HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: palmerc@abulafia.b21.ingr.com (Christopher M. Palmer)
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Organization: Intergraph
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 14:53:36 GMT

In article <CC.92Sep30111913@arran.dcs.ed.ac.uk> cc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Chris Cooke) writes:
>
>The problem is that making the study of Shakespeare's works compulsory is the
>most effective way of getting most of the population to loathe them utterly
>until the day they die.  It's counter-productive.

I really don't want to sound nasty, but the logical conclusion to the
above statement is that if we want our children to know everything, we
should teach them nothing.  The answer is making the education
interesting, not dropping everything that might bore someone.


-- 
Christopher M. Palmer --------------------------- Intergraph Corporation
palmerc@abulafia.b14.ingr.com ---------------------- Huntsville, Alabama
From: hiscrp@nuscc.nus.sg (C R Pennell)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Currency Problems
Date: 6 Oct 92 09:05:55 GMT
Article-I.D.: nuscc.1992Oct6.090555.5483
Organization: National University of Singapore

livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
: 
: And the difference is <drum roll> the new car industry in Britain
: is allowed to get on with the job of building cars any way it
: wants, buying its parts from any supplier it wants, using whatever
: labour it wants, at the lowest cost it can get, instead of being 
: used as a fancy scheme to prop up uneconomic coal mines and steel 
: mills.
: 
: Ironic, isn't it, that having run British owned firms into the
: ground by over-control, we now have to offer foreigners the
: right to run their businesses on a rational basis to get them
: to invest in the UK.    We couldn't offer ourselves that right,
: Oooooh no.

  I think this really is a bit nieve. Are you suggesting that Imperial
typewriters, the firm whose mamagement decided NOT to produce electirc
typwriters all those years ago (on the grounds that there was no market
for them) or Triumph motorbikes which decided NOT to mass produce small
Vesta-like machines, and later big machines with indicator lights (on
the grounds that that was not what THEIR market wanted) or the firm I
worked for in the 1970s one vacation which wholesaled mass-produced
furniture but refused to repair its roof on the grounds that it could
claim for damage on insurance (an anyway it was none of the business of
the workers to meddle in these things) - ALL OF WHICH WENT OUT OF
BUSINESS - are you suggesting that all this was due to them propping up
uneconomic coal-mines and steel mills? Six years ago (6 YEARS) the
ability to open the car boot (trunk for US readers) from INSIDE the car
was standard on the cheapest SUZUKI on the market. There wasn't a car
made in Europe below the mid-luxury range which had that device. The
famed VW POLO (one of which I hired to see if I should buy it) came
without a sun visor as standard on the passenger side. How can these
design/management decisions be blamed on "expensive" British labour (Yes
I know VW is German) - and expensive British labour is another myth - or
job-coddling. 

Richard Pennell, History NUS 

: 
: jon.
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:13098 talk.religion.misc:17276
From: alisonjw@spider.co.uk (Alison J Wyld)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: In response to Jon Livesey, also stand on EC, Maastricht and the
Date: 28 Sep 92 14:57:24 GMT
Organization: Spider Systems Limited, Edinburgh, UK.

In article <CC.92Sep28145735@arran.dcs.ed.ac.uk> cc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Chris Cooke) writes:
>In article <Bc9sRB6w165w@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca> yadallee@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Dave Shariff Yadallee) writes:
>
>   Wait a moment.  Both Hitler and Napoleon, more so Hitler, HAD the
>   DEMOCRATIC backing of their people before they went on their corruption
>   rampage. 
>
>Didn't Hitler's party have *less* than 50% of the Reichstag?  They got their
>majority by various maneouvres after the election, I thought.
>--
>	-- Chris. 	cc@dcs.ed.ac.uk   (on Janet, cc@uk.ac.ed.dcs)
>
>		

They formed the government because the Communists, Socialists, Social
Democrats and others proved incapable of uniting against them.  Now
where have we heard that more recently...

Alison
From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Abuse A Brit (was Re: Pardon my ignorance and such)
Date: 29 Sep 92 15:38:40 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <1992Sep29.130858.17852@osf.org> dbrooks@osf.org (David Brooks) writes:
>In article <1992Sep29.111536.27169@cas.org>, jac54@cas.org writes:
>|>	I've
>|> 	been identified as an Australian, a New Zealander and even a
>|> 	South Efriken.
>
>We probably all have (those English among us who have lived in the US a few
>years, that is).  It may have something to do with the mid-Atlantic accent
>we tend to pick up: neither one thing nor the other.

Works both ways; I've been identified as all of those, and also as
Canadian and (rarely) Irish.  In fact, I'm from the US (born and bred)
but have lived over here for about 13 years.  Leads to the interesting
effect that no-one you meet thinks you are one of them.  British folk
all can tell I'm foreign (though, as noted, are often wildly wrong
about WHICH foreign, since I don't sound like a 'proper' Merkin as
heard on TV); Yanks, on the other hand, are totally convinced that I
must be British.

