HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mgm@world.std.com (michael g moncur)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,news.groups
Subject: 'alt' group proposed - alt.quotations
Date: 16 Dec 92 06:52:21 GMT
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA


  [I have consulted with the original poster of this idea, Chua Hak Lien, and
got permission to post this.  Thanks for the idea, Chua.]
 
 Proposal for a new alt.group - alt.quotations (name is open for debate.)
 
 PURPOSE:  for quotations, quips, .sig lines, witticisms, and discussions
of all of the above. 
 
 VOTES:
 
    Please send Yes votes, No votes, and suggestions for the name
(alt.quotations is my pick) to my address: 
 
    mgm@world.std.com
 
  WHY A NEWSGROUP? 
 
    I think there's quite a bit of interest.  We see quotations all over,
particularly in  .sigs.  When this was first mentioned in alt.config,
there were 8 responses in one day. 
 
  WHY AN "alt" GROUP?
 
    I'm not THAT sure about the interest, and this topic will have a very
large "fluff factor."  If it works out as an alt group, perhaps a "talk"
or other USENET group will come of it.
 
  WHAT IS A QUOTATION? 
 
    I'm sure there are all sorts of smart-aleck answers to that question,
but here are some examples of what *I* would use the group for:
 
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and
as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
        --Albert Einstein

"Duct tape is like the force.  It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds
the universe together...."
        -- Carl Zwanzig

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months."
        -- Oscar Wilde

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting
 on people."
        -- W.C. Fields

"Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear
question."
                -- Albert Camus

"Girls are always running through my mind.  They don't dare walk." 
                -- Andy Gibb

"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards.  I got a full
 house and four people died."
                -- Stephen Wright

I think you get the idea.  If you reply to this message in e-mail to make
your vote, PLEASE don't quote this entire message (I may like quotations,
but not THAT kind.)  I'd rather not receive 300 copies of this message in
my mailbox.
 
 Thanks.




-- 
~`~`michael moncur - mgm@world.std.com / sysop@onlybbs.via.mind.org ~`~`
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
Keywords: Texas, coming-of-age, Mexico, horses, epic
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 17:53:00 GMT

In article <75462@apple.apple.COM> sac@Apple.COM (Steve Cisler) writes:
>
>All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy. Knopf 1992.
>ISBN 0-394-57474-5  $21.00  Volume One of The Border Trilogy
>
>John Grady Cole is 16, too young to run his family's Texas ranch
>alone, so he heads to Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. The
>time is 1949. It's a coming -of-age novel, one that will draw you in to
>other cultures. The language is rich and sparce at the same time. The
>author uses no quotation marks, but as Shelby Foote says about this
>work, "The novel's hero...is the English language--or perhaps I
>should say the American language."

	[excellent quotation deleted]

>You don't have to know horses or Texas or Mexico to enjoy this,
>and I think you will impatiently await the other two books of the 
>trilogy.

	It's a Usenet world I guess since I was mulling posting
something about this wonderful book and thought that this exact
quotation was perfect. (Although I'm glad Steve went to the trouble of
entering it in ). Another great sequence, this time of dialogue, is on
page 111. Just stand in a bookstore and read this - it's where the old
vaquero is talking about the nature of horses.
>
>Steve Cisler
>

Keith 
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keith Morgan		 	|A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
kamorgan@athena.mit.edu  	|		Jonathan Swift
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: Is a bimbo the modern name for hussy?
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 06:11:24 GMT

I could be misconstruing things, but what's been said so far suggests
y'all think "bimbo" is a term only applied to women.  NOT!  I forget
whether it was at the end of '89 or '90, when MTV had one of their
900-number phone-in vote things on various issues, one of which was
"Who was the Bimbo of the Year?"  They provided about 5 or 6 choices,
which (if I remember correctly) included Jessica Hahn, Rob Lowe, Britt
Ekland, Donna Maples, and I can't remember who else, except the man
who won: Dan Quayle.  Just imagine: thousands of people were willing
to pay good money, to cast a vote in favor of Dan Quayle as Bimbo of the
Year.  They also had a phone-in vote for the phrase of the year: "Don't
worry, be happy," "Totally awesome," and other ones I forget, lost out
to "Life sucks, and then you die."  I was amazed that in both cases,
the one I would've voted for, actually won.  I asked myself, "What 
does this mean? Have I achieved mystical oneness with the MTV group 
mind?"

