HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: whheydt@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.humor,alt.folklore.urban,rec.arts.sf.misc
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Date: 21 Aug 92 20:34:55 GMT
Reply-To: whheydt@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA

In article <21AUG199208151472@portal.lasc.lockheed.com> le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel (x2025)) writes:
>In article <1992Aug20.192930.11257@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, st890270@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
>
>ALSO DOES NOT GET THE MESSAGE!!!!!
>
>>as to why create people: nobody ever claimed god is immune to boredom.
>>(or maybe, he has his reasons, but they are beyond our imagining. After all,
>>can you actually imagine omnipotence?)
>
>The real question we must answer is why all you clods feel that you must
>beat this carpet in the books yard?  Haven't you seen that WE DON'T WANT
>YOU HERE?!  Keep this kind of _discussion_ in some religious category 
>not book, humor, etc!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Perhaps you need to read some of the books that take up these
subjects.   :-)

	--Hal
-- 
Hal Heydt                    |    "Boycott Time-Warner"
Analyst, Pacific*Bell        |         --J. Danforth Quayle
510-823-5447                 |    "... kill all the lawyers."
whheydt@pbhya.PacBell.COM    |         --William Shakespeare
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.religion.misc,sci.skeptic
From: sbuckley@fraser.sfu.ca (Stephen Buckley)
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 06:01:35 GMT

ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria) writes:

>In article <sbuckley.713175980@sfu.ca> sbuckley@fraser.sfu.ca (Stephen Buckley) writes:

>     and i weep for the united states whose classification under religion
>   according to the united nations is pagan.

>This sounds like an urban legend to me.  What's the source for your
>claim about this classification?

  well, the united nations.  :)

  i'll get back to you in a couple of days when i find the actual document.

>-30-
>Bob
From: cjh@tinton.ccur.com (Christopher J. Henrich)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 14 Aug 92 22:21:31 GMT
Organization: Concurrent Computer Corp., Tinton Falls, NJ

Crawford Killian suggested that if we are all free to "define our own
canons," then we might as well not have an education at all.  
I think the disjunction is too simple.  Without a higher education,
I might never have read some of my favorite authors, nor would I have
had the skill to read and appreciate canonical and non-canonical
authors.  Our discussion of canonry in r.a.b has omitted the fact
that skills are transferrable.

Also, we need not fear that all our canons are going to be disjoint,
and that we will not have common literary references.  I would expect
there to be large overlaps.  Lots of people will have enjoyed
"Huckleberry Finn."  Many of us, black or white, will find "The
Invisible Man" or "Native Son" or "Black Rage" is important to us.
People of diverse political stripes will be convulsed by "Catch-22."
And so it goes.

Regards,
Chris Henrich
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.humor,talk.religion.misc,sci.skeptic
From: sbuckley@fraser.sfu.ca (Stephen Buckley)
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Athiests
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 06:04:03 GMT

swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:

>In article <sbuckley.713175264@sfu.ca> sbuckley@fraser.sfu.ca (Stephen Buckley) writes:
>|m23364@mwunix (James Meritt) writes:
>|  
>|>Or if you prefer a more direct, define(in a non-circular manner) what "good",
>|>"holy", "sin", and "loving" mean then see if your stated reference indicates
>|>if the postulated entity (Yahweh) fits the description.  In my opinion, it
>|>does not.  I find activity which, if performed by humans, is described as
>|>"Evil", "unholy", "sinful" and "not loving" being performed by the diety
>|>described (mostly in the OT).  ...
>|
>|  god created the universe and is justified in judging it however he wants.