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
From: ian@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Ian Watson)
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 17:10:03 GMT
Subject: Re: Abuse A Brit (was Re: Pardon my ignorance and such)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard ISG-SBU-PWD, UK.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british

> / hpopd:soc.culture.british / torkel@sics.se (Torkel Franzen) /  6:03 pm  Sep 28, 1992 /
> In article <6250083@hpopd.pwd.hp.com> ian@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Ian Watson) writes:
>                                      
>    >I've been hauled up once before for using this term ["Jap"], and I still
>    >don't see why.  To me, it's the equivalent to 'Brit', which I don't
>    >find in the least offensive.
> 
>   In cases of this kind, the question is to what extent we should take into
> account, not how we who use the term regard it, but how those referred to
> react. In the case of "Jap" it has emerged in soc.culture.japan that some
> Japanese at least consider it highly offensive. So do you want to continue
> using the term since you yourself consider it perfectly harmless, or do
> you want to avoid it so as not to be perceived as grossly offensive by
> any Japanese readers? Whatever the answer, we should be aware that people
> perceive this term differently.
> ----------

I didn't mean to imply that I continue to use the term; I haven't since it was
pointed out to me.  When I used it that time, I just didn't see what the
difference was from the receiver's point of view.  I got flamed by several
people for using it, but NOT ONE explained WHY I shouldn't.  So if you can
enlighten me, great.  

Until people stop assuming that something that is offensive to them is used by
the addresser in the *knowledge* that it offends, we'll all have to walk on
eggshells, since so much seems to offend *someone*.  My fond wish is that
people will think a bit more about whether there is mean intent behind a term
and react accordingly.  It's a lot easier for all than straining to be PC all
the time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ian Watson, HP Pinewood Information Systems Division, England.
From: mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Some of my best friends are speculators
Date: 2 Oct 92 08:11:29 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept, QMW, University of London, UK.

From: gray@rz-berlin.mpg.de
>Tim agrees:
>
>>>give it up. Mebbe Perot can hold their feet to the fire.
>
>And Matthew Huntbach adds:
>
>> The British Electorate has for the past four general elections
>> voted in a party whose main platform is belt-tightening. It
>> ought to be obvious after this latest crisis that the loony
>> right are part of the problem not part of the solution.
>
>  Are you disagreeing with Tim and me?  This is a serious question.

>  My whole point (way back in my original post) was that the Torys have
>persistantly sold themselves as the party of fiscal rectitude whilst
>indulging in conjuring tricks such as living off capital, giving income
>tax cuts with one hand but raising the overall tax base with the other,
>and devaluing the pound after months of pretending it would never happen.

Yes, I do disagree. I understand that Mr.Perot's main plank is
to reduce the federal deficit. I took the original posting as
saying that the trouble with the UK was that it was just like
the US - too great a government spending deficit. This at least
is totally wrong - the UK government has until the past year
been running with a budget surplus and paying off the national
debt. As for "belt-tightening", talk to anyone involved with
public services and they will tell you how conditions have
deteriorated during the years of Tory government due to
belt-tightening measures. In the eleven years I've been working
as an academic I've seen a marked detioration in such things as
the availability of grants, the staff-student ration, my pay
levels compared to what I could earn as a business programmer
etc etc.

I quite agree that Tory economic mismanagement is huge, but I
don't agree with the line coming from certain quarters that the
Tories are another variety of socialist, and what we need are
people who are *really* going to cut state spending.

Matthew Huntbach
From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Currency Problems
Date: 5 Oct 92 10:18:55 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <BvJBEM.BE5@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU> streater@unixjr.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater) writes:
>In article <1992Sep30.160742.14991@bristol.ac.uk> P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee) writes:
>>
>>Ah, a political difference.  One of my feelings is that things which
>>are basically 'natural monopolies', and which should be (another
>>opinion, of course) considered necessities of civilized living, ought
>>to be run by (properly-run) nationalised industry.  Particularly in
>>cases where, if they are run privately, the government is going to
>>'need' to create a monitoring bureaucracy parallel to the company's
>>operational bureaucracy, which feels painfully inefficient.
>>
>But Paul, this does work quite well. Right here where I live, in fact. I have
>electric & gas supplied by Pacific Gas and Electric, a private company. It is
>regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. Clearly we have a 
>private monopoly here. 