					         --Fiona Factoid
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:22239 talk.philosophy.misc:2914
From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: RE: excellent reading!
Organization: Clark University
Date: 11 DEC 92 17:54:22 GMT


twain@milton.u.washington.edu (Barbara Hlavin) seems to
think that we need a play-by-play commentator:

>Said the Theory Queen to the r.a.b.ble
>>>>I just finished a very good book and wanted to recommend it...
>>>>Title: _The Education of Little Tree_
>>>>Author (appropriately enough): Forrest Carter
> 
>to which Tom Maddox replied 
>>>	Who's going to break the news to her?
> 
>and then Jan Yarnot said 
>>OK, it's fiction instead of non-, and the author is KKK/neo-Nazi.
>>Does that somehow make it less "well-written and humorous"?  Not
>>from the reviews I've read, except that now it's non-PC to read it.
>>Why, Tom, do we HAVE to "break the news"?  She liked the book, she
>>reccommended it.  I know it's a strange thing to find in r.a.books, 
>>but there's room for oddities, n'est-ce pas?
>> 
>Wow, that's packing a lot of assumptions into a simple sentence.  My 
>own assumption was that Tom was suggesting that there was a piece of 
>information about the book that might be of interest to the person 
>recommending it. 

That was my assumption too.  And how odd that he was aware of the 
information, yet felt like withholding it!

>If I had read a book believing it to be a true story, I'd be grateful 
>to someone who was able to clarify the issue for me. 

Naturally.  Anyone would be.  Hence, the Theory Queen owes her
gratitude to Jan Yarnot, who provided the necessary information
while Mr. Maddox was busy sniggering behind his hand.

>Heather contributes this useful comment to the discussion
>>But Jan, you don't want to deprive Mr. Maddox of his right to be a
>>snot -- he might sic a reptoid on you.
>>
>There's a lot of snottiness around here recently.  Must be the season 
>for colds. 

In the real world, yes, but on rec.arts.books, snottiness is measureless
to man (or woman), and bounded by no earthly season.

Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: davidf@golem.waterloo.on.ca (David J. Fiander)
Subject: Re: Backhanded compliments and other things I get
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 00:23:04 GMT

According to spb0457@rigel.tamu.edu (SubGenius):
>
>(Actually, this makes a charming break from the usual comparisons people make  
> of me, sending the Ancient Bearded Myth to make bail for their veracity--
> Neil Young is a common comparison, although I, not knowing what Mr. Young
> looks like, am not sure how to take it;  Gilligan is another prominent figure 
> (if prominent is indeed the word) that is mentioned to me, although I think

Mr. Young is average height and build, with sideburns that were
on a sheep yesterday, and buys his razors from the same place
Don Johnson does (shaves closer than a lawnmower, or your money
back!).

I would consider the description to be "compliment-neutral".

- David
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: excellent reading!
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 18:56:15 GMT

Gadzooks!!  "Teensy Notepad" made a spelling error in the word derived
from "synecdoche"!  So much for *that* persona.  

Self-absorbed isn't the half of it, Paul.

Reference to loins: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."

							--Fiona
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: rjwill6@PacBell.COM (Rod Williams)
Subject: Re: Is a bimbo the modern name for hussy?
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, California
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 19:40:37 GMT

Well, let's see what the *faaabulous* American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language (3rd Edition) has to
say on the subject...

