APPLE CENSORS CD-ROM
Peter D Merholz
by columnist Juan Gonzalez:
APPLE'S BIG BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
Apple, the company that revolutionized the personal computer industry,
apparently thinks Newt Gingrich's Third Wave Information Age means
cencorship is back - especially when it comes to abortion and gays.
In a stunning move for a company long admired for its forward-looking
policies, Apple last week suddenly notified the producer of an acclaimed
American history CD-ROM that it was discontinuing shipments because of
complaints about mentions of turn-of-the-century abortion, birth control
and homosexuality.
After failing to get Voyager Co. - the producer of "Who Built America?" -
to delete the controversial sections, Apple informed the company on Jan. 31
that it was discontinuing shipments of the disc to public schools.
Apple's notice came only a few days after "Who Built America?" won the
American Historical Association's bienniel prize for "the most outstanding
contribution to the teaching and learning of history."
Since November, Apple has distributed more than 12,000 copies of the
Voyager disc, as part of its free software package bundled with new
computer shipments to public schools.
"Who Built America?" was a joint project between New York-based Voyager,
the leading U.S. publisher of CD-ROM discs, and the American Social History
Project at the City University of New York.
CD-ROM is the technology that combines text, photos, music and video into
one multi-media experience on a personal computer. Like cd music discs,
CD-ROM discs can store immense amounts of information compared with older
methods.
Only a few minutes of viewing this disc shows you why Apple was at first so
enthusiastic. With it, history comes alive. You get not only a standard
text but original source documents, such as the complete video of "The
Great Train Robbery," the actual voice of William Jennings Bryan giving his
"Cross of Gold" speech, and survivors of the 1906 Atlanta race riot and the
1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire giving you firsthand accounts of
those tragedies.
But in early January, Apple executives notified Bob Stein, chief executive
of Voyager, that they had recieved some complaints, the most troubling
dealing with citations of abortion, birth control, and homosexuality.
There was, for instance, the audio interview with Elizabeth Anderson, who
recounted how, beginning in 1910, she had had 12 abortions.
And the 1882 letter from a gay German immigrant explaining how he fled to
America from his native land after being arrested for a homosexual
relationship.
And the 1901 New York Times account of Murray Hall, a well-known Tammany
Hall leader who for 25 years masquereded as a man and was married twice,
though "he" was secretly a "she."
"Some people may not like the fact there was abortion in 1910, but you
can't deny it existed," said Steven Brier, the CUNY history professor who
authored the original two-volume "Who Built America" and then adapted it
for CD-ROM.
"It's unbelievable to have this project blown-off in this way," an angry
Brier said yesterday.
And for this to happen with Apple - long regarded by many as the most
creative and visionary of companies - is especially troubling.
I bought my first Apple 2E more than 10 years ago, and I came to believe
that Apple's healthy irreverence toward narrow-minded thought and arbitrary
authority was just the spirit that produced its pioneering innovations,
things like the Macintosh and the powerbook laptops.
It was Apple, remember, that not too long ago refused to build a new plant
in Austin, Tex., after the local government tried to penalize it for
providing medical benefits to same-sex domestic partners. That time, Apple
stood on principal and won.
But now here was this public relations person, Carolyn Donohoe, giving me a
prepared statement late yesterday on the "Voyager issue."
Since the statement so clearly double-speaks for itself, I will quote it
extensively:
"It's not an issue of censorship. However, Apple has recieved some
customer complaints. As a matter of course, Apple continually reviews the
content of its bundles based on customer satisfaction and feedback.
"Currently, Apple is evaluating the bundle titled 'Apple Educational
Series: Elementary and Secondary Reference.' To date, Apple has neither
formally notified Voyager nor made any public announcements about future
versions of this bundle."
With the November elections behind us, and with our nation's future being
increasingly shaped by a rabid history professor named Newt Gingrich, Apple
appears ready to join the cencorship posse, tossing its own once-proud
rebel legacy into the trash bin it helped make famous.
-30-
If *you* have something to say, send email to:
and/or
Lizard
> The following article appeared in the Feb. 8 New York Daily News, written
> by columnist Juan Gonzalez:
> APPLE'S BIG BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
<deleted>
You know, I read about this in the WSJ today, and I said to myself "Ten
to one someone will start whining about 'censorship'". Looks like
Lizard's uncanny ability to predict foolish behavior is right on the
money again. Sigh.
There has been no 'censorship'.
Anyone who wants the CD can get it.
It is legal to sell it in every state in the Union.
Apple is not shipping a cut or bowdlerized version.
Apple made a typical business decision to not place their name and
reputation behind a product which is controversial and revisionist. I
doubt Apple would offer a co-marketing program to a company offering a
disk of 'proof' that the Holocaust never occured, or one which described
the bombing of Hiroshima as an act of unjustified aggression against the
peaceful Japanese.
Such ideas ARE protected speech -- and anyone who wishes to distribute
such ideas is free to do so -- but neither Apple nor anyone else is
obliged to support it.
There is no moral difference between Apple's refusal to continue
co-marketing this CD, and Apple's past refusal to deal with South Africa
when it was under white-minority rule. In both cases, they chose to
listen to protestors and withdraw from what might be considered
a controversial position.
--
Evolution doesn't take prisoners. -- Lizard
Democracy:The worship of jackals by jackasses -- Mencken
Some people collect bottlecaps;I collect net providers. Update
your killfiles, folks.
Lizard
> In article <3hgvbt$j...@redstone.interpath.net>,
> Lizard <liz...@mercury.interpath.net> wrote:
> >Apple made a typical business decision to not place their name and
> >reputation behind a product which is controversial and revisionist.
> As Frank would say, "You had me and you lost me." I completely agree with
> you that Apple's decision not to be involved with the disc was in no way
> censorship, but where do you get "revisionistic"? I quote from Peter's
> original post:
I am basing my data on the rather detailed review/analysis in the Wall
Street Journal, Friday,2/10. It was 'revisionist' in the sense that it
greatly altered the importance of some events and the motives for
others. "Revisionist" should not be construed to mean "false" (unless it
is the second word in a phrase beginning with 'Holocaust'). A
"revisionist" history is one which goes against accepted
interpretations. For example, my view of the Civil War, which holds that
slavery was used by the North purely as an emotional hook to drag the
nation into a war which was realy over cotton taxes and Federal power,
is "revisionist". My belief that the Constitutional Convention was a
bloodless coup is *very* revisionist. I would not expect a major
corporation to throw their weight behind any product containing these
views.
"Revisionist" is a very loaded word, and, in retrospect, is not the term
I should have used. "Controversial" should stand alone. (Hey, Lizard has
a flair for hyperbole and rhetoric, and sometimes, it gets the better of
me when it shouldn't.)
<deletia>
> Are you saying that some of this isn't true, or are you using the term
> revisionistic to mean "Well, it's truthful, but a history book from 40
> years ago would not have included it, so we shouldn't either."?
I have little doubt that everything presented as a fact on the CD in
question is, in fact, true. I question which facts they chose to
include, and why. Suppose, for example, in a study of the American
Revolution, I chose to focus on the violence enacted against civilians
who chose to support the British -- looting, lynching, being driven out
of town, etc...all for backing the wrong horse. All done by people
allegedly fighting for 'freedom'. Such things did indeed occur, but a
focus on them would indicate a skewed view of history. Contrarywise,
suppose I presented a history of the settling of the West which played
up those times when the the Europeans and the Natives got along
together, or where certain tribes left their lands peacefully and
without much fuss. This, too, would be both true -- and a distortion in
order to support one viewpoint.
> While I certainly don't aprove of some people's desire to label every
> private decision as censorship, and I am also quite tired of people who
> use revisionistic in the second way above. The idea that "my father's
> history books are good enough for me" just doen't wash. Sorry.
The issue is not "My father's history books are good enough" but rather,
WHICH view of history is to predominate. There are thousands of possible
ways to view any major span of history, such as the settling of America.
My High School, for example, covered the industrial revolution solely in
terms of Noble, Oppressed Workers and Evil Capitalist Exploiters. We
read all sorts of books on the history of unions, the depradations of
the Robber Barons, and so forth. Other schools might teach the exact
same events from the perspective of Great Industrialists who brought
Progress to the Masses. Which is "true"? Neither and both.
Lizard
> In article <3hgvbt$j...@redstone.interpath.net>, liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard) says:
> >
> >> APPLE'S BIG BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
> ><deleted>
> >
> >
> "censorship", or whether you are hiding behind a legalistic rationalisation
> of the same thing.
Censorship is the use of force, or threat of force, to prevent someone
from using his/her own property to express their views to a willing
audience.
Refusal to fund is not 'censorship'. If I decide not to purchase
Ben&Jerries Ice Cream because I disagree with their funding of
neo-luddite organizations, that is not censorship.
> >Anyone who wants the CD can get it.
> >It is legal to sell it in every state in the Union.
> >Apple is not shipping a cut or bowdlerized version.
> >
> Apparently true- but so what? The whole point of the CD, was that it be
> made available to schools. Apple's cave-in to the Religious Right effectively
> negates this.
It is perfectly available to any school which wishes to purchase it.
Apple's decision merely removes it from a bundled package;Voyager still
makes the disk and will happily sell it to anyone who wants to buy it.
They lose Apple's marketing muscle;but them's the breaks.
> >Apple made a typical business decision to not place their name and
> >reputation behind a product which is controversial and revisionist. I
> >doubt Apple would offer a co-marketing program to a company offering a
> >disk of 'proof' that the Holocaust never occured, or one which described
> >the bombing of Hiroshima as an act of unjustified aggression against the
> >peaceful Japanese.
> >
> Now here, we get to the crux of the issue. The REAL point is, some types of
> complaints against "controversial" ideas are reasonable, and some are not.
And who is to decide? Are you to declare "Sorry, your complaints are not
sufficiently reasonable;bugger off."? It seems that if the target market
(school boards) feel the product is unsuitable, then that is valid
enough for Apple. As I said earlier, they wish to sell computers -- not
political viewpoints. Companies tend to shy away from any sort of
controversy;while this does sometimes backfire, in most cases, it is the
correct action, from a purely bottom-line perspective.
> The reason why a tract denying the Holocaust, or one making unsubstantiated
> claims about Hiroshima (although, I think the latter is a bad example since
> there IS plenty of evidence to support this opinion), could legitimately be
> de-listed from a school history CD is simply that these opinions are at
> variance with both fact and history. As an analogy, we would neither use a
> science CD that stated the world is flat, nor would we accomodate a flat-earth
> pressure group which demanded that the CD be stripped of all references to the
> earth being round, because the earth IS round, not flat.
The issue is not facts, but emphasis;I find it difficult to believe that
gay cowboy love poems are truly relevant to a general history of the US.
On a disk about the longtime existence of homosexuality, especially one
which aims to debunk stereotypes about gays? Sure! On a general history
of the US? Highly questionable.
> What the Religious Right pressure groups that complained against the content
> of the CD want to do is to censor historical fact. It is a FACT that abortions
> were common in the U.S. prior to Roe vs. Wade. It is a FACT that some homosexuals
> fled to North America to escape persecution elsewhere. There are many other such
> facts that the Religious Right doesn't like to deal with (and interestingly, one
> of them, for the Neo-Nazi ideologues of the Right, is the Holocaust itself), so
> its solution is for kids not to learn about them. History is politically neutral;
> some things happened, others didn't, and it is the responsibility of historians
> to record facts and events in their historical context.
History is politically neutral, but the selection of facts is
politically loaded. Given access to the near infinite number of 'facts'
which exist, I could 'prove' that:
a)The United States is entirely the product of Straight White Christian
Males;minorities played a trivial role, or..
b)The United States was built almost entirely by 'minorities', who, un
total, form a majority;Straight White Christian Males just stole all the
credit.
> Incidentally, I always love it when I hear something being vilified for being
> "revisionist". I agree that some revisionist history (for example, the type that
> tries to imply that Africans invented the electric battery in the 1200s) is
> ridiculous, but the term "revisionist" has come to be used by right-wingers to
> stigmatise any historical point of view that doesn't coincide with their own. It's
> much too easy a term to throw at someone, without going into the details of what
> does, and does not, count as fact versus opinion.
Again, I never questioned the facts -- merely their selection and
emphasis. This is as much a form of revisonism as out-and-out lying. For
example, without much work, I could probably dredge up a female
playwright who was a contemporary of Shakespeare. To devote equal time
to Will and to this hypothetical female counterpart *would* be
revisionist, even if every fact were true. Imagine a CD which talked as
much about the Nazi's social programs and full employment as they did
about their acts of genocide;the choice of emphasis *is* a form of
political bias.
> >Such ideas ARE protected speech -- and anyone who wishes to distribute
> >such ideas is free to do so -- but neither Apple nor anyone else is
> >obliged to support it.
> >
> This point is correct, but again it is simply a legalism. As long as the primary
> means of transmitting a medium of communication (e.g., having your CD distributed
> by Apple or another similar large partner) is unavailable to someone with a
> "controversial" point of view, you have _de_facto_ censorship. We have all heard
> the famous comment that "there's complete freedom of the press, as long as you can
> afford one". It applies here as well.
I agree it applies here;I see nothing wrong with it. There is no such
thing as an obligation to *support* speech with which you disagree -- it
is as much a violation of freedom of the press to *compel* speech as to
*ban* it.
> >There is no moral difference between Apple's refusal to continue
> >co-marketing this CD, and Apple's past refusal to deal with South Africa
> >when it was under white-minority rule. In both cases, they chose to
> >listen to protestors and withdraw from what might be considered
> >a controversial position.
> >--
> I think the difference here is quite plain. I believe that Apple (and also the
> majority of other Western computer companies) refused to have extensive dealings
> with South Africa's _apartheid_ regime partly because of agitation from pressure
> groups here at home, but primarily because the regime might very well have used
> its computer products for repressive purposes, i.e. to keep records on political
> dissidents. The agitation from the Religious Right against the Voyager CD is the
> polar opposite of this: they want to suppress history, not reveal it; they want
> to censor opposing points of view, not respect them; and if they had their way
> there wouldn't be much difference between their America and South Africa in its
> pre-Mandela days.
Again, the classic hpyocrisy. Activism for a cause you approve is
Noble;activism for a cuase you disapprove of is Censorship. I mean,
really -- fear that Mac II's would used to "keep tabs" on people? No. I
don't think so. Apple boycotted South Africa purely because the sales to
Aouth Africa would not equal LOST sales in American and Europe from a
likely boycott. Pure bottom-line business calculation. That it was the
"Atheist Left" (g) as opposed to the "Religious Right" making the
demands is 100% irrelevent. And irrelevence never forgets.
Michael Kaufman
>reputation behind a product which is controversial and revisionist.
As Frank would say, "You had me and you lost me." I completely agree with
you that Apple's decision not to be involved with the disc was in no way
censorship, but where do you get "revisionistic"? I quote from Peter's
original post:
>>There was, for instance, the audio interview with Elizabeth Anderson, who
>>recounted how, beginning in 1910, she had had 12 abortions.
>>And the 1882 letter from a gay German immigrant explaining how he fled to
>>America from his native land after being arrested for a homosexual
>>relationship.
>>And the 1901 New York Times account of Murray Hall, a well-known Tammany
>>Hall leader who for 25 years masquereded as a man and was married twice,
>>though "he" was secretly a "she."
Are you saying that some of this isn't true, or are you using the term
revisionistic to mean "Well, it's truthful, but a history book from 40
years ago would not have included it, so we shouldn't either."?
While I certainly don't aprove of some people's desire to label every
private decision as censorship, and I am also quite tired of people who
use revisionistic in the second way above. The idea that "my father's
history books are good enough for me" just doen't wash. Sorry.
Michael
--
| I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack
Michael L. Kaufman | ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched
kau...@mcs.com | C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
| All those moments will be lost in time - like tears
| in rain. Time to die. Roy Batty - Blade Runner
Joe Ragosta
(Siegfried Kreischer) wrote:
> Apple cowardly rewrites history in order to please the conservatives.
> It's a SHAME.
>
Baloney. I've seen some of the things that there were objections to and I
found them inappropriate (not necessarily offensive, though).
For example, if you're writing a history, why should you EMPHASIZE a
person's sexual orientation? I thought it didn't matter. It's a case of
political correctness being shoved down our throats.
Apple apparently felt (based on what I've read--I can't speak for Apple)
that the tone and extraneous information made this disk less than ideal
for a history text.
I applaud them.
--
Regards,
Joe Ragosta
doc...@interramp.com
100% Chemical -- and proud of it.
William E. Hope
conservative officials because Apple's benefits package allows 'same sex
spouse' health coverage. Don't know if Apple said forget it or the local
officials changed their mind. So half the CD-ROM story is inaccurate.
---
|| Bill Hope || All Opinions are personal and have not ||
|| DSEG Software Automation || been approved by Upper Management. ||
|| Texas Instruments, Inc. || ||
|| email: weh...@ti.com || Any Facts are Facts as I know them; ||
|| voice: 214.995.5618 || Others may have more accurate Facts. ||
mshields
><deleted>
>
>
"censorship", or whether you are hiding behind a legalistic rationalisation
of the same thing.
>Anyone who wants the CD can get it.
>It is legal to sell it in every state in the Union.
>Apple is not shipping a cut or bowdlerized version.
>
Apparently true- but so what? The whole point of the CD, was that it be
made available to schools. Apple's cave-in to the Religious Right effectively
negates this.
>Apple made a typical business decision to not place their name and
>reputation behind a product which is controversial and revisionist. I
>doubt Apple would offer a co-marketing program to a company offering a
>disk of 'proof' that the Holocaust never occured, or one which described
>the bombing of Hiroshima as an act of unjustified aggression against the
>peaceful Japanese.
>
Now here, we get to the crux of the issue. The REAL point is, some types of
complaints against "controversial" ideas are reasonable, and some are not.
The reason why a tract denying the Holocaust, or one making unsubstantiated
claims about Hiroshima (although, I think the latter is a bad example since
there IS plenty of evidence to support this opinion), could legitimately be
de-listed from a school history CD is simply that these opinions are at
variance with both fact and history. As an analogy, we would neither use a
science CD that stated the world is flat, nor would we accomodate a flat-earth
pressure group which demanded that the CD be stripped of all references to the
earth being round, because the earth IS round, not flat.
What the Religious Right pressure groups that complained against the content
of the CD want to do is to censor historical fact. It is a FACT that abortions
were common in the U.S. prior to Roe vs. Wade. It is a FACT that some homosexuals
fled to North America to escape persecution elsewhere. There are many other such
facts that the Religious Right doesn't like to deal with (and interestingly, one
of them, for the Neo-Nazi ideologues of the Right, is the Holocaust itself), so
its solution is for kids not to learn about them. History is politically neutral;
some things happened, others didn't, and it is the responsibility of historians
to record facts and events in their historical context.
Incidentally, I always love it when I hear something being vilified for being
"revisionist". I agree that some revisionist history (for example, the type that
tries to imply that Africans invented the electric battery in the 1200s) is
ridiculous, but the term "revisionist" has come to be used by right-wingers to
stigmatise any historical point of view that doesn't coincide with their own. It's
much too easy a term to throw at someone, without going into the details of what
does, and does not, count as fact versus opinion.
>Such ideas ARE protected speech -- and anyone who wishes to distribute
>such ideas is free to do so -- but neither Apple nor anyone else is
>obliged to support it.
>
This point is correct, but again it is simply a legalism. As long as the primary
means of transmitting a medium of communication (e.g., having your CD distributed
by Apple or another similar large partner) is unavailable to someone with a
"controversial" point of view, you have _de_facto_ censorship. We have all heard
the famous comment that "there's complete freedom of the press, as long as you can
afford one". It applies here as well.
>There is no moral difference between Apple's refusal to continue
>co-marketing this CD, and Apple's past refusal to deal with South Africa
>when it was under white-minority rule. In both cases, they chose to
>listen to protestors and withdraw from what might be considered
>a controversial position.
>--
I think the difference here is quite plain. I believe that Apple (and also the
majority of other Western computer companies) refused to have extensive dealings
with South Africa's _apartheid_ regime partly because of agitation from pressure
groups here at home, but primarily because the regime might very well have used
its computer products for repressive purposes, i.e. to keep records on political
dissidents. The agitation from the Religious Right against the Voyager CD is the
polar opposite of this: they want to suppress history, not reveal it; they want
to censor opposing points of view, not respect them; and if they had their way
there wouldn't be much difference between their America and South Africa in its
pre-Mandela days.
I guess this all goes to prove, Apple has grown up- it's now a true-blue member
of the Wall Street corporate crowd. Well, if that's what they want, they're
welcome to it... I stopped buying their products when they launched the Windows
lawsuit.
Marcus Shields
mshi...@bull.ca
kec
dp...@osage.csc.ti.com (Doug Page) writes:
> 2) a study at the time that indicated that convenience stores that
> carried such magazines had a higher risk of armed robbery.
This is really interesting! Did anyone venture to speculate the
reasons why? I can't imagine two guys in ski masks stepping into a
convenience store, pulling their guns, checking the magazine rack and
going "Hey, no good magazines here. Let's try the place down the
street." and heading out.
What's the connection?
kc
Erik Kloeppel
They were all in Lubbok Texas! What else is there to know? Now, if
they'd done that survey nation-wide, could be that the results would
have differed a bit.
Erik Kloeppel
Gah - my last post blew up...
The connection is: they were all in Lubbok Texas! Obviously, the
criminal element there is hooked on "dirty" magazines. I bet if they
had conducted the survey nationwide, or at least included some other
locations, they would have seen different results.
Lurch
Erik Kloeppel
Gah - my last post blew up...
Erik Kloeppel
Gah - my last post blew up...
Gary McGath
(mshields) wrote:
> Incidentally, I always love it when I hear something being vilified for being
> "revisionist". I agree that some revisionist history (for example, the
type that
> tries to imply that Africans invented the electric battery in the 1200s) is
> ridiculous, but the term "revisionist" has come to be used by right-wingers to
> stigmatise any historical point of view that doesn't coincide with their own.
Another part of the negative connotations attached to "revisionism" may
come from the fact that the Institute for Historical Review, an
organization whose scholarly name hides the fact that its sole purpose is
to create the impression that the Holocaust either didn't happen or wasn't
important, equates the whole of revisionism with its particular issue. If
other organizations are doing the same, they could be having a negative
impact -- though I don't know if that impact is very large.
I read an article a while back in which the author reported being told
that a book called (approximately) *What Went Right with the Eighties* was
"Stalinist" because it challenged generally accepted history. Such people
apparently regard standard history as Holy Writ.
--
Gary McGath
gmc...@condes.mv.com
PGP Signature: 3E B3 62 C8 F8 9E E9 3A 67 E7 71 99 71 BD FA 29
Per Erik Berrs Stendahl
: Anyone who wants the CD can get it.
: It is legal to sell it in every state in the Union.
: Apple is not shipping a cut or bowdlerized version.
:
: Apple made a typical business decision to not place their name and
: reputation behind a product which is controversial and revisionist. I
A question: What was the 'controversial' contents of the CD?
Homosexuality? Abortion?
If these things are "controversial" and should be banned from public
view, then, I'm afraid, you guys are in *serious* trouble.
Flames to:
__
__/// "Berrs" (a.k.a. P E Stendahl @ University of Skovde, Sweden )
\XX/ a94p...@ida.his.se || http://www.his.se/ida/~a94perst/
"We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors,
we borrow it from our children" - Indian proverb
Jay Towslee
From: Mike Lorion, Director
Apple USA K-12 Education Division Marketing
To Whom it May Concern:
Reports that Apple Computer plans to stop bundling the CD-ROM ³Who
Built America?² with computers sold to K12 education customers have contained
inaccuracies and raise concerns that we believe need to be addressed.
Beginning in December, Apple started shipping versions of the Macintosh LC 575
to K-12 schools bundled with 16 software and multimedia reference titles in two
offerings called the Elementary Reference Bundle and the Secondary Reference
Bundle. The purpose of these product offerings is to provide educators and
students in elementary, middle and high school classrooms and libraries with a
rich assortment of general use history, art, reference, science, language, and
career planning CD-ROM titles.
Within just a few weeks, several K-12 customers contacted Apple concerned that
the way some subject matter is presented on ³Who Built America² was not
appropriate for classroom use.
It is extremely rare for Apple to receive this level of immediate and critical
feedback on a product, and has spurred significant public discussion and
internal evaluation. Because our reference bundles are intended as tools for
use in any classroom grades K-12, customer feedback is considered important in
deciding classroom and age appropriateness of all the materials. As part of our
ongoing product evaluation process, we intend to solicit input from our K-12
education customers, our Education Advisory Council, other curriculum experts,
professional organizations in the education community, and educators on staff.
Contrary to published reports, Apple continues to distribute this CD in the
versions of our Elementary and Secondary Reference Bundles that we offer. Our
decision to bundle or not to bundle this CD in the next version is in the
process of being finalized. Decisions to bundle various software with our
educational computers are based on education market direction; customer
feedback; and user satisfaction --this is not a matter of censorship.
Mike Lorion, Director
Apple USA K-12 Education Division Marketing
Jay Towslee
<http://www.info.apple.com/apple.html>
check the news releases link for the latest...
Ronald Hopkins-Lutz
Krzyzanowski) writes:
>
>Peter D Merholz (pet...@uclink2.berkeley.edu) wrote:
>: The following article appeared in the Feb. 8 New York Daily News,
written
>: by columnist Juan Gonzalez:
>
>This probably no longer should be posted to alt.cd-rom,
alt.cd-rom.reviews,
>or comp.sys.mac.advocacy; and I hope this thread will soon end, but...
>
>: APPLE'S BIG BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
>
>: Apple, the company that revolutionized the personal computer
industry,
>: apparently thinks Newt Gingrich's Third Wave Information Age means
>: cencorship is back - especially when it comes to abortion and gays.
>
>How are these actions by Apple even remotely related to the fact that
>Newt Gingrich thinks the information age is more and more important to
>the average citizen?
>
>: <snip>
>
>: But now here was this public relations person, Carolyn Donohoe,
giving me a
>: prepared statement late yesterday on the "Voyager issue."
>
>: <snip>
>
>: With the November elections behind us, and with our nation's future
being
>: increasingly shaped by a rabid history professor named Newt Gingrich,
Apple
>: appears ready to join the cencorship posse, tossing its own
once-proud
>: rebel legacy into the trash bin it helped make famous.
>
>What does Newt Gingrich have to do with any of this? Is he really a
>rabid history professor? Why? Is he part of a censorship posse?
>
>--
>Not necessarily the opinion of the company...
>--
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
(snip sig)
Like the CD-ROM he talks about things other people don't want to hear
about. He also talks fast and with pithy quips. That makes him a _rapid_
history professor. Other than that I don't see what he had to do with
this. Newt is an effect, not a cause.
--
============================================================
"May the peace of Allah be upon you and in your heart."
Ron "the typingly challenged Boring White Male" Hopkins-Lutz
Ro...@ix.netcom.com aa...@cleveland.freenet.edu
The Great Grendel-Khan
>The following article appeared in the Feb. 8 New York Daily News, written
>by columnist Juan Gonzalez:
>APPLE'S BIG BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
[perhaps inaccurate censorship story deleted]
Okay, before flying of the handle, get both sides. Better yet, wait to
see what happens, then decide if you are justified in flames.
------- Forwarded Message
This is not a press release, but we thought the members of the pressrel
mailing list might want a copy....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Whom it May Concern:
Reports that Apple Computer plans to stop bundling the CD-ROM "Who
Built America?" with computers sold to K12 education customers have
contained inaccuracies and raise concerns that we believe need to be
addressed.
