AKICIF: Regional descriptions
Evelyn C. Leeper
chunks and want to make sure that my naming conventions don't violate anyone's
sensibilities. So here is what I have called them, with descriptions as
needed:
Bookstores in the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland)
(not including Republic of Ireland)
Bookstores in the United Kingdom (Scotland)
Bookstores in the United Kingdom (England)
(not including London)
Bookstores in the United Kingdom (London)
Bookstores in the United Kingdom (Wales)
Bookstores in Benelux
(Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg)
Bookstores in France
Bookstores in Germany
Bookstores in the Nordic Countries
(Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Greenland)
Bookstores in Europe (various)
(Europe east to Russia and Turkey; not including the United Kingdom,
Benelux, France, Germany, or the Nordic countries)
Bookstores in Africa
Bookstores in Asia
(Asia west to Israel, not including Japan)
Bookstores in Japan
Bookstores in Australia
Bookstores in Eastern Canada Cities
(NF, NB, NS, PEI, PQ/QC, ON)
Bookstores in Western Canada and Alaska Cities
(MB, AB, SK, BC, the territories, and Alaska)
Bookstores in Vermont
Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
Bookstores in New England
(not including Vermont or the Boston area)
Bookstores in New York City (Manhattan)
Bookstores in New York City (other than Manhattan)
Bookstores in Washington DC
Bookstores in Eastern United States Cities
(including NY [except for NYC], NJ, PA, DE, MD [except for DC suburbs], WV)
Bookstores in Southern United States Cities
(VA [except for DC suburbs], TN, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, AR, and FL,
and Bermuda)
Bookstores in Midwestern United States Cities
(including OH, KY, MI, IN, WI, and IL)
Bookstores in Central United States Cities
(including MN, IA, and MO)
Bookstores in Western United States Cities
(including WY, CO, UT, NV)
Bookstores in Southwestern United States Cities
(including OK, TX, NM, and AZ)
Bookstores in Southern California Cities
(includes Hawai'i)
Bookstores in San Francisco Bay Area (San Francisco and north)
Bookstores in San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley, Oakland, and East Bay)
Bookstores in San Francisco Bay Area (Peninsula and south)
Bookstores in Northwestern United States Cities
(including WA, OR, and CA [except for southern California and the
San Francisco Bay area])
Are there any terms or descriptions you feel I've mis-used?
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
--Jean Cocteau
Alison Hopkins
Evelyn C. Leeper wrote in message <84dkdm$s...@nntpb.cb.lucent.com>...
>I have just finished splitting the larger bookstore lists into managaeable
>chunks and want to make sure that my naming conventions don't violate
anyone's
>sensibilities. So here is what I have called them, with descriptions as
>needed:
>
>Bookstores in the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland)
> (not including Republic of Ireland)
I can see a faint chance that you *might* get someone getting jumpy about
the "not including R of I" bit. My suggestion would be to have a category
that was explicitly "Bookstores in Eire", which I don't think is on your
list and makes things clearer?
Nice job.
Ali
Peter Hentges
Well, I think you've got "Midwestern United States" and "Central United
States" divided a bit oddly. Minnesota and Iowa are more culturally
and geographically Midwestern (as would be ND, and SD). I would call
MO and KY "Southern" states but that would make that list a bit long, I
would guess. Perhaps you need a "Southeastern" section consisting of
FL, NC, SC, AL and GA?
[O] Peter Hentges
[O] Sheep get rent
[O] JBRU
Richard Brandt
>
> > Bookstores in Vermont
> > Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
> > Bookstores in New England
> > (not including Vermont or the Boston area)
[snip]
> > Bookstores in Western United States Cities
> > (including WY, CO, UT, NV)
> > Bookstores in Southwestern United States Cities
> > (including OK, TX, NM, and AZ)
Does a bias in this selection reveal itself?
--
===Richard Brandt is at http://www.spaceports.com/~rsbrandt===
"Weekly pregnancy test kits are awarded."
-- one really odd contest prize
Julie Stampnitzky
> I have just finished splitting the larger bookstore lists into managaeable
> chunks and want to make sure that my naming conventions don't violate anyone's
> sensibilities. So here is what I have called them, with descriptions as
> needed:
> Bookstores in Europe (various)
> (Europe east to Russia and Turkey;
Would that include Asiatic Russia?
--
Julie Stampnitzky |"I hope you can imagine my furious joy,
Rehovot, Israel |scribbling away in the lamplight, sometimes
http://www.yucs.org/~jules |surprising myself with what I think, and how I
http://neskaya.darkover.cx |choose to express it." (_Freedom & Necessity_)
Evelyn C. Leeper
Richard Brandt <rsbr...@netscape.net> wrote:
> "Evelyn C. Leeper" wrote:
> >
> > > Bookstores in Vermont
> > > Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
> > > Bookstores in New England
> > > (not including Vermont or the Boston area)
>
> [snip]
>
> > > Bookstores in Western United States Cities
> > > (including WY, CO, UT, NV)
> > > Bookstores in Southwestern United States Cities
> > > (including OK, TX, NM, and AZ)
>
> Does a bias in this selection reveal itself?