    BIMBO:  1. Offensive Slang.  A woman, especially one
    who is perceived as vacuous or as having an exaggerated
    interest in sexuality: "Bimbos had become major role
    models for young girls everywhere" (Ellen Goodman)...

    HUSSY:  1.  A woman considered brazen or immoral.  2.
    A saucy or impudent girl.  [Alteration of Middle English
    'houswif', housewife...]

I'd say the association of vacuity with one and brazenness
with the other makes both words potentially useful, if
offensive, components of a contemporary vocabulary...
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
rod williams -=- pacific bell -=- san ramon, ca -=- rjwill6@pacbell.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.food.historic
From: bobdev@hprpcd.rose.hp.com (Bob Devereaux)
Subject: Re: Goober, a Southernism??
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 16:17:41 GMT
Organization: HP - Systems Technology Division
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1.8 PL6]

Gang--

Yes, yes, I know that "goober" means peanut.  And I know that Goober was
a character on the Andy Griffith show.  My point is, neither of these
makes sense as a griffito.  Let me be more explicit:  Does "Debbie Loves
Goober" have a more specifically sexual connotation in Southern (or
elsewhere) slang?

Robert Devereaux
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: sfysh@epas.utoronto.ca (Stephanie Moskal Fysh)
Subject: Re: Making notations in your books?
Organization: University of Toronto - EPAS
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 21:40:19 GMT
Keywords: books notations 

In article <BzFx87.E1p@world.std.com> kieran@world.std.com (Aaron L Dickey) writes:
>What are your feelings about making notes, highlighting, etc., in the
>books that you own?

I make notes (only in pencil) in books that I know I will have to come
back to later - for research purposes, teaching, etc.  I don't make
notes in stuff I read for my own pleasure only (like current novels

Of course, if you get really famous and then you die, someone could
pay big bucks some day for books with your marginalia in them!

-- 
Stephanie Moskal Fysh    |   "Today an eighteenth-century scholar may well
Dept. of English         |   be Jewish, female, or generally irreverent."
Univ. of Toronto         |                             - Lawrence Lipking
(sfysh@epas.utoronto.ca) |
From: pas@anchor.unh.edu (Paul A Sand)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Whoops.
Date: 16 Dec 1992 13:39:22 GMT
Organization: University of New Hampshire
NNTP-Posting-Host: anchor.unh.edu

In article <1glotjINNgem@agate.berkeley.edu> maverick@cork.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick) writes:
[Concerning Mark Taranto's alias file]
>There *is* the question of why anyone would do this:
>
>[alias] why	echo because we like you
>
>Unfortunately, it probably just means he inherited the line --
>but at worst it only suggests he is easily amused.

There's nothing wrong with being easily amused. I'm easily amused, and
I generally recommend it to others. 
-- 
-- Paul A. Sand           | When you intuit, you make an int
-- Univ. of New Hampshire | out of you and it.
-- pas@kepler.unh.edu     |     (Brian Fitzgerald in comp.unix.shell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: Wandering through a bookstore at lunchtime.
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 01:45:06 GMT

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 recently had a fairly long conversation with the
middle-aged owner/manager of a small independent bookstore, in
which it devolved that she had never heard of Willa Cather or
Katherine Anne Porter, the movie "Hellraiser" or the subgenre
"cyberpunk," or Joe McGinnis' _Fatal_Vision_ (this last being
curious because she professed to be a big fan of true crime).
She's actually quite pleasant, and fun to talk to, but those
three points of ignorance did seem to be in different places
of the map, as it were.