Beginning in December, Apple started shipping versions of the Macintosh
LC 575 to K-12 schools bundled with 16 software and multimedia reference
title in two offerings called the Elementary Reference Bundle and the
------- End of Forwarded Message
--
Why would I want to die like Jesus Christ? | arg...@iastate.edu
|<The Great Grendel-Khan>
No News (is NOT good news!) | since '91
Lizard
> liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard) writes:
> : Anyone who wants the CD can get it.
> : It is legal to sell it in every state in the Union.
> : Apple is not shipping a cut or bowdlerized version.
> :
> : Apple made a typical business decision to not place their name and
> : reputation behind a product which is controversial and revisionist. I
> A question: What was the 'controversial' contents of the CD?
> Homosexuality? Abortion?
Rather, undue emphasis on those (and other) issues in a work promoted as
a general purpose history text. Clearly, enough people did find it
'controversial' to generate sufficient consumer pressure to cause Apple
to withdraw support.
If you feel that homosexuality, abortion, et al, are not issues which
tend to generate controversy -- might I suggest you get away from your
computer and read, oh, such radical right-wing neo-fascist magazines as
Time or Newsweek?
"Controversial" is hardly a synonym for "evil" or "criminal" -- which is
what you seem to be thinking it is.
> If these things are "controversial" and should be banned from public
> view, then, I'm afraid, you guys are in *serious* trouble.
Banned from public view? Tell me, are you remotely familiar at all with
exactly what Apple did, and why, or did someone just say, "Hey, Apple is
trying to ban anyone talking abut homosexuals on their computers!" or
some similair distorted twaddle? For <deity of your choice>'s sake, man,
we're only discussing a decision not to bundle a CD -- not a rewriting
of <insert favorite charter of human rights>.
Priorities, dude.
> "We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors,
> we borrow it from our children" - Indian proverb
Actually, an early twentieth century white man's trite phrase, falsely
attributed to Chief Seattle. Even then, the myth of the Noble Savage had
useful propaganda purposes.
mshields
Dear Mr. Lorion:
Please. This is the INTERNET you are talking to. We know all about your
real motives in pulling the Voyager CD (namely, censorship to appease the
radical Religious Right), and we CAN talk back to you in a way that
readers of printed press releases can't.
Stop insulting our intelligence and leave the corporate BS for your
board of directors, eh?
M. Shields
mshi...@bull.ca
Dave Albrecht
> On Tue, 14 Feb 1995 10:21:57 GMT in article <BSON.95Fe...@moomin.moomix.com>, Jan Brittenson wrote:
>> On 11 Feb 1995 00:11:41 GMT,
>> liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard) wrote:
>
>> > Apple made a typical business decision to not place their name and
>> > reputation behind a product which is controversial and revisionist.
>
>> agreed-upon partnership as a leverage to revise history. The Voyager
>> product contains the facts, and it's the mere presence of these facts
>> that are controversial.
>
> Unless you have evidence that Apple has invented a time machine
> (Hmmm...QuickTime 3.0?), I doubt Apple could ever hope to 'revise'
> history. The facts selected fro the Voyager CD evidently offend a number
> of people;Apple is in the business of selling computer, not making
> political stands;Apple originally chose the CD because they (Apple)
> thought it would help them sell computers;they have since decided
> otherwise. End of story.
>
Oh bullshit. I'm not sure whether Apple is wrong or
right on this issue. You, however, seem quite biased.
I won't pretend to know very much about this CD either but I have seen
some of what was considered 'controversial' and while some of the information
presented may have been anecdotal, it was also factual, hardly 'revisionist'.
Since you were the first to make an inaccurate cry of 'revisionist' you
can hardly pick nits with others following suit. Most people understand
the concept of revising history implies written history not actual history but
since you since to be pretending to be a lackwit I'll explain.
Actual history is events not open to revision. Written history is a
subjective viewpoint on events and is subject to distortion, omission,
and exaggeration. Victors often rewrite history to paint themselves in
glowing terms and the losers as low down scum. 'Revisionism' or 'revising'
history for right or wrong is now in common usage as distorting or omitting
historical events in historical reporting to give a particularly biased
subjective slant. I ought to know, I grew up with the 'happy slaves'
U.S. history textbooks.
Regarding 'pure business' decisions. 99% of the most heinous corporate actions
throughout history were 'pure business' decisions. For instance:
Ford deciding it was cheaper to settle the Pinto lawsuits than fix the car.
There is no lack of this kind of behavior. If your kid was riding in a
car seat and got killed because the seat malfunctioned from a known defect
which the manufacturer decided not to recall because it was too expensive
(a 'pure business' decision) would you think that the manufacturer had behaved
properly and that the only response should be that the marketplace know so
that the might stop buying their car seats, End of Story? Obviously, this
is an extreme case but it serves to make a point. The point is that virtually
every business makes many decisions that could be regarded as 'purely business'
but which any sensible person realises requires a bit more consideration
of societal and environmental concerns.
Marketplace forces aren't generally the best enforcer of good behavior. There
are literally dozens of reasons why one might choose one computer over another.
Expecting the consumer to be knowledgeable of all the reprehensible conduct
of the company if no one gets out there and complains about it is hardly
sensible. Voting with your feet is appropriate but it is also like hitting your
puppy on the nose with a newspaper a month after he wet the rug. It is a
message that is ill-timed and essentially incomprehensible to the
recipient. It is unlikely to have any desired result.
It is far more appropriate to give them alot of heat over a decision that
you find objectionable so that they can bask in the light of unfavorable
publicity which is a motivating force they do understand.
With regard to school districts.
Any number of classic novels that most would consider very important reading
have been banned by some school district or other (Animal Farm, 1984,
Lord of the Flies, the full list is way too long to quote here).
If everything that some little educational backwater objects to gets removed
you end up with mental 'gruel' which informs little and teaches less.
Similar kinds of pressures were brought to bear on Waldenbooks by right-
wing religous groups. Waldenbooks, unlike Apple, however, had some
backbone and stood up to them even having a storefront display on
book censorship.
The question to be answered here is how much of the audience for this CD
took offense. After all, we are talking about
something that, like a book, no one is forcing you to read. Considering
that this CD was considered an award-winning treatise I am leaning more
toward corporate Apple being spineless rather than justified.
David Albrecht
Dave Albrecht
> On Tue, 14 Feb 1995 22:34:15 GMT in article <1995Feb14.2...@bullns.on01.bull.ca>, mshields wrote:
>> In article <3hgvbt$j...@redstone.interpath.net>, liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard) says:
>> >
>> >> APPLE'S BIG BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
>> ><deleted>
>> >
>> >There has been no 'censorship'.
>> >
>> That depends on whether you are using a realistic definition of the term
>> "censorship", or whether you are hiding behind a legalistic rationalisation
>> of the same thing.
>
> Censorship is the use of force, or threat of force, to prevent someone
> from using his/her own property to express their views to a willing
> audience.
>
> Refusal to fund is not 'censorship'. If I decide not to purchase
> Ben&Jerries Ice Cream because I disagree with their funding of
> neo-luddite organizations, that is not censorship.
>
Censorship in the general sense is filtering information such that
it doesn't get presented to a more general public. It seems pretty
clear that the people that Apple is responding to on this issue found
some aspects of this CD offensive and didn't want it to be made available
to children. They want to censor this information and Apple is being a
party to it. By my definition of the word this IS censorship.
>> >Anyone who wants the CD can get it.
>> >It is legal to sell it in every state in the Union.
>> >Apple is not shipping a cut or bowdlerized version.
>> >
>
> And who is to decide? Are you to declare "Sorry, your complaints are not
> sufficiently reasonable;bugger off."? It seems that if the target market
> (school boards) feel the product is unsuitable, then that is valid
> enough for Apple. As I said earlier, they wish to sell computers -- not
> political viewpoints. Companies tend to shy away from any sort of
> controversy;while this does sometimes backfire, in most cases, it is the
> correct action, from a purely bottom-line perspective.
It is just as unreasonable to make have a few particularly facist school
boards dictate the content for the rest. If 30% of the school boards said
they found this material offensive and didn't want it bundled then I can
see Apple doing something about it. If 3% say so, then I think Apple
should tell them to stuff it.
>
>> The reason why a tract denying the Holocaust, or one making unsubstantiated
>> claims about Hiroshima (although, I think the latter is a bad example since
>> there IS plenty of evidence to support this opinion), could legitimately be
>> de-listed from a school history CD is simply that these opinions are at
>> variance with both fact and history. As an analogy, we would neither use a
>> science CD that stated the world is flat, nor would we accomodate a flat-earth
>> pressure group which demanded that the CD be stripped of all references to the
>> earth being round, because the earth IS round, not flat.
>
> The issue is not facts, but emphasis;I find it difficult to believe that
> gay cowboy love poems are truly relevant to a general history of the US.
> On a disk about the longtime existence of homosexuality, especially one
> which aims to debunk stereotypes about gays? Sure! On a general history
> of the US? Highly questionable.
>
Oh sure, and you can also have a dull dry recitation of facts that puts everyone
to sleep just like all the history texts that I was unfortunate enough to
be brought up on. Good history texts can be best-seller novels, they make history
live by bringing to life the people who made it, warts and all. They bring
up the grandiose and the mundane, the cowardly and the courageous, the generous
and the miserly. Most of all good history points out that it is
occupied by people just like us. Homosexuals didn't just spring fully
formed from the ground in the 1970s. They've always been around, they have
had their part in the formation of this country just like everyone else.
Countries are built on the backs of ordinary people living their lives the
best they can. There is nothing fundamentally different from a story about
some ordinary Italian immigrants and small snapshot of their life than homosexuals
and a small look into theirs. I'm neither an Italian or a homosexual but
a U.S. history disk about those 'relevant' to me i.e. WASP would be pretty
banal. Only those fixated on homosexuals would consider a story on some of
them as 'inapproriate' for a history text like they were some kind of freak show
and would fixate on a relatively small part of the content of the disk and blow it
up to grandiose proportions. Only appropriate for a 'gay' cd of some sort,
give me a break.
> Again, I never questioned the facts -- merely their selection and
> emphasis. This is as much a form of revisonism as out-and-out lying. For
> example, without much work, I could probably dredge up a female
> playwright who was a contemporary of Shakespeare. To devote equal time
> to Will and to this hypothetical female counterpart *would* be
> revisionist, even if every fact were true. Imagine a CD which talked as
> much about the Nazi's social programs and full employment as they did
> about their acts of genocide;the choice of emphasis *is* a form of
> political bias.
But revisionism is usually through distortion or omission. I haven't heard
anyone say this disk ommitted important parts of history or misrepresented
it. What I have heard people say is that it contains stories and information
that they don't think are important and/or appropriate for people to know.
> Activism for a cause you approve of is
> Noble;activism for a cause you disapprove of is Censorship.
Damn right :-). Actually activism is a behavior, censorship is a tool.
I'm not really fond of censorship as a tool even for causes I approve
of. I don't like distortion of the facts even by those purporting to
support causes I am in favor of. I'd prefer to be allowed (and
have everyone else be allowed) to hear a balanced view of the
whole story and allow them to make up their own minds. While the
term 'balanced' is itself subjective, usually having a presentation
that isn't in direct contradiction to the facts and omitting information
that some consider important goes a long way.
Even so, I will readily admit that I am not hypocrisy-free.
I would have a hard time not censoring of hateful, inaccurate treatises
like a Neo-nazi text if it was to be presented as normal educational
matter not presented in a proper framework. On the other hand
I wouldn't want then censored as a reference work available from the
library.
Activism for a cause I believe in is Noble; activism for a cause
I disapprove of is wrong-headed perhaps I wouldn't usually call it censorship.
David Albrecht -- Intolerance and hate mongering are not family values.
Lizard
> From article <3httmn$o...@redstone.interpath.net>, by liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard):
> > On Tue, 14 Feb 1995 22:34:15 GMT in article <1995Feb14.2...@bullns.on01.bull.ca>, mshields wrote:
> >> In article <3hgvbt$j...@redstone.interpath.net>, liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard) says:
> >> >
> > Censorship is the use of force, or threat of force, to prevent someone
> > from using his/her own property to express their views to a willing
> > audience.
> >
I'm not surprised. I find the standard dictonary definition to inadequate and
invalid.
> Censorship in the general sense is filtering information such that
> it doesn't get presented to a more general public. It seems pretty
> clear that the people that Apple is responding to on this issue found
> some aspects of this CD offensive and didn't want it to be made available
> to children. They want to censor this information and Apple is being a
> party to it. By my definition of the word this IS censorship.
Well, that's your definition, then. But, by that definition, Apple
'censored' hundreds of products -- by choosing not to include them in
any bundles at all. Heck, every time you go to a bookstore and only
purchase one book, you are 'censoring' every other book there. Every
time an editors decides not to print an article, he is 'censoring'. If
that is your definition, fine -- but it makes every human being on Earth
a 'censor'.
> > And who is to decide? Are you to declare "Sorry, your complaints are not
> > sufficiently reasonable;bugger off."? It seems that if the target market
> > (school boards) feel the product is unsuitable, then that is valid
> > enough for Apple. As I said earlier, they wish to sell computers -- not
> > political viewpoints. Companies tend to shy away from any sort of
> > controversy;while this does sometimes backfire, in most cases, it is the
> > correct action, from a purely bottom-line perspective.
> It is just as unreasonable to make have a few particularly facist school
> boards dictate the content for the rest. If 30% of the school boards said
> they found this material offensive and didn't want it bundled then I can
> see Apple doing something about it. If 3% say so, then I think Apple
> should tell them to stuff it.
Well, I suggest that you buy 51% of Apple's stock, and then you will be
free to tell them exactly how to run their business. Actually, business
decisions are usually made on the basis of very tiny percentages --
because the bulk of the populace doesn't care enough to bother
expressing themselves. This is why tiny minorities, such as the
Christian Coalition, can wield such disproprotionate political power.
> > The issue is not facts, but emphasis;I find it difficult to believe that
> > gay cowboy love poems are truly relevant to a general history of the US.
> > On a disk about the longtime existence of homosexuality, especially one
> > which aims to debunk stereotypes about gays? Sure! On a general history
> > of the US? Highly questionable.
> >
> Oh sure, and you can also have a dull dry recitation of facts that puts everyone
> to sleep just like all the history texts that I was unfortunate enough to
> be brought up on. Good history texts can be best-seller novels, they make history
> live by bringing to life the people who made it, warts and all. They bring
> up the grandiose and the mundane, the cowardly and the courageous, the generous
> and the miserly. Most of all good history points out that it is
> occupied by people just like us. Homosexuals didn't just spring fully
> formed from the ground in the 1970s. They've always been around, they have
> had their part in the formation of this country just like everyone else.
True. But their homosexuality was irrelevant. Tell me, which is more
important -- Plato's philosophy, or the fact he liked boys? Obviously,
his philosophy. His sexual orientation is *irrelevant*. The only time
sexual orientation *is* relevant is when that is the focus of the work.
Otherwise, it would be like concerning yourself with Da Vinci's favorite
brand of wine, or arguing over how cigarttes FDR smoked in day. (If
Phillip Morris sponsored a history course which made sure to cover just
how many 'great Americans' were tobacco addicts, would you not consider
that somewhat suspect -- although it would be factually true?)
> Countries are built on the backs of ordinary people living their lives the
> best they can.
Very egalitarian, but pretty much false. "Ordinary people" are just that
-- ordinary. They may be the bricks and mortar of a nation, but history
is (or should be) about the architects.
My High School taught history just as you recommend -- all sorts of
"people's histories' and Studs Terkel books and learning Union struggle
songs. I found it forced, biased, and patronizing. Who cares about Joe
Shlemp, who worked six days a week, had twelve kids, and finally
croaked, having done nothing more than replicate his genes a dozen
times? If THAT is how history is to be taught, then it is small wonder
there is no more greatness in the world. Who would you rather have your
children taught to strive to emulate -- George Washington, or some
nameless, faceless, soldier who got shot and killed in some obscure,
meaningless battle of the Revolutionary War?
There is nothing fundamentally different from a story about
> some ordinary Italian immigrants and small snapshot of their life than homosexuals
> and a small look into theirs. I'm neither an Italian or a homosexual but
> a U.S. history disk about those 'relevant' to me i.e. WASP would be pretty
> banal. Only those fixated on homosexuals would consider a story on some of
> them as 'inapproriate' for a history text like they were some kind of freak show
> and would fixate on a relatively small part of the content of the disk and blow it
> up to grandiose proportions. Only appropriate for a 'gay' cd of some sort,
> give me a break.
And yet -- that is just what you are doing. If, in fact, the
'controversial' contents are trivial or meaningless or occupy only a
small portion of the product -- then, why get to upset about
'censorship'? Clearly, it *isn't* a trivial issue to you.
So why gays and not Italians? Why italians and not Poles? Why Poles and
not Jews? *Decisions have to be made*. Any information source is finite
-- be it a disk or a book or even a library. The amount of total
possible information is, effectively, infinite. So what yardstick do YOU
use to determine what should be included, and what should not? How would
YOU make such decisions? According to what standards?
As for the issue of relevance -- if you were *not* a WASP (and I'm not,
for the record), you would most likely be claiming the only 'meaningful'
history was one which focussed *exclusively* on whatever-it-is you are.
> > Again, I never questioned the facts -- merely their selection and
> > emphasis. This is as much a form of revisonism as out-and-out lying. For
> > example, without much work, I could probably dredge up a female
> > playwright who was a contemporary of Shakespeare. To devote equal time
> > to Will and to this hypothetical female counterpart *would* be
> > revisionist, even if every fact were true. Imagine a CD which talked as
> > much about the Nazi's social programs and full employment as they did
> > about their acts of genocide;the choice of emphasis *is* a form of
> > political bias.
> But revisionism is usually through distortion or omission. I haven't heard
> anyone say this disk ommitted important parts of history or misrepresented
> it. What I have heard people say is that it contains stories and information
> that they don't think are important and/or appropriate for people to know.
By definition, for every thing which is included, something else needed
to be ommitted. Finite space, remember. And 'distortion' is achieved by
placing events or people of disparate importance into frameworks which
make them seem equal. For example, people tend to discuss Pearl Harbor
and Hirsoshima as if they were action/reaction -- the bookends of
America's particpation in the war, two 'equal' atrocities that somehow
'balance' each other. This is, of course, utterly false -- and the
common practice of devoting 'equal time' to both events is purely
revisionist.
> > Activism for a cause you approve of is
> > Noble;activism for a cause you disapprove of is Censorship.
> Damn right :-). Actually activism is a behavior, censorship is a tool.
> I'm not really fond of censorship as a tool even for causes I approve
> of. I don't like distortion of the facts even by those purporting to
> support causes I am in favor of. I'd prefer to be allowed (and
> have everyone else be allowed) to hear a balanced view of the
> whole story and allow them to make up their own minds. While the
> term 'balanced' is itself subjective, usually having a presentation
> that isn't in direct contradiction to the facts and omitting information
> that some consider important goes a long way.
And my point is that the CD, as described, is imbalanced -- it focuses
on irrelevant facts to make a point. To again go back to homosexualityu
-- while many historical figures were gay, in 99% of the cases, their
gayness was 100% irrelevent to their impact on history. Focussing on it,
thus, is imbalance -- it implies it was somehow meaningful or important,
when it is not. Who the $%#@$R@ cares whether Napoleon or Nero was gay
or straight -- their sexuality was not a factor in their lives. (OTOH,
it certainly *was* a factor in the life of, say, Oscar Wilde -- so it
would be perfectly relevant to mention it in a discussion of him, and
revisionist, or at least suspect, not too. It would also be relevant in
discussions of J. Edgar Hoover, because of his public anti-gay stance.)
Do you see the point I'm making? There is nothing "wrong" with
discussing sexual orientation when it is *relevant* -- but forcing it in
when it is NOT relevant is a clear sign of bias. Is *bias* wrong? Of
course not -- the middle of the road is bland and dull.
But is Apple morally obliged to support a bias which is somewhat
controversial? No.
> Even so, I will readily admit that I am not hypocrisy-free.
> I would have a hard time not censoring of hateful, inaccurate treatises
> like a Neo-nazi text if it was to be presented as normal educational
> matter not presented in a proper framework. On the other hand
> I wouldn't want then censored as a reference work available from the
> library.
Shall we compromise, then, and join forces to produce a CD which
discusses just how many of the high-ranking members of the Nazi party
were probably gay?
Of course, I'm kidding -- but it does lead to another point, which is
that minorities are presented in a uniformally positive light -- White
European Males appear to have a monopoly on evil .The Aztecs were
nature-loving egalitairans murdered by the cruel Spanish. Africa was a
paradise inhabited by peace-loving vegetarians who never,ever, fought
among themselves until the White Men came and ruined it. Native
Americans were environmentalists. And on, and on, and on...that a
backlash is building should surprise no one, and the fact it *does* seem
to surprise people surprises me.
Face it -- the entire history of the human race is one endless nightmare
of murder, genocide, rape, and oppression. There is no race, culture,
people, society, or religion which is not drenched in blood -- and
playing 'more oppressed than thou' is a fools game.
> David Albrecht -- Intolerance and hate mongering are not family values.
Since WHEN? Strikes me that hatred of all but your own gene-line is the
*fundemental* family value! The only reason humanity has anything
resembling civilization at all is because we managed to extend our
concept of 'family' to be based on memetic, rather than genetic,
similarity.
Bryan Wu
>In article <5ffr7...@argo.rhein-main.de>, si...@argo.rhein-main.de
>(Siegfried Kreischer) wrote:
>> Apple cowardly rewrites history in order to please the conservatives.
>> It's a SHAME.
>Baloney. I've seen some of the things that there were objections to and I
>found them inappropriate (not necessarily offensive, though).
>
>For example, if you're writing a history, why should you EMPHASIZE a
>person's sexual orientation? I thought it didn't matter. It's a case of
>political correctness being shoved down our throats.
Because in many cases, it _does matter. Would it matter if George
Washington were really a woman?
>Apple apparently felt (based on what I've read--I can't speak for Apple)
>that the tone and extraneous information made this disk less than ideal
>for a history text.
I don't think that's the case at all. Apple chose to include it in the
bundle - it was the customers who complained. Had they not complained,
then the CD would probably still be in the bundle.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>> Incidentally, I always love it when I hear something being vilified for being
>> "revisionist". I agree that some revisionist history (for example, the type that
>> tries to imply that Africans invented the electric battery in the 1200s) is
>> ridiculous, but the term "revisionist" has come to be used by right-wingers to
>> stigmatise any historical point of view that doesn't coincide with their own.
Hmmm.. who's to say that Africans didn't invent _an electric battery in
the 1200's? It's not too hard to do, I imagine - heck, you can generate
electricity with a potato. It probably just wasn't useful enough at the
time to keep on making batterys. Speaking of 'revisionist', tell me - who
invented the printing press and moving metal type? Hint: It wasn't
Guttenburg. It was the Chinese - in what is now Korea, and it was
several hundred years before Guttenburg. I stood up in class back in Jr
High and said just that and the teacher told me that I was full of it.
Now that I'm a graphic designer, I have textbooks to prove it. So much
for 'history'.
I don't know if you think this, but saying that things never happened in
other cultures which you know nothing about is very different from saying
the Holocost didn't happen.
Bryan
Jonathan Badger
>Nevermind that "western civilization" has been in a decline for the past
>few decades, while the Pacific Rim is more than on the upswing ....
No. This is rapidly getting off topic but this is muddled thinking on
your part. Japan is succeeding *because* it has rejected its
non-Western ways and embraced the West. Japan *is* now a Western
country in all but location. Korea is becoming successful because it
is now emulating Japan, and becoming Western too. The West isn't
declining -- the major player has simply changed, as has happened many
times before.
> you're saying that Africans really _didn't invent a battery back in
>1200 after all? Or say, that the Chinese didn't invent the movable
>metal type and the printing press first? They say history is
>rewritten by the victors - and I suppose you're just supporting that
>idea.
As for the Chinese printing press -- if you read anything about it,
you'll find that it only lasted for a couple of centuries as a
curiousity before it was abandoned. The Chinese (actually the Koreans
under the yoke of Chinese colonialism) had something and completely
failed to recognize its use, rather like the Inca's discovery of the
wheel which they used for children's pull-toys but not for
carts. Anyway, the invention of the Chinese printing press was
*irrelevant* to history because it didn't change Chinese culture,
while Gutenberg's rediscovery of the printing press greatly changed
Western civilization and was part of the requirement for the
Scientific Revolution to occur. History is about turning points, not
trivia.
>How do you know that China ceased to be a center of intellectual activity
>- were you told so by a high-school history book?
Well, this gets philosophical, doesn't it? If you believe that all
history books are biased against China, then I *can't* convince you,
can I? But then it gets rather hard to explain why China has since
embraced the Western scientific method.
Jonathan Badger
>I don't know if you think this, but saying that things never happened in
>other cultures which you know nothing about is very different from saying
>the Holocost didn't happen.
Well the thing to remember with all other cultures except the Western
one is that while they may have been advanced at one time, they went
stagnant long ago. Sure the Chinese were advanced at one time. The
Arabs were advanced too. But something in their cultures didn't allow
them to develop beyond a certain point -- China ceased to be the
center of intellectual activity around 1000, and similarly with the
Arab world around 1500. I'm not saying this makes Western culture
*better*, and it may have been entirely due to good luck on the part
of the West that it succeeded where others failed, but you can't deny
that it is true. This isn't ignoring other cultures -- it's facing
reality.
And, of course, all this happened before colonialism, so you can't
invoke "Western Imperialism" as the explanation for these events.
Bryan Wu
>b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) writes:
>>Nevermind that "western civilization" has been in a decline for the past
>>few decades, while the Pacific Rim is more than on the upswing ....
>
>No. This is rapidly getting off topic but this is muddled thinking on
>your part. Japan is succeeding *because* it has rejected its
>non-Western ways and embraced the West. Japan *is* now a Western
>country in all but location.
Not.
>Korea is becoming successful because it
>is now emulating Japan, and becoming Western too.
Not. But since you mention it, I guess Americans have been emulating Hong
Kong (all Tarantino flicks) and Japan (Sony Walkman and that whole consumer
electronics revolution, have you ever eaten Sushi or instant Ramen
noodles?, corporate structures, etc.), Singapore (trying to push through
paddling as penalty for graffiti in California) more and more, so I guess
we're now Eastern by your thinking, right?
>The West isn't
>declining -- the major player has simply changed, as has happened many
>times before.
Yup, the new major players will be Asian. You can still call it "the
west" if you like. I think you'd be fooling yourself though.
>> you're saying that Africans really _didn't invent a battery back in
>>1200 after all? Or say, that the Chinese didn't invent the movable
>>metal type and the printing press first? They say history is
>>rewritten by the victors - and I suppose you're just supporting that
>>idea.
>
>As for the Chinese printing press -- if you read anything about it,
>you'll find that it only lasted for a couple of centuries as a
>curiousity before it was abandoned. The Chinese (actually the Koreans
>under the yoke of Chinese colonialism) had something and completely
>failed to recognize its use, rather like the Inca's discovery of the
>wheel which they used for children's pull-toys but not for
>carts. Anyway, the invention of the Chinese printing press was
>*irrelevant* to history because it didn't change Chinese culture,
Are you kidding? The printing press was used to disseminate new
agricultural methods, scholarly texts, and just about anything else that
needed to be mass produced. Why do you think it was invented in the
first place? Meanwhile in Europe, monks were copying down illuminations
by hand, while the masses stated illiterate. You seem to be
prone to trivializing other country's inventions when you don't know
how they were used or thier impact. Oh yeah, and the "yoke of Chinese
colonialism" is completely different from the "yoke" used by European
colonialists - don't know if you know that. Now you do.