If you mean why a separate list for Vermont, it's because someone who
lives in Vermont maintains the various New England lists, and has a
separate Vermont list. I maintain all the rest, which are split more
on the basis of size of file than completely geographically. (For the
US, there used to be just NYC, SF Bay area, east, and west. the lists
have grown since then.)
Example:
The Manhattan list is currently 64K, the western 27K, and the Southwest
56K. I'd even split the Manhattan list if there were a rational way to do
it. (Come to think of it, I wonder if I should combine the non-NYC New
York listings with the NYC non-Manhattan ones in a single
non-Manhattan-NY-state listing?)
Evelyn C. Leeper
Julie Stampnitzky <ju...@yucs.org> wrote:
> On 29 Dec 1999, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:
>
> > I have just finished splitting the larger bookstore lists into managaeable
> > chunks and want to make sure that my naming conventions don't violate
> > anyone's sensibilities. So here is what I have called them, with
> > descriptions as needed:
>
> > Bookstores in Europe (various)
> > (Europe east to Russia and Turkey;
>
> Would that include Asiatic Russia?
Yes, if I ever get anything for there. (If I get enough, then Russia
could have its own file.) The same is true for Turkey if I get around
to writing up Ankara bookstores.
But I probably should re-phrase this to be
(Europe up to and including Russia and Turkey;
Rachael Lininger
Rachael
--
Rachael Lininger | "It's good to know an assassin
lininger@ | you can hire with a can of tuna fish."
chem.wisc.edu | --Rocco da Mallet
Kip Williams
>
> "Evelyn C. Leeper" wrote:
> >
> > > Bookstores in Vermont
> > > Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
> > > Bookstores in New England
> > > (not including Vermont or the Boston area)
>
> [snip]
>
> > > Bookstores in Western United States Cities
> > > (including WY, CO, UT, NV)
> > > Bookstores in Southwestern United States Cities
> > > (including OK, TX, NM, and AZ)
>
> Does a bias in this selection reveal itself?
I was taking it as a prose version of Saul Steinberg's famous
point-of-view map cover for the _New Englander_ magazine.
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
Meredith Dixon
(Evelyn C. Leeper) wrote:
>Bookstores in Eastern United States Cities
> (including NY [except for NYC], NJ, PA, DE, MD [except for DC suburbs], WV)
>Bookstores in Southern United States Cities
> (VA [except for DC suburbs], TN, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, AR, and FL,
> and Bermuda)
>Bookstores in Midwestern United States Cities
> (including OH, KY, MI, IN, WI, and IL)
This division isn't really very useful for those of us in the
Ohio Valley. The mountains are more of a division than any state
line. People in Eastern PA may have some interest in NY and NJ
bookstores, but people in Western PA certainly don't. Eastern
WV, also, looks to VA and MD but not to NY or NJ (the Civil War
notwithstanding), and Western WV is much more closely affiliated
with OH than with anything to the East.
I'd suggest a Mid-Atlantic grouping (Eastern PA, MD, Eastern WV
and VA) and an Ohio Valley grouping (Western PA, Western WV,
OH, KY). If you feel you must divide by state, IMO WV should be
with Ohio and Kentucky. I can't speak for PA, since I don't
live there.
--
Meredith Dixon <dix...@access.mountain.net>
Check out *Raven Days*, for victims and survivors of bullying.
And for those who want to help.
http://web.mountain.net/~dixonm/raven.html
Richard Brandt
>
> rsbr...@netscape.net (Richard Brandt) wrote in
> <386AE912...@rgfn.epcc.edu>:
>
> > "Evelyn C. Leeper" wrote:
> >>
> >> > Bookstores in Vermont
> >> > Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
> >> > Bookstores in New England
> >> > (not including Vermont or the Boston area)
> >
> >[snip]
> >
> >> > Bookstores in Western United States Cities
> >> > (including WY, CO, UT, NV)
> >> > Bookstores in Southwestern United States Cities
> >> > (including OK, TX, NM, and AZ)
> >
> >Does a bias in this selection reveal itself?
>
Me neither. I will, however, plead to a lesser charge of amusement.
> How much time have you spent in New England, Richard? Have you ever
> driven from tiny town to tiny town in Vermont -- noting the independent
> bookstore in each one?
>
> New England simply has a buttload of little bookstores.
Sure. Lots of places do.
P Nielsen Hayden
> "Evelyn C. Leeper" wrote:
>>
>> > Bookstores in Vermont
>> > Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
>> > Bookstores in New England
>> > (not including Vermont or the Boston area)
>
>[snip]
>
>> > Bookstores in Western United States Cities
>> > (including WY, CO, UT, NV)
>> > Bookstores in Southwestern United States Cities
>> > (including OK, TX, NM, and AZ)
>
>Does a bias in this selection reveal itself?
Well, I'm from the Southwest, and it neither offends nor surprises me.
How much time have you spent in New England, Richard? Have you ever
driven from tiny town to tiny town in Vermont -- noting the independent
bookstore in each one?