						--Fiona
From: engelson-sean@cs.yale.edu (Sean Philip Engelson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: On minor points and sealing wax (was Re: Is a bimbo ad nauseam?)
Date: 17 Dec 1992 19:31:41 -0500
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: argentina.ai.cs.yale.edu

In article <1992Dec17.235532.16664@u.washington.edu>, hoosiers@carson.u.washington.edu (Mary Loveless) writes:
|> In article <JMC.92Dec17134101@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
|> writes: > > Would the lady who referred to herself as a hussy, in >jest I
|> assume, be equally inclined to refer to herself as a bimbo? >-- >John
|> McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305 >* >He who
|> refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
|> __________________________________________________________________________
|> John, I haven't yet met anyone who calls herself a lady who would also
|> call herself a hussy, which term implies a certain lack of restraint in
|> areas where ladies, in my experience, are most inhibited.  Now that I have
|> peevishly set you straight on a minor point (god, that felt good!) ....
	...et c.  et c....

Speaking of setting people straight on minor points: I believe there's
a bit of referential confusion here.  The good Doctor John was himself
referring to the aforementioned individual as a "lady", whilst
remaining (so it seems) agnostic as to whether or not she would thus
self-appellate.  The reference was to her self-reference as a "hussy",
not as a "lady", which point is irrelevant in context, except insofar
as it illuminates M. McCarthy's excellent manners.

|> Mary Loveless

A lovely name, indeed, though vaguely dismal.

-- 
Sean Philip (Shlomo) Engelson		
Yale Department of Computer Science	
Box 2158 Yale Station			
New Haven, CT 06520
From: matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Scientists?
Date: 11 Dec 92 18:02:21
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: tvorst@ccu.umanitoba.ca's message of Sat, 12 Dec 1992 01:25:33 GMT

In article <Bz4HAL.7K1@ccu.umanitoba.ca> tvorst@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Tommy Che Vorst) writes:

> I'm not sure if this counts, but check out the following:
> 
> 		"Entropy" - short story by the elusive T. Pynchon

Except that, as Pynchon himself points out (in his introduction to
_Slow Learner_), the story displays his lack of any deep knowledge of
thermodynamics.  

Please note that I am not criticizing Pynchon; not everybody has to be
an expert on thermodynamics.  Pynchon isn't one, and has never
pretended to be.  What he is, though, is a very good writer who knows
something about the culture of engineering.
--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!
From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Good bookstore (for a change)
Date: 16 Dec 92 14:58:55 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

sterbenc@ivhs.mot.com (Joe Sterbenc) wrote:
> Hey, kids, I just discovered a new favorite bookstore in Chicago.  It's
> also apparently a pretty big chain in the U.K. The name is...Waterstone's.

What does that say about Chicago bookshop standards?  They're a subsidiary
of the UK's largest and most mindless distribution chain, WH Smiths.
Yuppie bestsellers only.  Something like the Book-of-the-Month Club with
carpeting.  Further, Smiths have a record of randomly vindictive political
censorship, like refusing to carry the UK's largest-selling gay newspaper.

There *must* be real (i.e. non-chain) bookshops in Chicago, surely?

-- 
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: 041 339 8855 x6854 (work)
INTERNET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk or via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk    FAX: 041 330 4913
BANG!net: via mcsun and uknet     BITNET: via UKACRL    UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.politics.theory,alt.postmodern,alt.society.anarchy,alt.conspiracy,alt.cyberpunk
From: maverick@cork.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Whoops.
Date: 15 Dec 92 23:14:59 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: cork.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <85400@ut-emx.uucp>, jzimm@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Joann Zimmerman) writes:
|> 
|> From mtaranto@shearson.com (Mark Taranto):
|> 
|> >I think I just posted my .alias file, accidentally.
|> 
|> Would anyone care to begin the deconstruction process?

There *is* the question of why anyone would do this:

[alias] why	echo because we like you

Unfortunately, it probably just means he inherited the line --
but at worst it only suggests he is easily amused.

	Vance
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: wismith@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (William R. Smith)
Subject: Re: All I want for xmas 
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 16:58:51 GMT

Mary Loveless writes:
	
	It sounds disgracefully self-indulgent, but other than that,
	I have every single book I want, including almost everything
	^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
	by Robertson Davies and Doris Lessing.  