>while Gutenberg's rediscovery of the printing press greatly changed
>Western civilization and was part of the requirement for the
>Scientific Revolution to occur. History is about turning points, not
>trivia.
So you're denying that China invented the printing press? Fine. So then
you also ignore the impact of it's invention throughout China and it's
surrounding neighbors, and it's use indiseminating Chinese culture
throughout the entire Pacific rim. That's also fine. But since you
classify this as "trivia" - something which say, a Japanese student isn't
likely to do - then you are keeping quite a narrow field of view for
yourself. And isn't that the whole point of the Voyager CD? To point
out things that you would not have otherwise known or cared about, until
someone pointed it out to you? Things such as the lives of gays say,
about 100 years ago? Gays in America were far more accepted back then
than they are now, as is true in many places around the world. In fact,
in many places, being gay or straight isn't all that important. But you
wouldn't know that if you didn't learn about it from somewhere.
>>How do you know that China ceased to be a center of intellectual activity
>>- were you told so by a high-school history book?
>
>Well, this gets philosophical, doesn't it? If you believe that all
>history books are biased against China, then I *can't* convince you,
>can I?
And if you believe that all history books are accurately portraying
China, then I *can't* convince you otherwise, right?
As I asked, which history books are you getting your statement from? If
it's an old HS history book, then yes, there's a good chance it is biased
against China, Native Americans, and perhaps even Blacks, among other things.
And again, this is the point of that Voyager CD - to cover things which
have been glaringly (in the author's opinion, I assume) ommited from
standard texts. There are a number of history book suppliments which aim
to research and talk about parts of history which are neither glamourous
nor high-profile. For example, there is a general movement away from
teaching about individual famous people - George Washington, Harriet
Tubman (sp?) - and more about the living conditions of the masses.
>But then it gets rather hard to explain why China has since
>embraced the Western scientific method.
Huh? I guess that since America's companies have embraced Japanese
corporate management methods, that America has ceased to be a center of
corporate innovation? If that's how you want to see it.
I think that's kinda silly reasoning though.
Bryan
michael calvin mcgee
In article <3i5jq8$k...@redstone.interpath.net>, Lizard
(liz...@mercury.interpath.net) writes:
>True. But their homosexuality was irrelevant. Tell me, which is more
>important -- Plato's philosophy, or the fact he liked boys? Obviously,
>his philosophy. His sexual orientation is *irrelevant*. The only time
>sexual orientation *is* relevant is when that is the focus of the work.
>Otherwise, it would be like concerning yourself with Da Vinci's favorite
>brand of wine, or arguing over how cigarttes FDR smoked in day. (If
>Phillip Morris sponsored a history course which made sure to cover just
>how many 'great Americans' were tobacco addicts, would you not consider
>that somewhat suspect -- although it would be factually true?)
Because it is such a basic human motivation, sexual orientation is
often a deciding factor in interpreting past events. Have you read
Plato's philosophy? Many of the dialogues feature his homosexuality
to the point that it is difficult at first to tell that they're about
anything else. The +Phaedrus+ is a case in point. Napoleon's fascin-
ation with Josephine may have been the primary factor in one of the
more stupid military actions in history, the decision to attack Moscow.
The reason some leaders get to be "prime movers" in the history of
this or that is precisely because others are inclined, or are taught,
to think of them as sex-less, even life-less. Does it matter that
George Washington had rotten teeth, that Thomas Jefferson smoked pot,
that Benjamin Franklin was a lothario, or that Marion Berry uses
cocaine? Damned right it does!
>Face it -- the entire history of the human race is one endless nightmare
>of murder, genocide, rape, and oppression. There is no race, culture,
>people, society, or religion which is not drenched in blood -- and
>playing 'more oppressed than thou' is a fools game.
You are right, of course. 2,000 wrongs, however, do not make a right.
Suppose that, instead of hiding their dirty laundry in loud +tu quoque+
argument, everyone just "'fessed up" to all the crap in their history.
I wonder why such arguments as yours seem always to come from history's
current oppressors?
michael
michael calvin mcgee
In article <badger.793169906@phylo>, Jonathan Badger
(bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu) writes:
>Well the thing to remember with all other cultures except the Western
>one is that while they may have been advanced at one time, they went
>stagnant long ago. Sure the Chinese were advanced at one time. The
>Arabs were advanced too. But something in their cultures didn't allow
>them to develop beyond a certain point -- China ceased to be the
>center of intellectual activity around 1000, and similarly with the
>Arab world around 1500. I'm not saying this makes Western culture
>*better*, and it may have been entirely due to good luck on the part
>of the West that it succeeded where others failed, but you can't deny
>that it is true. This isn't ignoring other cultures -- it's facing
>reality.
Which way is progress? What makes you so sure that current Western
cultures are so "advanced"? Do we measure "advancement" by growth of
technologies, or perhaps by the number of murders in the cities? Or
by your feeling of safety and security when you take a midnight stroll
through Central Park? Or by the way all of the subcultures in the US
get along so well? Perhaps by the +pax Americana+, the way we have
been able to preserve peace in the world as England and Rome did before
us? Maybe by our success in promoting equality between the genders and
among the races and classes? UChicago professor Richard Weaver once
wrote that the world has been in a steady state of decline since 1343.
Wonder where he got it wrong?
michael
Mark Giangrande
Voyager CD-ROM complain to the school boards who provoked Apple's
decision? That's where the real censorship is occuring. I suppose Apple
is morally off the hook if Apple kept distributing the disc and principals
and others simply threw it in the trash without ever letting the students
see it, or evening letting them know it existed.
I don't think Apple, as a company who is up front about their purpose--a
company who wants to make zillions of dollars selling computers to most
anyone who wants to buy them--has to promote controversy in one of their
primary markets. We're talking sales here, especially for a company that
is hanging on to their market share by its fingernails. I can't fault
them for it, as much as I can't fault the other companies with whom they
compete for not carrying similar products.
Why isn't IBM carrying this product? Why hasn't Microsoft put out a
similar product (with or without pirated code from the source)? Why
aren't we outraged against them?
And to combine any number of other net controveries, why don't we impose
moral pressure on Apple to distribute CD-ROM's of pix from the AA Bulletin
Board to schools, or perhaps a CD of Jake Baker stories culled from
alt.sex.stories. Why is we have overlooked the contributions of
pedophiles that have made this country a great nation. Perhaps we should
be outraged at Voyager for not including references. I also think that
any discussion of the attack on the peaceful Japanese at Hirsoshima
should also include a an account of their courteous and kind treatment of
the Korean "comfort" women who graciously donated their "services" to the
Imperial Army, which was simply seeking to stabalize that corner of the
world.
I think anyone who is interested in the source of controversy should get
involved with what is or isn't taught in schools. That's where the real
discrimination in thought and idea takes place. I assure you, if school
districts clamored for gay cowboy poetry, there would be volumes of it on
the library shelves in dog-eared condition from the high volume of use,
and Apple and every other company out there would have competing products
on their lists.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Apple shouldn't be singled out for
promoting or not promoting a particular point of view. I mean, who the
hell are they when it comes to writing or revising history? They didn't
invent it, make it happen, or even record it. I would even venture to
guess that the company doesn't have any expertise in history as a
subject. I'd be more concerned about the viability of their product line
than their alleged duty to promote egalitarian thought. I'm not against
egalitarian thought. I leave that to the marketplace of ideas, not Apple
Computer Inc.
Mark Giangrande
Basil....@mail.utexas.edu
Lizard
> Because in many cases, it _does matter. Would it matter if George
> Washington were really a woman?
Only if it were unusual for a woman at the time to be head of a
revolutionary army. (For the record, it would be). Does it matter that
George Washington had wooden teeth? No.
Bryan Wu
>b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) writes:
>>I don't know if you think this, but saying that things never happened in
>>other cultures which you know nothing about is very different from saying
>>the Holocost didn't happen.
>Well the thing to remember with all other cultures except the Western
>one is that while they may have been advanced at one time, they went
>stagnant long ago. Sure the Chinese were advanced at one time. The
>Arabs were advanced too. But something in their cultures didn't allow
>them to develop beyond a certain point -- China ceased to be the
>center of intellectual activity around 1000, and similarly with the
>Arab world around 1500. I'm not saying this makes Western culture
>*better*, and it may have been entirely due to good luck on the part
>of the West that it succeeded where others failed, but you can't deny
>that it is true. This isn't ignoring other cultures -- it's facing
>reality.
Nevermind that "western civilization" has been in a decline for the past
few decades, while the Pacific Rim is more than on the upswing, you're
saying that Africans really _didn't invent a battery back in 1200 after
all? Or say, that the Chinese didn't invent the movable metal type and
the printing press first? They say history is rewritten by the victors -
and I suppose you're just supporting that idea. In that case, what if
the Nazis had won? Would you say that the Holocost doesn't matter or
didn't happen? Or say, that the history books denied that abortion and
the lives of women before liberation really didn't matter, or that gays
emmigrated to America becuase of persecution _because they were gay..
which the Voyager CD apparently points out.. And then imagine when
America has lost it's lead (as it surely will eventually), become like
'Great' Britain - i.e. a fallen empire - and the Chinese tell you they
Guttenburg never existed.
>And, of course, all this happened before colonialism, so you can't
>invoke "Western Imperialism" as the explanation for these events.
How do you know that China ceased to be a center of intellectual activity
- were you told so by a high-school history book?
Bryan
Jonathan Badger
>Yup, the new major players will be Asian. You can still call it "the
>west" if you like. I think you'd be fooling yourself though.
My point is that having the scientific method as the ultimate test of fact
is Western. The notion of democracy is Western. The concept of the purpose of
work is not merely to get food and shelter but to gather toys like computers
and VCRs is Western. Basically the entire world (with the exception of Islamic
fundamentalists) is becoming Western. Japan (and others) are succeeeding by
embracing these Western principles.
>>As for the Chinese printing press -- if you read anything about it,
>>you'll find that it only lasted for a couple of centuries as a
>>curiousity before it was abandoned. The Chinese (actually the Koreans
>>under the yoke of Chinese colonialism) had something and completely
>>failed to recognize its use, rather like the Inca's discovery of the
>>wheel which they used for children's pull-toys but not for
>>carts. Anyway, the invention of the Chinese printing press was
>>*irrelevant* to history because it didn't change Chinese culture,
>Are you kidding? The printing press was used to disseminate new
>agricultural methods, scholarly texts, and just about anything else that
>needed to be mass produced. Why do you think it was invented in the
>first place? Meanwhile in Europe, monks were copying down illuminations
>by hand, while the masses stated illiterate. You seem to be
>prone to trivializing other country's inventions when you don't know
>how they were used or thier impact.
Wrong. Look at any book published in China from 900 on to the 19th century.
The art of the printing press was lost. Everything had returned to block
printing. If you can show me a citation *any* citation saying otherwise, then
please show it to me. I'm not into trivialising anything -- I just like
arguments to have actual facts and not just opinions behind them.
Jonathan Badger
>Which way is progress? What makes you so sure that current Western
>cultures are so "advanced"? Do we measure "advancement" by growth of
>technologies, or perhaps by the number of murders in the cities? [...].
>Chicago professor Richard Weaver once
>wrote that the world has been in a steady state of decline since 1343.
>Wonder where he got it wrong?
Fuzzy thinking. That's where he got it wrong. Guess what happened to
nearly anyone before the 20th century when they got an
infection. *Bingo*, you got it! They *DIED*! Medieval "hospitials"
basically just kept people comfortable until they either got well on
their own, or died. If you lived to fifty, you were OLD! People can
romanticise the middle ages, or primitive hunting and gathering
societies, or what have you, but the fact is people today live longer
than ever before, have more free money to buy non-essentials, and can
get a better education that any other time in history. If that isn't a
better life, please tell me what is.
I wish the whiners who complain about modern civilization would create
model communities where they would live as hunters and gatherers or
medieval peasants, or ancient Egyptians or whatever. I think a day or two
of those cultures would send them scurrying back to the 20th century very
quickly!
Bryan Wu
>Which way is progress? What makes you so sure that current Western
>cultures are so "advanced"? Do we measure "advancement" by growth of
>technologies, or perhaps by the number of murders in the cities? Or
>by your feeling of safety and security when you take a midnight stroll
>through Central Park? Or by the way all of the subcultures in the US
>get along so well? Perhaps by the +pax Americana+, the way we have
>been able to preserve peace in the world as England and Rome did before
>us? Maybe by our success in promoting equality between the genders and
>among the races and classes? UChicago professor Richard Weaver once
>wrote that the world has been in a steady state of decline since 1343.
>Wonder where he got it wrong?
I agree - Singapore has like 20 crimes per day, nationwide.
And that includes parking tickets.
Being that I'm in NYC, Singapore sounds plenty more advanced than here.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>On 18 Feb 1995 20:44:25 -0500 in article <3i67pp$o...@panix.com>, Bryan Wu wrote:
>> Because in many cases, it _does matter. Would it matter if George
>> Washington were really a woman?
>Only if it were unusual for a woman at the time to be head of a
>revolutionary army. (For the record, it would be). Does it matter that
>George Washington had wooden teeth? No.
If there was some kind of social stigma/affect of having wooden teeth,
then yes. If George Washington owned slaves, then would that make a
difference in how we view our history? I think it would - it would be
indicative of how accepted slavery was, and the ideas of the time that the
constitution was written around. But a fact like that isn't often
mentioned in the history books. Should it be?
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) writes:
>>Yup, the new major players will be Asian. You can still call it "the
>>west" if you like. I think you'd be fooling yourself though.
>My point is that having the scientific method as the ultimate test of fact
>is Western.
Is it really though? It may have originated in the west, but currently,
Japanese companies hold the most US patents. So, who's 'culture' is it
now? The Japanese seem to be using it more than us. Just so you know -
quality control was 'invented' by an American - but it's considered a
Japanese method.
>The notion of democracy is Western.
Hmm.. Isn't Greece kinda middle-Eastern?
>The concept of the purpose of
>work is not merely to get food and shelter but to gather toys like computers
>and VCRs is Western.
And you know this because..? You've jumped back in history and talked to
merchants all around the world perhaps? Don't be silly.
>Basically the entire world (with the exception of Islamic
>fundamentalists) is becoming Western. Japan (and others) are succeeeding by
>embracing these Western principles.
And America is succeeding by embracing Asian priciples - quality control
in manufacturing, new management styles (as opposed to the top-down
pyramid), etc.
>>Are you kidding? The printing press was used to disseminate new
>>agricultural methods, scholarly texts, and just about anything else that
>>needed to be mass produced. Why do you think it was invented in the
>>first place? Meanwhile in Europe, monks were copying down illuminations
>>by hand, while the masses stated illiterate. You seem to be
>>prone to trivializing other country's inventions when you don't know
>>how they were used or thier impact.
>
>Wrong. Look at any book published in China from 900 on to the 19th century.
>The art of the printing press was lost.
Wrong. See below.
>Everything had returned to block
>printing.
Uh.. is block printing supposed to be inferior? The point is that the world
was being changed by the printing press in the East far before the West.
It would do you well not to ignore that fact, although that seems to be
your inclination. Also, Europeans used block printing in conjunction
with movable type, on the same presses, in fact.
>If you can show me a citation *any* citation saying otherwise, then
>please show it to me.
Meggs, p. 28: "With a total of over fourty-four thousand characters, it
is not surprising that movable type never came into widespread Far
Eastern use." Metal type was invented in Korea in 1403 AD - that's between
"900 on to the 19th century", isn't it?
>I'm not into trivialising anything -- I just like
>arguments to have actual facts and not just opinions behind them.
Fine. I'm looking at A History Of Graphic Design by Phillip Meggs.
For one thing, movable type was invented by Pi Sheng in 1040 AD - I don't
know where you're getting "900" from. For context, the first extant printed
manuscript, The Diamond Sutra, is dated 868AD - and don't tell me you
don't think the spread of Buddhism via texts from India to China,
and throughout Asia is "significant". In addition, China was the first
place in the world to use paper money - again, maybe you don't think that's
significant either.
I'm currently looking at page 28, showing Chinese movable type, dated
1300 BC (it's probably a typo - it's obviously AD, the Chinese hadn't
invented paper yet in 1300BC)
"A notable effort to print from bronze movable type began in Korea under
government sponsorship in 1403 AD."
"The Chinese contribution to the evolution of visual communications was
formidable. During the Wester world's thousand-year medieval period,
China's invention of paper and printing spread slowly westward, arriving
in Europe just as it was rising from it's long night to awaken into a
renaissance of learning and culture."
So in other words, I guess the "Western world" is really Chinese,
according to your thinking, since we are using a Chinese invention - and
one which changed the entire world. And by the way, I don't limit the
idea of 'printing' to "movable type" vs. "woodcuts" - "A benchmark in
block printing-reproducing beautiful calligraphy with perfection - was
established in China by 1000AD and has never been surpassed". Chinese is
different from roman alphabets, as should be obvious - so block printing was
the preferred method, because movable type had little advantage over it.
In addition, the Chinese printed illustrations to educate the illiterate
in new farming methods, etc.
>I'm not into trivialising anything -- I just like
>arguments to have actual facts and not just opinions behind them.
Hmm.. is that why you ridiculed the idea that Africans had invented a
battery? Mighty open-minded of you.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>Fuzzy thinking. That's where he got it wrong. Guess what happened to
>nearly anyone before the 20th century when they got an
>infection. *Bingo*, you got it! They *DIED*!
Maybe in Europe - but not everywhere else.
>Medieval "hospitials"
>basically just kept people comfortable until they either got well on
>their own, or died.
Oh.. "Medieval" I guess you were only refering to Europe anyway.
>If you lived to fifty, you were OLD! People can
>romanticise the middle ages, or primitive hunting and gathering
>societies, or what have you, but the fact is people today live longer
>than ever before, have more free money to buy non-essentials, and can
>get a better education that any other time in history. If that isn't a
>better life, please tell me what is.
Well, as I posted earlier, Singpore, Japan, and most other Asian
countries have a far lower murder/crime rate than America. I don't think
it's difficult to see what the direction toward a better life is.
>I wish the whiners who complain about modern civilization would create
>model communities where they would live as hunters and gatherers or
>medieval peasants, or ancient Egyptians or whatever. I think a day or two
>of those cultures would send them scurrying back to the 20th century very
>quickly!
Gee - good thing we have the old Boob tube and McDonalds. Now _that's
progress. :P
Bryan
Doug Page
|> From article <3httmn$o...@redstone.interpath.net>, by liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard):
|> > On Tue, 14 Feb 1995 22:34:15 GMT in article <1995Feb14.2...@bullns.on01.bull.ca>, mshields wrote:
|> >> In article <3hgvbt$j...@redstone.interpath.net>, liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard) says:
|> >> >
|> >> >> APPLE'S BIG BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
|> >> ><deleted>
|> >> >
|> >> >There has been no 'censorship'.
|> >> >
|> >> That depends on whether you are using a realistic definition of the term
|> >> "censorship", or whether you are hiding behind a legalistic rationalisation
|> >> of the same thing.
|> >
|> > Censorship is the use of force, or threat of force, to prevent someone
|> > from using his/her own property to express their views to a willing
|> > audience.
|> >
|> > Refusal to fund is not 'censorship'. If I decide not to purchase
|> > Ben&Jerries Ice Cream because I disagree with their funding of
|> > neo-luddite organizations, that is not censorship.
|> >
|> Funny, I couldn't find this definition in my dictionary.
|> Censorship in the general sense is filtering information such that
|> it doesn't get presented to a more general public. It seems pretty
|> clear that the people that Apple is responding to on this issue found
|> some aspects of this CD offensive and didn't want it to be made available
|> to children. They want to censor this information and Apple is being a
|> party to it. By my definition of the word this IS censorship.
Now, let`s see... which dictionary definition did you choose for censorship?
It doesn't look like you chose the primary usage since Apple was not around in the
early Roman empire (which was not yet a "Christian" nation) and could not have been one
of the two government officials. It doesn't look like you chose the second definition
either since it is obvious (from this thread, at least) that Apple did not supervise
the original production of the CR-ROM, not to mention that they are not `officials'.
Perhaps it was the third definition that you chose. You know, the one about a
`hypothetical psychic agency that represses unacceptable notions before they reach
conscousness'. No, that must not be it either. After all, the `psychic' portion of the
definition sounds more like Next than it does Apple. (Not to mention that the "notion"
reached "consciousness".) Oh no, there seems to be a problem with my Webster's
dictionary - the definition that you are using is just not there. I wonder if it
was censored.
Oh, wait, I see now, you admittedly revised your dictionary and are using YOUR definition
of censorship. :*)
|>
|>
|> >> >Anyone who wants the CD can get it.
|> >> >It is legal to sell it in every state in the Union.
|> >> >Apple is not shipping a cut or bowdlerized version.
|> >> >
|> >
|> > And who is to decide? Are you to declare "Sorry, your complaints are not
|> > sufficiently reasonable;bugger off."? It seems that if the target market
|> > (school boards) feel the product is unsuitable, then that is valid
|> > enough for Apple. As I said earlier, they wish to sell computers -- not
|> > political viewpoints. Companies tend to shy away from any sort of
|> > controversy;while this does sometimes backfire, in most cases, it is the
|> > correct action, from a purely bottom-line perspective.
|>
|> It is just as unreasonable to make have a few particularly facist school
|> boards dictate the content for the rest. If 30% of the school boards said
|> they found this material offensive and didn't want it bundled then I can
|> see Apple doing something about it. If 3% say so, then I think Apple
|> should tell them to stuff it.
This is no argument. It is simply an experssion of your opinion (which you are
entitled to) prefaced with an ad hominem attack. You might want to get a dictionary
and look up "facist" (sic). Your approach to of an all powerful central government
and your attitude WRT those that differ with your opinions has more in common with
fascism than those you attack.
Bur, alas, there would be little contained in many of the "alt" groups were it not
for ad hominem attacks. All to often we have those misusing terms such as bigot,
nazi, fascist (including `facist'), and those new (and not so new) invented labels
such as the `radical religious right', the `liberal left', and `homophobe' as their
strongest "argument".
You obviously need to go back and reread much of this thread. You must live under a
rock if you consider that including `gay cowboy poems' is not revisionist. Serious
studies indicate that homosexuals represent <5% of the population as a whole and
anyone who knows anything at all about the range hand culture could easily recognize
that the inclusion of such a poem as `normal' is a distortion of history. To present
that such a life style was readily accepted in the American west a century ago IS a
distortion of fact. The issue here is that the CD distorts the attitudes of the
era.
BTW, does the CD include the fact that the majority of those that were involved
in the creation and operation of the Nazi death camps were homosexuals? It would seem
that this is a Very important `contribution' of homosexuals to history which has been
largely left untaught in the public schools of the US.
The omission of homosexuals' contributions to history is currently being distorted by
presenting only the "good" contributions. That, as well as the previous silence, is
revisionism.
|>
|> > Activism for a cause you approve of is
|> > Noble;activism for a cause you disapprove of is Censorship.
|>
|> Damn right :-). Actually activism is a behavior, censorship is a tool.
|> I'm not really fond of censorship as a tool even for causes I approve
|> of. I don't like distortion of the facts even by those purporting to
|> support causes I am in favor of. I'd prefer to be allowed (and
|> have everyone else be allowed) to hear a balanced view of the
|> whole story and allow them to make up their own minds. While the
|> term 'balanced' is itself subjective, usually having a presentation
|> that isn't in direct contradiction to the facts and omitting information
|> that some consider important goes a long way.
|> Even so, I will readily admit that I am not hypocrisy-free.
|> I would have a hard time not censoring of hateful, inaccurate treatises
|> like a Neo-nazi text if it was to be presented as normal educational
|> matter not presented in a proper framework. On the other hand
|> I wouldn't want then censored as a reference work available from the
|> library.
|>
|> Activism for a cause I believe in is Noble; activism for a cause
|> I disapprove of is wrong-headed perhaps I wouldn't usually call it censorship.
|>
|> David Albrecht -- Intolerance and hate mongering are not family values.
--
dp
*** The opinions are mine (maybe) and don't necessarily represent those ***
*** of my employer - or any other sane person, for that matter. ***
Jonathan Badger
>bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
>>>Yup, the new major players will be Asian. You can still call it "the
>>>west" if you like. I think you'd be fooling yourself though.
>>My point is that having the scientific method as the ultimate test of fact
>>is Western.
>Is it really though? It may have originated in the west, but currently,
>Japanese companies hold the most US patents. So, who's 'culture' is it
>now? The Japanese seem to be using it more than us. Just so you know -
>quality control was 'invented' by an American - but it's considered a
>Japanese method.
And my point is it has nothing to do with samurais, shoguns, and
Zen. The Meji restoration was Japan's deliberate rejection of it's own
culture in favor of that of the West.
>>The notion of democracy is Western.
>Hmm.. Isn't Greece kinda middle-Eastern?
Well, it seems more than way now, but it was part of the Ottoman
(Turkish) empire for centuries, which greatly changed its culture. It
is considered, however, by nearly all as the cradle of Western
civilization. The Greeks and Romans (who were of course greatly
influenced by the Greeks) have provided much of the basis for Western
civilization.
>>The concept of the purpose of work is not merely to get food and
>>shelter but to gather toys like computers and VCRs is Western.
>And you know this because..? You've jumped back in history and talked to
>merchants all around the world perhaps? Don't be silly.
Well, I know this because consumerism isn't possible without disposible
income, which wasn't prevalant among anybody but nobles and rich merchants
in any culture (including Western ones) until this century.
>>Basically the entire world (with the exception of Islamic
>>fundamentalists) is becoming Western. Japan (and others) are succeeeding by
>>embracing these Western principles.
>And America is succeeding by embracing Asian priciples - quality control
>in manufacturing, new management styles (as opposed to the top-down
>pyramid), etc.
Well, I don't see how these are Asian principles. I could be wrong, but they
don't come from Buddist theology or anything. Many of these concepts such
as "Just in Time" were developed by Asians, but in a very Western business
structure.
>>If you can show me a citation *any* citation saying otherwise, then
>>please show it to me.
>Meggs, p. 28: "With a total of over fourty-four thousand characters, it
>is not surprising that movable type never came into widespread Far
>Eastern use." Metal type was invented in Korea in 1403 AD - that's between
>"900 on to the 19th century", isn't it?
Yes. My reference on the subject (Will Durant's "Our Oriental
Heritage") has this statement on metal type too. I'm confused as to
the relation of metal type to the printing press, but maybe the whole
purpose of metal type is for printing presses -- I don't know.
>For one thing, movable type was invented by Pi Sheng in 1040 AD - I don't
>know where you're getting "900" from. For context, the first extant printed
>manuscript, The Diamond Sutra, is dated 868AD - and don't tell me you
>don't think the spread of Buddhism via texts from India to China,
>and throughout Asia is "significant". In addition, China was the first
>place in the world to use paper money - again, maybe you don't think that's
>significant either.
Well, I believe the "Diamond Sutra" was *block* printed. Block
printing was very relevant to Chinese culture. But block printing is
only marginally better than hand-writing in terms of speed and price
of books. And no, I *don't* think Buddhism is irrelevant. It is quite
relevant. Trying to understand Asian cultures without Buddhism is like
trying to study the West without Christianity.
>"The Chinese contribution to the evolution of visual communications was
>formidable. During the Wester world's thousand-year medieval period,
>China's invention of paper and printing spread slowly westward, arriving
>in Europe just as it was rising from it's long night to awaken into a
>renaissance of learning and culture."