New England simply has a buttload of little bookstores.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
LAFF
<dix...@access.mountain.net> wrote:
>On 29 Dec 1999 18:37:42 GMT, ele...@starship.dnrc.bell-labs.com
>(Evelyn C. Leeper) wrote:
>
>>Bookstores in Eastern United States Cities
>> (including NY [except for NYC], NJ, PA, DE, MD [except for DC suburbs], WV)
<snip>
>>Bookstores in Midwestern United States Cities
>> (including OH, KY, MI, IN, WI, and IL)
>
>This division isn't really very useful for those of us in the
>Ohio Valley. The mountains are more of a division than any state
>line. People in Eastern PA may have some interest in NY and NJ
>bookstores, but people in Western PA certainly don't. Eastern
>WV, also, looks to VA and MD but not to NY or NJ (the Civil War
>notwithstanding), and Western WV is much more closely affiliated
>with OH than with anything to the East.
>
>I'd suggest a Mid-Atlantic grouping (Eastern PA, MD, Eastern WV
>and VA) and an Ohio Valley grouping (Western PA, Western WV,
>OH, KY). If you feel you must divide by state, IMO WV should be
>with Ohio and Kentucky. I can't speak for PA, since I don't
>live there.
Northern West Virginia -- the Northern Panhandle and maybe the
Morgantown/Clarksburg area -- would probably be comfortable being
lumped with Western Pa. (Pittsburgh being the regional metropolis).
Perhaps even extreme western Maryland (Garrett Co.), too. I grew up
in Western Pa. and have lived in the Panhandle for quite a few years
now so this is something I'm familiar with.
The southern/southwestern bulge (can't call it a corner exactly) of
W.Va. -- say, from Parkersburg south to Charleston & Huntington -- I
agree,would identify more with Ohio. And the Eastern Panhandle, which
is increasingly becoming a suburb of Washington, with Maryland and
D.C.
You can tell roughly where in W.Va. someone lives by which pro sports
teams they support -- Pittsburgh, Cincinnati or Baltimore/Washington.
For that matter parts of east-central Ohio (Youngstown/Steubenville)
may be as comfortable with Pittsburgh as with some other parts of
Ohio.
But all this requires looking at a map to see which part of a state
some city is in. That may be too time-consuming for someone making an
inclusive worldwide list like this one about bookstores. So we may
just need to read different regions and do our own sorting:
"This is near here; this is too far; this is way too far . . ."
One of my major gripes about sets of reference books about the U.S. --
and as a reference librarian this is part of What I Do for a Living --
is that often the publishers will put West Virginia in the South,
Pennsylvania in the East (or North) and Ohio in the Midwest. Which
means, living in a panhandle that's only 6 miles wide where I live,
our immediate area seems to be divided into three "different" regions.
We then need three volumes of what is often only a four or five volume
set to cover all the places within 50 miles (35 miles east of here
being Pittsburgh, 30 miles south being Wheeling, 50 miles north being
Youngstown). And these volumes can run $100 each. People in most other
areas do not have this problem.
--
Lois Fundis lfu...@weir.net
Doug Wickstrom
(Rachael Lininger) excited the ether to say:
>You missed the Canadian Annexation (MN, WI).
Nah, dat's only da Yoo Pee, eh?
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."
--Lee DeForest
Evelyn C. Leeper
> 'tis said that on Thu, 30 Dec 1999 16:47:45 -0500, Meredith Dixon
> <dix...@access.mountain.net> wrote:
> >On 29 Dec 1999 18:37:42 GMT, ele...@starship.dnrc.bell-labs.com
> >(Evelyn C. Leeper) wrote:
> >
> >>Bookstores in Eastern United States Cities
> >> (including NY [except for NYC], NJ, PA, DE, MD [except for DC suburbs], WV)
> >> (including OH, KY, MI, IN, WI, and IL)
> >
> >This division isn't really very useful for those of us in the
> >Ohio Valley. The mountains are more of a division than any state
> >line. People in Eastern PA may have some interest in NY and NJ
> >bookstores, but people in Western PA certainly don't. Eastern
> >WV, also, looks to VA and MD but not to NY or NJ (the Civil War
> >notwithstanding), and Western WV is much more closely affiliated
> >with OH than with anything to the East.
> >
> >I'd suggest a Mid-Atlantic grouping (Eastern PA, MD, Eastern WV
> >and VA) and an Ohio Valley grouping (Western PA, Western WV,
> >OH, KY). If you feel you must divide by state, IMO WV should be
> >with Ohio and Kentucky. I can't speak for PA, since I don't
> >live there.
Well, I don't actually *have* any WV listings yet. As for the rest,
I'm probably going to make non-Manhattan NY state a separate file. And
wherever I put the split in PA, there would probably still be cities
close together in separate files. Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, and
Philadelphia; Pittsburgh is west. But where are State College and
Harrisburg/Lancaster? But the real problem is transitivity: People
where I live are interested in New York and (say) Philadelphia. People
in Philadelphia are probably interested in Baltimore and Washington
DC. People in Washington DC are interested in Virginia, etc. But a
single file covering New York through Virgina is not reasonable.
