HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu
Subject: Wits and Half-Wits (was: *Any* kind of r.a.b. split...)
Organization: Clark University
Date: 24 DEC 92 17:20:52 GMT


Tom Maddox announced:

>    I don't make it my practice to worry about whether I'm offending 
>others unless the social situation is so highly fraught that I can't avoid
>that worry.  I also don't expect others to worry about my taking offense.
>I'm much more concerned with whether people are being interesting, witty,
>enlightening, provocative.  In short, when it comes to public exchanges of
>the written word, I would hold up Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker as exemplars
>rather than Miss Manners.  

Dani Zweig wrote:

>>Posting to tens of thousands of newsgroup readers in the same terms you'd
>>use to speak to one of them is...provincial.

Tom wrote:

>    Teach your grandmother to suck eggs.  

Was that -- Wilde?  No -- Parker?  Hang on, hang on, gimme a second.  Aha! 
Alexander Woollcott to Robert Benchley, at the Algonquin Round Table.  Yeah,
that's right.  Then Benchley told him to fuck off and die.  People were
really witty back in those days.  Whatever happened?  Must be too much TV, or
Nintendo, or something.

>    In fact, if the majority were lunatic enough to conform to your 
>restrictions, r.a.b. would become a very dull place indeed.  The implied
>maxim of "do not offend, whatever the cost" (which would be inaccurately 
>characterized by some as "p.c.") would turn us all into timorous and
>mincing creatures, all calculation and no spontaneity, all homily and
>no wit, all deadly deadly dull.

Rudeness = honesty.  Courtesy = dullness.  Obscenity = wit.  Friendliness =
timidity.  

I'm beginning to crack the code of your little world.

>    But a world of such people exists only in Dreams of Order.  In this
>one there are Infidel, Zeleny, Fido, Cramer, McCarthy, Heather (who thinks
>herself one of the angels but is in fact of the devil's party--face it,
>she's fighting for peace, fucking for chastity)

That's a good one, I like it.  It'd make a great bumper sticker.

Speaking of bumper stickers, Tom, I saw one the other day that said: "Looking
For A Better World?  Try Up Your Ass".  Sounds like your philosophy of life,
in a nutshell.  If I see it on sale anywhere, I'll pick one up for you.  

Heather
HHENDERSON@vax.clarku.edu
From: bh419@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ted B Samsel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Cultural Appropriation and the New Age
Date: 22 Dec 1992 17:21:20 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


This may be somewhat tangential, but in DeMille's debunking
of Carlos Caste#eda, there are several anecdotes which tell
of "indios viejos" (old native american males) who allow young
and earnest norteamericanos to believe that they are the "real
Don Juan". Thus the duped NewAgers proceed to bring them such
items as refrigerators, vcrs, beer, etc.
  Ah, a stunt worthy of Barnum to be described by Mencken...
sigh...
-- 
Ted....
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Subject: Re: Morally good hypertext
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 16:10:48 GMT

Frankly, I wish Morris hadn't brought up Reagan.  It completely muddies
the discussion with irrelevancies.

In article <JMC.92Dec23001836@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>I don't think that this inability of smart people to agree is a
>permanent phenomenon.  The fact is that no correct comprehensible
>theory of economics and politics has been developed.  I hope that some
>day politics and economics will be no more controversial than physics,
>but I don't think we are close.

This strikes me as a corollary to Drexler's original quoted statement,
and both of them seem to me to be examples of engineer-think at their worst,
however admirable their goals.  Both present (or hypothesize) a solution
to a misperceived problem which manages to completely miss some essential
truths about the situation.

In brief: in Drexler's case (and I believe that this has been
adequately touched on by others), the idea that hypertext is a
"solution" to anything is laughable.  Having all the links in the world
to everywhere else (instantiated by "Maxwell's Librarian", I presume)
won't make a bit of difference if the person trying to use this new
tool doesn't understand what he's talking about.  Even assuming that
such a facility, however imperfectly realized, will be useful, I
completely expect that two people could navigate the same hypertext
document and come up with entirely different understandings.  This
should not come as a surprise to anyone, except perhaps a subset of
engineers.  This is why Drexler's quote makes grown people chortle.