Well. Two things here. First, there is *no* evidence that Gutenburg
was influenced by any other design -- he developed it
independantly. Secondly, while we may quibble on actual dates of the
Chinese printing press' development, the fact is when missionaries
came to China in the 19th century, there were no native printing
presses, and even at its heyday, the Chinese printing press was the
minority form of printing, most printing being done by block
type. China missed out on having cheap plentiful books, which is in a
large part why it failed to develop the scientific method on it's
own. If it had, no doubt it would be more advanced that the West
today.
Jonathan Badger
>In <badger.793240590@phylo> bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
>>Fuzzy thinking. That's where he got it wrong. Guess what happened to
>>nearly anyone before the 20th century when they got an
>>infection. *Bingo*, you got it! They *DIED*!
>Maybe in Europe - but not everywhere else.
Um. No. Acupucture and the like was very nice, and more advanced than
Western medicine at the time, but it couldn't save you from cholera or
the plague. Only antibiotics can.
>Well, as I posted earlier, Singpore, Japan, and most other Asian
>countries have a far lower murder/crime rate than America. I don't think
>it's difficult to see what the direction toward a better life is.
Well, Japan has a low crime rate because it has few people in poverty due to
its almost 100% employment This is wonderful, but it has more to do with
their being the key industrial power currently than anything else. Now that
Japanese companies are moving out of Japan to exploit cheap Malaysan labor,
this might change soon.
Singapore. Well, the more I read about that country the more distasteful it
seems. If safety can only be achieved by having no civil rights to speak of,
I want no part of it.
Lizard
>
> Because it is such a basic human motivation, sexual orientation is
> often a deciding factor in interpreting past events. Have you read
> Plato's philosophy?
As much of it as I could stand, which, frankly, wasn't much. When it
comes to ancient Greeks, give me Aristophanes.
> Many of the dialogues feature his homosexuality
> to the point that it is difficult at first to tell that they're about
> anything else. The +Phaedrus+ is a case in point. Napoleon's fascin-
> ation with Josephine may have been the primary factor in one of the
> more stupid military actions in history, the decision to attack Moscow.
> The reason some leaders get to be "prime movers" in the history of
> this or that is precisely because others are inclined, or are taught,
> to think of them as sex-less, even life-less. Does it matter that
> George Washington had rotten teeth, that Thomas Jefferson smoked pot,
> that Benjamin Franklin was a lothario, or that Marion Berry uses
> cocaine? Damned right it does!
In all of those cases, I'd say, it depends on the context...and the
intended age group. A first grade class needs only know that Benjamin
Franklin was instrumental in securing French aid for the Revolution;a
ninth grade class should know he did it mostly in bedrooms, not throne
rooms. Jefferson's hemp smoking (and careers as a smuggler) is important
from some perspectives, and not from others. The choice of which facts
should be focussed on reveals much about the historian. Consider, for
example, the recent hooplah over Dr. King's extramarital affairs. Many
people felt the information should be suppressed, regardless of the
admitted truth of it. Is it ncecessary to point out every wart and
character flaw of everyone who managed to achieve anything of note? What
does it reveal about our society, if our primary interest in men and
women of greatness is what skeletons are in their closet. George
Washington apparently died of VD. So bleedin' what?
> >Face it -- the entire history of the human race is one endless nightmare
> >of murder, genocide, rape, and oppression. There is no race, culture,
> >people, society, or religion which is not drenched in blood -- and
> >playing 'more oppressed than thou' is a fools game.
> You are right, of course. 2,000 wrongs, however, do not make a right.
> Suppose that, instead of hiding their dirty laundry in loud +tu quoque+
> argument, everyone just "'fessed up" to all the crap in their history.
> I wonder why such arguments as yours seem always to come from history's
> current oppressors?
Because whoever is top dog du jour gets to write the history books.
Trust me, the history books of 2050 will detail a 'history' to at odds
with what you nad I know they might as well be written about another
planet. (For some fun thrills, see if your local college library has
translations of Breznhev-era Soviet Encyclopedias. Check out their view
of world history)
Bryan Wu
>b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) writes:
>>Japanese companies hold the most US patents. So, who's 'culture' is it
>>now? The Japanese seem to be using it more than us. Just so you know -
>>quality control was 'invented' by an American - but it's considered a
>>Japanese method.
>
>And my point is it has nothing to do with samurais, shoguns, and
>Zen. The Meji restoration was Japan's deliberate rejection of it's own
>culture in favor of that of the West.
No. The Japanese, I believe, see it as an _addition to their culture.
From all I've read, Japanese see their culture as a 'wet' culture - one
which is not static, but rather one which changes - i.e. incorporate the
best of whatever floats down the river. This seems apparent to me, as I
saw plenty of people wearing kimonos (a old Chinese costume BTW)
alongside people wearing double-breasted suits. I think you also might
want to ask a Japanese person if they 'reject Japanese culture'. From
what you just wrote, I think you'll be suprised at their answer.
>>>The notion of democracy is Western.
>>Hmm.. Isn't Greece kinda middle-Eastern?
>Well, it seems more than way now, but it was part of the Ottoman
>(Turkish) empire for centuries, which greatly changed its culture.
Turkey is often thought of as a middle-eastern or near-eastern country,
as opposed to a more 'white' country such as Italy, correct? Since it is
not classified as "Europe" really, how come it's still considered
"western"? Would it be more correct, using your terms, to say that
European culture is based on Middle-Eastern concepts? i.e. Christianity,
Judiasm, democracy, slavery, etc. etc. Hmm?
>>>The concept of the purpose of work is not merely to get food and
>>>shelter but to gather toys like computers and VCRs is Western.
>>And you know this because..? You've jumped back in history and talked to
>>merchants all around the world perhaps? Don't be silly.
>
>Well, I know this because consumerism isn't possible without disposible
>income, which wasn't prevalant among anybody but nobles and rich merchants
>in any culture (including Western ones) until this century.
And so you're saying that rich merchants and nobles around the world 500 or
1000 years ago didn't have disposable income? Don't be silly. The whole
"silk road"/'gee - lets look for more spices to sell' idea was driven by
consumerism. Who do you think paid these merchants for their silk?
Silk's not a 'necessity', nor is pepper.
>>>Basically the entire world (with the exception of Islamic
>>>fundamentalists) is becoming Western. Japan (and others) are succeeeding by
>>>embracing these Western principles.
>>And America is succeeding by embracing Asian priciples - quality control
>>in manufacturing, new management styles (as opposed to the top-down
>>pyramid), etc.
>
>Well, I don't see how these are Asian principles. I could be wrong, but they
>don't come from Buddist theology or anything. Many of these concepts such
>as "Just in Time" were developed by Asians, but in a very Western business
>structure.
I see - so "Asian" only means "stuff from 500 years ago", while "Western"
means anything later than that, even if it was invented in an Asian
country. Give credit when it's a western idea, but deny it when it's not
western. Not very open-minded or fair, is that? The very problem the
Voyager CD was addressing, I believe.
>>>If you can show me a citation *any* citation saying otherwise, then
>>>please show it to me.
>>Meggs, p. 28: "With a total of over fourty-four thousand characters, it
>>is not surprising that movable type never came into widespread Far
>>Eastern use." Metal type was invented in Korea in 1403 AD - that's between
>>"900 on to the 19th century", isn't it?
>Yes. My reference on the subject (Will Durant's "Our Oriental
>Heritage") has this statement on metal type too. I'm confused as to
>the relation of metal type to the printing press, but maybe the whole
>purpose of metal type is for printing presses -- I don't know.
Metal type is much more durable than say, wooden type.
>>For one thing, movable type was invented by Pi Sheng in 1040 AD - I don't
>>know where you're getting "900" from. For context, the first extant printed
>>manuscript, The Diamond Sutra, is dated 868AD - and don't tell me you
>>don't think the spread of Buddhism via texts from India to China,
>>and throughout Asia is "significant". In addition, China was the first
>>place in the world to use paper money - again, maybe you don't think that's
>>significant either.
>
>Well, I believe the "Diamond Sutra" was *block* printed.
Correct. It was printed before movable type was invented.
>Block
>printing was very relevant to Chinese culture.
Correct.
>But block printing is
>only marginally better than hand-writing in terms of speed and price
>of books.
Very incorrect! How do you figure that? Would you rather hand-write a
page of text, or print it with a wood-block? Remember my quote about the
quality of Chinese wood-block printing.
>>"The Chinese contribution to the evolution of visual communications was
>>formidable. During the Wester world's thousand-year medieval period,
>>China's invention of paper and printing spread slowly westward, arriving
>>in Europe just as it was rising from it's long night to awaken into a
>>renaissance of learning and culture."
>
>Well. Two things here. First, there is *no* evidence that Gutenburg
>was influenced by any other design -- he developed it
>independantly.
Actually, there were several other people developing printing
presses, and metal type - I believe that he was in direct competition
with others in Europe. Additionally, that doesn't mean that a similar
invention which existed half-way around the world and which made just as
big an impact should be denied existance or importance.
>Secondly, while we may quibble on actual dates of the
>Chinese printing press' development, the fact is when missionaries
>came to China in the 19th century, there were no native printing
>presses, and even at its heyday, the Chinese printing press was the
>minority form of printing, most printing being done by block
>type.
I believe you mean "There were no printing presses which were similar to
Guttenburg". There was plenty of printing going on, and had been going
on since the 9th century, using wood-block printing. Metal type never
really caught on for the simple reason that there are some 40,000
characters in Chinese. Additionally, I'm sure you know about the general
missionary attitude about existing cultures - i.e. they're uncultured
heathens - so I tend to take things they report with that in mind. Of
course, the Chinese called them (and still do) 'barbarians', so I'm sure
the feeling was mutual.
>China missed out on having cheap plentiful books, which is in a
>large part why it failed to develop the scientific method on it's
>own.
Actually, how do you know that? or rather, why do you assume what
methodology that the Chinese, or anyone else for that matter, used were not
valid forms of research? There are plenty of Chinese herbal medicines
and methods which have been proven to work - and they didn't guess them
out of thin air - , and many are being brought outside of Asia, and
are being isolated (for replication by drug companies). For example,
ingestion of an allergin, say cat hair, makes a person's immune system
less sensitive to that allergin. It's been know in China for as long as
anyone can remember - but when a 'western doctor' figures it out - it's a
'discovery'.. well, until he tells his Chinese associates and they say
"what, you didn't know that?".
Another example? - accupuncture.
It seems that a big problem with Americans is the default "Not Invented
Here" syndrome when it comes to other cultures. I don't know if
Europeans have that problem.
>If it had, no doubt it would be more advanced that the West
>today.
Well, we'll see what happens say, in a hundred years. My bet's on the
Pacific Rim. :)
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>>Well, as I posted earlier, Singpore, Japan, and most other Asian
>>countries have a far lower murder/crime rate than America. I don't think
>>it's difficult to see what the direction toward a better life is.
>Well, Japan has a low crime rate because it has few people in poverty due to
>its almost 100% employment This is wonderful, but it has more to do with
>their being the key industrial power currently than anything else.
It also has to do with the general culture, police involvement in the
community, etc. If I were a woman, I'd feel safe walking along a deserted
street in Japan, Singapore, HK, etc. Not so sure about here. Also,
America is a huge industrial power - how come we don't have a low crime
rate? (probably because our culture likes guns).. again, which is the
direction toward a better life?
>Now that
>Japanese companies are moving out of Japan to exploit cheap Malaysan labor,
>this might change soon.
Japan has been moving labor out of the country for a long time. But hey,
who knows.
>Singapore. Well, the more I read about that country the more distasteful it
>seems. If safety can only be achieved by having no civil rights to speak of,
>I want no part of it.
Well, I've known a lot of Singaporeans who've been here, but decide to go
back because they like it there more. Singapore is basically a middle-class
heaven.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>On 20 Feb 1995 02:08:18 -0500 in article <3i9f52$c...@panix.com>, Bryan Wu wrote:
>> then yes. If George Washington owned slaves, then would that make a
>> difference in how we view our history? I think it would - it would be
>> indicative of how accepted slavery was, and the ideas of the time that the
>> constitution was written around. But a fact like that isn't often
>> mentioned in the history books. Should it be?
>pages describing the life of Jefferson's slaves, and while I don't
>recall Washington being mentioned explicitly, I do recall being informed
>nearly all the Founders were slaveholders. We also learned about
>Jefferson's love affair with one of his slaves, and his refusal to
>acknowledge the children he had by her. I was under the impression this
>was how history was taught;indeed, how could anyone study that time
>period of American history and *not* be aware of just how widely
>practiced slavery was?
Ah.. local school boards(?). The above details weren't in my text books. :)
>But what is often left out of history books is that slavery was not
>invented by Europeans;nor was it unique to any one culture. Prior to
>1700 or so, practically every culture practiced slavery...including the cultures American slaves
>were taken from.
I _did learn this, however.
>The omission of *this* little fact is indeed curious;I
>did not learn it until fairly late in my education, and then, not via
>any formal teaching process.
Bryan
Lizard
It *isn't*??? Could have fooled me. I distinctly remember reading many
pages describing the life of Jefferson's slaves, and while I don't
recall Washington being mentioned explicitly, I do recall being informed
nearly all the Founders were slaveholders. We also learned about
Jefferson's love affair with one of his slaves, and his refusal to
acknowledge the children he had by her. I was under the impression this
was how history was taught;indeed, how could anyone study that time
period of American history and *not* be aware of just how widely
practiced slavery was?
But what is often left out of history books is that slavery was not
invented by Europeans;nor was it unique to any one culture. Prior to
1700 or so, practically every culture practiced slavery...including the cultures American slaves
were taken from. The omission of *this* little fact is indeed curious;I
did not learn it until fairly late in my education, and then, not via
any formal teaching process.
--
Doug Page
|> <3i8c08$3...@panix.com> <badger.793239261@phylo>
|> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
|> Xref: sislnews.csc.ti.com alt.cd-rom:41797 alt.cd-rom.reviews:3746 alt.censorship:39248 comp.sys.mac.advocacy:36955
|>
|> In <badger.793239261@phylo> bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
|> >b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) writes:
|> >>Yup, the new major players will be Asian. You can still call it "the
|> >>west" if you like. I think you'd be fooling yourself though.
|> >My point is that having the scientific method as the ultimate test of fact
|> >is Western.
|>
|> Is it really though? It may have originated in the west, but currently,
|> Japanese companies hold the most US patents. So, who's 'culture' is it
|> now? The Japanese seem to be using it more than us. Just so you know -
|> quality control was 'invented' by an American - but it's considered a
|> Japanese method.
Just because it is "considered" a Japanese method doesn't mean that it is. (see my
coments below re: Demming)
BTW, Demming did not just `invent' the methods, he implemented them in Japan.
|>
|> >The notion of democracy is Western.
|>
|> Hmm.. Isn't Greece kinda middle-Eastern?
|>
and kinda western...
|> >The concept of the purpose of
|> >work is not merely to get food and shelter but to gather toys like computers
|> >and VCRs is Western.
|>
|> And you know this because..? You've jumped back in history and talked to
|> merchants all around the world perhaps? Don't be silly.
|>
|> >Basically the entire world (with the exception of Islamic
|> >fundamentalists) is becoming Western. Japan (and others) are succeeeding by
|> >embracing these Western principles.
|>
|> And America is succeeding by embracing Asian priciples - quality control
|> in manufacturing, new management styles (as opposed to the top-down
|> pyramid), etc.
Even the leaders in Japanese quality control circles recognize that "their" methods
come from the US. That is why their quality award is named the "Demming Prize".
Personal conversations with J. Edwards Demming revealed that he based his 14 points
on his interpretation of Christian principles. (Christ was middle-eastern, you
know.) The preface to Taguchi's book on TQM clearly states that TQM, new management
styles, and etc. are easier to implement in the US because they are not foreign to
western culture as the are to the far eastern culture. You had better do a little
more reading before you make such broad statements.
BTW, Toyota's goal is to become the GM of tomorrow. Yes, that is correct, a Japanese
automaker considers a US automaker as its benchmark.
It is a US company which holds the basic Japanese patent for the IC. That same US
company "invented" the `Japanese' transistor radio. The Japanese have taken US
ideas such as video audio and tape recorders, transistor radios, ICs, LCDs, TVs,
calculators, digital watches, and so on, used their government based and/or multi-company
economic resources to introduce cheaper products. Japan uses the money that it
saves by having the US provide its military protection and invests it in industry.
Japan also does not have the anti-trust concepts that the western world does. Japanese
companies recognize that their highest quality products are manufactured in the US.
Likewise, the west does not see a move to the companies' commitment to their employees
(and vice-versa) that exists in Japan. In fact, we have been hearing of late of
Japanese companies laying off their Japanese workers. The western world has not, as of
yet, embraced the Japanese policy that you cannot leave the company that you work for
until you have personally recruited, hired, and trained your replacement (a process which
typically takes between 2 and 3 years to complete.)
It is the US which is the benchmark for both worker productivity and growth of worker
productivity. The Asian manufacturing community routinely studies US manufacturing
techniques in order to improve their own productivity.
There are many other areas where true Japanese techniques are worth studying. TQM
and new management styles are two of them (no matter which side of the Pacific that you
look at them from.) Is Japan the catalyst? Sure. Is Japan the origin? Absolutely not!
|>
|>
|> >>Are you kidding? The printing press was used to disseminate new
|> >>agricultural methods, scholarly texts, and just about anything else that
|> >>needed to be mass produced. Why do you think it was invented in the
|> >>first place? Meanwhile in Europe, monks were copying down illuminations
|> >>by hand, while the masses stated illiterate. You seem to be
|> >>prone to trivializing other country's inventions when you don't know
|> >>how they were used or thier impact.
|> >
|> >Wrong. Look at any book published in China from 900 on to the 19th century.
|> >The art of the printing press was lost.
|>
|> Wrong. See below.
|>
|> >Everything had returned to block
|> >printing.
|>
|> Uh.. is block printing supposed to be inferior? The point is that the world
|> was being changed by the printing press in the East far before the West.
|> It would do you well not to ignore that fact, although that seems to be
|> your inclination. Also, Europeans used block printing in conjunction
|> with movable type, on the same presses, in fact.
|>
|>
|> >If you can show me a citation *any* citation saying otherwise, then
|> >please show it to me.
|>
|> Meggs, p. 28: "With a total of over fourty-four thousand characters, it
|> is not surprising that movable type never came into widespread Far
|> Eastern use." Metal type was invented in Korea in 1403 AD - that's between
|> "900 on to the 19th century", isn't it?
|>
<< lenghty quote from Meggs re: the Chinese/Korean printing press deleted to say >>
<< bandwidth >>
Bryan, you appear to want it both ways. On the one hand you are willing to attribute
Demming's 14 points and the phylosophies which have flowed from them to the Japanese
simply because they are considered "Japanese" techniques. (Even though the Japanese
in that area of expertise are honest enough to point out the fact that that is simply
not true.) On the other hand, you want the true origin of the moveable type printing
press to be recognized even though Guttenburg is considered the inventor of the
first praticle movable type printing press. Please make up your mind as to which
approach to history you want to take.
|> >I'm not into trivialising anything -- I just like
|> >arguments to have actual facts and not just opinions behind them.
|>
|> Hmm.. is that why you ridiculed the idea that Africans had invented a
|> battery? Mighty open-minded of you.
|>
|> Bryan
--
Bryan Wu
>in china, confuscism rose as the major religion. this religion is based
>on heavy ancestor worship, and frowns heavily on any changes or
>innovations.
Huh!? Confucianism is not a religion, and is not based on "heavy ancestor
worship", it's based on order and individual responsibility. If that's what
you're learning in the schools, then our education system's got a long way
to go!
"Yeah, Christianity is the worship of some dead guy nailed to a tree".
>the indians in central and south america (mayans and incas) are reported
>to have over farmed and caused major soil damage.
Unlike the American midwest during the 30's, right? Ever hear of the
term "dust bowl"?
>then they were
>virtually wiped out by a people whose major advantage was gunpowder.
And disease.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>Just because it is "considered" a Japanese method doesn't mean that it is. (see my
>coments below re: Demming)
>
>BTW, Demming did not just `invent' the methods, he implemented them in Japan.
And Demming was ignored in his home country - America. That is why quality
control is considered a part of Japanese corporate culture rather than
American corporate culture. And when TQM is talked about here, it's
talked about as an import/reaction from/to Japanese corporations.
>Even the leaders in Japanese quality control circles recognize that "their" methods
>come from the US. That is why their quality award is named the "Demming Prize".
"From the US" meaning it's main advocate, Demming, was "from the US".
Demming was "From the US" - the culture of quality control was, however,
not "From the US" because there was little respect for quality control in
America at the time, correct? The culture and implementation of quality
control is a Japanese innovation - based on an individual American's
ideas, not on the ideas/culture of America as a whole.
>Personal conversations with J. Edwards Demming revealed that he based his 14 points
>on his interpretation of Christian principles. (Christ was middle-eastern, you
>know.) The preface to Taguchi's book on TQM clearly states that TQM, new management
>styles, and etc. are easier to implement in the US because they are not foreign to
>western culture as the are to the far eastern culture.
Then why is America trying to catch up then? :) TQM was a foreign
concept to many American companies even a decade ago. Care to explain why?
>BTW, Toyota's goal is to become the GM of tomorrow. Yes, that is correct, a Japanese
>automaker considers a US automaker as its benchmark.
In other words, Toyota wants to become the biggest car company in the
world. (GM is the biggest car company in the world, in case you didn't
know). GM has also just recently reorganized to a more Japanese-styled
management system to better compete in the future. Ford was the first
company to do this BTW. Please don't misrepresent what people really mean.
>It is a US company which holds the basic Japanese patent for the IC. That same US
>company "invented" the `Japanese' transistor radio. The Japanese have taken US
>ideas such as video audio and tape recorders, transistor radios, ICs, LCDs, TVs,
>calculators, digital watches, and so on, used their government based and/or multi-company
>economic resources to introduce cheaper products. Japan uses the money that it
>saves by having the US provide its military protection and invests it in industry.
>Japan also does not have the anti-trust concepts that the western world does.
Sounds like you have a case of sour grapes.
>Japanese
>companies recognize that their highest quality products are manufactured in the US.
Oh give me a break. Japan didn't/doesn't buy American cars because of
quality concerns and their outrageous prices. It was only recently that
Japan has begun buying American consumer products again - mostly due to
the improvement in American goods due to competition with the Japanese
and the ideas imported from Japan - for example, Motorolla cellular products.
>It is the US which is the benchmark for both worker productivity and growth of worker
>productivity. The Asian manufacturing community routinely studies US manufacturing
>techniques in order to improve their own productivity.
And visa versa, correct?
>There are many other areas where true Japanese techniques are worth studying. TQM
>and new management styles are two of them (no matter which side of the Pacific that you
>look at them from.) Is Japan the catalyst? Sure. Is Japan the origin? Absolutely not!
Think of it this way, if Japan didn't embrace Demmings ideas, America
would still be producing crappy consumer goods.
><< lenghty quote from Meggs re: the Chinese/Korean printing press deleted to say >>
><< bandwidth >>
Limit your line-length to 80 characters.
>Bryan, you appear to want it both ways. On the one hand you are willing to attribute
>Demming's 14 points and the phylosophies which have flowed from them to the Japanese
>simply because they are considered "Japanese" techniques. (Even though the Japanese
>in that area of expertise are honest enough to point out the fact that that is simply
>not true.) On the other hand, you want the true origin of the moveable type printing
>press to be recognized even though Guttenburg is considered the inventor of the
>first praticle movable type printing press.
"even though" is the point of what I've been saying. Fact: Guttenburg
did not invent movable metal type. (He did, however, perfect the
printing press.) Why is there an "even though" in the sentence above is
the point - it's a simple fact that Guttenburg did not invent metal type
- why even kid ourselves that he did? In Europe, Guttenburg invented
metal type. That's what your sentence should have said.
Anyway, you are incorrect - my point is that inventions that affected
greatly other cultures, such as gunpowder, printing, astronomy, medicine,
etc. (and often consequently affected our own,) are often ignored or
diminished by us because of our own culturual prejudices. That is a problem.
See the original post earlier in this thread where a poster ridiculed the
thought that Africans had invented a battery hundreds of years before
Europeans did.
>Please make up your mind as to which
>approach to history you want to take.
Do you understand my point now?
Alex Stephens
> I agree - Singapore has like 20 crimes per day, nationwide.
> And that includes parking tickets.
> Being that I'm in NYC, Singapore sounds plenty more advanced than here.
Yes, crime was quite low in Nazi Germany and the former Soviet bloc as
well. I suppose, by your standards, both were 'plenty more advanced than
here'. Some people are willing to sacrifice freedom for security;
perhaps you're one of them. Given the choice, I'd take freedom any day.
--
Alex Stephens
e-mail - ale...@ccnet.com
WWW - http://ccnet.com/~alex900)
Doug Page
|> <3i8c08$3...@panix.com> <badger.793239261@phylo> <3i9hcm$s...@panix.com> <3idlf3$1...@superb.csc.ti.com>
|> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix.com
|> Xref: sislnews.csc.ti.com alt.cd-rom:41877 alt.cd-rom.reviews:3780 alt.censorship:39380 comp.sys.mac.advocacy:37040
|>
|> In <3idlf3$1...@superb.csc.ti.com> dp...@osage.csc.ti.com (Doug Page) writes:
|> >Just because it is "considered" a Japanese method doesn't mean that it is. (see my
|> >coments below re: Demming)
|> >
|> >BTW, Demming did not just `invent' the methods, he implemented them in Japan.
|>
|> And Demming was ignored in his home country - America. That is why quality
|> control is considered a part of Japanese corporate culture rather than
|> American corporate culture. And when TQM is talked about here, it's
|> talked about as an import/reaction from/to Japanese corporations.
|>
|>
Demming also argued that his 14 points are rooted in the way America did business
prior to the grow of big business and its arogant attitudes. His view was that
the US had the recipe, large US corporations threw it away in the 1950s, the Japanese
implemented them, the Japanese began getting market share in the early 1970s (in
most cases, because there products were cheaper NOT because they were higher quality*),
the Japanese passed the US in perceived quality in the 1970s, the US lost market share,
some US companies began recognizing that what the customer thinks does matter and
that they must change the way they do business or they would no longer be doing business,
US companies found that they could only go to the keepers of the recipe Demming
(who resented the way that he had been rejected until the day that he died) or to the
Japanese.
* It is well documented that the OPEC oil embarbo (usually incorrectly referred to as the
`Arab' oil embarbo) in the early 1970s drove Americans to more fuel effecient cars.
US companies had long left this niche market mostly to VW. Many Americans began buying
the cheaper (about half the price) Japanese cars. These cars from Toyota, Nissan (then
called Datsun in the US), Honda, and (that new auto company created by a Japanese truck
manufacturer) Mazda were recognized as being cheap and unreliable. These cars sold
volumes because they were cheap, not because they were better (and they sure weren't
safer!).
|> >Even the leaders in Japanese quality control circles recognize that "their" methods
|> >come from the US. That is why their quality award is named the "Demming Prize".
|>
|> "From the US" meaning it's main advocate, Demming, was "from the US".
|> Demming was "From the US" - the culture of quality control was, however,
|> not "From the US" because there was little respect for quality control in
|> America at the time, correct? The culture and implementation of quality
|> control is a Japanese innovation - based on an individual American's
|> ideas, not on the ideas/culture of America as a whole.
|>
Wrong for several reasons.
First, "quality control" WAS the prevailing thought of the day in the US. As Demming
points out, "quality control" places the total burden of quality on the assembly line
even though the quality problems may be in the design itself or the assembly process
itself as well as any number of other areas. Demming was a proponent of Total Quality
Management and a very vocal opponent of "quality control".