As the files grow, this problem goes away somewhat--Chicago is now
its own file, for example, eliminating the problem of whether it's
Midwest or Central.
f
i
l
l
e
r
Matt Austern
> "Evelyn C. Leeper" wrote:
> >
> > > Bookstores in Vermont
> > > Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
> > > Bookstores in New England
> > > (not including Vermont or the Boston area)
>
> [snip]
>
> > > Bookstores in Western United States Cities
> > > (including WY, CO, UT, NV)
> > > Bookstores in Southwestern United States Cities
> > > (including OK, TX, NM, and AZ)
>
> Does a bias in this selection reveal itself?
The bias I detect is that there are more listings in places where
there are more bookstores, which correlates fairly well with places
where there are more people. (TX is the obvious exception.)
Tony Towers
> I have just finished splitting the larger bookstore lists into managaeable
> chunks and want to make sure that my naming conventions don't violate
> anyone's sensibilities. So here is what I have called them, with
> descriptions as needed:
Looks OK to me, apart from the NI/RoI possibility Alison identified,
however
> Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
the city of Cambridge and town of Boston in England are only about
thirty miles apart. I *doubt* anyone over here would group them
together, but there may be a super pedant somewhere just itching to
get confused :-)
Since AFAIR they're both in Massachusetts you could add the two letter
code to avoid this?
--
Tony Towers
(o_ To Email, use the Reply-To: address _o)
//\ Very dull web page available at /\\
V_/_ http://www.cats.tele2.co.uk _\_V
Andy Hickmott
>You missed the Canadian Annexation (MN, WI).
>
Well so did I! 54°40' or fight by gum!
--
Andy Hickmott
How fleeting are all human passions compared with
the massive continuity of ducks. [Dorothy Sayers]
David G. Bell
sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk "Tony Towers" wrote:
> ele...@starship.dnrc.bell-labs.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) writes:
> > I have just finished splitting the larger bookstore lists into managaeable
> > chunks and want to make sure that my naming conventions don't violate
> > anyone's sensibilities. So here is what I have called them, with
> > descriptions as needed:
>
> Looks OK to me, apart from the NI/RoI possibility Alison identified,
> however
>
> > Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
>
> the city of Cambridge and town of Boston in England are only about
> thirty miles apart. I *doubt* anyone over here would group them
> together, but there may be a super pedant somewhere just itching to
> get confused :-)
>
> Since AFAIR they're both in Massachusetts you could add the two letter
> code to avoid this?
Boston is rather more than thirty miles from Cambridge (70.9 miles).
Boston _is_ less than thirty miles from New York. And they're not both
in Massachusetts. The City of Cambridge is in Cambridgeshire, while
Boston is in Lincolnshire. As is New York. You seem to have a very
strange idea of the geography of England.
Have you been affected by the Millennium Bug?
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
Tony Towers
> On 01 Jan, in article <87aemqo...@cats.tele2.co.uk>
> sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk "Tony Towers" wrote:
>
> > ele...@starship.dnrc.bell-labs.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) writes:
> >
> > > Bookstores in the Cambridge-Boston area
> >
> > the city of Cambridge and town of Boston in England are only about
> > thirty miles apart. I *doubt* anyone over here would group them
> > together, but there may be a super pedant somewhere just itching to
> > get confused :-)
> >
> > Since AFAIR they're both in Massachusetts you could add the two letter
> > code to avoid this?
>
> Boston is rather more than thirty miles from Cambridge (70.9 miles).
So it is. I must remember to check my maps before making such
declarations in future.
> Boston _is_ less than thirty miles from New York. And they're not both
> in Massachusetts. The City of Cambridge is in Cambridgeshire, while
> Boston is in Lincolnshire. As is New York. You seem to have a very
> strange idea of the geography of England.
Well, East Anglia anyway.
> Have you been affected by the Millennium Bug?
Must have been the large quantities of alcohol. I must try to keep my
New Year's resolution this time (I will not post when drunk or tired).
I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
John Dallman
Towers) wrote:
> I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
> amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy! It
appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue" backlash.
I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got fixed".
---
John Dallman j...@cix.co.uk
P Nielsen Hayden
<memo.2000010...@jgd.compulink.co.uk>:
Indeed. It's like people who protest against hurricane warnings, when
after the storm their windows _aren't_ all smashed. Because you
boarded them up, morons!
Rob Hansen
(John Dallman) wrote:
>In article <874scyn...@cats.tele2.co.uk>, sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk (Tony
>Towers) wrote:
>
>> I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
>> amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
>
>I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy! It
>appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue" backlash.
>I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got fixed".
Yeah. I think Jack Straw is an authoritarian creep and the individual
politician who's been the single biggest threat to civil liberties in
the UK in my lifetime, but criticizing him for this is deranged. It's
only because we spent the money that we didn't have the problems. I
mean, would people prefer it if utilities and food distribution
networks had collapsed?
--
Rob Hansen
================================================
My Home Page: http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/rob/
Feminists Against Censorship:
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/
John Dallman
(John Dallman) wrote:
> I never thought I'd sympathise with [Jack Straw] defending government
> policy! It appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an
> issue" backlash. I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't
> mostly got fixed".