On McCarthy's point, physics and chemistry are grounded in immutable
physical laws.  Economics and politics are grounded in malleable self-
interest.  It would be doing a disservice to both the social and physical
sciences to confuse them with each other.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kasprj@jec310.its.rpi.edu (Jim Kasprzak)
Subject: Re: Reading as an addiction (Was: 92 in rabreview)
Reply-To: kasprj@rpi.edu
Organization: The Big Wedge 
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 17:50:15 GMT

In article <1992Dec31.050130.24366@sophia.smith.edu>, orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
|> Seeing the astounding quantity of books some posters consumed in 1992
|> makes me wonder if reading can be a type of (benign?) addiction.  This 
|> may be an especially apt description of those who (compulsively?) read a 
|> hundred genre novels a year, mysteries or science fiction for example.
 
 I'll concur with the folks who say that reading for escape is a form of 
addiction. 

|> 	Among those who are voracious readers, do you feel the
|> equivalent of withdrawal symptoms when (for whatever reason) you cannot 
|> read for an extended period? 
 
 Well, yes and no. I've got other "addictive" behaviors that can substitute.
If I have nothing to read, I'll usually wander - get on a bike, a bus or a 
train or just walk and go somewhere. That's my second-biggest consumer of
free time, after reading (and just above Usenet). Of course, somewhere in the
course of my travels I usually pass a library or a bookstore, and that takes
care of the nothing-to-read problem.
 
 Then again, sometimes I find myself engaged in double-escapist behavior:
"I don't want to work. I think I'll read a book. Whoa! Look at that pile of
books I've been meaning to read! I think I'll go for a walk."
------------------------------------------------------------------
     __  Live from Capitaland, heart of the Empire State...
 ___/  | Jim Kasprzak, computer operator @ RPI, Troy, NY, USA
/____ *|          he who refuses to do nonsense  
     \_|          is doomed to talk arithmetic.
      ====  e-mail: kasprj@rpi.edu or kasprzak@mts.rpi.edu 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox)
Subject: Re: Project B.F.D. (was: An apology)
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 09:39:25 GMT

In article <1992Dec24.005928.8573@Cadence.COM> vince@cadence.com (Vince Gibboni) writes:
>    Well, admittedly I haven't really been paying attention, but I do think
>    you've got this all wrong. 


	Now there's the voice of reason.  What other things that you've
not been paying attention to would you care to deliver judgment upon?


>    The motive, I think, is not so much a noble 
>    protection of the trodden-upon as a selfish interest in not having every 
>    new, interesting, reasonably-clever poster sent scrambling off into 
>    oblivion after being scared (or pissed) off by, for instance, one of 
>    Tom's lapses into the literary equivalent of Torret's syndrome. (sp?)

	Oh, that Terrible Tom.  He will say fuck shit and piss in front of
god and everybody to some poor innocent who will then cry "Run away! Run
away!" and never be heard from again.  

	Though I should add that this whole remarkably vituperative exchange,
which has expanded to include a wide variety of people, began with a casual,
mildly humorous query of mine concerning _The Education of Little Tree_.

	Which then turned into The Battle of the 'Orrible Clique of Longtimers 
vs. the Virtuous Newbies as well as Heather Says Fuck You You Turd If You're 
Rude as well as Gibboni & Mammel Claim It's All That Awful Maddox's Fault and
some others I've left out no doubt.

	So might I request that you put some substance into your casual 
slander--i.e., that you put forth some evidence that I habitually chase
newcomers out of r.a.b. by drenching them in obscenities--or else you 
can recant and beg my pardon or show forth as the weasel I suspect you are.