Having been brought up in Pennsylvania, and then lived nearly 20 years
in Massachusetts, I am aware that this CAN work.  However, it's also
based on those experiences that I don't believe it can work in the MOST
efficient manner.  The 'market' was designed such that it works well in
cases where there is real competition.  It's my belief that it breaks
down pretty severely in cases where there is not, and that all of the
various mechanisms in use to control monopolies are simply bandaids
stuck over the problem, rather than real solutions to the underlying
problem.  Bit like giving someone an aspirin for a broken leg.

>It may seem painfully inefficient, but not as much as government interference
>is. There is much I could say about how that affects me personally in my job,
>but I suppose I shouldn't as I am posting from work.

Well, as I said, it is also my belief that government DOES stick its nose
into a lot of areas where it's got no business.  If that's any consolation.

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: jackson@soldev.tti.com (Dick Jackson)
Subject: Re: My wife's gon to the West Indies
Keywords: joke
Organization: Transaction Technology Inc.
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 14:46:44 GMT

In article <1afjljINNnre@gap.caltech.edu> roy@willow.ccsf.caltech.edu writes:
>I wonder if there are any jokesmiths out there? I'm sure everyone has heard the
>old music hall jokes:
>
>	My wife's gone to the West Indies.
>	Oh really? Jamaica?
>	No, she wanted to go !
>
>Can anyone think of any more of these? How about Cuba, Durban, Djibouti?

	My wife's gone to Italy
	Oh really? Genoa?
	Whisky and soda if you don't mind.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,rec.arts.books
From: quigley@acs.ucalgary.ca (Martyn Thomas Quigley)
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 92 03:05:09 GMT
Organization: The University of Calgary, Alberta

ajw@aus.intel.com (alan waldock) writes:
>Reading plays closely (which I imagine equates to 'studying' them,
>except for the need to prove that you've done it) is a very rewarding
>exercise, and a skill worth practising. Essentially, it cuts out the
>middleman, and lets the dramatist speak directly to you.  Your own
>imagination becomes the director and the cast.

I must be missing something here.  Do playwrights write plays to be
acted or to be read?  Do you read opera?  Do you read film scores?  
Laban?  Stockhausen?  To be really insulting, do you read synchronised 
swimming scripts, and let your 'imagination' provide the performance?  

>Mind you, when the middleman is of RSC calibre, then there's a lot of
>enjoyment to be had in watching someone else's interpretation too, and
>I have certainly had visits to that company (particularly back in Trevor
>Nunn's day) that illuminated a play far beyond what my own reading had done.

Oh dear.  I had the misfortune to grow up 20 minutes from Stratford and
to be routinely dragged off to the RSC once each term.  How I hated it.
I thought West Side Story was a great improvement on R&J.  But I hated
that too.

Martyn
From: jackson@soldev.tti.com (Dick Jackson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: France, je vous remercie pour l'election d'Anti-Christ
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:12:18 GMT
Organization: Transaction Technology Inc.

In article <NICKH.92Sep28141241@VOILA.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU> nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines) writes:
=In article <1992Sep28.150154.17528@menudo.uh.edu> chem91@Elroy.UH.EDU ("Bill Harrison (713)-743-2789") writes:
=
=   godfrey@sscvx1.ssc.gov (LAURENCE GODFREY) writes:

    Several of his typically, (ahem!) vigourously phrased opinions deleted.

=   Why don't you just unsubscribe from the net, in that case, Laurence?
=
=   Just kidding,
=
=Why? I think that's an excellent suggestion: the net requires that he
=have contact with Germans (and all other nations, including the
=Japanese whom he also seems to hate), so by his own words he won't
=support the net. So he should clear off and spare us his disgraceful
=bigotry. He represents one of the most unpleasant aspects of British
="culture", and we'd all be much better off without him.
=
=Go on, get lost. Spend your time campaigning for withdrawal from the
=EC, NATO and the UN, and for a trade embargo against Germany. It's
=bigots like you that empowered Hitler.

I totally disagree. There are far too many mealy-mouthed hypocrites like
me poncing around ever so politely in this group. While I disagree with
almost everything young Laurence says, I love the way he says it. What
a refreshing change. People reading soc.*.BRITISH should certainly not be
troubled by him.

Dick Jackson
From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Some of my best friends are speculators
Date: 4 Oct 92 03:14:19 GMT
Organization: sgi

In article <1992Oct2.082728.12184@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>, mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
|> 
|> No, I mean the huge volumes of bureaucratic rules coming from
|> central government which schools now have to follow. In the
|> past, schools were free to set their own curricula. Now they
|> are not. I find it hard to see how this means "letting parents
|> control schools".

Actually, as part of their endless debate on education, Americans
are starting to talk about the UK system of national curriculum
and testing as being a useful idea.   One fairly serious comic,
perhaps Business Week, has an article this week pointing out this 
very issue.  They also said that there is merit in the UK notion
of letting schools control their own budget.