Ah, a better phrase:
"Think of it as insurance in action."
---
John Dallman j...@cix.co.uk
Vicki Rosenzweig
+0000:
>On Sat, 1 Jan 2000 14:07 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), j...@cix.co.uk
>(John Dallman) wrote:
>
>>In article <874scyn...@cats.tele2.co.uk>, sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk (Tony
>>Towers) wrote:
>>
>>> I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
>>> amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
>>
>>I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy! It
>>appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue" backlash.
>>I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got fixed".
>
>Yeah. I think Jack Straw is an authoritarian creep and the individual
>politician who's been the single biggest threat to civil liberties in
>the UK in my lifetime, but criticizing him for this is deranged. It's
>only because we spent the money that we didn't have the problems. I
>mean, would people prefer it if utilities and food distribution
>networks had collapsed?
Some probably would have. Think of the drama! They could have
fought off the rampaging packs of wild dogs who were trying
to steal their freeze-dried food, and bewailed the end of the
world, and not had to pay off their credit card bills! As it
is, they woke up this morning, and all they had was a hangover.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html
Sue Mason for TAFF!
David G. Bell
<memo.2000010...@jgd.compulink.co.uk> j...@cix.co.uk
"John Dallman" wrote:
> In article <874scyn...@cats.tele2.co.uk>, sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk (Tony
> Towers) wrote:
>
> > I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
> > amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
>
> I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy! It
> appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue" backlash.
> I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got fixed".
Some software which came with my OS turned out to have a Y2K bug this
morning. I'd already applied all the Y2K patches which were available
for the OS.
There's a lot of bits and pieces which will be discovered not to work in
the next few weeks.
d_a_h...@my-deja.com
>
> >In article <874scyn...@cats.tele2.co.uk>, sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk
(Tony
> >Towers) wrote:
> >
> >> I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
> >> amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
> >
> >I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy!
It
> >appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue"
backlash.
> >I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got
fixed".
>
> politician who's been the single biggest threat to civil liberties in
> the UK in my lifetime, but criticizing him for this is deranged. It's
> only because we spent the money that we didn't have the problems. I
> mean, would people prefer it if utilities and food distribution
> networks had collapsed?
>
> Rob Hansen
People can be very odd..
after Floyd skirted the coast of Florida there was an interview with
some shopkeeper of a coastal Florida town in us today.
Instead of being grateful that his town only received a glancing blow
he was carrying on about the business he lost because people
evacuated.
Still after the immense amount of damage done to the Carolina's
there are some people who call Floyed a non event.
Yes there were problems with how the people were evacuated but if some
of the towns had not been... well who knows how many would have been
killed.
I also agree that if we hadnt spent all this time and money fixing the
problem we would have been up the proverable creek without a paddle.
I really did not believe we would have any serious problems in the
US and places like Europe, Japan ect...
I was really relived to see that places like Russia seemed to
come through it just fine too.
I did buy some extra batteries and candles this week when they went on
sale... not as much because of ytk but because we are heading into
ice storm and considering what happened to Clarksville, Tn last January
torando season also.
debra hussey
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Maureen Kincaid Speller
<r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Sat, 1 Jan 2000 14:07 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), j...@cix.co.uk
>(John Dallman) wrote:
>
>>In article <874scyn...@cats.tele2.co.uk>, sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk (Tony
>>Towers) wrote:
>>
>>> I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
>>> amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
>>
>>I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy! It
>>appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue" backlash.
>>I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got fixed".
>
>Yeah. I think Jack Straw is an authoritarian creep and the individual
>politician who's been the single biggest threat to civil liberties in
>the UK in my lifetime, but criticizing him for this is deranged.
> It's
>only because we spent the money that we didn't have the problems. I
>mean, would people prefer it if utilities and food distribution
>networks had collapsed?
In a way, I suspect some people might have preferred this latter
option, because then they could either bitch about that instead, or
else extol the virtues of the good old British Blitz spirit (or else
bitch because everyone doesn't pull together like they did sixty years
ago).
I know I am becoming terribly misanthropic as I grow older but I get
the distinct impression that there are a lot of people in the UK who
actively enjoy crises, to a certain level at least, and bitch if
they're deprived of their 'fun' but who have no real concept of what
it might have meant if utilities and food distribution networks had
really crashed spectacularly ... because that kind of thing only
happens somewhere else.
Maureen
Maureen Kincaid Speller
Folkestone, Kent, UK
m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk & http://www.acnestis.demon.co.uk/
P Nielsen Hayden
<3879f5fd...@news.demon.co.uk>:
I can't speak specifically to "a lot of people in the UK," but I do
think that many people secretly enjoy crises, and while this attitude
is in many ways thoughtless, the human impulses from which it proceeds
aren't entirely bad.
We enjoy crises because they break down the everyday barriers between
us and afford opportunities to overcome our routines and become more
than ourselves. This is what's behind that great inadmissable fact of
human history: War Is Fun.
I think that far more people than we ever suspect secretly long for the
opportunity to wholeheartedly give their all. Really big crises have
the signal virtue of eliminating all other choices.