-- 
				Tom Maddox
		    	    tmaddox@netcom.com
	"That's a bird bone, chair, Bob.  I don't know if I should sit there."
				Tom Waits
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written
From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 15:26:55 GMT

                                        Saturday, the 2nd of January, 1993

Curtis Yarvin writes:
 "Because it makes really really cool people like Ezra Pound and
 Mortimer Adler and Allan Bloom and Kenneth Rexroth smile, and tap a
 little jig," is not, in my perhaps-jaundiced opinion, the best approach.

Well, but coolness is not exactly why I said it might be worth listening
to these people more than others. I said Pound was a great poet in his own
right, but it should be clear that Bloom and Adler are not. For starters,
they are simply better read than most other people. It's exactly the reason I
weigh some people's opinions here more than others. Those who've read an
awful lot are simply going to be in a position to know.

                   Mike Morris
             (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mworley@mathcs.emory.edu (Meg Worley)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: domes of tomes
Date: 31 Dec 1992 01:30:43 -0500
Organization: Emory University, Dept of Math and CS
NNTP-Posting-Host: emory.mathcs.emory.edu

I think we can unite in our awe, either admiring or
distrustful, or both, of Monsieur Morris's 1492 books.

For myself, I have found that being "shacked up," as
my dear old grandpa (who had a penchant for it himself)
called it, decreases my reading tremendously.  Special
K., however, is worth the decline in my thunderfooted
and stumblebunnied education.   

Jan's broken paw may have increased her reading, but
the shoulder my mother broke the day after xmas has
also brought a dramatic decrease in my reading ... Ah,
I hear her now... "Meg, another glass of sherry..."

Envious meg
-- 

 Meg Worley 				Internet:  mworley@mathcs.emory.edu		
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Subject: Re: Judith Mth that collections of
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 03:05:09 GMT

In article <1992Dec29.080727.2003@netcom.com> tmaddox@netcom.com (Tom Maddox) writes:
>In article <Bzz243.JCx@NeoSoft.com> claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird) writes:
>>z
>>Tom Peters and some business journalists give the impression
>>that CPI is in the little things:  one lone operative in the
>>Rockies hiring a helicopter to get the parcel through, one
>>production team voting to rationalize its break schedule.  I
>>suspect there's some rugged-individualist Americana in this.
>>At the same time, I know how easy it is to abstract my work-table
>>illumination problem to the point where we'd have a fantastic ROI,
>>but we're unable to accomplish anything definite ("no, this is
>>Expires: 
>>References: <Bzs03t.KKH@dcs.glasgowwe really
>>need to provide adequate lighting for all the welders--no, we
>>have to make sure that lclaird
>>Caitlin
>>tm
>>trn
>>nn   R
>
>	A remarkable posting, fit to stand beside Mark Taranto's sublime
>"alias" text.

	Not as poetic as Taranto's which had a certain haiku-like
fascination but Cameron's does seem to have a definite esoteric
dimension. It has the code words (ROI and CPI) and then that dwindling
off towards the end, kind of like the Python gang in the cave during
the Grail hunt. "What did he say?" He said urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
Certainly a linguistic analysis could be applied to "voting to
rationalize its break schedule" and "adequate lighting for all the
welders" 

Why? Because we like you. Urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

--

Keith Morgan kamorgan@athena.mit.edu
In the end nothing could be said of his work except that it was
preposterous and true and totally unacceptable. Edward Whittemore
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: pamela@sscux1.ssc.gov (pamela gurd)
Subject: Re: 92 in rabreview
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 16:53:19 GMT

In article <1htpq3INN95b@agate.berkeley.edu> annie@garnet.berkeley.edu  (Anne Jessop) writes:
>In article <1992Dec31.022551.17233@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:
>>Not comic books, graphic novels.  A good graphic novel will take longer
>>to read than most books.  (Yes, most graphic novels are collections of
>>a run of comic book.)  But I agree that they shouldn't count anyhow.
>
>
>I am reminded of the first page of _Alice in Wonderland_:  "Once or twice
>[Alice] had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no
>pictures or conversation in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought
>Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?'"
>

Did you ever wonder what Alice meant by "conversations"?  This was one 
of the deep mysteries of my childhood, that Alice's sister read books
with nothing in them at all.

