HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Subject: Re: Time Travel FAQ Version .0001 (long)
Keywords: FAQ, time travel, paradox, plebny
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 22:39:09 GMT

In article <K4V=VZA@engin.umich.edu> ingles@engin.umich.edu (Ray Ingles) writes:
>Okay, I'm going to try for a 'FAQ' on time travel, as it pops up from time to
>time (no pun intended) and we keep covering the same ground.
>... 
>	I. So, Was Kennedy Assassinated in *Your* Timeline?
> The "many worlds" idea. You can travel into the past, but you immediately
>create a whole new universe. ...
>	II. I Never Liked Grandpa Anyway...
> (a) *That* Was Easy...
> Well, you don't make alternate universes, you just change history.
>Paradoxes are ignored, and easy to make. Grandad's toast.
> Examples: "Terminator 2,"  (I *hated* the plot of T2...) "Back to the
>Future" (part 1)

IIa is impossible to tell from I.  (Unless you can travel back to the old
universe).  They look identical.  Terminator 2 was either I or IIa, and so was
BTTF.

Here's another:

IV. You Have to Catch Up.

This idea is that you can make changes in your past, but you don't change--
immediately.  If you keep your father and mother apart, you start to fade, but
there's an interval before complete fading where you can still change things
back.  Or if you give yourself a million dollars in 1975, you at first remember
being poor in 1975, but when the history change "catches up" with you, you
suddenly had a mysterious benefactor "all along".  The BTTF movies use this
idea, but mixed in with other ones.

One problem with this idea is that it's ill-defined to "take time" for the
changes to reach you.  At best, you still need metatime or else "that change
just caught up to Monday, but hasn't reached Wednesday yet" makes no sense.
Also, the movement of the change itself causes a change: if yesterday the
change was 3 days behind you and now it's 1 day behind you, and you travel
a day back and look at yesterday's meter, it'll say 1, even though you
remember it as being 3.

Your brother's picture should not start to fade earlier than yours just
because he's younger; there's exactly as many years between your parents'
meeting and your existence as a 20 year old, as between it and his as (say) a
16 year old.
--
"the bogosity in a field equals the bogosity imported from related areas, plus
the bogosity generated internally, minus the bogosity expelled or otherwise
disposed of."  -- K. Eric Drexler

Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, arromdee@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu)
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3864 rec.arts.sf.misc:3544 rec.arts.startrek.tech:7120
From: max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: Territorial Disputes
Date: 22 Dec 92 09:03:04 GMT
Organization: The Dark Side of the Moon +1 408 245 SPAM

jdnicoll@prism.ccs.uwo.ca (James Davis Nicoll) writes:

> 	Why is territoriality so  common  among terrestrial species?
> Could it perhaps have something with  the challenges  of  acquiring
> sufficient  resources to prosper? Economics is the  study of   human
> allocation of scarce  resources: why do you draw a  distinction
> between economic conflict and territorialism?

It's something I like to call evolution.  If you're selfish, you have 
more children, because you wipe out the guys who don't care.


  ____  Erik Max Francis -- ..!apple!uuwest!max -- max@west.darkside.com   __
  \  /  1070 Oakmont Dr. #1  San Jose, CA  95117  37 20 N 121 53 W  ACGT  /  \
   \/   Like strategic interstellar conquest games?  Ask about UNIVERSE!  \__/
        Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt.   All things that are, are lights.
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3898 alt.folklore.science:4524
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Keywords: n
Date: 2 Jan 93 04:31:29 GMT
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.

In article <pete.725935174@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel) writes:
>Of course the sterilization process must be carried out on the q.t., because
>any nation or group that openly performed it would find itself the target of no
>end of persecution and vengeance. We can only speculate about the impact on
>nations like India and religions like Catholicism of the discovery of global
>infertility, but we may imagine that nations ruled by adherents of moron 
>memes would find themselves incapable of building the technology required to 
>globally reverse the sterilization. 

The technology needed is a simple one.  Build bomb, hold bomb over head of
smarter country, announce that the sterility is an act of war (which indeed it
is) and you'll drop the bomb unless they both reverse it and give you half
their gross national product in compensation.  (And plenty of memes which
otherwise don't encourage science encourage violence.)
--
"On the first day after Christmas my truelove served to me...  Leftover Turkey!
On the second day after Christmas my truelove served to me...  Turkey Casserole
    that she made from Leftover Turkey.
[days 3-4 deleted] ...  Flaming Turkey Wings! ...
   -- Pizza Hut commercial (and M*tlu/A*gic bait)

Ken Arromdee (arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, arromdee@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: wengland@stephsf.com (Bill England)
Subject: Re: Do starships collapse when flying near c?
    <1gkkuhINNi8r@uni-paderborn.de> <1992Dec18.042207.2956@uumeme.chi.il.us>
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 20:15:32 GMT
Organization: Stephen Software Systems Inc., Tacoma/Seattle, +1 800 829 1684
X-Bytes: 1220

In article <1992Dec18.042207.2956@uumeme.chi.il.us> drac@uumeme.chi.il.us (Bruce Maynard) writes:
>re: "Does this mean then that the ship flying at the "right" speed will fall
>into a black hole (ie, the rest of the universe)?"
>
>Nonono... the "gained mass", is actually the energy aquired relative to other
>objects via HAVING such a high speed... there *is NO* "actual" mass gained
>(and therefore no additional gravitational attraction!)