Kip Williams
>
> On Sat, 01 Jan 2000 17:04:18 +0000, Rob Hansen
> <r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >(John Dallman) wrote:
> >
> >>In article <874scyn...@cats.tele2.co.uk>, sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk (Tony
> >>Towers) wrote:
> >>
> >>> I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
> >>> amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
> >>
> >>I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy! It
> >>appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue" backlash.
> >>I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got fixed".
> >
> >Yeah. I think Jack Straw is an authoritarian creep and the individual
> >politician who's been the single biggest threat to civil liberties in
> >the UK in my lifetime, but criticizing him for this is deranged.
>
> >only because we spent the money that we didn't have the problems. I
> >mean, would people prefer it if utilities and food distribution
> >networks had collapsed?
>
> In a way, I suspect some people might have preferred this latter
> option, because then they could either bitch about that instead, or
> else extol the virtues of the good old British Blitz spirit (or else
> bitch because everyone doesn't pull together like they did sixty years
> ago).
>
> I know I am becoming terribly misanthropic as I grow older but I get
> the distinct impression that there are a lot of people in the UK who
> actively enjoy crises, to a certain level at least, and bitch if
> they're deprived of their 'fun' but who have no real concept of what
> it might have meant if utilities and food distribution networks had
> really crashed spectacularly ... because that kind of thing only
> happens somewhere else.
John Boorman's movie _Hope and Glory_ is a delightful personal memoir of
being a kid in WW2. Boys playing in bombed houses, missing school,
living with Grampa... no clue as to personal danger or larger
implications. "Thank you, Adolf!" indeed. (Hey, I had to mention him!
They said it in the movie!)
David G. Bell
<9hZuOMM4E=BIF5h7131...@4ax.com>
r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk "Rob Hansen" wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Jan 2000 14:07 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), j...@cix.co.uk
> (John Dallman) wrote:
>
> >In article <874scyn...@cats.tele2.co.uk>, sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk (Tony
> >Towers) wrote:
> >
> >> I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
> >> amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
> >
> >I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy! It
> >appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue" backlash.
> >I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got fixed".
>
> Yeah. I think Jack Straw is an authoritarian creep and the individual
> politician who's been the single biggest threat to civil liberties in
> the UK in my lifetime, but criticizing him for this is deranged. It's
> only because we spent the money that we didn't have the problems. I
> mean, would people prefer it if utilities and food distribution
> networks had collapsed?
At the Blockbuster Video store in Lincoln today, where I had a quick
look in to check for cheap ex-rental tapes, there was a hand-lettered
notice at the till. Suddenly, they can't deal with credit cards which
have Y2K expiry dates.
Morgan
>
> People can be very odd..
Years ago, an English teacher of mine told the class this story, when
we were discussing human nature:
A man was walking down the street when a complete stranger walked
up to him and said "Tomorrow, you are going to win 40 000 pounds."
The man thought the stranger was nuts, shook his head, and walked away.
The next day he won 40 000 pounds.
The following week, the man spotted the stranger, ran up to him
and shook his hand. "Thank you, thank, you so much, how can I
ever repay you?" The stranger just smiled and said "Tomorrow,
you will win 40 000 pounds."
The man smiled. The next day, he won 40 000 pounds.
The following week the man was once more walking down the street, when
he spotted the stranger. he once more ran up to him and thanked him.
The stranger smiled and said "Tomorrow, you will win 40 000 pounds."
The next day, the man won 20 000 pounds.
The following week, the man spotted the stranger, ran over the road to
him, grapped him by the lapels and throw him up against a wall.
"Where the hell is my other 20 000 pounds."
-
Morgan
"Nunc demum intellego," dixit Winnie ille Pu. "Stultus et
delusus fui," dixit "et ursus sine ullo cerebro sum."
Jonathan Guthrie
> In article <874scyn...@cats.tele2.co.uk>, sp...@cats.tele2.co.uk (Tony
> Towers) wrote:
>> I see on Teletext that poor old Jack Straw is having to defend the
>> amount of money spent on tackling the Y2K bug.
> I never thought I'd sympathise with him defending government policy! It
> appears that there's starting to be an "Y2K was never an issue" backlash.
> I think my attitude is "it would have been if it hadn't mostly got fixed".
While there were some definite problems that were fixed, my company spent
precisely 0 hours and 0 dollars fixing Y2K in advance and, so far, have
spent about 2 hours fixing the one Y2K problem that did appear, which was
with my personal news server. From my perspective (and I've been on
record saying this for some months) Y2K really WAS never an issue. Not
in the way most people meant.
Of course, the real problems (screwed up bills, mostly) are yet to be
seen and may not be for months. The fact of the matter is, the hype
and concern for Y2K issues was way overblown. We never really were
threatened by the End of Civilization As We Know It. For this, I blame
various consultants who took a minor problem and made millions from it
by exaggerating it all out of proportion.
In fact, I am now concerned that people will use the lack of any real
Y2K problems as evidence that date dependence is not that big a deal
and so they can ignore the next set of date rollover problems, due in
2038. This is, of course, not the case, although I'm not going to
recommend hysteria for that eventuality, either.