>Oh really?  So creating something automatically gives one the right to
>do anything at all with the created!  Really, if we managed to generate
>life in the lab, would you then conclude we could do anything we wanrted
>with it?  Or would you say that we should treat it like any other living
>thing?

  no that's not what i said.  god is justified in doing whatever he wants
with his creation.  if i write a poem, i can burn it, but if i could create
life, i could do whatever i want with it.  but 2 things.  one is i don't
believe humans create life.  i believe god does.  human beings can have
sex but god creates the life.  :)  two is if you can prove to me that i
can create life, which entails proving god is not creating life [but
both of those are empirically unverifiable], then i would discuss your
hypothetical as reality--until then tho, it's just hypothetical.  and since
i'm not god i cannot do what i will with his creation.  his will rules.
and his will is to love him with all my heart, mind and soul, and to love
my neighbours as myself.

---                          
     Stephen Buckley        /    the meaning of life is the answer
     sbuckley@sfu.ca       /      to God's question in the Bible:
   TrueNorthStrong&Free   /        
      1-800-REALITY      /    "What are you going to do with my Son?"                   
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: craigdo@microsoft.com (Craig Dowell)
Subject: Re: Agnostics and Atheists: god REPLIES
Date: 14 Aug 92 00:33:49 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Followup-To: alt.flame 

>  Wow, I wasn't aware that god was on the Internet.  What's his address?  
>god@heaven.vatican.it?  :-)

No, no!

uunet!heaven.org!god@uunet.uu.net

God has to have a bang path.  A *big bang* path.

-- Craig


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 16:56:01 GMT

                                   Thursday, the 13th of August, 1992

Eric Rauchway asks:
 So any takers?  Who believes me that the canon we've been kicking around
 in r.a.b. is a straw man and that the actual field of endeavor is
 a lot more open?

I certainly agree with this. But, although it is in scholarly practice
a lot more open than some would believe, I would also add that by
the time you've included many of the women you have listed, you'd
have to include many, many more men who might otherwise not have
been included on any short list of 50 or 100 books. For instance,
Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the more famous authors you mention,
immediately begs the context of Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke,
and Thomas Paine. In other words, I do not believe that great or
good female authors have existed in equal proportion to great
or good male authors until about the 20th Century (except perhaps
for the genre of the 19th C English novel). I do think it's clear
that *something* has been unfair. But the thing I think is unfair
overwhelmingly is past societal discrimination between men and women, past
discouragement that women should even think of trying to be writers---
not any present desire to exclude women from canonization because
they are women.

                Mike Morris
        (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,soc.history
From: john@makesys.com (John Turman)
Subject: Re: God (was: Agnostics and Athiests
Organization: Make Systems, Inc.
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 20:53:05 GMT

In article <1992Aug12.170505.20237@cas.org> sdr57@cas.org () writes:
>In article <1992Aug12.153055.20120@linus.mitre.org> m23364@mwunix (James Meritt) writes:
>>}In article <1992Aug10.183411.13270@cas.org> sdr57@cas.org writes:
>>}>}>  [King James and NIV versions of same verse deleted]
>>}
>>}Given that the King James Version was transcribed in 1611, while
>>
Holy S*** deleted

>>Given that there is a few thousand years since "the original",
>>perhaps the entire thing is OBE.
>>
>>Must be nice to be able to refer to something unavailable and think it
>>is authoratitave...
>				     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>From this statement, you seem to be saying that the King James version
>is *not* a translation of earlier documents from which the NIV was
>also prepared.
>
>Is it then your position that the NIV is a translation of the King James
>or do you maintain that the King James version simply sprang up with
>no precedents?

Hahahahahahahah.........You guys kill me this is the funniest shit I've ever
read in my life hahahahaha............. what jokesters hahahaha.... You should
take this on the road, in fact try the middle of the road with merging busses
and trucks at high speed.

