problem. Lewontin is one of those Marxists who knows better what's
better for people than they do themselves. (Ullica Segerstrale,
"Colleagues in Conflict", Biology and Philosophy 1: 60, reports that
John Maynard Smith, a former Marxist, and red diaper baby said of
Lewontin that he was an old-fashioned mechanistic reductionist who
would like to be a Marxist. The rest of the quote is worth reading in
the original, so I won't give it here.) Chomsky is high handed, but he
always answered my most difficult questions fairly.  I can't say the
same of either of the co-authors mentioned.



-- 
John Collier 			Email: jcollier@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au
HPS -- U. of Melbourne		  	Fax:   +61 3 344 7959
Parkville, Victoria, AUSTRALIA 3052
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: Re: Call For Discussion: rec.arts.books.reviewed
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 05:53:38 GMT



jamesd@techbook.com (James Deibele) writes:

> One of the nice things about rec.arts.books is the free-wheeling nature
> of the discussions, which often jump quickly to subjects only
> tangentially relevant to the book(s) which first provoked this
> discussion.  But one of the bad things about rec.arts.books is the
> free-wheeling nature of the discussions, which ...
 
[This leads up to a call for a new newsgroup for reviews]
 
There is alread an 'alt' group called "alt.books.reviews" -- which serves
this purpose.  It gets very little traffic.  *VERY* little!
 
Now I know that not everyone gets the 'alt' groups -- but enough do that
indicate that this group will go nowhere.
 
If you want to write reviews -- put then in r.a.b -- where they belong.
 
I'll vote "no" to the new group.
 
Mark
 

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: Bruce.Tindall@launchpad.unc.edu (Bruce Tindall)
Subject: Novel title? Greek immigrant to Tennessee
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 02:29:41 GMT

Please e-mail response if possible.  Does anyone know author or title
of novel described on National Public Radio earlier this week about a
Greek immigrant to Tennessee early in this century?  Published recently.
Title was something like "After the War".  Thanks!

--
   The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
     North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
        Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
           internet:  laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
From: spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: A modest proposal (was: Git)
Date: 18 Dec 1992 00:22 CST
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: rigel.tamu.edu
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

>______________________________________________________________________________
>Have you seen the Dave Barry holiday gift guide?  There's a firm in
>Houston which is marketing a possible substitute, which would seem more in
>keeping with Texas aesthetic values (thermal underwear is a little Pacific
>Northwest ecofanatic, don't you think?):  bull scrotums ("each...with a
>convenient leather carrying strap"), which could easily be tailored into
>lederhosen style underthings for the fashion conscious SubGenius.  $35/ea
>from Goode Company Barbecue, (713) 464-1901.  Heaven protect me if Barry
>**INVENTED** this item.  I know **everybody's** gonna want a pair. };)
>Mary Loveless

+-------------------------------------SubG-------------------------------------+
I'll take it under advisement, but truth be told (which seems terribly 
unlikely), that seems to be a tad at odds with what I'm in the market for.
First off, I'm a Texican by geography, but a New Jersian by birth and although 
that's technically Northeastern and I don't think anyone would accuse except 
in jest the Garden State [cough] of being ecofanatical, flannels (such as the 
spiffy blue and white number I'm sporting as I type this) and thermal britches 
are more up my sociological alley than bull scrotums which, on last count, 
weren't up my anything (I guess those angels and ministers of grace got off 
their pinheads and on the ball after all), which sounds like a double entendre 
but isn't.  Really.

Appy polly logies.  I seem to have lost the point of my discussion again.








Yours etc.,



SubGenius



Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: pingleto@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Mike Pingleton)
Subject: re: Silverlock Sequel
Originator: pingleto@troon.ncsa.uiuc.edu
Organization: Nat'l Ctr for Supercomp App (NCSA) @ University of Illinois
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 20:43:19 GMT

That would be _The Moon's Fire Eating Daughter_.  Tasty stuff.

Mike (back to the Peanut Gallery) Pingleton


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto)
Subject: Re: Robertson Davies
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 00:18:18 GMT


hiroki@limerick.cbs.umn.edu (Hiroki Morizono) writes:
 
> Are all Davies' books about celibate/near celibate  protagonists?
> Seemed to notice this in (something something) malice and the
> Deptford trilogy. This was probably reinforced because I had read
> A Prayer for Owen Meany by Irving(?) in which Davies' is mentioned, first,
> and also is, in my mind a similar, uh, environment.
 
Well, he certainly has his share of characters who are celibate or
nearly so.  They are usually surrounded by characters who are much
less so (such as Boy Staunton in the first two books of the Deptford
Trilogy).
 
The characters in MURTHER & WALKING SPIRITS lead normal -- if not
healthy -- sex lives.
 
 
Mark
From: jcollier@ariel.ucs.unimelb.EDU.AU (John Donald Collier)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The word "homophobic"
Date: 18 Dec 1992 17:59:09 +1100
Organization: University of Melbourne
NNTP-Posting-Host: ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au

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

>I have heard it said that since he has gone the publicity and
>popularity route his expertise has necessarily declined. That is, too
>much time in the studios and not enough in the lab. That may or may
>not be true. 

Some people say that, but it doesn't affect the stuff he already
knew. Your right about Suzuki's tendency to let his emotions
carry him, though (I hasten to add that it is not necessarily
a bad characteristic -- there are many ways to communicate
veridically). At a "debate" between Creationist Duane Gish and
Dennis Chitty at UBC in 1981, Suzuki got so excited that Gish
was able to put him down by saying, "Now calm down David, calm
down."

I should remark that I put "debate" in quotes because Gish did
not agree to the terms of the debate that each side would present
the positive evidence for their view, followed by rebuttals. He
started out with a rebuttal.
-- 
John Collier 			Email: jcollier@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au
HPS -- U. of Melbourne		  	Fax:   +61 3 344 7959
Parkville, Victoria, AUSTRALIA 3052
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books