  BZZZT!  Sorry but it really all depends on where you are standing.  The
  extra mass is quite real and will  distort space/time. 
  Take a look at photon pressure for a simple daily example.

  On the other hand time is slowed down significantly on your spaceship
  and as far as the ships particles are concerned their mass is the
  same as it always was. (ie acceleration = force * t)   But relative to
  'stationary' objects their mass is much greator.


-- 
 +-  Bill England,  wengland@stephsf.COM -----------------------------------+
 |   * *      H -> He +24MeV                                                |
 |  * * * ... Oooo, we're having so much fun making itty bitty suns *       |
 |__ * * ___________________________________________________________________| 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: Re: Book Review: "The Big Bang Never Happened"
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 21:32:38 GMT

wengland@stephsf.com (Bill England):
>Erec J. Lerner shows that much of the bizzar phyics we assume is 
>gospel is actually wrong, as shown by experiments, and should
>actually be replaced by more exciting and interesting theories.

It's grain-of-salt time.  "Shows" implies compelling evidence, and begs
the question of why most physicists don't feel compelled.  I like "argues"
better.  It suggests that a case can be made, but that it's not strong
enough that anyone who rejects it is a villain or a fool.

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

   The inability of snakes to count is actually a refusal, on their part,
    to appreciate the Cardinal Number system. -- "Actual Facts"
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3870 alt.folklore.science:4465
From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Date: 23 Dec 92 00:55:02 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester

In article <pete.725064249@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel) writes:

> around the planet gives you power beyond the wildest dreams of most people on
> the planet, for whom the twentieth century provides much the same level of
> creature comfort and cultural advancement as the 19th, or for that matter the
> first.

Actually, if you look at the global statistics, the average person
today is much better off than he would have been 100 years ago.
Global life expectancy is up, average nutrition is up, literacy rates
are at all time highs (the number, not just the fraction, of people
who are illiterate is declining), and average wealth is up.  About the
only places not making real progress are parts of Africa.

China, a place of periodic famine in the last century, is now poised
to become the next "tiger" of the pacific rim.  Per capita GNP there
will reach US levels within several decades at current growth rates.
China's economy could exceed the size of the entire OECD's by the year
2010 (source: The Economist.)

	Paul F. Dietz
	dietz@cs.rochester.edu
	
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Disappearing Frogs (Was Re: Global Sterilization)
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 05:19:33 GMT

dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>In article <pete.726114932@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel) writes:
>> Wrong. It is very easy to point at an ecosystem and say it is inesssential,
>> but what you forget is that all of these systems are bound up together, and
>> loss of any one part endangers all of the rest.

>Yes, you've got the cant down pat.  But engage your critical faculties
>for a moment.  Are ecosystems really so interdependent and sensitive
>as that?  What *evidence* is there to support this dogma?  

Goodness I never realised I was full of so much dogma.

Okay, let's see if we can piece this together from lego bricks. I'll start
with a little gedanken ecosystem and you show me where the argument breaks down.

Alfalfa grows on gannet droppings. Beetles eat the alfalfa, and gannets eat the
beetles. The sun shines down and warms them and the night sky sucks the heat 
away. That temperature differential drives the whole system.

Kill the alfalfa, and everything dies.
Kill the beetles, and everything dies.
Kill the gannets, and everything dies.

Now, scaling this up, we find that there are many alternative cycles involving
many alternative creatures. But kill enough of these cycles, or kill creatures
that are pivotally involved in many cycles, and everything dies. No?

If you follow this far, then won't you agree that destroying the rainforests
is foolhardy in the extreme?

>I see
>damned little.  The loss of frogs (real or not) only illustrates the
>redundancy in the ecosystems -- lots of things other than frogs eat
>insects (and frogs don't control locust plagues, unless there is some
>strange form of locust that lives mostly in swamps...).

Pardon a small amount of poetic license. But if lots of things other than frogs
eat the things that frogs ate, then why were the frogs so successful? And won't
either their copredators or their prey now assume plague proportions in their
absence?