>******************************************************************************
>
.sig s*** deleted

>Stanley "Ya nee speon" Roberts
>

John T.
-- 
My opinions only, if you don't like `em don't read `em. 
Hurricanes and Dolphins, my favorite weather phenomena and aquatic mammals, oh
and also my favorite football teams. And remember to always genuflect in Shula's
presence and to kiss his Super Bowl Rings. .........John "Dolphinatic" Turman
From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 14 Aug 92 13:34:34 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <7195@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>In article <1992Aug12.171211.15344@athena.cs.uga.edu> heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath) writes:
>>
>>In an earlier post, I mentioned an article concerning the exclusion of
>>black authors from a recently published Great Books collection.  I
>>located the article and typed it in. It ran in Jet (a magazine) on
>>November 19, 1991, and is posted here without permission.   The typos
>>are mine, and are a result of fatigue.
>>
>>article follows:
>
>It all seemed pretty reasonable to me up to this:
>
>>  Ultimately, the
>>world has to come to realize that the Western world didn't discover
>>anything.  They just took it and made new use of it."
>
>I guess Doris Saunders (who said this) (a) doesn't mind alienating
>people who find some value in western culture and (b) doesn't know
>very much what's been discovered since, say, the ancient Greeks,
>and (c) doesn't realize that "the people who discovered mathematics
>were African" does not mean that no one else has discovered any
>mathematics.
>
>Why is it that the case against a narrow selection of "great books"
>so often involves this kind of excess?

And I was hoping someone would address another statement in the
article. Namely the statement that there have yet to be any "great"
black authors.

Ms. Saunders, I think, knows what is and isn't taught as far as real
history isn't concerned, and that knowledge is what informed her
remark. And as for the danger of offending or alienating those who find
something of value in western culture (a) no one's ever died from
being offended and (b) I'm sure those who are alienated will find much
to comfort them within they culture they value so much.

-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 13 Aug 92 16:58:51 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <+04m3lb.dani@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:
>There are books that everyone should read, 

Such as?
From: twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon & Women
Date: 18 Aug 92 15:09:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Aug18.150922.26011
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <1992Aug17.183715.16280@sco.COM> maureenw@sco.COM 
(Maureen Wilkes) writes:
>
>This triggered a memory of THE YELLOW WALLPAPER (author??!?), a pre-feminist 
>indictment of the 19th-century psychological practice of denying women
>access to books and stimulating conversation in order to give
>their poor little brains a rest -- when in fact all they needed was
>to be taken seriously.  The story traces the mental disintegration of
>a creative young woman ("high strung", according to the doctors her
>husband hired), who goes mad after being condemned to a life without
>reading or writing.  Her daydreams become nightmarish
>hallucinations under the tyrrany of the men who control her life.
>Is anyone else familiar with this work?  My memories of it are rather
>sketchy.  Anyone know the author?  


Charlotte Perkins.  I agree with Maureen that this is a very powerful 
and disturbing story, which, after reading it at the age of 11, prompted 
me to announce to my parents that I was never going to get married. 

Charlotte Perkins was "rediscovered" in the early '70s; she is also 
the author of _Herland_, which I believe has been discussed here before.

--Barbara 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir)
Subject: Re: MFK Fisher (Re: Bang, BANG, B-A-N-G!)
Organization: Stanford Exploration Project
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 22:30:34 GMT

sheila writes:

	I finished _Howards_End_. I was about to run out and read every
	other book by EM Forster like I used to do when I was a kid and
	found a new author, but I must be getting old because I plan
	to check out a different author.

If stark, raving sanity is to have its way, then sheila must reverse her
decision on not reading more Forster and trot out and obtain *A Room With
A View*. Forster's novels can be lined up by weight, with *The Longest
Journey* at one end -- the heavyweight -- and *A Room With A View* at the 
other. TLJ is recognized in England as the Masterpiece (but really quite 
dreadfully boring), but ARWAV is the Jewel. HE falls flat somewhere in 
between. 
						Fido
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 13 Aug 92 16:54:37 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <14240@mindlink.bc.ca> Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>So if we "define our own canons," we are forgoing any chance of a shared
>community of experience and language. We're just doing our own personal,
>individual thing. And if that's the case, why are we bothering with formal
>education at all?