Pam.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: nadel@attatash.aero.org (Miriam Nadel)
Subject: Re: Stark Naked
Organization: /usr/lib/news/organization
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 15:59:42 GMT

In article <1hahimINNlre@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
>Click & Clack, the Tappet Bros., of Car Talk have a list of these names
>which grows increasingly excruciating as the weeks go by. Their book,
>*CAR TALK*, may include a list.

It doesn't - the book is much more to the point than the show.  

But Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle used to be full of
real-life examples and may well still be.  I believe he referred to them
as "namephreaks."

If the book in question is by Norton Juster, that gives me more incentive
to go out and get it.  I wasn't aware that he had written anything but
_The Phantom Tollbooth_ which should not be given to children too young
to understand the humor.

Miriam Nadel


Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Cultural Appropriation and the New Age
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 22 Dec 92 00:32:34

When some American Indians became Catholic, were they appropriating someone
else's spirituality?
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,news.groups
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 02:54:28 GMT

In article <92357.145658U48073@uicvm.uic.edu> Cole Kendall <U48073@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:
>As an infrequent poster, and a frequent reader/lurker, I offer
>a modest proposal.  Why not split into:
>
>rec.arts.books     and      rec.arts.booklovers  (approximate title)

How about rec.arts.books and rec.arts.books.pigeonhole?

>This seems to be the crux of the issue.  Fido is the archetypal
>book lover, and anything he would want to discuss would easily
>fit into the appropriate matter for r.a.bl, as would discussions
>of spinster societies and Rabelaisian discussions of internal
>plumbing.

I believe that virtually everything Fido writes is appropriate for
rec.arts.books proper. Ditto for the spinster society stuff and the
Rabelais thread.

rec.arts.books.pigeonhole could be reserved for those benighted souls
who can't see how books pervade everything, and how almost every
discussion follows from or leads to a discussion of books.


--Mike



-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I'm waiting for the one-man revolution
mnemonic@eff.org| The only one that's coming."
(617) 864-0665  |                           
EFF, Cambridge  |                   --Robert Frost 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written
From: msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: SF + PC
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 15:38:36 GMT

                                   Thursday, the 31st of December, 1992

I said:
  There is nothing circular in saying that Ezra Pound or Mortimer Adler
  or Allan Bloom or Kenneth Rexroth thought a book important to read,
  and that that is reason to read it in lieu of other books. Their opinions
  simply weigh more than most other opinions.

Tom Maddox replies:
	Of course it's circular.  You must terminate your explanatory
  regress by something other than an appeal to authority if your explanation
  is to have any weight at all.

	I personally consider Pound's opinions interesting but often 
  preposterous, Adler's and Bloom's tedious and tendentious, and 
  Rexroth's . . . it's been too long since I've read any to offer an opinion.
  But even if I worshipped at the clay feet of all four, that would say
  nothing about their grounds for holding their opinions and certainly would
  not justify me or anyone else in following them.

I don't think there's any regress at all. These people have read a lot
(more than I am ever likely to), and they have written and thought about
literature, therefore they are worth listening to. Their canons weigh
more as recommendations than mine would. They are experts and insofar as
there is any agreement between them it can be said that there are objective
standards of judging literary merit.

                Mike Morris
         (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)
 

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: mls@panix.com (Michael Siemon)
Subject: Re: Shouting at robots
Summary: soulless?
Organization: Panix Public Access Internet & Unix, NYC
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 23:10:31 GMT

In article <C0Au9r.5u5@panix.com> mtaranto@panix.com (Mark Taranto) writes:

>Many have said that it is alright to scream at the robot, because it is
>a soulless object, like a car, VCR, stereo or a Math Professor.