>The substantial environmental problems of the day are geochemical and
>climatological, not ecological (CO2, CFCs, acid precipitation).

Now there's an authoritative sounding statement. How have you managed to
pick these out as the most important? I'm not saying they're not important,
and interdependent with the ecological disruptions, but how can you point
at one part of the problem and say that that's the most important bit?

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
                       I am a big pond in a small fish.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Keywords: n
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 00:39:34 GMT

johns@ssd.comm.mot.com (Mike Johns) writes:
>>Instead of blindly accepting the intelligence of High School graduates,
>>you could set up the following game [3 card Monty for fertility]

>this is a familiar problem.  It also tends to be one that most easily
>victimizes intelligent people.

Yes. I think that the criteria we use to select breeders should be linked,
not with parlour tricks or tests of general intelligence, but with standards
of entry into places of higher learning. 

This will have two effects. The first will be to exclude from the gene
pool those who, for one reason or another, are unable to learn useful
skills. The second will be to provide an enormous incentive for those
who are able to acquire an education to acquire that education.

Of course the sterilization process must be carried out on the q.t., because
any nation or group that openly performed it would find itself the target of no
end of persecution and vengeance. We can only speculate about the impact on
nations like India and religions like Catholicism of the discovery of global
infertility, but we may imagine that nations ruled by adherents of moron 
memes would find themselves incapable of building the technology required to 
globally reverse the sterilization. 

Even were they to acquire this technology by subterfuge it would be a
relatively simple matter to produce a more sophisticated sterilizing
agent, and through differentials of cultural acceleration stay one step
ahead of them for the generation or two required to eliminate most of the 
morons.

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
                       I am a big pond in a small fish.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com (wood,christopher)
Subject: Re: Title/author?? ... Thanks
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 15:10:56 GMT

In article <1gv9tmINNr9a@mirror.digex.com> nbull@access.digex.com (Nicholas Bull) writes:
>In article <1gso64INNo1c@mirror.digex.com> nbull@access.digex.com (Nicholas Bull) writes:
>>Dear sci-fi readers,
>>
>>I'm trying to remeber the title &/or author of a sci-fi novel I
>>read 20 years ago, when I was about 12.  I kind of remember the
>>plot:

[deleted]

>Dear all,

>Thanks for your help on identifying the book in question.  The
>following reply from Richard Clark nails it:

>This is Against_the_Fall_of_Night/The_City_and_the_Stars by A C Clarke.
>Fall was the original, later rewritten and lengthened as City. Both from
>the 50's. They may now be out of print but the text of one of them (Fall
>I think) is the first half of the recent Clarke/Benford(?) 'collaboration'
>Beyond_the_Fall_of_Night.
>Its recently been discussed in *.sf.written. From the reviews: buy it if
>you can't get the original story any other way and then don't read the
>second half. I've never read the new one.

One last followup on this thread before I let it live the rest of it's
natural life in rec.arts.sf.written...

The "science fiction book club" had a volume with
Against_The_Fall_Of_Night and Lion_of_Camarre (the spelling on that
isn't right; my copy is far away and packed in a box...)

Chris


-- 
Chris Wood     Bellcore     ...!bellcore!prefect!ccw
                         or ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 12:30:37 GMT

arromdee@godel.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel) writes:
>>arromdee@godel.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>>>The technology needed is a simple one.  Build bomb, hold bomb over head of
>>>smarter country
>>Hmm. Okay let's dump the education criterion. An unknown group produce
>>a strain of influenza that sterilizes the human race. First world
>>nations race to find a cure. After some time they find one ...

>The solution by the overpopulated country is quite similar: start dropping the
>bombs (or for that matter, just use the excess population as soldiers).  "Give
>us all we need, for free, or else you vanish in a mushroom cloud."  

Ah, and this is something you expect to happen when an HIV vaccine becomes
available? If third world countries engage in nuclear brinkmanship they know
precisely what they will get: death, and in large doses. Why do you think that
they would be interested in this?

>It doesn't
>matter that in this case it's a private group producing the sterility virus
>and an unaffiliated country producing the cure--extorting the cure out of them
>works regardless.

No, it doesn't. If a poor country could get whatever it wanted this way then
you'd have the Brazilians waving bombs in your face right now demanding that
their foreign debt be written off. I guess I just don't see why you think that
diplomacy works like this. Perhaps you could support your conjecture somehow?
Reasoning? A precedent?

>For that matter, your proposal may encourage countries to take over the whole
>world--a lot harder to have secret recombinant DNA factories in a world
>dictatorship....

I don't seem to be able to follow your argument here. Are you suggesting that
a world without overpopulation problems is somehow more prone to dictatorship?
Or are you suggesting that sterilization is such an effective blackmail threat
that it can be used to conquer the world? I really don't see how either of
these make any sense ... but perhaps I am misinterpreting you?