Second, as Demming himself often pointed out, what we now call the "TQM culture"
preceeded his 14 points in the US culture. He simply documented them and pointed out
that the US needed to return to them. He was simply calling for a return to building
quality in rather than testing it in. The old Zenith slogan: "The quality goes in
before the name goes on" was rooted in the old US approach of building quality in.
Indeed, the US customer often wanted cheaper products irrespective of their quality or
durability (the Japanese cars of the early to mid 1970s are prime examples).
Third, respect for the individuals' ideas is rooted in the respect that the US has
placed in the individual. The Japanese culture had to be `westernized' in order to
accept this portion of TQM. There are sometimes violent student protest in Japan
which point specifically to this westernization and demand it removal from today's
Japoanese society. This is one of the main areas, BTW, that Taguchi points to when
he addresses his view that TQM is more intuitive and culturally acceptable in the US
than it is in the Far East and, specifically, Japan.
|>
|> >Personal conversations with J. Edwards Demming revealed that he based his 14 points
|> >on his interpretation of Christian principles. (Christ was middle-eastern, you
|> >know.) The preface to Taguchi's book on TQM clearly states that TQM, new management
|> >styles, and etc. are easier to implement in the US because they are not foreign to
|> >western culture as the are to the far eastern culture.
|>
|> Then why is America trying to catch up then? :) TQM was a foreign
|> concept to many American companies even a decade ago. Care to explain why?
|>
It was a concept foreign to most major corporations. It was not necessarily forsign
to small companies. Sure they might not have used the term "TQM", but they not only
understood the concepts, they understood that they had to use the TQM approach or they
would be out of business. Irronically, the companies that we tend to complain about
the most are the ones that retained the most of the `build the quality in' mentality:
the public utilities. Despite our complaints if the US utility companies achieved
the six-sigma that so many Japanese and US companies are targeting, then they would
have reduced their quality of service. That is one of the reasons that US companies
such as Motorola are the worlwide quality benchmark for such items as pagers and cellular
phones.
WRT US big business it is/was simply arrogance. GM (with Chrysler right behind) is
probably the best example of this arrogance. Remember a few years ago when GM had
an add campaign claiming that they had "Redefined quality"? They still haven't got
it, IMHO.
|> >BTW, Toyota's goal is to become the GM of tomorrow. Yes, that is correct, a Japanese
|> >automaker considers a US automaker as its benchmark.
|>
|> In other words, Toyota wants to become the biggest car company in the
|> world. (GM is the biggest car company in the world, in case you didn't
|> know). GM has also just recently reorganized to a more Japanese-styled
|> management system to better compete in the future. Ford was the first
|> company to do this BTW. Please don't misrepresent what people really mean.
|>
You need to read Toyota's TQM material. Yes, their goal is to be the largest auto
company in the world. But you are misrepresenting their goal when you leave out the
fact that they also are targeting GM's quality, productivity, and profitability.
Toyota will clearly sacrifice quality and safety (which, BTW, you will notice is absent
from the list) for profitability. I will not defend Toyota for setting their quality
goal so low (IMHO); neither will I allow you to distort their goal of becoming the
next GM. Toyota knows full well that they should now target Ford if they want a true
benchmark - they are not interested.
I am well aware that Ford long ago implemented TQM as a matter of survival and daily
business. I and those that I worked with have been a part of Ford's TQM culture change.
I am well aware that from a TQM perspective that the Taurus/Saber fell short; I am
also aware that the Explorer would have never been considered as a product were it not
for TQM.
BTW, I would suggest that Chrysler has done so only to a limited extent and
that GM has done so primarily on the surface. But arguing whether Chrysler and GM
produce quality automobiles has nothing to do with which culture produced TQM. The
fact that Toyota targets GM as they do even suggests that Toyota has been westernized
so much that it is about to make the same mistakes that major US corporations made
20 to 30 years ago.
|>
|> >It is a US company which holds the basic Japanese patent for the IC. That same US
|> >company "invented" the `Japanese' transistor radio. The Japanese have taken US
|> >ideas such as video audio and tape recorders, transistor radios, ICs, LCDs, TVs,
|> >calculators, digital watches, and so on, used their government based and/or multi-company
|> >economic resources to introduce cheaper products. Japan uses the money that it
|> >saves by having the US provide its military protection and invests it in industry.
|> >Japan also does not have the anti-trust concepts that the western world does.
|>
|> Sounds like you have a case of sour grapes.
No, I was simply pointing out a few other areas where the Japanese have taken ideas
from outside their country and, with the help of their culture which does not have
an anti-trust bias, made them into very profitable products. This is the same culture
that pretended that Motorola cellular phones were of inferior quality and refused to
import them even though Japanese companies regarded/regard Motorola was the worlwide
quality benchmark for cellular phones. This is not sour grapes. I mentioned these
points because this agressive, risk-free funding of R&D and the blatant protectionism is
rooted in the Japanese culture.
|>
|> >Japanese
|> >companies recognize that their highest quality products are manufactured in the US.
|>
|> Oh give me a break. Japan didn't/doesn't buy American cars because of
|> quality concerns and their outrageous prices. It was only recently that
|> Japan has begun buying American consumer products again - mostly due to
|> the improvement in American goods due to competition with the Japanese
|> and the ideas imported from Japan - for example, Motorolla cellular products.
|>
The facts don't bear out your position. The Motorolla cellular products were banned
from import in Japan due to "quality concerns" even though they knew better.
It was threats from the US govenrment that forced the Japanese to allow a small
number of the in, not a sudden improvement in quality.
The Japanese do purchase American manufactured Japanese cars with no quality concerns.
The outrageous prices of the US autos is a direct result of Japan's protectionist
polocies. They know full well how they became major players in the US auto market
and they are not about to let it happen to their domestic auto producers.
|> >It is the US which is the benchmark for both worker productivity and growth of worker
|> >productivity. The Asian manufacturing community routinely studies US manufacturing
|> >techniques in order to improve their own productivity.
|>
|> And visa versa, correct?
Correct, but the learning is not balanced as you imply that it would be.
|>
|> >There are many other areas where true Japanese techniques are worth studying. TQM
|> >and new management styles are two of them (no matter which side of the Pacific that you
|> >look at them from.) Is Japan the catalyst? Sure. Is Japan the origin? Absolutely not!
|>
|> Think of it this way, if Japan didn't embrace Demmings ideas, America
|> would still be producing crappy consumer goods.
|>
Perhaps so, perhaps not. Japan got its original market share by being cheap (and it
was usually crappy), not by being high quality. America would still be produce crappy
consumer goods only if we continued to buy them. Quality products existed in the US
20 years ago for less than it does today (when adjusted for inflation). Baby boomers
chose cheap over quality back when that was all that they could afford. Now they
can afford more and would still be able to buy German quality. Now, let's see what
is it that has always set German products apart? I remember now, it's that German
engineering. That's right, those German's have always produced quality designs. Sounds
a bit like we might be studying those German engineering techniques - I wonder if they'd
have called it TQM... Oh well, Ford is studying them today anyway...
|>
|> ><< lenghty quote from Meggs re: the Chinese/Korean printing press deleted to say >>
|> ><< bandwidth >>
|>
|> Limit your line-length to 80 characters.
|>
|> >Bryan, you appear to want it both ways. On the one hand you are willing to attribute
|> >Demming's 14 points and the phylosophies which have flowed from them to the Japanese
|> >simply because they are considered "Japanese" techniques. (Even though the Japanese
|> >in that area of expertise are honest enough to point out the fact that that is simply
|> >not true.) On the other hand, you want the true origin of the moveable type printing
|> >press to be recognized even though Guttenburg is considered the inventor of the
|> >first praticle movable type printing press.
|>
|> "even though" is the point of what I've been saying. Fact: Guttenburg
|> did not invent movable metal type. (He did, however, perfect the
|> printing press.) Why is there an "even though" in the sentence above is
|> the point - it's a simple fact that Guttenburg did not invent metal type
|> - why even kid ourselves that he did? In Europe, Guttenburg invented
|> metal type. That's what your sentence should have said.
|>
|> Anyway, you are incorrect - my point is that inventions that affected
|> greatly other cultures, such as gunpowder, printing, astronomy, medicine,
|> etc. (and often consequently affected our own,) are often ignored or
|> diminished by us because of our own culturual prejudices. That is a problem.
|>
|> See the original post earlier in this thread where a poster ridiculed the
|> thought that Africans had invented a battery hundreds of years before
|> Europeans did.
|>
I did not disagree with your point here. History is more then who was first. History
is what they did or did not do with the invention and/or concept.
|> >Please make up your mind as to which
|> >approach to history you want to take.
|>
|> Do you understand my point now?
|>
I understood it before and agree with it. I was simply making the point that you
weakened your own point with the reference to TQM being a Japanese concept. I would
argue strongly for studying the impact that TQM has had on the Japanese culture,
the US, and the world. I would also argue that it is worth studying how and why
the US let such a valuable concept go so much that we now struggle desperately to
get it back.
I would also argue strongly for studying the differences in `ethical' and `unethical'
in the US and Japan and where those differences originate.
|>
|> >|> >I'm not into trivialising anything -- I just like
|> >|> >arguments to have actual facts and not just opinions behind them.
|> >|>
|> >|> Hmm.. is that why you ridiculed the idea that Africans had invented a
|> >|> battery? Mighty open-minded of you.
|>
|> Bryan
more than enough said,
robert
> b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) writes:
>
> >I don't know if you think this, but saying that things never happened in
> >other cultures which you know nothing about is very different from saying
> >the Holocost didn't happen.
>
> Well the thing to remember with all other cultures except the Western
> one is that while they may have been advanced at one time, they went
> stagnant long ago. Sure the Chinese were advanced at one time. The
> Arabs were advanced too. But something in their cultures didn't allow
> them to develop beyond a certain point -- China ceased to be the
> center of intellectual activity around 1000, and similarly with the
> Arab world around 1500. I'm not saying this makes Western culture
> *better*, and it may have been entirely due to good luck on the part
> of the West that it succeeded where others failed, but you can't deny
> that it is true. This isn't ignoring other cultures -- it's facing
> reality.
>
> And, of course, all this happened before colonialism, so you can't
> invoke "Western Imperialism" as the explanation for these events.
the arabian area was messed up severely by the continuos attacks that are
known as the crusades. afterwards they seemed to have cut off major links
with the rest of the world, and followed an isolationist type practice
for a long time.
in china, confuscism rose as the major religion. this religion is based
on heavy ancestor worship, and frowns heavily on any changes or
innovations.
the indians in central and south america (mayans and incas) are reported
to have over farmed and caused major soil damage. then they were
virtually wiped out by a people whose major advantage was gunpowder.
europe advanced, because each state or territory was in a constant arms
race with its neighbours. but remember, even the europeans had a stagnant
period from between 400ad to 1400ad.
societies evolve in waves. its just luck who has the best crops to begin
agriculture, the minerals to make weapons, the cannons to kill people, or
the computers to write to people.
peace love and molotovs,
bert
Robert Watkins
: >come from the US. That is why their quality award is named the "Demming Prize".
: "From the US" meaning it's main advocate, Demming, was "from the US".
: Demming was "From the US" - the culture of quality control was, however,
: not "From the US" because there was little respect for quality control in
: America at the time, correct? The culture and implementation of quality
: control is a Japanese innovation - based on an individual American's
: ideas, not on the ideas/culture of America as a whole.
Hold it... Demming wasn't hailed as some sort of saviour in Japan. Not
everyone in Japan liked his ideas. Some groups, however, gave it a shot,
and showed how good it was. The rest of Japan lapped it up. Now, they
export it, along with their cars and TV sets.
: Then why is America trying to catch up then? :) TQM was a foreign
: concept to many American companies even a decade ago. Care to explain why?
Yep. America didn't need it. They were successful, productive, and the
world's major economic power (some say the world's _only_ economic power).
There's a saying: "When you're second best, you try harder". About a decade
ago, American companies were starting to realise they needed to change to
survive.
: >It is the US which is the benchmark for both worker productivity and growth of worker
: >productivity. The Asian manufacturing community routinely studies US manufacturing
: >techniques in order to improve their own productivity.
: And visa versa, correct?
A smart management group (is that an oxymoron?) look at all ideas that have
been shown to be successful, no matter where they came from.
: Think of it this way, if Japan didn't embrace Demmings ideas, America
: would still be producing crappy consumer goods.
Nope. Demming would have moved on. Some European countries (especially
Germany) would have snapped it up.
: "even though" is the point of what I've been saying. Fact: Guttenburg
: did not invent movable metal type. (He did, however, perfect the
: printing press.) Why is there an "even though" in the sentence above is
: the point - it's a simple fact that Guttenburg did not invent metal type
: - why even kid ourselves that he did? In Europe, Guttenburg invented
: metal type. That's what your sentence should have said.
Guttenburg did invent metal type. He simply wasn't the first to do so.
: Anyway, you are incorrect - my point is that inventions that affected
: greatly other cultures, such as gunpowder, printing, astronomy, medicine,
: etc. (and often consequently affected our own,) are often ignored or
: diminished by us because of our own culturual prejudices. That is a problem.
: See the original post earlier in this thread where a poster ridiculed the
: thought that Africans had invented a battery hundreds of years before
: Europeans did.
: >Please make up your mind as to which
: >approach to history you want to take.
: Do you understand my point now?
Lemme see that list: Gunpowder: discovered by the Chinese first (though
many natural scientists knew the secrets). Suppressed by the Emperors. Came
back with Marco Polo, I think. Developed into a weapon first in the Middle
East, then more successfully in Europe. Has affected every culture,
everywhere, usually by being on the receiving end.
Printing press: Suppressed in China by the Emperors (again. Those Chinese
Emperors did a lot of that), and restricted to an intellectual elite.
Ignored in the Middle East. Really took off in Europe solely due to the
backing by the Catholic Church, who wanted everyone to be able to read the
Bible and own a copy, and co-incidentally started it's own fall from power.
Astronomy: Heaps and heaps of cultures had this. Egyptians, Mayans,
Chinese, primitive tribes. In many cases, it was wrapped up in religious
trappings. One major exception was in Europe where the Catholic Church
refused to believe in such hogwash.
Medicine: Ah, here's the biggest and best one of them all. Medicine
developed everywhere. Some were more successful than others (European
medicine, especially, was barbaric). The Chinese, and other nearby
cultures, had particular success. Indeed, many of the fundamentals of our
modern health system comes from the East. However, they lacked a scientific
structure to the theory behind the medicine, and it is dubious if they ever
had one. Which relegates it to little more than successful superstition.
For the record, here, I don't hold up the Europeans as being all-powerful,
graced by God, etc. I think they were just lucky. They didn't make many
discoveries first (though people shouldn't denigrate later independant
discovery), but they were the ones to get the right combination of factors
to enable them to dominate the rest of the world.
IMHO, the only thing I really see as uniquely European is the scientific
method.
: >|> Hmm.. is that why you ridiculed the idea that Africans had invented a
: >|> battery? Mighty open-minded of you.
More likely ignorance. A battery isn't anything special, just some fairly
simple chemistry.
--
Robert Watkins b...@it.ntu.edu.au
Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers
are around at 9 am, it's because they were up all night.
Alex Stephens
> >>it's difficult to see what the direction toward a better life is.
> >Well, Japan has a low crime rate because it has few people in poverty due to
> >its almost 100% employment This is wonderful, but it has more to do with
> >their being the key industrial power currently than anything else.
>
> It also has to do with the general culture, police involvement in the
> community, etc. If I were a woman, I'd feel safe walking along a deserted
> street in Japan, Singapore, HK, etc. Not so sure about here. Also,
> America is a huge industrial power - how come we don't have a low crime
> rate? (probably because our culture likes guns).. again, which is the
> direction toward a better life?
The American culture does have a rebellious tendency, which differentiates
it somewhat from other branches of western civilisation. This may have
something to do with America's unique crime problem. However, the
American crime problem began in the 1960's, and may have more to do with
mass-media violence (via commercial television, for example), than with
some cultural anomaly.
With the spead of American television via satellite, Europe is now facing
the beginnings of some of the same crime problems found in the United
States. If American satellite television begins to gain popularity in
Japan, we may see the same sorts of problems there. Singapore is a less
likely candidate, due to the regime, but anything's possible.
> >Now that
> >Japanese companies are moving out of Japan to exploit cheap Malaysan labor,
> >this might change soon.
>
> Japan has been moving labor out of the country for a long time. But hey,
> who knows.
Japanese companies generally seem to recognise the value of producing in
Japan, and the manufacturer-driven distribution system in place in Japan
allows them to charge substantially higher prives than in other markets,
which supports maintaining production in Japan (even though Japanese
labour is substantially less productive than American labour, while the
cost difference is negligible). Most of the off-shore production is
driven by labour shortages rather than the savings provided by cheaper
(Asia) or more productive (America) labour. If the Japanese open their
consumer market, however, cheap foreign goods could force the Japanese to
move production elsewhere. Only time will tell.
> >Singapore. Well, the more I read about that country the more distasteful it
> >seems. If safety can only be achieved by having no civil rights to speak of,
> >I want no part of it.
>
> Well, I've known a lot of Singaporeans who've been here, but decide to go
> back because they like it there more. Singapore is basically a middle-class
> heaven.
So was Nazi Germany. The trains ran on time, everyone had a job, social
services were great, crime was low, and so on. It was fine for those who
were in good favour with the state. For those who weren't, it was hell.
Such is the nature of fascist regimes.
Bryan Wu
On Thu, 23 Feb 1995, Robert Watkins wrote:
> In article <3icjv7$m...@panix.com> you wrote:
> : "western"? Would it be more correct, using your terms, to say that
> : European culture is based on Middle-Eastern concepts? i.e. Christianity,
> : Judiasm, democracy, slavery, etc. etc. Hmm?
>
> Christianity, Judaism aren't Middle-Eastern as we know the term now.
> Israel is most definitley a Western state, despite it's Middle-Eastern
> location.
I wasn't talking about Israel, I was talking about Christianity and
civilization being called "Western", although they were in fact "Middle
Eastern" from the get-go.
> Essentially, Western concepts are those that evolved during the Middle
> Ages, Renaissance, and Industrial Ages in Europe. Greek ideas, such as
> democracy, flourished in this period (look at all the physical sciences,
> for example: most of the ideas the appeared in the Renaissance, such as
> atomic theory, Earth orbiting the Sun, etc, were revivals of ideas popular
> in Greece and Ptolemic Egypt (which was a Greek state).)
Many of these concepts were duplicated around the world in other
cultures, correct.
> : I see - so "Asian" only means "stuff from 500 years ago", while "Western"
> : means anything later than that, even if it was invented in an Asian
> : country. Give credit when it's a western idea, but deny it when it's not
> : western. Not very open-minded or fair, is that? The very problem the
> : Voyager CD was addressing, I believe.
>
> You're right in a way... The various management styles, etc, from Japan are
> Japanese (not Asian) principles.
Give it time - Korea for example, I'm sure, practices many of the forms of
management that Japan does.
>Quality-control isn't, it's a former
> American idea, picked up and run with by the Japanese, and returning to the
> world.
Oh, you mean like how Europeans took democracy, Christianity, etc. and
ran with it? :) What you're saying here isn't consistant with what you
said above about "western culture", eh?
> I'm not sure the various management styles are a cultural principle,
> but they are definitley Japanese ideas.
Japanese managament style seems to echo Confucian, (and therefore Asian)
ideals.
> : >>and throughout Asia is "significant". In addition, China was the first
> : >>place in the world to use paper money - again, maybe you don't think that's
> : >>significant either.
>
> It's not to the West... we evolved paper money more or less seperately.
Hmm.. so a development affecting millions and millions of people for
almost a thousand years isn't really 'significant'? I think that's the
whole point of the Voyager CD - that just because you don't think it's
relevant to you, it still affected the lives of tons of everyday people,
and therefore really _is important, if only because it's an
acknowledgement that such things existed.
> The Chinese _deliberately_ missed out on cheap plentiful books. If you look
> at Chinese history, it's full of examples like this. Gunpowder: rejected by
> Chinese emporers because if the peasantry could get hold of such a
> powerful, and easy to use weapon, they wouldn't be controllable. Relegated
> to a toy, in fireworks. Exploratory fleets: at one stage (shortly before
> the Western expansion), China had a massive navy, well suited to the task
> of exploration. The Chinese emporers sunk it when it started to bring in
> too much wealth (an influx in wealth creates an unstable political
> atmosphere). Printing presses: deliberatly kept scarce and relatively
> inefficent as the Emporers wanted an uneducated country.
If they did these things _deliberately_, then it was their choice. And it
still does not change the fact that these inventions altered the course of
Chinese and Asian history internally. How much of the world's population
does Asia comprise? Think about it.
> Also, if you don't know something, finding it out is a discovery, even if
> some one else knows. Also, much of the Chinese medicine is now lacking in a
> scientific explanation. After centuries or millenia of being taught as a
> tradition, few of the traditional practitioners really know _why_ it works.
> Also, Chinese medicine is lacking in a tradition of research.
Hey, if it works, it works, and there's a reason it works as far as the
proscribers are concerned. The Chinese have their own theories and
methods as to how things work and how to figure out that they work, and I
imagine that it fits in with the world view at the time, and perhaps even
now. There are tons of herbal medicines around the world that Europeans
don't know how they work. Accupuncture - care to explain _why_ it
works? Talk to an accupuncturist, and I'm sure he'll tell you. If you
don't believe what he says, then hey, explain how it really _does work
then in a way that matches your world view. Do you figure that those
herbal medicines came out of thin air with out any research? Come on.
> : It seems that a big problem with Americans is the default "Not Invented
> : Here" syndrome when it comes to other cultures. I don't know if
> : Europeans have that problem.
>
> Australians, as a rule, don't, but we face facts. The Western society is
> (or was) more inventive than the East, which has traditionally chosen
> stagnation.
Hmm.. like the Spanish Inquisition, or perhaps the excommunication of
plenty of "inventors" from Western history?
>This is, however, changing.
Shure is. Japanese companies register more patents in the US than US
companies do.
> : >If it had, no doubt it would be more advanced that the West
> : >today.
> : Well, we'll see what happens say, in a hundred years. My bet's on the
> : Pacific Rim. :)
> Both East and West coasts.
Hmm... mostly the West coasts. See above about patents.
> Anyway, what's this doing in a.f.c?
We were talking about Apple's thoughts about discontinuing a Voyager CD
ROM which showed un-popular/known facts of American history.
Bryan
John Bacon-Shone
> In <badger.793291532@phylo> bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger)
writes:
> >Singapore. Well, the more I read about that country the more distasteful it
> >seems. If safety can only be achieved by having no civil rights to speak of,
> >I want no part of it.
>
> Well, I've known a lot of Singaporeans who've been here, but decide to go
> back because they like it there more. Singapore is basically a middle-class
> heaven.
*If* you don't care about freedom of speech!
How about Hong Kong :)
Low crime rate (similar to Singapore) and arguably a freer press than the
US. To me, the funniest part is how inward looking US culture is. US
newspapers see *everything* only in terms of its effect on the US!
John
--
John Bacon-Shone
Social Sciences Research Centre
The University of Hong Kong
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
joh...@hkucc.hku.hk
Bryan Wu
In <3ig03a$2...@superb.csc.ti.com> dp...@osage.csc.ti.com (Doug Page) writes:
>In article <3ielrm$o...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) writes:
>|> "From the US" meaning it's main advocate, Demming, was "from the US".
>|> Demming was "From the US" - the culture of quality control was, however,
>|> not "From the US" because there was little respect for quality control in
>|> America at the time, correct? The culture and implementation of quality
>|> control is a Japanese innovation - based on an individual American's
>|> ideas, not on the ideas/culture of America as a whole.
>
>Wrong for several reasons.
>
>First, "quality control" WAS the prevailing thought of the day in the US. As Demming
>points out, "quality control" places the total burden of quality on the assembly line
>even though the quality problems may be in the design itself or the assembly process
>itself as well as any number of other areas. Demming was a proponent of Total Quality
>Management and a very vocal opponent of "quality control".
Sigh. Limit your lines to 80 characters or less, please. Replace
"quality control" in my statement above with "TQM" then. Sorry if I'm
not matching your terminology exactly, but I believe it's obvious what
I'm talking about.
>Second, as Demming himself often pointed out, what we now call the "TQM culture"
>preceeded his 14 points in the US culture. He simply documented them and pointed out
>that the US needed to return to them. He was simply calling for a return to building
>quality in rather than testing it in. The old Zenith slogan: "The quality goes in
>before the name goes on" was rooted in the old US approach of building quality in.
>Indeed, the US customer often wanted cheaper products irrespective of their quality or
>durability (the Japanese cars of the early to mid 1970s are prime examples).
So then why is TQM considered a Japanese corporate innovation?
>Third, respect for the individuals' ideas is rooted in the respect that the US has
>placed in the individual.
Huh? Tell that to the middle manager! Tell that to the union
organizer! etc. etc. I think they might get a chuckle about that.
America was based on the commodification of the worker, see just about
anything by Upton Sinclair during his "muckraking years". In comparison,
Japanese companies respect the worker far more, the way I look at it. At
least they don't get laid off at the first sign of a recession.
>The Japanese culture had to be `westernized' in order to
>accept this portion of TQM. There are sometimes violent student protest in Japan
>which point specifically to this westernization and demand it removal from today's
>Japoanese society. This is one of the main areas, BTW, that Taguchi points to when
>he addresses his view that TQM is more intuitive and culturally acceptable in the US
>than it is in the Far East and, specifically, Japan.
And so isn't it even more amazing that America shunned Demming (kicked
him out's more like it, from what I understand) while Japan embraced him?
>|> Then why is America trying to catch up then? :) TQM was a foreign
>|> concept to many American companies even a decade ago. Care to explain why?
>
>It was a concept foreign to most major corporations. It was not necessarily forsign
>to small companies. Sure they might not have used the term "TQM", but they not only
>understood the concepts, they understood that they had to use the TQM approach or they
>would be out of business.
So Demming's whole statistical language was existant before the Japanese
cannonized it? Big corporations are usually what America is defined by -
when we talk about American products, we're usually not talking about big
manufacturers such as Ford, GM, GE. Not cottage industries.
>Irronically, the companies that we tend to complain about
>the most are the ones that retained the most of the `build the quality in' mentality:
>the public utilities. Despite our complaints if the US utility companies achieved
>the six-sigma that so many Japanese and US companies are targeting, then they would
>have reduced their quality of service. That is one of the reasons that US companies
>such as Motorola are the worlwide quality benchmark for such items as pagers and cellular
>phones.
>
>WRT US big business it is/was simply arrogance. GM (with Chrysler right behind) is
>probably the best example of this arrogance. Remember a few years ago when GM had
>an add campaign claiming that they had "Redefined quality"? They still haven't got
>it, IMHO.
So perhaps Demming was wrong. America is a land of waste - build it, if
it doesn't work, then trash it and test the next one - also "hey, we've
made a car that gets 13mpg! isn't that great!". America's businesses is
arrogant (not that other non-American businesses aren't, but in
particular..), they believe that what we tell you you want, you will buy
- even if it falls apart. "respect for the individual" exists in theory,
yes. In practice (until recently), no. Did it exist in Japan?
Apparently so.
>|> In other words, Toyota wants to become the biggest car company in the
>|> world. (GM is the biggest car company in the world, in case you didn't
>|> know). GM has also just recently reorganized to a more Japanese-styled
>|> management system to better compete in the future. Ford was the first
>|> company to do this BTW. Please don't misrepresent what people really mean.