I don't accept that only such extremes are possible.  For instance,
someone could be a physicist, read hardly any literature, and still not
just doing one's own personal, individual thing.  (I'm not a physicist,	
btw, much less this one.)  Besides, having our own canons doesn't mean
there are no overlaps.  I don't think it's necessarily even desirable
that there be some books everyone has read.

If it's true that "if a group does not have some kind of shared
references, common experiences, it isn't a group at all", then
what we end up with is smaller, overlapping groups.  Why is that
so bad?  Moreover, there can be shared reference and common 
experiences that aren't literary.  They are not confined to
TV comercials and cartoons.

The fight over the canon is mostly a debate about what English
departments should teach, about what (if any) core courses should
be required (chiefly of 1st year students).  I don't think any
kind of serious cultural crisis is involved at all.  In some
countries other than the US, it's possible to go to university
and study nothing but, say, mathematics.  You don't have to read
any literature, much less canonical literature.  The culture
does not therefore fragment into individuals doing their personal
thing.

-- jd
From: ajansen@peg.pegasus.oz.au
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: views on reviews
Date: 16 Aug 92 22:28:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:peg:213300003:000:1096
Nf-From: peg.UUCP!ajansen    Aug 16 17:28:00 1992


 
Call for papers for Views On Reviews seminar :
 
Challenging the Prevailing Orthodoxy
 
is the title of a National Seminar on reviewing literature for
young people which is to be held in Adelaide 7th-8th May 1993.
The seminar, which has been organised with the support of the
South Australian Writers Centre and immediately precedes Allwrite
( the literature section of ComeOut 1993 ), aims to attract
critics, literary editors, authors, illustrators, librarians,
publishers, educators and others.
 
Some of the issues the seminar plans to address include :
 
> Reviewing picture books 
> Art/Design knowledge 
> The time and space given to reviews of childrens books 
> The need for an international cultural and overall literary
context for reviewers 
> The state of the art in Australia 
> The reviewing of non-fiction 
> The place of children's literature in the spectrum of
literature
 
Reviewers and other interested parties are invited to submit
papers for this seminar.  For further information, contact
 
Frances Kelly
23 Main St
Eastwood
South Australia 5063
 
Email peg:ajansen
From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 17 Aug 92 23:14:51 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

Hamish Reid offers useful observations on my earlier posting about growing up
gringo in Mexico and red in the US. I should have explained that the beating-up
of the friend's father (Dalton Trumbo, if you want to know) took place in
Highland Park, a working-class community in L.A.

Granted, once I was back in the states the only visible minority I belonged to
was teenage nearsighted geek; but offering a political opinion left of Richard
Nixon could get you in big trouble in the 1950s, especially from your
classmates. (Remind me to moan some day about the fact that we all got taken
for a ride by the political expediencies of the era...) So the point is that,
white or black, your freedom was pretty sharply limited and you'd better watch
your mouth.

Several people have disagreed with my argument that accepting racial and sexual
differences means accepting racism and sexism. Well, sure--many people are
jerks and do jerky things. But that doesn't mean I have to accept jerkism. Some
people write ungrammatically, and laugh at people who write well; that doesn't
mean I have to kowtow to them. I refuse even to feel hurt about it; as I
learned in China, racism by definition is never personal. And as I recently
learned here in Canada, the difference between a jerk and an asshole is that
the asshole knows what he's doing. So why should I worry what either one
thinks? The jerk is too stunned to understand, and the asshole is deliberately
displaying his limitations and anxieties. The hell with both of them.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon & Women
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 17:39:29 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <1992Aug18.150922.26011@u.washington.edu> twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin) writes:
>
>Charlotte Perkins was "rediscovered" in the early '70s; she is also 
>the author of _Herland_, which I believe has been discussed here before.
>

	_Herland_ may be obtained via anonymous FTP from Project
	Gutenberg, mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu, in the etext/etext92
	directory.  The head of this file says:

		Charlotte Gilman's Herland--This is the Project Gutenberg Etext.
		This file should be named hrlnd10.txt or hrlnd10.zip and is made
		for release on Mother's Day, May 10, 1992, to honor all mothers.