As usual, of course, slippery Matthew is mixing up two distinct
questions.    He wants you to think of national curriculum and
testing as "regulation", to encourage you to imagine that there is
more bureacratic control of the day to day operation of schools, 
when what is really happening is that there is national level
quality control of the results, and how those results are achieved
is more and more left to individual schools.


|>           We shouldn't have the nanny state coming in and
|> telling the council what it must do with its schools, what
|> level of local tax it must set, what it must do with its
|> houses, etc. etc. etc, you name it, it used to be locally
|> controlled, it's now nationally controlled.

Slippery again.   What is being regulated is the *maximum*.
It used to be that left-controlled councils could impose penal
levels of property tax to finance ideological follies.  Stopping
them from doing that is, IMHO, a very good thing.

|> Well, if the British aerospace industry closes down and moves
|> to Taiwan because the Taiwan government has offered it
|> subsidies, who is to blame when Britain has a trade deficit in
|> airplanes?

Indeed, and what if they compell you to cease beating 
your wife?

jon.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,rec.arts.books
From: wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (William R. Smith)
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 16:05:14 GMT

I wrote:
	> 
	Current research has now proved conclusively that Shakespeare's plays
	were written by a different person of the same name.


Graham Walker writes:

	It is not clear as to which "same name" you mean Shakespeare or Earl of
	Oxford? Please follow up.



Ohhhh (long, slow sigh).  It was an attempt at humor that fizzled.  The idea
was: how would you know who you were talking about?  Perhaps too much
is know about the man from Stratford on Avon for it to work.

Would it work if I used a more obscure person?  Perhaps: "Aesops didn't
tell all those fables, it was a different person with the same name."

Perhaps not.

I'll slink away now.



William Sburgfort Smith
Intel, SSD
From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Currency problems
Date: 5 Oct 92 18:36:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: zola.qna6et0
Organization: sgi

In article <1992Oct5.082759.25713@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>, mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
|> 
|> Weren't microchips supposed to be one of those hi-tech
|> industries that would replace nasty dirty coal-mining and all
|> those other industries that we are supposed no longer to need?
|> What exactly *is* it that Britain is going to make or do that
|> it can trade with the rest of the world? *When* is Britain
|> going to triumph over these poor foreigners who have mistakenly
|> been putting government investment into developing modern
|> industries?

What Mr Huntbach is doing here is to perpetuate one of the
worst bits of lazy thinking that Socialists indulged in from
1945 to about 1980.

Yes, you're correct, we were constantly told that this-and-that
piece of wondrous technology would finally make it big.   It
wasn't just microchips: there were jet airliners, nuclear fusion
experiments, SSTs and on and on.

What these charlies forgot is that "microchip" doesn't exist
in isolation.   It has to compete with all the othe microchips
out there.   And if foreign companies can produce microchips
better and/or cheaper that UK companies, either the UK 
companies will fold, or they will be taken over.  Like Mr 
Huntbach above, they often mistook "modern" in the sense of 
flashy contemporary products, with "modern" in the sense of 
up-to-date production facilities and management and labour 
relations.

Economic success does necessarily not come from flagship 
technological products.   In fact, from the point of view of 
socialist and socialist-wannabe Govts, technological wonders 
often play the part of Potemkin villages, keeping the rubes 
happy, while the rest of the economy goes down the tubes.  
Economic success comes from *anything* you make, no matter 
how dull and mondane, that you make better and cheaper than 
anyone else.   Japanese still make paper fans, and Germans
still make cuckoo clocks.

As to what Britain makes: the answer is plenty.    Just for
fun, I took note of what British products I see around me
in sunny California, and when I'd noted planes, cars, tapes,
CDs, endless varieties of food, tea, beer, clothese, shoes,
china and pottery, sports equipment, and of course books, 
books, books, books, and more books, I thought to myself 
"I must remember to tell Matthew on Monday".

jon.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british


   Euro-sceptics....who are these people? What are they, people
 who don't believe it's there? Do they stand on the cliffs of
 Dover and say, 

	"Nah...it's just a big cloud...."

	"Oh come on, that's France that is!"

	"Nah mate. Definitely a cloud...."


	puzzled of Avon
From: ray@philmtl.philips.ca (Ray Dunn)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: VNS, Wed 30-Sep-1992
Date: 4 Oct 92 01:12:02 GMT
Organization: On the Brew.

In referenced article, cockburn@edieng.enet.dec.com (Craig Cockburn) writes:
>     A former TV reseracher has been charged with purgery following his
>     participation in a TV documentary....

He came clean, I suppose...
-- 
Ray Dunn at home  |  Beaconsfield,  Quebec,  Canada.
(514) 630 3749    |  ray@philmtl.philips.ca  or  ..uunet!sobeco!philmtl!ray
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british