>
>You need to read Toyota's TQM material. Yes, their goal is to be the largest auto
>company in the world. But you are misrepresenting their goal when you leave out the
>fact that they also are targeting GM's quality, productivity, and profitability.
If you were the biggest car company in the world, I would hope that
you're the most productive and profitable. I don't know about quality
however.
>Toyota will clearly sacrifice quality and safety (which, BTW, you will notice is absent
>from the list) for profitability. I will not defend Toyota for setting their quality
>goal so low (IMHO);
Toyata's cars sold in the US have been among (if not _the) most reliable
cars over the past what, decade? That's their reputation, and it's not
unearned. As you know, Toyota manufactures the Lexus brand. As for
safety, I don't know what you're talking about there, so I won't comment
on it.
>neither will I allow you to distort their goal of becoming the
>next GM. Toyota knows full well that they should now target Ford if they want a true
>benchmark - they are not interested.
Ford is the Honda of America - i.e. it's small potatoes, but gaining
rapidly. Should Toyota try to emulate a small company when it's already
bigger than that company by factors of x?
[comparison of US car manufacturers deleted]
>The
>fact that Toyota targets GM as they do even suggests that Toyota has been westernized
>so much that it is about to make the same mistakes that major US corporations made
>20 to 30 years ago.
Because they're becoming arrogant, hierarchical, and division-bound?
>No, I was simply pointing out a few other areas where the Japanese have taken ideas
>from outside their country and, with the help of their culture which does not have
>an anti-trust bias, made them into very profitable products. This is the same culture
>that pretended that Motorola cellular phones were of inferior quality and refused to
>import them even though Japanese companies regarded/regard Motorola was the worlwide
>quality benchmark for cellular phones. This is not sour grapes. I mentioned these
>points because this agressive, risk-free funding of R&D and the blatant protectionism is
>rooted in the Japanese culture.
And France (and other nations around the world)'s culture too, don't
forget. Simply said, they've got a better strategy - and it's one that
countries around the world (including America) are starting to follow.
Goverment cooperation with industry. Do you think it's normal for rice
to grow in California? Massive water subsidies. That sounds like govt.
and industry are sleeping together to lower prices below fair-market
rates, no? Kinda like Japan, eh.. There were no tarrif barriers, but
hey, if you can make your rice for half the price of the foreign
competition, where's the need? :)
>|> Oh give me a break. Japan didn't/doesn't buy American cars because of
>|> quality concerns and their outrageous prices. It was only recently that
>|> Japan has begun buying American consumer products again - mostly due to
>|> the improvement in American goods due to competition with the Japanese
>|> and the ideas imported from Japan - for example, Motorolla cellular products.
>The facts don't bear out your position.
Hmm? How much do you think a Camaro sold for in Japan? Think the
equivalent of say, a cheap Caddy here. And it wasn't even RHD. And you
_know how poor in quality the old Chevys were.
>The Motorolla cellular products were banned
>from import in Japan due to "quality concerns" even though they knew better.
>It was threats from the US govenrment that forced the Japanese to allow a small
>number of the in, not a sudden improvement in quality.
Correct, and Motorolla is heralded as basically the first major
corporation to be able to do this. On the car front, however, lack of
quality - or rather, percieved lack of quality - doomed most American
goods in comparison to similarly (or cheaper) priced Japanese products.
>The Japanese do purchase American manufactured Japanese cars with no quality concerns.
Correct.
>The outrageous prices of the US autos is a direct result of Japan's protectionist
>polocies.
No. Because European autos are sold quite competitively - for example,
the VW Golf is quite a popular number over there. Ever see a Caddilac on
a Japanese street? I have, and it's not a pretty sight. It's bloated,
RHD, and probably more expensive than a Lexus over there. If a Japanese
person is going to buy a luxury car, I'm sure that person would buy a car
which gives prestige, fits the environment, and is of good quality. When
American car manufacturers try pitting those old Caddys against a Q45,
guess who loses? In any case, European cars have done quite well, and
are not outrageously priced in Japan.
>They know full well how they became major players in the US auto market
>and they are not about to let it happen to their domestic auto producers.
Well, Japan's car market seems to be a lot more vibrant than America's -
shorter production cycles helps, niche cars help, and the fact that
America didn't even want to adapt it's cars to drive on the other side of
the road speaks volumes in itself.
>|> >It is the US which is the benchmark for both worker productivity and growth of worker
>|> >productivity. The Asian manufacturing community routinely studies US manufacturing
>|> >techniques in order to improve their own productivity.
>|> And visa versa, correct?
>
>Correct, but the learning is not balanced as you imply that it would be.
Learning means not only finding out _what to do, but what _not to do as well.
>|> Think of it this way, if Japan didn't embrace Demmings ideas, America
>|> would still be producing crappy consumer goods.
>
>Perhaps so, perhaps not. Japan got its original market share by being cheap (and it
>was usually crappy), not by being high quality.
Hmm.. sounds like America right after WWII while selling to a devastated
Europe and Asia from it's untouched manufacturing plants... doesn't it?
>America would still be produce crappy
>consumer goods only if we continued to buy them. Quality products existed in the US
>20 years ago for less than it does today (when adjusted for inflation). Baby boomers
>chose cheap over quality back when that was all that they could afford. Now they
>can afford more and would still be able to buy German quality. Now, let's see what
>is it that has always set German products apart? I remember now, it's that German
>engineering. That's right, those German's have always produced quality designs. Sounds
>a bit like we might be studying those German engineering techniques - I wonder if they'd
>have called it TQM...
Probably not, but then again, they have a much more educated workforce,
much more libereral work hours, and here's the important part, expected
attention to craft. Kinda like the Japanese (except for the work hours
part). They also have advanced labor relations. Not really comparable
to Japan or America.
>Oh well, Ford is studying them today anyway...
Studying? Ford upcoming "world cars" such as the Contoura/Mystique twins
have basically been on sale in Europe for what, a year now? Doing quite
well.. Ford also 'imported' the Merkur XR4ti and Scorpio a while back to
little acclaim - both manufacturerd for the German market.
>I did not disagree with your point here. History is more then who was first. History
>is what they did or did not do with the invention and/or concept.
Bringing it back full circle to the Voyager CD, knowing that some
immigrants immigrated to America because of persecution due to their
being gay _is a fact that shouldn't be denied. Same thing with that
_fact that homosexuality wasn't quite so scorned back in the 1920's as it is
today in America, or that the fact that women died because of abortions
due to the pressure to marry.
>|> >Please make up your mind as to which
>|> >approach to history you want to take.
>|> Do you understand my point now?
>
>I understood it before and agree with it. I was simply making the point that you
>weakened your own point with the reference to TQM being a Japanese concept.
Consider that I'm talking about the culture surrounding TQM - as in the
culture which actively supported and implimented it (Japan), as opposed to
the culture which it was supposedly based on (American). America should
have listened to Demming - if we had, then we'd be the TQM culture, not
the Japanese IMO.
>I would
>argue strongly for studying the impact that TQM has had on the Japanese culture,
>the US, and the world. I would also argue that it is worth studying how and why
>the US let such a valuable concept go so much that we now struggle desperately to
>get it back.
Agreed. :)
>I would also argue strongly for studying the differences in `ethical' and `unethical'
>in the US and Japan and where those differences originate.
Agreed - here's something to think about: Semetech = America's experiment
with Japanese-styled cooperation between business and industry in order
to push up American market share in the world market. "ethics" change.
The Japanese seem to realize this as a truism - Dunno if Americans have
yet (certainly Christianity doesn't foster this view). In any case,
other countries (Korea, for example) tend to see this as the best way to
go - and in the future, direct govt. collaboration with industry may be
seen as totally ethical.
US microchip advances came out of (and still do) the US Space program.. Govt
funds the research, industry sells it.
>|> >|> >I'm not into trivialising anything -- I just like
>|> >|> >arguments to have actual facts and not just opinions behind them.
>|> >|>
>|> >|> Hmm.. is that why you ridiculed the idea that Africans had invented a
>|> >|> battery? Mighty open-minded of you.
>|>
>|> Bryan
>more than enough said,
>dp
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>Bryan Wu (b...@panix.com) wrote:
>: >It is the US which is the benchmark for both worker productivity and growth of worker
>: >productivity. The Asian manufacturing community routinely studies US manufacturing
>: >techniques in order to improve their own productivity.
>: And visa versa, correct?
>A smart management group (is that an oxymoron?) look at all ideas that have
>been shown to be successful, no matter where they came from.
Totally. That's how all cultures should work, IMO.
>: Think of it this way, if Japan didn't embrace Demmings ideas, America
>: would still be producing crappy consumer goods.
>
>Nope. Demming would have moved on. Some European countries (especially
>Germany) would have snapped it up.
But America would still be producing crappy consumer goods though :).
>Guttenburg did invent metal type. He simply wasn't the first to do so.
Correct - "Guttenburg was the first to invent metal type in Europe" (as
opposed to the world).
>Lemme see that list: Gunpowder: discovered by the Chinese first (though
>many natural scientists knew the secrets). Suppressed by the Emperors. Came
>back with Marco Polo, I think. Developed into a weapon first in the Middle
>East, then more successfully in Europe.
Actually, gunpowder was used as a weapon in China - just not as
effectively as in a cannon. Rocket powered incindiary arrows, for example.
>Has affected every culture,
>everywhere, usually by being on the receiving end.
>Printing press: Suppressed in China by the Emperors (again. Those Chinese
>Emperors did a lot of that), and restricted to an intellectual elite.
I don't know about the printing _press - maybe that's true. But I would
garner that wood-block printing wasn't all that big of a deal. Printing
had a huge effect, parallel to the effect in Europe with the printing
done there.
>Medicine: Ah, here's the biggest and best one of them all. Medicine
>developed everywhere. Some were more successful than others (European
>medicine, especially, was barbaric). The Chinese, and other nearby
>cultures, had particular success. Indeed, many of the fundamentals of our
>modern health system comes from the East. However, they lacked a scientific
>structure to the theory behind the medicine, and it is dubious if they ever
>had one. Which relegates it to little more than successful superstition.
Hmm.. "scientific" today is something different from "scientific" say,
500 years ago. You can't come up with the rules of accupuncture
(whatever they are) by randomly sticking people with needles - there must
have been a methodology. Nerve centers (energy distribution centers or
whatever terminology was used back then) were accurately described before
the actual underpinnings were discovered, and are useable. Western science
doesn't know how many of it's own drugs work, simply that they do.
Bad analogy, but it's kinda like a car - you don't need to know the
theory behind the combustion engine to understand how to work it.
>For the record, here, I don't hold up the Europeans as being all-powerful,
>graced by God, etc. I think they were just lucky. They didn't make many
>discoveries first (though people shouldn't denigrate later independant
>discovery), but they were the ones to get the right combination of factors
>to enable them to dominate the rest of the world.
For now :)
>IMHO, the only thing I really see as uniquely European is the scientific
>method.
What exactly is the scientific method? Theory and proof? I would think
that that method existed elsewhere, but under different names.
>: >|> Hmm.. is that why you ridiculed the idea that Africans had invented a
>: >|> battery? Mighty open-minded of you.
>
>More likely ignorance. A battery isn't anything special, just some fairly
>simple chemistry.
Yup.
Bryan
Alex Stephens
> >And my point is it has nothing to do with samurais, shoguns, and
> >Zen. The Meji restoration was Japan's deliberate rejection of it's own
> >culture in favor of that of the West.
>
> No. The Japanese, I believe, see it as an _addition to their culture.
> From all I've read, Japanese see their culture as a 'wet' culture - one
> which is not static, but rather one which changes - i.e. incorporate the
> best of whatever floats down the river. This seems apparent to me, as I
> saw plenty of people wearing kimonos (a old Chinese costume BTW)
> alongside people wearing double-breasted suits. I think you also might
> want to ask a Japanese person if they 'reject Japanese culture'. From
> what you just wrote, I think you'll be suprised at their answer.
Perhaps you aren't aware of just how strong the westernisation process
during the Meiji Restoration was. In the first five years, Japan adopted
a prefectoral system of administration, the Gregorian calendar, a ministry
of education, a railway, posts, a newspaper, military conscription, and
religious tolerance. These were followed by a constitution, a peerage,
and a bi-cameral Parliament.
The Japanese desperately wanted to rid themselves of their 'shameful
inferiority' to the west (versus the Chinese belief in their own
superiority). The more radical shishi even encouraged Japanese to marry
westerners, so as to 'improve the Japanese race', and supported the
abandonment the Japanese language (spoken and written) in favour of
English (the language of the dominant world power at the time, the British
Empire).
The Japanese didn't 'add to' their feudal system, they literally
_abolished_ it. They also adopted western dress, which continues to
dominate in Japan (and most of the world). Those institutions, like the
monarchy, which were preserved are largely symbolic, and don't
differentiate Japan from other westernised countries any more than the
cultural variations between Britain and France somehow make France (or
Britain) 'non-western'. In fact, when the Anglo-Japanese alliance was
established in 1902, it was said that Japan had 'joined Europe'. It's
hard to get more western than that.
> >>>The notion of democracy is Western.
> >>Hmm.. Isn't Greece kinda middle-Eastern?
> >Well, it seems more than way now, but it was part of the Ottoman
> >(Turkish) empire for centuries, which greatly changed its culture.
>
> Turkey is often thought of as a middle-eastern or near-eastern country,
> as opposed to a more 'white' country such as Italy, correct? Since it is
> not classified as "Europe" really, how come it's still considered
> "western"? Would it be more correct, using your terms, to say that
> European culture is based on Middle-Eastern concepts? i.e. Christianity,
> Judiasm, democracy, slavery, etc. etc. Hmm?
Western civilisation doesn't equate to continental Europe (although Turkey
does occupy part of the continent)! In fact, western civilisation _began_
in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), whence it spread throughout the eastern
mediterranean to Egypt, Greece, and western Europe. Under the Romans,
most of the west was brought together. It was only after the collapse of
the Roman Empire and the spread of Islam that the schism between the
northern and southern regions of the western world developed. It would be
fair to say that both the Christian and Islamic worlds are branches of
western civilisation.
> >>>The concept of the purpose of work is not merely to get food and
> >>>shelter but to gather toys like computers and VCRs is Western.
> >>And you know this because..? You've jumped back in history and talked to
> >>merchants all around the world perhaps? Don't be silly.
> >
> >Well, I know this because consumerism isn't possible without disposible
> >income, which wasn't prevalant among anybody but nobles and rich merchants
> >in any culture (including Western ones) until this century.
>
> And so you're saying that rich merchants and nobles around the world 500 or
> 1000 years ago didn't have disposable income? Don't be silly. The whole
> "silk road"/'gee - lets look for more spices to sell' idea was driven by
> consumerism. Who do you think paid these merchants for their silk?
> Silk's not a 'necessity', nor is pepper.
I don't really see how consumerism (a movement to protect consumers from
unscrupulous business practices) fits in with all this, but the modern
consumer society (as exists in the United States) is based on the fact
that the _mass_of_the_people_ have disposable income. Throughout history,
the rich elites who have ruled societies around the world have been able
to acquire luxuries, whilst the bulk of the people have been limited to
subsitence. Mass production changed all that, and is the root of the
current consumer-based society in which the ordinary worker (as opposed to
the wealthy merchants/ruling classes) can produce enough to go beyond mere
subsistence.
> >>>Basically the entire world (with the exception of Islamic
> >>>fundamentalists) is becoming Western. Japan (and others) are succeeeding by
> >>>embracing these Western principles.
> >>And America is succeeding by embracing Asian priciples - quality control
> >>in manufacturing, new management styles (as opposed to the top-down
> >>pyramid), etc.
> >
> >Well, I don't see how these are Asian principles. I could be wrong, but they
> >don't come from Buddist theology or anything. Many of these concepts such
> >as "Just in Time" were developed by Asians, but in a very Western business
> >structure.
>
> I see - so "Asian" only means "stuff from 500 years ago", while "Western"
> means anything later than that, even if it was invented in an Asian
> country. Give credit when it's a western idea, but deny it when it's not
> western. Not very open-minded or fair, is that? The very problem the
> Voyager CD was addressing, I believe.
No. Japan is a completely westernised society. The industrial revolution
began in Britain, and spread around the world to continental Europe, the
United States, Japan, etc. Perhaps 'Anglicised' would be a more
appropriate term than 'westernised', but the fact is that Japan came into
contact with western (Anglo-Saxon) civilisation, and chose to abandon its
feudal society in favour of western Anglo-Saxon societal, economic, and
governmental models. As Japan, like America, is now a westernised,
industrial society, their feudal past is largely irrelevent except in
ceremony (similar to holdovers from the feudal era in Europe).
Geographical differences are no longer important; western civilisation has
transcended them to become global.
The difference between, for example, the Chinese invention of movable
type, and the Japanese adoption of western culture is contact. Pi Sheng
invented movable type, and Gutenberg developed it at a later date. The
latter was totally separate from the former. The Japanese adoption of
western culture, by contrast, was a direct result of contact with the west
- contact which continues to this day, and is now an integral part of
Japanese culture. Western culture was extended to Japan, rather than
simply the development of a similar, but separate, culture in Japan.
It is to be expected that new ideas will come from all over the
westernised world today. Just because the industrial revolution began in
Britain doesn't mean that all new industrial ideas will come from
Britain. However, those new ideas constitute extensions of British
industrial technology. Similarly, the concept of Parliamentary democracy
is a British concept, but it has been modified in unique ways by those who
have adopted it (from the Americans, to the French, to the Japanese).
> >Well. Two things here. First, there is *no* evidence that Gutenburg
> >was influenced by any other design -- he developed it
> >independantly.
>
> Actually, there were several other people developing printing
> presses, and metal type - I believe that he was in direct competition
> with others in Europe. Additionally, that doesn't mean that a similar
> invention which existed half-way around the world and which made just as
> big an impact should be denied existance or importance.
Surely, you're not claiming that Pi Sheng's movable type was as relevent
to world history as Gutenberg's printing press? Such a statement would be
absurd. Chinese printing presses should only be discussed to the extent
to which they affected the local civilisation in the region in which
history is being taught (in the case of the United States, they are
irrelevant), or world civilisation (in which they played a rather
insignificant role).
> I believe you mean "There were no printing presses which were similar to
> Guttenburg". There was plenty of printing going on, and had been going
> on since the 9th century, using wood-block printing. Metal type never
> really caught on for the simple reason that there are some 40,000
> characters in Chinese. Additionally, I'm sure you know about the general
> missionary attitude about existing cultures - i.e. they're uncultured
> heathens - so I tend to take things they report with that in mind. Of
> course, the Chinese called them (and still do) 'barbarians', so I'm sure
> the feeling was mutual.
Yes, and early westerners, who may have introduced the wheel,
metalworking, and other basics of civilisation to China four millenia ago,
are also referred to as 'barbarians' in Chinese texts. It just shows that
Chinese are no less arrogant than Greeks, Britons, and Americans :). The
recognition by the Japanese that the west was more advanced, as opposed to
the self-assuredness of the Chinese, is one of the reasons why Japan is
now a westernised industrial power, whilst mainland China is still largely
a poor, technologically backward country.
With regard to printing, the differences between the Chinese and Roman
writing systems tend to make comparisons between Gutenberg's printing
press and Pi Sheng's movable type somewhat useless. Gutenberg's printing
press with movable type was revolutionary in Europe because it allowed any
written work to be mass-produced (to the tune of 300 pages per day) with
just the two or three dozen characters and symbols used in the Roman
writing system. Pi Sheng's development of moveable type in China,
requiring tens of thousands of different characters, didn't really give
the Chinese much of an advantage over block printing, and so wasn't
revolutionary to the Chinese the way Gutenberg's printing press was to
Europeans. One changed the world, whilst the other was relatively
insignificant.
> >China missed out on having cheap plentiful books, which is in a
> >large part why it failed to develop the scientific method on it's
> >own.
>
> Actually, how do you know that? or rather, why do you assume what
> methodology that the Chinese, or anyone else for that matter, used were not
> valid forms of research?
It's not a question of whether or not they're 'valid forms of research'.
It's a question of whether or not the scientific method (a specific method
for solving problems) was employed.
> There are plenty of Chinese herbal medicines
> and methods which have been proven to work - and they didn't guess them
> out of thin air - , and many are being brought outside of Asia, and
Natural/herbal remedies are common in virtually all societies. They
generally come about through chance discoveries, which are preserved over
generations, not the scientific method. They usually work (or else they
wouldn't have been preserved), but the reasons why are not often known.
> are being isolated (for replication by drug companies). For example,
> ingestion of an allergin, say cat hair, makes a person's immune system
> less sensitive to that allergin. It's been know in China for as long as
> anyone can remember - but when a 'western doctor' figures it out - it's a
> 'discovery'.. well, until he tells his Chinese associates and they say
> "what, you didn't know that?".
Traditional remedies, like chicken soup for a cold, often help. However,
a discovery of _why_ they work is at least as important as the fact that
they work.
> Another example? - accupuncture.
Just what is the scientific reasoning behind acupuncture?
> It seems that a big problem with Americans is the default "Not Invented
> Here" syndrome when it comes to other cultures. I don't know if
> Europeans have that problem.
I think you're making a mistake in evaluating the way history is (or used
to be) taught in the United States. History should be taught in the
United States from the standpoint of how historical events and
personalities affected the United States, and how they affect America
today. Gutenberg's printing press had a huge impact on Europeans, who
brought the United States into being, where as Pi Sheng's movable type had
essentially none. That being the case, I would suggest that, in an
American classroom, Gutenberg's printing press deserves much more
attention. The same goes for Thomas Edison and the light bulb, Henry Ford
and the automobile, James Watt (who was British in any event) and the
steam engine, etc. None of the aforementioned mentioned individuals
invented the device for which each is famous, but their work had a huge
impact on the development and wide-spread use of those devices, and thus
on the world as we know it today, which is what matters from a historical
standpoint.
Getting back to China, if Pi Sheng's movable type had a substantial effect
on the Chinese then, by all means, it should be discussed in Chinese
classrooms, or courses on Chinese history. On the other hand, it's not
relevant to the history of the United States, and therefore has no place
in a general history course in the United States. However, the Chinese
should focus on Guttenberg's printing press, as the ability to print large
numbers of books cheaply in Europe, which it provided for, was one of the
essential ingredients which has allowed the west to dominate China.
> >If it had, no doubt it would be more advanced that the West
> >today.
>
> Well, we'll see what happens say, in a hundred years. My bet's on the
> Pacific Rim. :)
The world has been brought together under western culture. There are no
longer separate cultures developing relatively independently throughout
the world, as there were in the pre-colonial era. Rather, there is a
world-wide culture (with strong Anglo-Saxon roots), which continues to
develop together. All the new ideas developed in either America, Europe,
or Asia quickly spread to the other two regions, thereby providing for
unified technological progress. Because of this, it's extremely unlikely
that the sort of technological gap which existed between 18th-19th century
Britain and the rest of the world will ever exist again.
New players (China, India, and so on) will become more prominent (as will
revitalised old players like a United Europe), and one of them may usurp
the United States as the top power, but all will be living in the world
culture moulded by the British Empire during the industrial revolution,
and the European colonial expansion around the world.
One other thing which it would be useful to point out is that, during the
19th century, the 20th century was expected to be a century of supreme
European dominance, with the few remaining uncolonised regions of the
world coming under European control. There was no reason to suspect
otherwise; until 1914, when war shattered the European world and
eventually led to the decline of the European colonial empires in favour
of the United States and the Soviet Union.
After 1945, fears abounded that the Soviet Union, with it's large
population, rapid industrial progress, and vast natural resources, would
overtake the United States as the dominant world power within a few
decades. Now, the Soviet Empire lies in ruins, whilst America continues
to grow stronger. For a while, Japan was viewed as the 'big threat', but
the Japanese recession and China's rapid growth rate have led many to
focus on China as the 'new threat'. I'm not overly alarmed.
The United States is not, and never has been an empire; it is a union of
states. That being the case, it won't go the way of the Roman Empire, the
Spanish Empire, the British Empire (keep in mind that Britain is still a
major world power, despite the transition from Empire to Commonwealth), or
the Russian/Soviet Empire. It may be surpassed by other powers (the EU,
India, China, Russia, et al), but it won't cease to be a major player.
It's a simple fact that, as the rest of the world becomes more
westernised, the west's dominance will recede. However, I see no reason
to believe that western dominance will be replaced by Japanese, Chinese,
Indian, Latin-American, or African dominance. It seems more likely to me
that the future will look similar to the 19th century, but will be
dominated by players from around the globe, rather than players on one
continent (Europe). I doubt that any single power or group of powers will
be able to dominate world affairs the way Britain and the European powers
did in the 19th century. It's just not possible in the global community
which industrialisation has brought about. As long as the major powers
remain at peace (and nuclear weapons will likely ensure that they do),
we'll be fine. If there's a war, we're all doomed.
Bryan Wu
>With the spead of American television via satellite, Europe is now facing
>the beginnings of some of the same crime problems found in the United
>States. If American satellite television begins to gain popularity in
>Japan, we may see the same sorts of problems there.
Actually, C.O.P.S. is, I hear, a pretty popular show in Japan. Good
thing we're exporting Americacn culture.. not! Right now, they think
that America's a violent place - hopefully they won't start emulating!
>> Well, I've known a lot of Singaporeans who've been here, but decide to go
>> back because they like it there more. Singapore is basically a middle-class
>> heaven.
>
>So was Nazi Germany. The trains ran on time, everyone had a job, social
>services were great, crime was low, and so on. It was fine for those who
>were in good favour with the state. For those who weren't, it was hell.
>Such is the nature of fascist regimes.
I wouldn't go so far as to say Singapore is fascist - the government is a
lot more strict, however. Importing drugs? Death sentence. If that
happened in the US, betcha we'd see _some kind of change.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
In <alex900-2202...@ccnet.ccnet.com> ale...@ccnet.com (Alex Stephens) writes:
>In article <3i9f02$c...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) wrote:
>> I agree - Singapore has like 20 crimes per day, nationwide.
>> And that includes parking tickets.
>> Being that I'm in NYC, Singapore sounds plenty more advanced than here.
>
>Yes, crime was quite low in Nazi Germany and the former Soviet bloc as
>well. I suppose, by your standards, both were 'plenty more advanced than
>here'.
No, by my standards, I'd say I'd feel safer walking around at night
anywhere outside of NYC.
>Some people are willing to sacrifice freedom for security;
>perhaps you're one of them. Given the choice, I'd take freedom any day.
And a person with the freedom to carry a gun could destroy your freedom
to live, I suppose. Assault with a deadly weapon in Singapore is a
capital crime. Perhaps Singapore _is more advanced than your country.
Bryan
Robert Watkins
: We were talking about Apple's thoughts about discontinuing a Voyager CD
: ROM which showed un-popular/known facts of American history.
Okay, let me say this, in response to that response to my post...
History is important, and facts are important. Revisionism in history is
unavoidable, as historians always cast the facts in someway or another, but
should be frowned upon.
Just because people were unadvanced, doesn't mean they were stupid or
unsophisticated. Of course many advances were duplicated in many areas.
But, and I must stress this, so what? Some places capitalised on the
advances, some didn't. Some fluked it, others stole them, others built up
to them with a pattern of successive advancements.
The dominance of Western (and don't get so hung up on the term) is largely
an historical accident. Why is it called Western? Because at the time, the
people lived in "the west". The west of Euope, which was west of Asia.
Hence "Western". These terms change, and they are little more than labels.