		I have only one line of editorial comment to make about Herland:
		I found it worthwhile to compare Herland to Dances With Wolves

>--Barbara 

Roger Squires
rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu
From: del_col@ab.wvnet.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Hunter S. Thompson - is he hunkered down or what?
Date: 12 Aug 92 21:42:54 GMT
Organization: Alderson-Broaddus College

In article <1992Aug10.181358.26183@sco.COM>, maureenw@sco.COM (Maureen Wilkes) writes:
> In article <3710@keele.keele.ac.uk> gerry@seq1.keele.ac.uk (G.D.Pratt) writes:
>>Any news about what the good Dr. Gonzo is up to these days? 
> 
> 


Two years ago HST was supposed to appear in Morgantown, WV but about a week
beforehand his booking agent called the venue at which he was to speak to
tell them to forget about it, that HST was pretty much out of control, totally
unreliable and prone to the most extreme behavior. It seems that his practice
of recycling vast quantities of ethanol via his brain cells is finally
taking its toll.

This correspondent was one disappointed gaucho; I've got FEAR AND LOATHING
IN LAS VEGAS memorized!

J. Del Col
From: barclay@RAIL9000.gatech.edu (Barclay Blanchard)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 14 Aug 92 22:20:41 GMT
Organization: Georgia Tech Research Institute

In article <9208141500.AA11548@cfdev1.shearson.com> mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
>
>        It is easy for a white man to tell a black man that color
>        is unimportant.
>
>        It is easy for a straight man to tell a gay man that sexual
>        preference is unimportant.
>
>        It is easy for a rich man to tell a poor man that money
>        in unimportant.
>
And it is easy for a man to tell a woman that being female is unimportant.

(I realize that you didn't say that being female is unimportant, Mark, but
I feel that Crawford implied it.)

Barclay

-- 
Barclay Elizabeth Blanchard    barclay@rail9000@gatech.edu
"I've been laughed at by some of the funniest people."
--Lissie, Alice Walker's _The Temple of My Familiar_
From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Some Canonical Lists
Date: 18 Aug 92 21:18:26 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <Bt4pAM.AI7@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris) writes:
>
>                               Monday, the 17th of August, 1992
>
>Roger Squires writes:
>        Oh, but I'm not asking for a list solely based on Mr. Heath's
>        limited experience.  There probably already exist such
>        experienced scholars with their associated lists which Mr.
>        Heath or whoever may know of via secondary works.  I see no
>        reason why I should have to wait ten years for Mr. Heath to
>        finish reading these hypothetical 1000 books just to get a
>        silly list out of him.
>
>I agree that there is a silly component to these lists and
>list-making. I will reiterate that I think it would be
>interesting to see what kind of a list Terrance might make now.
>But, my only reason for responding to you was that I feel
>that Anthony Burgess saying which modern novels he thinks
>are the best *weighs* more than, say, the opinion-poll
>character of the UWM Select 100 List. Expertise counts.
>And, since that point is important to what I'd like to argue
>with Matt and Tom (i.e. that objectivity in aesthetic judgment
>is possible), I shamelessly tried to make it again.
>
>(Agreed that such expertise already exists for African-American
>literature. My assumption could be wrong is that Terrance himself has much
>more expertise on the topic than I do. I also assume---could be wrong---
>that he is in his early 20s and could not have read widely
>enough to give me the kind of book I'd really like. In other
>words, I was also putting in a request, making another suggestion
>like the biography idea, for something that would
>be neat to see come out of a career of scholarship.)
>


This will all be settled soon, as I am compiling a list to be posted
soon. I'm starting with those books I've read and then those I know
something about, and then ... well, you'll see.




-- 
"Black men loving black men is THE revolutionary act!"
			-Joseph Beam_
Terrance Heath 
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.philosophy.misc,sci.classics