INCREDIBLE!!!  IN - fucking - CRIDBLE!!!    (slyly combining threads) 

I don't even know the TITLES of all the books I want.  I walk thru
a bookstore and break out in a serious case of the I-wants.

Mary has truly reached a Zen state where her wants match her resources.
I'm envious.  Sort of.



William Sburgfort Smith
Intel, SSD
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: alcoholics synonymous
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Distribution: rec
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 16:14:52 GMT

Meg Worley asks:
>What are your favorite books that are
>sodden with booze of any flavor?

My favorite, by a landslide, is Malcolm Lowry's _Under_the_Volcano_.
Jeez, what a book!  I love the ending, especially.  For those of you
who've read it, remember how after the last line, you think you've
finished the book, and then you turn the page to find a nearly blank
expanse with these words, centered and printed in capitals:

		?LE GUSTA ESTE JARDIN
		   QUE ES SUYO?
	  !EVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LO DESTRUYAN!

...the way those words resonate, then, with their previous appearances
in the book, and send a shudder of comprehension back through all your
immediate recollections of the story, changing things, revealing new
things...whoa.  

I also think it would make a good motto for the campaign to save Mother
Earth.

							--Fiona

P.S.  If someone who's fluent in Spanish would offer a good translation
for those words, that would be helpful.  I'm stuck in the can-read-but-
-can't-translate phase of language learning, when it comes to Spanish.
From: annie@garnet.berkeley.edu ()
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Git
Date: 15 Dec 1992 01:09:21 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu


Graham,
This is in response to your humorless and snotty response. You called what I
wrote a flame; this characterization surprises me, because I was not in
"flame mode" when I wrote it.   As I recall, I was responding to
something that I found amusing -- the example of Adam naming the animals
with various modern-English epithets.  I don't know why you found my tone
or my own example sanctimonious, and I am curious about what kind of
attitude you are referring to.  Indeed, the unfairly harsh tone of your
response (which in my mind is more properly a flame) seems to indicate
that you are the one with the holier-than-thou complex.  I don't know who
started all the "fuck" business.  I don't care.  I do object to your
jumping all over me for posting something in innocence when others were
posting more mischievous things.  When I apologized in advance if I was
being "unfair and out of context," it was because I was responding to an
example that someone else had quoted in their post, and I wanted to let
the original author know that that was all I had seen. If I could have
known that I was going to get slammed in response, well, I wouldn't have
done it.

So, Graham, some words of advice:
relax
cool down
fuck off :)

Anne Jessop
 


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: marcy@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca (Marcy Thompson)
Subject: Airport Bookstores (was: Books for Christmas)
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Surrey, British Columbia, CANADA
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 19:32:59 GMT

In a recent rec.arts.books article, Cole Kendall <U48073@uicvm.uic.edu> wrote:

>(An idea just occured to me that perhaps others could reveal the
>few decent airport bookstores; I know the one at O'Hare, but would
>appreciate other recommendations.)  

Portland International has an outlet of Powell's. 

Marcy

-- 

Marcy Thompson		
  SoftQuad (West)			
    marcy@sqwest.wimsey.bc.ca (preferred) or marcy@sq.com
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:22524 news.groups:24475
From: tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,news.groups
Subject: Re: 'alt' group proposed - alt.quotations
Date: 16 Dec 92 18:12:47 GMT
Reply-To: tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation

In article <BzCB39.57o@world.std.com>, mgm@world.std.com (michael g moncur) 
writes:
>  Proposal for a new alt.group - alt.quotations (name is open for debate.)
>  
>  PURPOSE:  for quotations, quips, .sig lines, witticisms, and discussions
> of all of the above. 

Would this newsgroup also entertain discussions of the "who said ... ?" 
variety?

Terry Carroll - tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com - 408/992-2152
The opinions presented above are not necessarily those of a sound mind.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books