Rob Hansen
>John Boorman's movie _Hope and Glory_ is a delightful personal memoir of
>being a kid in WW2. Boys playing in bombed houses, missing school,
>living with Grampa... no clue as to personal danger or larger
>implications. "Thank you, Adolf!" indeed. (Hey, I had to mention him!
>They said it in the movie!)
The film critic Barry Norman got into an argument with his father, the
director Leslie Norman (he directed _Dunkirk_, among others), over
this film. Norman Sr was appalled by the film since he remembered the
war as a time of great fear and anxiety but Norman Jr - who's of the
same generation as Boorman - argued that, no, the film had it right
and for a child in WWII Britain, that's *exactly* how it was. My
parents, aunts, and uncles were all children over here during WWII and
they report the same thing. They all had a great time. I have no doubt
their parents viewed the situation entirely differently.
As soon as the air raid sirens sounded the all clear, the boys would
all race from their shelters to collect all the shrapnel, discarded
casings, and other war-related debris they could. This was traded with
others much like, say, baseball cards. Some years afterwards, when my
uncle Jack had moved away from home, my grandmother checked out the
attic where Jack kept these souvenirs. IIRC, she found several
unexploded shells, an unexploded incendiary, and the like. She had
them removed by an army bomb disposal team.
Bruce Baugh
>I know I am becoming terribly misanthropic as I grow older but I get
>the distinct impression that there are a lot of people in the UK who
>actively enjoy crises, to a certain level at least, and bitch if
>they're deprived of their 'fun' but who have no real concept of what
>it might have meant if utilities and food distribution networks had
>really crashed spectacularly ... because that kind of thing only
>happens somewhere else.
It's not just the UK, though. A lot of people in the US have gotten
accustomed to problems being solved, or at least addressed, as response
to crisis. Something fails spectacularly, the mass media cover it, and
politicians act boldly to address the grievous need. The concept of
smooth uneventful proceedings being a Good Thing largely escapes them -
things you solve quietly must somehow not have been all that serious.
Bugs me a lot.
--
Bruce Baugh / bruce...@sff.net
"Never let it be be said, especially by large men with guns, that
I failed to help." - Dave Weinstein
P Nielsen Hayden
<84o5a5$10c...@enews.newsguy.com>:
>In article <3879f5fd...@news.demon.co.uk>,
>m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
>>I know I am becoming terribly misanthropic as I grow older but I
>>get the distinct impression that there are a lot of people in the
>>UK who actively enjoy crises, to a certain level at least, and
>>bitch if they're deprived of their 'fun' but who have no real
>>concept of what it might have meant if utilities and food
>>distribution networks had really crashed spectacularly ... because
>>that kind of thing only happens somewhere else.
>
>It's not just the UK, though. A lot of people in the US have gotten
>accustomed to problems being solved, or at least addressed, as
>response to crisis. Something fails spectacularly, the mass media
>cover it, and politicians act boldly to address the grievous need.
>The concept of smooth uneventful proceedings being a Good Thing
>largely escapes them - things you solve quietly must somehow not
>have been all that serious.
>
>Bugs me a lot.
Yes well, American sentiment being what it is, politicians get a lot
more mileage out of visibly responding to crises than they get from
anticipating them and quietly arranging to avert them.
We don't respect or lionize politicians for being capable professional
politicians; in fact, we vilify those sorts as "gray." It's part and
parcel of the American reflexively anti-government, dare I say
libertarian, mindset.
Your move. :)
Andrew Plotkin
> While there were some definite problems that were fixed, my company spent
> precisely 0 hours and 0 dollars fixing Y2K in advance and, so far, have
> spent about 2 hours fixing the one Y2K problem that did appear, which was
> with my personal news server. From my perspective (and I've been on
> record saying this for some months) Y2K really WAS never an issue. Not
> in the way most people meant.
>
> Of course, the real problems (screwed up bills, mostly) are yet to be
> seen and may not be for months. The fact of the matter is, the hype
> and concern for Y2K issues was way overblown. We never really were
> threatened by the End of Civilization As We Know It.
I am not convinced of this. (Of course, since it's speculation, I never
will be.)
A year ago, nobody knew what was going to happen in a year. There
was no data.
Today, nobody knows what *would* have happened without the repair efforts
that occurred. There is no data. I'm just glad it's now a lack of data
about a hypothetical.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Mike Kozlowski
>> While there were some definite problems that were fixed, my company spent
>> precisely 0 hours and 0 dollars fixing Y2K in advance and, so far, have
>> spent about 2 hours fixing the one Y2K problem that did appear, which was
>> with my personal news server. From my perspective (and I've been on
>> record saying this for some months) Y2K really WAS never an issue.
Your perspective, I imagine, doesn't include a lot of mainframe stuff.
Over the last couple of years, I've worked in two places that relied
(still rely, actually) heavily on mainframe applications. In both places,
huge systems would have failed had they not been fixed -- accounting
systems, order systems, all sorts of things. I can absolutely guarantee
you that it would have been a disaster -- not in the TEOTWAWKI sense,
perhaps, but crippling anyway.