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
                       I am a big pond in a small fish.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: markbr%radian@natinst.com (markbr)
Subject: Re: Title/author?? (please help me remember)
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 22:42:24 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: n.o.y.b

In article <1992Dec18.233956.24513@iscnvx.lmsc.lockheed.com> baylor@NEBULA.SSD.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM writes:
>In article <1gso64INNo1c@mirror.digex.com>, nbull@access.digex.com (Nicholas Bull) writes:
>>Dear sci-fi readers,
>>
>>I'm trying to remeber the title &/or author of a sci-fi novel I
>>read 20 years ago, when I was about 12.  I kind of remember the
>>plot:
>>
>>Location: Earth (maybe) or a planet somewhere.  There are two
>>cities, one which specializes in Science and the other in
>>Art--but the two cities don't know about each other.  I think the
>>action starts in the Art city.
>>
>>Main characters: A young man (or oldish boy--maybe 14-18 yrs old)
>>and an old man.  The old man is sort of a mayor of the city but
>>also sort of like the grand wizard of the city.  The young man is
>>a bright kid who sort of becomes the old man's apprentice.
>>
>>There is a statue of the founder of the city; the founder is
>>pointing down towards some sort of mosaic of tiles around the
>>base of the statue.  Somehow the young man figures out that the
>>tile the statue is pointing at controls a door which opens onto a
>>subway-type system.  As it turns out, the subway is connected to
>>the other city (which may be underground???).  The young man
>>makes the journey to the other city.  Maybe he falls in love with
>>a young woman there, I can't remember.  Anyway, the two cities
>>Need Each Other for some reason which I have forgotten.  Of
>>course, each is suspicous of the other so it takes the young
>>man's idealistic naivetee to bring them together.  Presumably all
>>live happily ever after.
>>
>>I read this around the same time as I read the Foundation Trilogy
>>(back when it was one), the Cities in the Sky books, and Earth
>>Abides.  Guess that doesn't mean it came out at the same time,
>>though.
>>
>>I appreciate any help anyone can give me. 
>>
>It sounds like a certain Arthur C. Clark story, whose title I
>keep forgetting. The young man is Alvin.  He is of an age to 
>
>Any help? Try looking in the tail end of that Clark/Lee Rama book
>(the 1st one, not Garden of Rama). There are excepts from several
>of Clark's books that include titles. I think the one you want
>is there.

Nope! It's _City and the Stars_/_Against the Fall of Night_ (two versions,
each readable seperately, of the same story).

	mark
Xref: sparky rec.arts.sf.science:3882 alt.folklore.science:4507
From: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Date: 26 Dec 1992 04:50:20 GMT
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Distribution: world
Reply-To: carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <1992Dec25.063313.22398@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>, rclark@lpl.arizona.edu (Richard Clark x4971) writes:
=>You have three doors.  Behind two of the doors, there is a injection
=>with the sterilizing Influenza virus.  Behind the third door, there is
=>an injection with a vaccine for the Influenza virus.
=>You have to pick a door at random.  Then the "examinator" opens
=>one of the other doors, but is obliged to open a door with an
=>Influenza virus.  Then you are permitted to switch.  Whatever door
=>you choose, you get "treated" by the vaccine you choose.
=>
=>   :-)  Familiar problem?  Now the "morons" would have to breed
=>twice as fast as the Intelligent people, just to keep up.
=>
=>Beware of your definition of "moron"!  It could have been me!   :-)
=>--
=>Paul Bijnens             -- MS-DOS is the world's most widespread virus.
=>Linguistics dept., K. University Leuven, Belgium
=>Polleke@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be
=
=
=Sounds like you're trying to select for good luck.

Perhaps you'd be selecting somewhat for good luck.  But that'd be a
second-order effect, since those who were able to think well enough to decide
to switch would, aside from good luck, be twice as likely to remain fertile as
those who decided not to switch.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: wtbwaw--we interrupt this newsgroup
From: morgan@arc.ab.ca (Sean Morgan)
Date: 31 Dec 92 11:50:23 MDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Alberta Research Council

In article <725157107.470000.D_NIBBY@UNHH.UNH.EDU> D_NIBBY@UNHH.UNH.EDU (Dana  
Nibby) writes:
>
> [an ad for his/her book
>
I thought the net wasn't to be used for such blatant commercial purposes,
especially when the subject line is so cryptic that you suck people into
reading your commercial (a FOR SALE... intro would have helped).
-----------------+-------------------------------
Sean Morgan      |  ALBERTA  6815 - 8 Street N.E.
                 | RESEARCH  Calgary, AB, Canada
morgan@arc.ab.ca |  COUNCIL  T2E 7H7

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,alt.folklore.science