I should not be mis-subscribed amongst any such "many."  I take it
that the propriety with which robots are shouted at has to do with
their being (largely futile, imho) technological substitutes for
servants.  Neither should I be read as having any very deep interest
in the two questions I posed.
-- 
Michael L. Siemon	"We honour founders of these starving cities
mls@panix.com		 Whose honour is the image of our sorrow ...
			 They built by rivers and at night the water
			 Running past the windows comforted their sorrow."
From: indy@immacc.prepnet.com (Dave Tartaglia)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Police Procedurals
Date: 29 Dec 1992 12:11:37 -0600
Organization: 'Immaculata College, PA '
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

I'll second the vote for James Melville's Inspector Otani series.
Sharp, funny, and insightful.

I would add James Marshall's novels: 
the Yellowthread Street series, set in Hong Kong
the Manilla series, set in the Philippines
the New York Detective series, in turn-of-the century Manhattan

Marshall's stories usually have about three or four subplots going at one time.
One is usually a mundane-but-funny police life bit, the others carry the 
suspense/mystery/weirdness.  Marshall often, but not always, ties the seemingly unrelated threads together at the end.  His specialty is writing about
catastrophic events which take place in a few seconds but are stretched out 
over several pages.  Agonizingly good fun!

And for laughs, I'll add Gary Alexander's Bamsan Kiet series: funny
political and social satire set in a fictional country in Southeast Asia.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
From: alisg@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Subject: Re: Making notations in your books?
Reply-To: alisg@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Organization: Montana State University
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 16:16:40 GMT

The thread on marking one's own copies of books has been interesting and
probably, given the likely readership of this group, predictable. I used to
have some of the same "reverence for the printed word," and would go into
orgasmic swoons over editions de luxe, etc.etc. I have now just about turned
180 degrees, and since the postings I have read have all expressed horror at
the idea, I say, MARK AWAY. I'll explain my feelings if you will first permit
me a digression.

I have been a librarian in high school, public, and now a university library.
I've given books talks to younger readers, helping propagandize reverence
for public property (which is quite different than reverence for books, per
se). In no way do I suggest anyone mark up a library book, except perhaps to
correct as unobtrusively as possible a typo which leads to factual error.

However, I know from experience that many librarians and teachers take their
own propaganda too seriously. Excessive reverence for print leads to school
book shelves crammed with outdated, incorrect, racist/sexist/stereotypical work
that is no longer appropriate and sometimes downright dangerous. No one will
throw it out because of this well-meant but misguided reverence. Face it,
folks, books are paper, glue and ink, all of which are cheap and disposable.
When the material in the book has served its purpose, throw it out.

Of course, not all libraries are alike. While a book may no longer be
appropriate for a school library, it may likely have research value in a
university library. I AM NOT ADVOCATING CENSORSHIP. But naive gushing over the
physical form of information too often leads to confusing form with content.
End of sermon. :)

Most of what I read comes from a library, and I do not mark it. But the books
I buy are mine to treat as I wish. The majority of them are, alas, not worth
the serious attention marking requires. An occasional mark in the margin
usually is enough, and most don't get that. 

Occasionally I find a truly interesting book that demands a lot of attention
and which compels me to address the author in one-sided conversation. Such
books are rare, but not until I go through and highlight, scribble in, or
 whatever, do I consider a book really mine. 

I am not concerned with the prospect of future owners. Books have little enough
resale value as it is, and I don't plan to sell them anyway. Someone remarked
that he would not mark up a Van Gogh or a da Vinci (pardon my paraphrase), and
I have rarely seen such a complete confusion of apples with oranges. Books,
thank the Lord and Mr. Gutenberg, are not one-off masterpieces. If one is into
collecting rare editions or incunabula, fine. They aren't what I'm talking
about.

Well, pardon my loquacity, but this is a topic on which I have heard far too
much gush. Flame away.

george
reference librarian
alisg@trex.oscs.montana.edu 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books