As for cultural things: something is cultural when it becomes ingrained in
the thinking of people in the society affected. Democracy is solidly
ingrained in Western thinking, and is part of Western culture. "All men are
created equal", and all that jazz. I'm not really sure that TQM is
ingrained in the thinking of Japanese. I'm not just talking about business
here, but other aspects. I am sure that it is becoming ingrained, though.
Getting it back on topic: If Apple stop bundling the CD with their
educational packages, this is a marketing decision. It may be a cave in to
various groups (and more than just the Religious Right, as well), but it's
far from censorship. It may be (actually, would be) a regrettable action,
but such is life.
If you feel so strongly about this, take on the Religious Right. Petition
your Congress to set standards for education that lessens the power of
school boards to determine what is taught, with funding determined by the
compliance to these standards. Lobby the school boards to purchase the
CD-ROM (and other such sources of information) should Apple decide to
remove the CD-ROM from the bundle.
Remember, education has been shown to be the strongest weapon against
religion. Educate the public, and they start expecting rational answers to
their questions. Unthinking, bigoted religious fanatics who take on heresy
wherever it doth raise its ugly head tend to be unable to provide these.
Alex Stephens
> >Nope. Demming would have moved on. Some European countries (especially
> >Germany) would have snapped it up.
>
> But America would still be producing crappy consumer goods though :).
Competition from followers of Demming is what led to the drive to improve
quality in America. Whether that competition came from Japan, Germany, or
somewhere else is irrelevant. If Demming had been ignored in Japan, and
moved on to Germany, Mexico, or some other country, the result would have
been the same for American business.
Alex Stephens
> >Third, respect for the individuals' ideas is rooted in the respect
that the US has
> >placed in the individual.
>
> Huh? Tell that to the middle manager! Tell that to the union
> organizer! etc. etc. I think they might get a chuckle about that.
Remeber that unions are largely in-house, powerless institutions in Japan.
> America was based on the commodification of the worker, see just about
> anything by Upton Sinclair during his "muckraking years". In comparison,
> Japanese companies respect the worker far more, the way I look at it. At
> least they don't get laid off at the first sign of a recession.
Actually, the Japanese tend to focus more on the group than the
individual, but they do respect workers today. That was certainly not the
case prior to the post-1945 period, however. Earlier this century,
Japanese companies like Misubishi thought nothing of literally working
their workers to death in places like Battleship Island. The complete
destruction of Japan in 1945 is what led the Japanese to recognise the
need to band together in order to survive. There's nothing like a
disaster to bring people together.
Alex Stephens
> In <alex900-2302...@ccnet.ccnet.com> ale...@ccnet.com (Alex
Stephens) writes:
> >With the spead of American television via satellite, Europe is now facing
> >the beginnings of some of the same crime problems found in the United
> >States. If American satellite television begins to gain popularity in
> >Japan, we may see the same sorts of problems there.
>
> Actually, C.O.P.S. is, I hear, a pretty popular show in Japan. Good
> thing we're exporting Americacn culture.. not! Right now, they think
> that America's a violent place - hopefully they won't start emulating!
Let's hope not. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests a strong link
between the violence in American mass-media and the violence in American
society. If it's gaining popularity in Japan, the Japanese had better
watch out. However, I believe cable/satellite television is still
relatively rare in Japan, so NHK will probably continue to dominate for a
while anyway.
One interesting example of the influence of the media is the flurry of
attacks on the White House which have occurred recently. It all began
when an aeroplane crashed into the White House, and major media sources
began speculating that it was an deliberate attack. Later reports suggest
that it was actually an accident, but the early media speculation,
combined with media commentary on the lack of security at the White House
gave ideas to others, probably including the chap who fired a gun at the
White House and his imitators. A more responsible job by the media in the
first place may have prevented this.
> >> Well, I've known a lot of Singaporeans who've been here, but decide to go
> >> back because they like it there more. Singapore is basically a
middle-class
> >> heaven.
> >
> >So was Nazi Germany. The trains ran on time, everyone had a job, social
> >services were great, crime was low, and so on. It was fine for those who
> >were in good favour with the state. For those who weren't, it was hell.
> >Such is the nature of fascist regimes.
>
> I wouldn't go so far as to say Singapore is fascist - the government is a
I would. The government is heavily involved in the regulation of all
aspects of society. Further, the harsh punishment for vandalism (made
famous by the recent incident involving an American) has nothing to do
with a desire to keep the city clean. Rather, it was implemented to
restrain political dissidents who were using vandalism to express their
political point of view. It worked. On the whole, there's not a great
deal of difference between Nazi Germany and Singapore.
> lot more strict, however. Importing drugs? Death sentence. If that
> happened in the US, betcha we'd see _some kind of change.
With regard to harsher punishment of crimes in the United States, I'd
certainly be willing to give it a shot (if I were running the United
States :). The trouble is that many have turned the US Constitution into
a political instrument, which they distort to suit their views. Some have
gone so far as to claim that capital punishment is unconstitutional.
Whether one agrees with the policy or not, claiming that it's
unconstitutional is a severe distortion of the US constitution. There are
other examples like abortion, the ban on semi-automatic weapons, and so
on.
Alex Stephens
> >Some people are willing to sacrifice freedom for security;
> >perhaps you're one of them. Given the choice, I'd take freedom any day.
>
> And a person with the freedom to carry a gun could destroy your freedom
> to live, I suppose. Assault with a deadly weapon in Singapore is a
> capital crime. Perhaps Singapore _is more advanced than your country.
And if I have the freedom to carry a gun, I can defend myself. Further,
the law isn't likely to stand in the way of an individual who is intent on
committing murder.
On the point of capital punishment, some consider the practice itself
barbarous, and hardly a sign of an advanced society. Again, Nazi Germany
was comparable to Singapore, and some prefer that type of regime to a
liberal democracy. That's fine, I'm just not one of them.
Alex Stephens
<b...@panix.com> wrote:
> > : "western"? Would it be more correct, using your terms, to say that
> > : European culture is based on Middle-Eastern concepts? i.e. Christianity,
> > : Judiasm, democracy, slavery, etc. etc. Hmm?
> >
> > Christianity, Judaism aren't Middle-Eastern as we know the term now.
> > Israel is most definitley a Western state, despite it's Middle-Eastern
> > location.
>
> I wasn't talking about Israel, I was talking about Christianity and
> civilization being called "Western", although they were in fact "Middle
> Eastern" from the get-go.
It's all relative. The view that the 'middle-east' is non-western is
relatively recent. Up until the arrival of Islam, the whole region from
Europe to north Africa to western Asia was 'the west'. Even after Islam,
the Ottoman Empire was often considered to be a western power before its
collapse following the 1914-18 war. From a geographic standpoint, the
'middle-east' is certainly western. In terms of culture, the Christian
and Islamic worlds share common western ancestry.
> >Quality-control isn't, it's a former
> > American idea, picked up and run with by the Japanese, and returning to the
> > world.
>
> Oh, you mean like how Europeans took democracy, Christianity, etc. and
> ran with it? :) What you're saying here isn't consistant with what you
> said above about "western culture", eh?
Well, modern democracy developed in Britain beginning with the Magna
Carta, and isn't really connected to ancient western democratic
traditions. However, I think it should be made clear that westen
civilisation does _not_ equate to Europe, but rather to the western world
(Europe, north Africa, and western Asia).
> > It's not to the West... we evolved paper money more or less seperately.
>
> Hmm.. so a development affecting millions and millions of people for
> almost a thousand years isn't really 'significant'? I think that's the
Not in a general history course in the United States, Europe, or other
western countries. The reason is that it has absolutely no bearing on the
world we live in.
> whole point of the Voyager CD - that just because you don't think it's
> relevant to you, it still affected the lives of tons of everyday people,
> and therefore really _is important, if only because it's an
> acknowledgement that such things existed.
It's not important to western civilisation. In most cases, neither are
things like abortion, sexual orientation, and the other issues on the
Voyager CD which seem to have aroused controversy. There's nothing wrong
with discussing them, I just don't think they're relevant in a general
history course, which, to my understanding, is the setting in which the
aforementioned product is intended to be used.
> > Australians, as a rule, don't, but we face facts. The Western society is
> > (or was) more inventive than the East, which has traditionally chosen
> > stagnation.
>
> Hmm.. like the Spanish Inquisition, or perhaps the excommunication of
> plenty of "inventors" from Western history?
There are plenty of warts on both western and Chinese civilisation.
However, it's plainly clear, to anyone who will see, which is more
relevant to world history and the world in which we live. The whole world
is westernising rapidly, and this trend will almost certainly continue.
Western civilisation (please don't mistake this to mean European) is the
oldest in the world, and has been dominant throughout history, with the
exception of the middle-ages, when much of the west fell into feudal
chaos. It took a millenium to recover, but the world is now
interconnected under the umbrella of western civilisation. There is now a
single, unified world civilisation (composed of competing westernised
states around the world) for the first time in history; and there's no
going back.
Lizard
> How about Hong Kong :)
If it wasn't about to be taken over by the commies, I'd be seriously
considering moving there.
> Low crime rate (similar to Singapore) and arguably a freer press than the
> US. To me, the funniest part is how inward looking US culture is. US
> newspapers see *everything* only in terms of its effect on the US!
Yes, the typical American newspaper article:"In China, a massive
earthquake, combined with a typhoon and a meteor strike, killed two
hundred fifty million people. No Americans were reported injured. And
now, twelve column-inches about a fender-bender on I-40!"
George Washington Hayduke
: b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) writes:
: >In <badger.793240590@phylo> bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
: >>Fuzzy thinking. That's where he got it wrong. Guess what happened to
: >>nearly anyone before the 20th century when they got an
: >>infection. *Bingo*, you got it! They *DIED*!
: >Maybe in Europe - but not everywhere else.
: Um. No. Acupucture and the like was very nice, and more advanced than
: Western medicine at the time, but it couldn't save you from cholera or
: the plague. Only antibiotics can.
: >Well, as I posted earlier, Singpore, Japan, and most other Asian
: >countries have a far lower murder/crime rate than America. I don't think
: >it's difficult to see what the direction toward a better life is.
: Well, Japan has a low crime rate because it has few people in poverty due to
: its almost 100% employment This is wonderful, but it has more to do with
: their being the key industrial power currently than anything else. Now that
: Japanese companies are moving out of Japan to exploit cheap Malaysan labor,
: this might change soon.
: Singapore. Well, the more I read about that country the more distasteful it
: seems. If safety can only be achieved by having no civil rights to speak of,
: I want no part of it.
:
Just one slight remark about medicine.
Many diseases such as cholera, giardia, dysentery, etc. are not
treated with antibiotics. Antibiotics may speed up the immune process, but
you treat cholera by drinking clean water and lots of it. If one with one of
these ilnesses simply sticks to clean water and properly cooked food for a time, the body will just clean itself out. Also, just about every culture had the
technology to boil water to make it safe to drink.
Also, note about japan and crime: their human-rights situation isn't
the best in the world..It's not at the level of a Singapore or Peoples Repiblic of China, but I wouldn't live there.
df Mike S. Medintz
--
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***** THIS INCONVENIENCE BECOMES AN IMPROVEMENT 3/01/95*****
*******This .sig under construction..we thank you for*******
************************your patience***********************
************************************************************
John Risser
> Funny, I couldn't find this definition in my dictionary.
> Censorship in the general sense is filtering information such
> that it doesn't get presented to a more general public. It
> seems pretty clear that the people that Apple is responding to
> on this issue found some aspects of this CD offensive and
> didn't want it to be made available to children. They want to
> censor this information and Apple is being a party to it. By
> my definition of the word this IS censorship.
Why is it that people always want to "protect" children from
certain material? It does no harm, so why are people
non-intelligent about it and think it does harm? I guess it's
an instinct that most women have (I'm not being sexist because
it's true) and most of them get together protesting about
"obscene" material. Either mostly women and some men or
mainly conservative and liberal christians.
--
_______________________________________________________________
: John Risser : Get bit... :
: Joh...@aol.com : _ _ _ _ _ _ :
: fv...@cleveland.freenet.edu : :6: :4: :-: :B: :I: :T: :
Bryan Wu
>In article <3icjv7$m...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) wrote:
>> No. The Japanese, I believe, see it as an _addition to their culture.
>> From all I've read, Japanese see their culture as a 'wet' culture - one
>> which is not static, but rather one which changes - i.e. incorporate the
>> best of whatever floats down the river. This seems apparent to me, as I
>> saw plenty of people wearing kimonos (a old Chinese costume BTW)
>> alongside people wearing double-breasted suits. I think you also might
>> want to ask a Japanese person if they 'reject Japanese culture'. From
>> what you just wrote, I think you'll be suprised at their answer.
>
>Perhaps you aren't aware of just how strong the westernisation process
>during the Meiji Restoration was. In the first five years, Japan adopted
>a prefectoral system of administration, the Gregorian calendar, a ministry
>of education, a railway, posts, a newspaper, military conscription, and
>religious tolerance. These were followed by a constitution, a peerage,
>and a bi-cameral Parliament.
And perhaps adopting what they saw as best at the time is _still
"addition to their culture". Japan's culture was and is highly based on
old Chinese culture. So as I wrote above, Japanese added to their
culture. They certainly did not replace it.
>> Turkey is often thought of as a middle-eastern or near-eastern country,
>> as opposed to a more 'white' country such as Italy, correct? Since it is
>> not classified as "Europe" really, how come it's still considered
>> "western"? Would it be more correct, using your terms, to say that
>> European culture is based on Middle-Eastern concepts? i.e. Christianity,
>> Judiasm, democracy, slavery, etc. etc. Hmm?
[...]
>It would be
>fair to say that both the Christian and Islamic worlds are branches of
>western civilisation.
Is it also fair to say that Western civilization is a branch of
Middle-Eastern civilization? I believe so.
>> I see - so "Asian" only means "stuff from 500 years ago", while "Western"
>> means anything later than that, even if it was invented in an Asian
>> country. Give credit when it's a western idea, but deny it when it's not
>> western. Not very open-minded or fair, is that? The very problem the
>> Voyager CD was addressing, I believe.
>
>No. Japan is a completely westernised society. The industrial revolution
>began in Britain, and spread around the world to continental Europe, the
>United States, Japan, etc. Perhaps 'Anglicised' would be a more
>appropriate term than 'westernised', but the fact is that Japan came into
>contact with western (Anglo-Saxon) civilisation, and chose to abandon its
>feudal society in favour of western Anglo-Saxon societal, economic, and
>governmental models. As Japan, like America, is now a westernised,
>industrial society, their feudal past is largely irrelevent except in
>ceremony (similar to holdovers from the feudal era in Europe).
>Geographical differences are no longer important; western civilisation has
>transcended them to become global.
Sigh. Your pro-Western culture posturing is a prime example of someone
who loves himself so much that he's blind to seeing the contributions of
others. I guess the fact that the relisions in Japan as Asian ones don't
make a difference. Nor does the fact that Confucian ideals are still the
basis of life in Japan. Nor does the fact that the Japanese have
influenced the world more in the past decade or so than any Western
nation doesn't mean much to you. Seems you'd like to think of Japan as
a student rather than the teacher.. but tell me this - if Japan's the
student, then how come the teacher's indebted to the student?
>> Actually, there were several other people developing printing
>> presses, and metal type - I believe that he was in direct competition
>> with others in Europe. Additionally, that doesn't mean that a similar
>> invention which existed half-way around the world and which made just as
>> big an impact should be denied existance or importance.
>
>Surely, you're not claiming that Pi Sheng's movable type was as relevent
>to world history as Gutenberg's printing press? Such a statement would be
>absurd. Chinese printing presses should only be discussed to the extent
>to which they affected the local civilisation in the region in which
>history is being taught (in the case of the United States, they are
>irrelevant), or world civilisation (in which they played a rather
>insignificant role).
Is it? For one thing, I'm not talking about movable type, I'm talking
about printing in general. If it were not for printing, then the lives
of people all over Asia and the world would be completely different due to
the non-spread of religion, literacy, and information in general
throughout Asia. Perhaps 60% of the world's population isn't
'significant' to you, but it's significant to me.
>> I believe you mean "There were no printing presses which were similar to
>> Guttenburg". There was plenty of printing going on, and had been going
>> on since the 9th century, using wood-block printing. Metal type never
>> really caught on for the simple reason that there are some 40,000
>> characters in Chinese. Additionally, I'm sure you know about the general
>> missionary attitude about existing cultures - i.e. they're uncultured
>> heathens - so I tend to take things they report with that in mind. Of
>> course, the Chinese called them (and still do) 'barbarians', so I'm sure
>> the feeling was mutual.
>
>Yes, and early westerners, who may have introduced the wheel,
>metalworking, and other basics of civilisation to China four millenia ago,
>are also referred to as 'barbarians' in Chinese texts. It just shows that
>Chinese are no less arrogant than Greeks, Britons, and Americans :). The
>recognition by the Japanese that the west was more advanced, as opposed to
>the self-assuredness of the Chinese, is one of the reasons why Japan is
>now a westernised industrial power, whilst mainland China is still largely
>a poor, technologically backward country.
America's graduate students.. who are they? Well, guess what, most of
the good schools are flooded with citizens from the People's Republic of
China. And guess what? Not very many Americans in those classes
either.. Ah, but I guess China's "a poor, technologically backward
country" - but one with atom bombs, an active space agency, plenty of
weapons sales, etc.
Also, frankly, Japan had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
>With regard to printing, the differences between the Chinese and Roman
>writing systems tend to make comparisons between Gutenberg's printing
>press and Pi Sheng's movable type somewhat useless. Gutenberg's printing
>press with movable type was revolutionary in Europe because it allowed any
>written work to be mass-produced (to the tune of 300 pages per day) with
>just the two or three dozen characters and symbols used in the Roman
>writing system. Pi Sheng's development of moveable type in China,
>requiring tens of thousands of different characters, didn't really give
>the Chinese much of an advantage over block printing, and so wasn't
>revolutionary to the Chinese the way Gutenberg's printing press was to
>Europeans. One changed the world, whilst the other was relatively
>insignificant.
Why are you repeating wholesale what has already been said? Read my
previous posts before you repeat something I said already again... unless
you like to talk for talking's sake.
>> >China missed out on having cheap plentiful books, which is in a
>> >large part why it failed to develop the scientific method on it's
>> >own.
>> Actually, how do you know that? or rather, why do you assume what
>> methodology that the Chinese, or anyone else for that matter, used were not
>> valid forms of research?
>It's not a question of whether or not they're 'valid forms of research'.
>It's a question of whether or not the scientific method (a specific method
>for solving problems) was employed.
And how do you know a kind of 'scientific method' _wasn't employed?
>> Another example? - accupuncture.
>
>Just what is the scientific reasoning behind acupuncture?
That's what I said - the ignorant like to disparage what they don't
understand.
>> It seems that a big problem with Americans is the default "Not Invented
>> Here" syndrome when it comes to other cultures. I don't know if
>> Europeans have that problem.
>
>I think you're making a mistake in evaluating the way history is (or used
>to be) taught in the United States. History should be taught in the
>United States from the standpoint of how historical events and
>personalities affected the United States, and how they affect America
>today. Gutenberg's printing press had a huge impact on Europeans, who
>brought the United States into being, where as Pi Sheng's movable type had
>essentially none. That being the case, I would suggest that, in an
>American classroom, Gutenberg's printing press deserves much more
>attention.
To the point of denying the existance of previously existing technologies
used by other civilizations? To denying the fact that gay men emmigrated
to America to escape persecution because of their being gay? To deny
that women had abortions even back in the 20's? To deny that Roman's
didn't seem to have a problm with homosexuality (and you can see plenty
of statues to prove it if you wish)? Please. This self-satisfying
tunnel-vision seems to be exactly the target of the Voyager CD's author.
>Getting back to China, if Pi Sheng's movable type had a substantial effect
>on the Chinese then, by all means, it should be discussed in Chinese
>classrooms, or courses on Chinese history. On the other hand, it's not
>relevant to the history of the United States, and therefore has no place
>in a general history course in the United States.
I see - so I guess you're saying it was ok for a history teacher to tell
me that I was wrong when I said that the Chinese invented movable type first.
Ok.
>However, the Chinese
>should focus on Guttenberg's printing press, as the ability to print large
>numbers of books cheaply in Europe, which it provided for, was one of the
>essential ingredients which has allowed the west to dominate China.
Sigh. So tell me, where was your computer manufactured?
Get back to me in 50 years when your kids are paying off the national
debt owed to Asian bankers.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>As for cultural things: something is cultural when it becomes ingrained in
>the thinking of people in the society affected. Democracy is solidly
>ingrained in Western thinking, and is part of Western culture. "All men are
>created equal", and all that jazz.
Hmm.. "All men are created equal" really meant "all white-land-owning-males
are created equal".. but Democracy is, I'll agree, a completely
Western/Greek idea - and again, one that's come to mean what it does only
recently (like since the 60's) - i.e. women and non-whites can vote, for
example. blah blah blah..
>Getting it back on topic: If Apple stop bundling the CD with their
>educational packages, this is a marketing decision. It may be a cave in to
>various groups (and more than just the Religious Right, as well), but it's
>far from censorship. It may be (actually, would be) a regrettable action,
>but such is life.
Agreed.
>If you feel so strongly about this, take on the Religious Right. Petition
>your Congress to set standards for education that lessens the power of
>school boards to determine what is taught, with funding determined by the
>compliance to these standards. Lobby the school boards to purchase the
>CD-ROM (and other such sources of information) should Apple decide to
>remove the CD-ROM from the bundle.
>
>Remember, education has been shown to be the strongest weapon against
>religion. Educate the public, and they start expecting rational answers to
>their questions. Unthinking, bigoted religious fanatics who take on heresy
>wherever it doth raise its ugly head tend to be unable to provide these.
I agree completely.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>In article <3ijrvf$u...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) wrote:
>> >Third, respect for the individuals' ideas is rooted in the respect that the US has
>> >placed in the individual.
>>
>> Huh? Tell that to the middle manager! Tell that to the union
>> organizer! etc. etc. I think they might get a chuckle about that.
>
>Remeber that unions are largely in-house, powerless institutions in Japan.
I think you missed the joke. In America, individual workers are seen as
interchangable parts, and generally, these workers are not 'respected'
any more than any other interchangable part.
>> America was based on the commodification of the worker, see just about
>> anything by Upton Sinclair during his "muckraking years". In comparison,
>> Japanese companies respect the worker far more, the way I look at it. At
>> least they don't get laid off at the first sign of a recession.
>
>Actually, the Japanese tend to focus more on the group than the
>individual, but they do respect workers today. That was certainly not the
>case prior to the post-1945 period, however. Earlier this century,
>Japanese companies like Misubishi thought nothing of literally working
>their workers to death in places like Battleship Island.
At least they were being paid. Could you say the same of America's
slaves? Didn't think so.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>relatively rare in Japan, so NHK will probably continue to dominate for a
>while anyway.
Satellite TV is quite popular in Japan.
>> >So was Nazi Germany. The trains ran on time, everyone had a job, social
>> >services were great, crime was low, and so on. It was fine for those who
>> >were in good favour with the state. For those who weren't, it was hell.
>> >Such is the nature of fascist regimes.
>> I wouldn't go so far as to say Singapore is fascist - the government is a
>
>I would. The government is heavily involved in the regulation of all
>aspects of society. Further, the harsh punishment for vandalism (made
>famous by the recent incident involving an American) has nothing to do
>with a desire to keep the city clean. Rather, it was implemented to
>restrain political dissidents who were using vandalism to express their
>political point of view. It worked. On the whole, there's not a great
>deal of difference between Nazi Germany and Singapore.
Yabba yabba yabba. In any case, who cares if you think a country is
fascist? As long as they're happy and not hurting anyone. And BTW, I
could care less if some white brat gets his ass bloodied for spraypainting
the equivalent of someone's Mercedes.
And BTW, America is pretty much the only country in the world where free
speech is a right. In all the other Western nations, free speech does
not exist. Therefore, I'd say that it follows that free speech does not
count as a Western ideal. Chew on that.
>The trouble is that many have turned the US Constitution into
>a political instrument, which they distort to suit their views.
Gee, sort of like history, wouldn't you agree?
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>relatively recent. Up until the arrival of Islam, the whole region from
>Europe to north Africa to western Asia was 'the west'.
That's simply incorrect.
>In terms of culture, the Christian
>and Islamic worlds share common western ancestry.
No. Western culture has Middle Eastern ancestry.
>> > It's not to the West... we evolved paper money more or less seperately.
>> Hmm.. so a development affecting millions and millions of people for
>> almost a thousand years isn't really 'significant'? I think that's the
>
>Not in a general history course in the United States, Europe, or other
>western countries. The reason is that it has absolutely no bearing on the
>world we live in.
Oh, so then something which affected some 60% of the world's population has
"no bearing on the world we live in". Okay.
>> whole point of the Voyager CD - that just because you don't think it's
>> relevant to you, it still affected the lives of tons of everyday people,
>> and therefore really _is important, if only because it's an
>> acknowledgement that such things existed.
>
>It's not important to western civilisation. In most cases, neither are
>things like abortion, sexual orientation, and the other issues on the
>Voyager CD which seem to have aroused controversy. There's nothing wrong
>with discussing them, I just don't think they're relevant in a general
>history course, which, to my understanding, is the setting in which the
>aforementioned product is intended to be used.
So the increase in the persecution of gays in America over the past 100
years isn't important? Perhaps slavery wasn't important since African
Americans only a minority of America's population.. or maybe the
internment of Japanese Americans isn't important either - heck, JAs only
make up less than 1% of the US population.
>The whole world
>is westernising rapidly, and this trend will almost certainly continue.
Hmm.. meaning that the whole world is going to become more violent,
self-serving and Christian?
>Western civilisation (please don't mistake this to mean European) is the
>oldest in the world, and has been dominant throughout history, with the
>exception of the middle-ages, when much of the west fell into feudal
>chaos.
You mean Middle Eastern civilization. China was doing just fine well
before Christ.
>It took a millenium to recover, but the world is now
>interconnected under the umbrella of western civilisation. There is now a
>single, unified world civilisation (composed of competing westernised
>states around the world) for the first time in history; and there's no
>going back.
Sigh. Seems like you'd be one of those people who would make their
school teach that America's the best country in the world. Whatever.
You liked Reaganomics. I believe that says it all.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>In article <3ick8q$m...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) wrote:
>> Well, I've known a lot of Singaporeans who've been here, but decide to go
>> back because they like it there more. Singapore is basically a middle-class
>> heaven.
>*If* you don't care about freedom of speech!
>How about Hong Kong :)
>Low crime rate (similar to Singapore) and arguably a freer press than the
>US.
But not as much a middle-class heaven.
>To me, the funniest part is how inward looking US culture is. US
>newspapers see *everything* only in terms of its effect on the US!
Yup
Loren Petrich
>In <3il0jb$h...@pellew.ntu.edu.au> b...@morinda.it.ntu.edu.au (Robert Watkins) writes:
>>As for cultural things: something is cultural when it becomes ingrained in
>>the thinking of people in the society affected. Democracy is solidly
>>ingrained in Western thinking, and is part of Western culture. "All men are
>>created equal", and all that jazz.
>Hmm.. "All men are created equal" really meant "all white-land-owning-males
>are created equal".. but Democracy is, I'll agree, a completely
>Western/Greek idea - and again, one that's come to mean what it does only
>recently (like since the 60's) - i.e. women and non-whites can vote, for
>example. blah blah blah...
Baloney. The democratic ideal, at least in limited forms :-) has
been around for centuries. Classical Athens had some very interesting
forms of it, such as selecting juries by lot and electing military
commanders (like Pericles). Though free men could certainly participate,
women and slaves could not. The idea of citizens, or some suitable subset
of them (like aristocrats), making policy, has origins in Greek, Roman,
and Germanic traditions. Where does the name of the "Senate" come from?
In the early years of the US, there were indeed limitations in
practice, but not in rhetoric :-) I don't know when property restrictions
were lifted, I must say. Black men got the vote after the end of the Civil
War, but in the South, they were disenfranchised by various scams like
Grandfather Clauses (one could vote only if one's ancestors were free
before the Civil War) and Poll Taxes (which one sometimes had to pay in
full for all the years one did not pay it if one wanted to vote). Such
scams were only struck down in the 1960's, by the efforts of the
civil-rights movement. Women got the vote in 1920, but only after a lot of
feminist agitation; it took a long time to get rid of various other legal
restrictions.
And to those who complain about focusing on bad things, I wish to
ask how they ought to be addressed.
--
Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster
pet...@netcom.com Happiness is a fast Macintosh
l...@s1.gov And a fast train
Loren Petrich
>Yabba yabba yabba. In any case, who cares if you think a country is
>fascist? As long as they're happy and not hurting anyone. And BTW, I
>could care less if some white brat gets his ass bloodied for spraypainting
>the equivalent of someone's Mercedes.
I'm disappointed with the bloodthirstiness of this kind of
rhetoric. The cars looked very ordinary, and I don't think that
spray-painting deserves that kind of brutality -- the cane produces
scars, Michael Fay reportedly passed out or something, and he was fined a
couple thousand dollars and was sentenced to four months or so in jail.
My own preferred penalty would have been a couple weekends of
cleanup duty, preferably while wearing ugly clothes -- something that
teaches a lesson that it is much easier to destroy than to build. I
confess I was especially annoyed at his lack of artistic talent :-), but
I don't think that anyone should suffer Singaporean penalties for that.
Furthermore, he was charged with a whole host of offenses, which
is common Singaporean practice; make so many charges that the accused
person is forced to plea-bargain. Also, there are limits to lawyer
access, and juries were abolished after discoveries that they were not
always willing to impose extreme punishments. Also, it is known that
people are sometimes tortured into confessing, sometimes rather
extremely (the 5th Amendment is for forbidding that).
Also, such minor offenses as not flushing public toilets can get
one fined $500 or so. Interestingly, white-collar offenders don't get
caned there.
And Singapore's "traditions" seem to be a local invention more
than anything else; they go so far with their punitiveness that there are
reportedly debates as to whether extending the death penalty would turn
hostage takers into desperadoes ("I'm going to die anyway, so I'd better
strike back when I can"). I may add that Israel has a firm policy of
*avoiding the death penalty for Arab terrorists, on the ground that it is
best not to turn them into hostage-killing desperadoes.
>And BTW, America is pretty much the only country in the world where free
>speech is a right. In all the other Western nations, free speech does
>not exist. Therefore, I'd say that it follows that free speech does not
>count as a Western ideal. Chew on that.
What makes you so sure about Europe? I think that they go at
least part of the way there.
Bryan Wu
>In article <3j6m9v$k...@panix.com>, Bryan Wu <b...@panix.com> wrote:
>>Hmm.. "All men are created equal" really meant "all white-land-owning-males
>>are created equal".. but Democracy is, I'll agree, a completely
>>Western/Greek idea - and again, one that's come to mean what it does only
>>recently (like since the 60's) - i.e. women and non-whites can vote, for
>>example. blah blah blah...
> Baloney. The democratic ideal, at least in limited forms :-) has
>been around for centuries. Classical Athens had some very interesting
>forms of it, such as selecting juries by lot and electing military
>commanders (like Pericles). Though free men could certainly participate,
>women and slaves could not.
I don't understand why you just said "baloney", since you seem to be
repeating the point that I made. :)
> And to those who complain about focusing on bad things, I wish to
>ask how they ought to be addressed.
Of course - history isn't supposed to be pleasant.
Bryan
Bryan Wu
>>Yabba yabba yabba. In any case, who cares if you think a country is
>>fascist? As long as they're happy and not hurting anyone. And BTW, I
>>could care less if some white brat gets his ass bloodied for spraypainting
>>the equivalent of someone's Mercedes.
>
> I'm disappointed with the bloodthirstiness of this kind of
>rhetoric. The cars looked very ordinary, and I don't think that
>spray-painting deserves that kind of brutality -- the cane produces
>scars, Michael Fay reportedly passed out or something, and he was fined a
>couple thousand dollars and was sentenced to four months or so in jail.
The cars that looked ordinary to you (and they are actually ordinary
- probably equivalent of a Taurus or something) cost about as much as a
Mercedes does in the US. In Singapore, there's a _huge tax on cars
because of the lack of parking, the congestion, etc. Hong Kong is a
similar situation - the tax is up near 90% for new cars. (so what you
see on the road are basically commercial vehicles, BMW's, Mercedes, Jags,
and the like and rich-kid hopped-up Civic Hatchbacks.. and taxi's.)
>And Singapore's "traditions" seem to be a local invention more
>than anything else; they go so far with their punitiveness that there are
>reportedly debates as to whether extending the death penalty would turn
>hostage takers into desperadoes ("I'm going to die anyway, so I'd better
>strike back when I can").
Actually, that's completely wrong. Caning was introduced by the
colonial British, (and Tiger Cages (of Vietnam fame), were introduced by
the colonial French). An artifact of "Western Civilization", as it were,
come back to bother you.
Additionally, I'm not sure if you know it, but physical punishment in the
schools is still legal in plenty of US states.
>>And BTW, America is pretty much the only country in the world where free
>>speech is a right. In all the other Western nations, free speech does
>>not exist. Therefore, I'd say that it follows that free speech does not
>>count as a Western ideal. Chew on that.
>
> What makes you so sure about Europe? I think that they go at
>least part of the way there.
Part of the way = no free speech. Canada, for example, has no free
speech (anti-porn/hate), nor does Germany (anti-Nazi/hate), England (I
forget), etc. America is very 'free' (guns, speech, etc.) - whether this
is good or bad for American society (in the long run) is open for debate. :)
Bryan
Lizard
> In article <3j92oc$r...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) says:
> >
> Oh, please. Spare us the self-congratulating propaganda about America being the
> only country in the world with "free speech". You live in a country where free speech
> (viz. the recent Amateur Action / Thomas obscenity case, or the recent Enola Gay
> exhibit case, et. al.) is under relentless attack from all quarters, particularly
> the Religious Right, and in which the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), virtually
> the only remaining channel of public access to the television spectrum, is about to
> be shut down by conservatives who don't like its alleged "liberal bias".
Astonishing. Are people *really* that ignorant in Canada? So much for
public education.
LEt's break it down, shall we?
Amateur Action:A clear and unquestionable assault on free speech by the
American government -- and your own government is busy doing likewise.
Enola Gay:A government funded organization attempted to use taxpayer
funds to present an exhibit repellent to many of those taxpayers. As a
properly democratic institution, it backed down when faced with the Will
Of The People. (Of course, Lizard is opposed to government-funded
musuems, primarily *because* they need to to obey The Will Of The
People, and The People are morons.)
PBS:Government funded 'entertainment' and 'education', which compels all
taxpayers to support programs watched only by a tiny minority.
So, we have one actual instance of censorship named, and two spurious
ones.
> America's brand of "free speech" comes off quite well when compared to true
> dictatorships such as Singapore or Saudi Arabia. It comes off poorly when compared
> to Canada, the U.K., Germany and other Western states, and no amount of wishful
> thinking on the part of American flag-wavers is going to fool the rest of us.
Really? So are you telling me it *is* legal to publis racist propoganda
in Canada?
> I invite you to question Noam Chomsky or anyone of his school on the level of
> "free speech" available to ordinary citizens of the United States. As for me, I'd
> trade the U.S. system of nearly complete corporate control of the mass media, for
> whatever was offered anywhere else in the Western world, ten times out of ten.
Let me see if I have this straight:
Privately-controlled media is Bad, and is Censorship.
Government controlled media is Good, and is Freedom.
Uh-HUH.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
--
Evolution doesn't take prisoners. -- Lizard
I like guns, because, without guns, you can't shoot people -- F. King
Whenever A annoys or injures B on the premise of saving or improving X,
A is a scoundrel -- Mencken.
mshields
>>>speech is a right. In all the other Western nations, free speech does
>>>not exist. Therefore, I'd say that it follows that free speech does not
>>>count as a Western ideal. Chew on that.
>>
>> What makes you so sure about Europe? I think that they go at
>>least part of the way there.
>
>Part of the way = no free speech. Canada, for example, has no free
>speech (anti-porn/hate), nor does Germany (anti-Nazi/hate), England (I
>forget), etc. America is very 'free' (guns, speech, etc.) - whether this
>is good or bad for American society (in the long run) is open for debate. :)
>
>Bryan
Oh, please. Spare us the self-congratulating propaganda about America being the
only country in the world with "free speech". You live in a country where free speech
(viz. the recent Amateur Action / Thomas obscenity case, or the recent Enola Gay
exhibit case, et. al.) is under relentless attack from all quarters, particularly
the Religious Right, and in which the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), virtually
the only remaining channel of public access to the television spectrum, is about to
be shut down by conservatives who don't like its alleged "liberal bias".
America's brand of "free speech" comes off quite well when compared to true
dictatorships such as Singapore or Saudi Arabia. It comes off poorly when compared
to Canada, the U.K., Germany and other Western states, and no amount of wishful
thinking on the part of American flag-wavers is going to fool the rest of us.
I invite you to question Noam Chomsky or anyone of his school on the level of
"free speech" available to ordinary citizens of the United States. As for me, I'd
trade the U.S. system of nearly complete corporate control of the mass media, for
whatever was offered anywhere else in the Western world, ten times out of ten.
M.Shields
mshi...@bull.ca
Victor Eijkhout
> >speech (anti-porn/hate), nor does Germany (anti-Nazi/hate), England (I
> >forget), etc. America is very 'free' (guns, speech, etc.) - whether this
> >is good or bad for American society (in the long run) is open for debate. :)
I've once seen a documentary about the presidential campaign of the
Socialist Worker Party. Quite hilarious to see how supposedly
law-upholding sherifs prevent their candidates from making
speeches out in the open. Free speech? Yeah, right.
Oh, and flag-burning is not really speech, but an amendment
against desecration of the flag? Get real.
--
Victor Eijkhout
405 Hilgard Ave ............................ ``And you don't have to put up
Department of Mathematics, UCLA ................ with dreadful human beings
Los Angeles CA 90024 .............................. sitting alongside you.''
phone: +1 310 825 2173 / 9036 ................ [British minister for public
home: +1 310 209 0068 .........................transport, on private cars]
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~eijkhout/
Sangria
In article <3jilsk$p...@chaos.kulnet.kuleuven.ac.be>, jasper...@student.kuleuven.ac.be says...
>Ever heared about McCartney (or so) who "cleaned the nation of all
>the red ones" using:"Beter Red than Death",...
That's "better dead than red" and McCarthy not McCartney (one
was a senator the other was a singer).
Also, if you were to go back and check, McCarthy did have his
downfall--a rather nasty one.
The time frame was more than 40 years ago and the nation was
gripped in a panic of anything even remotely communist--this
is not an excuse, but more of a reason why.
>Do you realise that a WORLDKNOWN BIG ROCK GROUP (Rage Against the Machine)
>who stood behind the people's liberation front in Peru, SENDERO LUMINOSO,
>also known as the Shining Path, is sencored from every TV-channel in the
>US and (so far i know) is been once on MTV in Europe...
The Shining Path is also considered by the US as an international
terrorist organization. Not exactly what I would call a shining example
of free speech (sorry for the pun...)
>The only reason why freedom of speech in the U.S. is 'free-er' than in
>Europe is bec they don't have freedom of tought and therefore think they
>'re free-er.
>BTW, spreading rasism and fasism isn't freedom of speech, but a crime,
>wich leads to murder, that's why it needs to be forbidden !!
Excuse me with one breath you state there is no real free speech in the US
and with the next show that it does exist.
If free speech did not exist, such groups as the KKK and White Supremist
group could not exist--since they stand for something the majority of the
people find aborrant.
Free speech wasn't intended only to protect those "good" speeches and
"popular" ideas, it was designed to protect _all_ speech (within reason
of course, yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theather--a classic example--would
not be protected under Free Speech)
The fact that people in the US _can_ express ideas like the White Supremist
and the KKK shows that indeed Free Speech, in all it's glory and ugliness
exists in the US. No one ever claimed that Free Speech is pretty, and anyone
who makes that connection is very naive indeed.
-- Sang.
*****************************************************************************
* Sang K. Choe san...@inlink.com *
* http://www.inlink.com/users/sangria/homepage.html *
*****************************************************************************
Lizard
> In article <1995Mar7.1...@bullns.on01.bull.ca>, mshi...@bull.ca (mshields) says:
> >
> >In article <3j92oc$r...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) says:
> >>
> >>>>And BTW, America is pretty much the only country in the world where free
> >>>>speech is a right. In all the other Western nations, free speech does
> >>>>not exist. Therefore, I'd say that it follows that free speech does not
> >>>>count as a Western ideal. Chew on that.
> >>>
> Ever heared about McCartney (or so) who "cleaned the nation of all
> the red ones" using:"Beter Red than Death",...
Er...a handful of Hollywood types had a few years of trouble. A gross
violation of their rights, but hardly a "cleansing". As a real influence
on America, McCarthy was about as important as Gallatin. (Who? That's my
point.)
As for "Beter Red than Death", I *think* you mean "Better Dead than
Red", and it had nothing to do with McCarthy -- rather, it was the
response of the militant right to the charge than the nuclear arms races
was leading to global destruction. As history has shown, the attitude
was a correct one. By choosing mutual destruction over surrender,
American forced the Communist bloc into bankruptcy. A dangerous,
dangerous game, but it worked.
> Do you realise that a WORLDKNOWN BIG ROCK GROUP (Rage Against the Machine)
> who stood behind the people's liberation front in Peru, SENDERO LUMINOSO,
> also known as the Shining Path, is sencored from every TV-channel in the
> US and (so far i know) is been once on MTV in Europe...
Can you show me a government order banning them? No? Then it isn't
censorship -- MTV has a right to choose which videos they play. And any
rock groups which support murderours lunatics the The Shining Path
certainly doesn't deserve to profit from the utterly ruthless capitalism
that is MTV.(I used to loathe MTV, until I realised it was wonderful --
it has merchandised the revolution, packaged it, distributed it, and
used it to sell T-shirts. It's very existence has made the socialist
posturings of rock stars hilariously irrelevant.)
> The only reason why freedom of speech in the U.S. is 'free-er' than in
> Europe is bec they don't have freedom of tought and therefore think they
> 're free-er.
> BTW, spreading rasism and fasism isn't freedom of speech, but a crime,
> wich leads to murder, that's why it needs to be forbidden !!
Ah, the (il)logic of the left shows at last. "Any speech with which I
disagree isn't speech, therefore, it can be censored." A typical liberal
world-view.
BTW, you went to a public school, right?
Lizard
> Oh, and flag-burning is not really speech, but an amendment
> against desecration of the flag? Get real.
You'll note that said Amendment died quickly, as the overwhelming
majority of Americans realised it was utterly bogus. You couldn't even
find support for it in magazines such as NR or AS. (That I can
recall...)
jasper...@student.kuleuven.ac.be
>>
>>>>And BTW, America is pretty much the only country in the world where free
>>>>speech is a right. In all the other Western nations, free speech does
>>>>not exist. Therefore, I'd say that it follows that free speech does not
>>>>count as a Western ideal. Chew on that.
>>>
Ever heared about McCartney (or so) who "cleaned the nation of all
the red ones" using:"Beter Red than Death",...
Do you realise that a WORLDKNOWN BIG ROCK GROUP (Rage Against the Machine)
who stood behind the people's liberation front in Peru, SENDERO LUMINOSO,
also known as the Shining Path, is sencored from every TV-channel in the
US and (so far i know) is been once on MTV in Europe...
The only reason why freedom of speech in the U.S. is 'free-er' than in
Europe is bec they don't have freedom of tought and therefore think they
're free-er.
BTW, spreading rasism and fasism isn't freedom of speech, but a crime,
wich leads to murder, that's why it needs to be forbidden !!
Beye,
Jasper)
Harry VALCOURT
: In article <3j92oc$r...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) says:
: >
: >>>And BTW, America is pretty much the only country in the world where free
: >>>speech is a right. In all the other Western nations, free speech does
: >>>not exist. Therefore, I'd say that it follows that free speech does not
: >>>count as a Western ideal. Chew on that.
: >>
: >> What makes you so sure about Europe? I think that they go at
: >>least part of the way there.
: >
: >Part of the way = no free speech. Canada, for example, has no free
: >speech (anti-porn/hate), nor does Germany (anti-Nazi/hate), England (I
: >forget), etc. America is very 'free' (guns, speech, etc.) - whether this
: >is good or bad for American society (in the long run) is open for debate. :)
: >
: >Bryan
: Oh, please. Spare us the self-congratulating propaganda about America being the
: only country in the world with "free speech". You live in a country where free speech
: (viz. the recent Amateur Action / Thomas obscenity case, or the recent Enola Gay
: exhibit case, et. al.) is under relentless attack from all quarters, particularly
: the Religious Right, and in which the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), virtually
: the only remaining channel of public access to the television spectrum, is about to
: be shut down by conservatives who don't like its alleged "liberal bias".
: America's brand of "free speech" comes off quite well when compared to true
: dictatorships such as Singapore or Saudi Arabia. It comes off poorly when compared
: to Canada, the U.K., Germany and other Western states, and no amount of wishful
^^^^^^^^^^
you cite the Thomases case as an example of the lack of freedom os
speech in the States. Then you talk about Canada as being somewhat better
in that aspect ??
have you heard of the Little Sister's case ? Don't you know that the
canadian custom agents can detain and burn any book that they judge
innapropriate ? Where have you been living ?
Yes, the us freedom of speech might not be as complete as some say. But
you just cannot use Canada as an example of a country with better
freedom. Canada is known worldwide for its censorship. Find a better
example please.
H.V
: M.Shields
: mshi...@bull.ca
Bryan Wu
>In article <3j92oc$r...@panix.com>, b...@panix.com (Bryan Wu) says:
>>>>And BTW, America is pretty much the only country in the world where free
>>>>speech is a right. In all the other Western nations, free speech does
>>>>not exist. Therefore, I'd say that it follows that free speech does not
>>>>count as a Western ideal. Chew on that.
>>> What makes you so sure about Europe? I think that they go at
>>>least part of the way there.
>>Part of the way = no free speech. Canada, for example, has no free
>>speech (anti-porn/hate), nor does Germany (anti-Nazi/hate), England (I
>>forget), etc. America is very 'free' (guns, speech, etc.) - whether this
>>is good or bad for American society (in the long run) is open for debate. :)
>
>only country in the world with "free speech". You live in a country where free speech
Oh, how about you shut up, you knee-jerking idiot. Why don't you read
what I was saying rather than say spew out your "self-congratulating
propaganda". Idiot.
>America's brand of "free speech" comes off quite well when compared to true
>dictatorships such as Singapore or Saudi Arabia. It comes off poorly when compared
>to Canada, the U.K., Germany and other Western states, and no amount of wishful
>thinking on the part of American flag-wavers is going to fool the rest of us.
Uh huh. In Germany and Canada, there is no concept of "free speech".
No Neo Nazi literature allowed in Germany, no hate speech in Canada. You
beeding idiot.
>I invite you to question Noam Chomsky or anyone of his school on the level of
>"free speech" available to ordinary citizens of the United States. As for me, I'd
>trade the U.S. system of nearly complete corporate control of the mass media, for
>whatever was offered anywhere else in the Western world, ten times out of ten.
>
>M.Shields
>mshi...@bull.ca
^^^^
Figures.
change c:/user/winvn/winvn.ini
>No Neo Nazi literature allowed in Germany, no hate speech in Canada. You
>beeding idiot.
"No Neo Nazi literature allowed in Germany",... that's against freedom of speech???
Spreading facism and racism propadanda is a crime you idiot!
It leads to MURDER!
Get real you white man!
Miskatonic Gryn
Lizard <liz...@mercury.interpath.net> wrote:
>PBS:Government funded 'entertainment' and 'education', which compels all
>taxpayers to support programs watched only by a tiny minority.
Here's a little exercise. Ask everyone you know whether or not they watched
Sesame Street, or the Electric Company when they were a kid. I'll venture
a guess to say that most, if not all have. Tiny minority my butt, nearly
every kid in America, at least in the past generation, has been exposed to
PBS programs...
Of course now, parents plunk their kids down in front of the tube, and leave
them in the gentle arms of Cap'n Crunch, and the Power Rangers. It's an
improvement, really... Right.
I also wonder whether or not you're completely ignoring the eternal
PBS fund-raising drives. Despite the whining on the part of certain government
officials, PBS is not a giant lead chain, holding down the wings of America--
It's a service which provides a medium through which programs can be seen
that would never make it on Fox, or NBC, and which is largely funded by
private groups. About all the government does is help make ends meet, and
even that seems to be too much for them.
Of course the gov't is more than willing to shell out a billion dollars for
a Stealth Bomber... A billion dollars which could run a mid-sized university
for ten years, go a long way to solve our welfare problems, or allow PBS
to continue existing indefinately. A billion dollars which is a drop in the
bucket for Uncle Sam.
- Gryn
Alex Hegedus
> > The only reason why freedom of speech in the U.S. is 'free-er' than in
> > Europe is bec they don't have freedom of tought and therefore think they
> > 're free-er.
> > BTW, spreading rasism and fasism isn't freedom of speech, but a crime,
> > wich leads to murder, that's why it needs to be forbidden !!
>
> Ah, the (il)logic of the left shows at last. "Any speech with which I
> disagree isn't speech, therefore, it can be censored." A typical liberal
> world-view.
for a while, I thought this was Mac.advocacy, not a free speech debate.
But since it seems to be one, I think here are some thoughts you should
consider:
fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and
assenbly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of
speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
Louis D. Brandeis
Whitney v. California
The problem of freedom in America is that of maintaning a competition of
ideas, and you do not achieve that by silencing one brand of ideas.
Max Lerner
In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
Learned Hand
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter.
The audience . . . that hissend yesterday may applaud today, evern for the
same performance.
William O. Douglas
Roth v. United States
If their is any principle of the constitution that more imperatively calls
for attachment that any other it is the principle of free thought-not
free thought
for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Uniter States v. Schwimmer
By placing discreton in the hands of an official to grant or deny a
license, such a
statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very exsistance
chills free speech.
Harry A. Blackmun
Roe v. Wade; Doe v. Bolton
T. Bruce Tober
eijk...@jacobi.math.ucla.edu "Victor Eijkhout" writes:
> > >Part of the way = no free speech. Canada, for example, has no free
> > >speech (anti-porn/hate), nor does Germany (anti-Nazi/hate), England (I
> > >forget), etc. America is very 'free' (guns, speech, etc.) - whether this
> > >is good or bad for American society (in the long run) is open for debate. :)
>
> I've once seen a documentary about the presidential campaign of the
> Socialist Worker Party. Quite hilarious to see how supposedly
> law-upholding sherifs prevent their candidates from making
> speeches out in the open. Free speech? Yeah, right.
>
> Oh, and flag-burning is not really speech, but an amendment
> against desecration of the flag? Get real.
That reminds me, the flag is not only not allowed to be burnt (though
recent rulings I believe reversed that) but also not to be worn as
attire in a defamatory way, that being the case why was Babs Bush
wearing a flag decorated dress on her yacht in those famous fourth of
july pix about six years ago. Shame on her, sitting on the flag,
wearing it as a covering over her ass etc.
--
=======================================================================
tbt |"It is dangerous to be right in
|matters on which the established
|authorities are wrong."
Octob...@crecon.demon.co.uk |Voltaire
=======================================================================
Michael Collier
CENSORS CD-ROM), mat...@stat1.cc.ukans.edu wrote:
>> I invite you to question Noam Chomsky or anyone of his school on the level of
>> "free speech" available to ordinary citizens of the United States. As for me,
>I'd
>> trade the U.S. system of nearly complete corporate control of the mass media,
>for
>> whatever was offered anywhere else in the Western world, ten times out of
ten.
>>
>> M.Shields
>> mshi...@bull.ca
>
>it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Macs anymore.
>
>Matt Peterson - University of Kansas, Experimental Psychology
You are obviously an expert on "nutcases".
After having read his books, just what do you base your conclusions on? You
have read his books, haven't you? Or are you referring to his theoretical books
on speech and cognitive development? In those fields his theories are still very
influential. So just how is he a nutcase???
Michael Collier ml...@tpts1.seed.net.tw
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence
is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate
intensity--WBY
Jay Vollmer
>>Uh huh. In Germany and Canada, there is no concept of "free speech".
>>No Neo Nazi literature allowed in Germany, no hate speech in Canada. You
>>beeding idiot.
>
>"No Neo Nazi literature allowed in Germany",... that's against freedom of speech???
People demand freedom of speech to make up
for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
--Soren Kierkegaard
--
J.C. Vollmer (Clot Boulot)| Apart from the pulling and hauling
Je suis revolutionnaire | stands what I am.
twos...@ferris.cray.com | --Walt Whitman
Lizard
> >Uh huh. In Germany and Canada, there is no concept of "free speech".
> >No Neo Nazi literature allowed in Germany, no hate speech in Canada. You
> >beeding idiot.
> "No Neo Nazi literature allowed in Germany",... that's against freedom of speech???
Certaily it is. A Nazi has as much right to spread his form of evil as a
communist or an environmentalist. You do not fight censorship by burning
books.
> Spreading facism and racism propadanda is a crime you idiot!
Yes, it is a crime -- which means the government is censoring it. It
*shouldn't* be a crime. I know this concept -- that something which is
criminal, shouldn't be -- might strain your intellect a bit, but try to
grasp it.
Simply put, if ANY ideas or viewpoints are deemed 'criminal', then the
fascists have already won. Once the mechanisms of censorship are
established, they only need to be seized.
> It leads to MURDER!
So prosecute the murderers, then. Murder is quite nicely illegal all
over the world, unless it is performed by the government.
> Get real you white man!
Is that racial slur? I do believe, by your own logic, you have committed
a crime. Please report for re-education at once, Citizen. Serve the
computer. The computer is your friend.
Brendan Cully
>Uh huh. In Germany and Canada, there is no concept of "free speech".
>No Neo Nazi literature allowed in Germany, no hate speech in Canada. You
>beeding idiot.
res ipsa loquitur.
Even beyond the issue of what free speech is for (your defense here is a
little mindless), nowadays the constitutional status of free speech is
moot. Someone recently laughed at the idea of PBS. He was all for private
media control, which is serendipitous 'cause that's what he's got.
It's almost never the government that prevents you from speaking freely.
Most western governments allow complete criticism of the government by
anybody, which is the heart of governmental free speech regulations.
It's businesses that engage in censorship. Editorials that criticise their
publisher or their SPONSORS don't get published. There certainly isn't
much legally obliging such things to be published. This isn't just about
direct criticism either...it's about things that reflect badly on the
INTERESTS of these sponsors. This covers a lot of territory.
You've got free speech. But how are you going to be heard? Where are you
going to get your information? Will you still be employable if you get
past these first two?
I don't suppose you think that any of this constitutes an argument. Fine.
How about you provide an exact definition of free speech that the US and
only the US *fully* upholds.
Regards,
Brendan
Brendan Cully
liz...@mercury.interpath.net (Lizard) wrote:
>By choosing mutual destruction over surrender,
>American forced the Communist bloc into bankruptcy. A dangerous,
>dangerous game, but it worked.
Not yet.