>Today, nobody knows what *would* have happened without the repair efforts
>that occurred. There is no data.
Except that insofar as things were fixed, people have a pretty good idea
now what would have broken if they hadn't been fixed.
--
Michael Kozlowski
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~mkozlows/
Andrew Plotkin
And that's not insofar very much. We can estimate what individual problems
may have occurred, by gathering data from a *lot* of people. (And I really
hope someone does this research.)
But the End-Of-It-All scenarios involved *cascades* of problems, problems
preventing the solutions to earlier problems, tiny little problems slowing
down the pace of otherwise unaffected systems, and so on. I don't think
there's any meaningful way to estimate those nonlinear effects.
I know a city can survive total power failure for a period of weeks. (I
followed news reports from Auckland a couple of years ago, avidly, as a
potential city-sized test case.) It's the interaction with *other*
city-sized problems that scared me.
I came home from a New Years party to find that my building power had been
dead for a few minutes, around 1:00 AM on January 1st. I still haven't
found the story behind that. If I'd been home, though, it would have been
a tense few minutes.
James Nicoll
>
>John Boorman's movie _Hope and Glory_ is a delightful personal memoir of
>being a kid in WW2. Boys playing in bombed houses, missing school,
>living with Grampa... no clue as to personal danger or larger
>implications. "Thank you, Adolf!" indeed. (Hey, I had to mention him!
>They said it in the movie!)
The fishing scene is priceless:
SPOILERS
Crusty and in no way amiable old man sends two young [less than
ten, I think] children out in a boat with instructions not to come back
until they have caught dinner. The fish don't bite at all and they are
readying themselves to go back empty handed when a German bomber flies
overhead and drops a bomb in the lake. Big Kaboom. All the fish helpfully
sloat to the surface and the kids get dinner after all. The grandfather
was somewhat taken aback at the dingy filled to the gunnels with fish.
--
Bruce Baugh
>We don't respect or lionize politicians for being capable professional
>politicians; in fact, we vilify those sorts as "gray." It's part and
>parcel of the American reflexively anti-government, dare I say
>libertarian, mindset.
>Your move. :)
I dunno how much of it is any meaningful sense, or even anti-government.
It's that crisis thing, and not respecting the extent to which no news
is good news. I'd buy an argument that it's anti-intellectual, though,
in that it tends to not respect the extent to which good governance is
just not a task for amateurs. It's the same attitude that there's no
such thing as any actual skill to management, which is equally false
even though it's also true that there's a lot of pathetic hype about the
specialness of management.
Certainly there are a lot of libertarians with this sort of attitude,
but it's not exclusive. Populism and Progressivism both have a lot of
it, for instance.
P Nielsen Hayden
>In article <8EAF93A...@166.84.0.240>, p...@panix.com (P Nielsen
>Hayden) wrote:
>
>>We don't respect or lionize politicians for being capable
>>professional politicians; in fact, we vilify those sorts as "gray."
>> It's part and parcel of the American reflexively anti-government,
>>dare I say libertarian, mindset.
>>Your move. :)
>
>I dunno how much of it is any meaningful sense, or even
>anti-government. It's that crisis thing, and not respecting the
>extent to which no news is good news. I'd buy an argument that it's
>anti-intellectual, though, in that it tends to not respect the
>extent to which good governance is just not a task for amateurs.
>It's the same attitude that there's no such thing as any actual
>skill to management, which is equally false even though it's also
>true that there's a lot of pathetic hype about the specialness of
>management.
>
>Certainly there are a lot of libertarians with this sort of
>attitude, but it's not exclusive. Populism and Progressivism both
>have a lot of it, for instance.
Oh, I certainly agree with that.
I'm not so sure it's exactly "anti-intellectual," because it's such a
common attitude in smart people and self-identified intellectuals. You
hear it all the time in fandom. Rather, I think it's an attitude that
a lot of people take on because it gives them permission to stop
thinking very hard about anything involving government. Government is
bad and all politicians are scoundrels, end of story. Of course, much
government is bad and many politicians _are_ scoundrels. But the
second attitude is one in which it's still necessary to make judicious
and nuanced distinctions. The first one takes us completely off the
hook. Which is something much desired by many smart people, so that
they can focus more on the things that actually interest them.
Perfectly understandable -- and, in a small way, corrosive to
democracy.
Avram Grumer
Hayden) wrote:
> m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk (Maureen Kincaid Speller) wrote in
> <3879f5fd...@news.demon.co.uk>:
>
> >I know I am becoming terribly misanthropic as I grow older but I get
> >the distinct impression that there are a lot of people in the UK who
> >actively enjoy crises, to a certain level at least, and bitch if
> >they're deprived of their 'fun' but who have no real concept of what
> >it might have meant if utilities and food distribution networks had
> >really crashed spectacularly ... because that kind of thing only
> >happens somewhere else.
>
>
> I can't speak specifically to "a lot of people in the UK," but I do
> think that many people secretly enjoy crises, and while this attitude
> is in many ways thoughtless, the human impulses from which it proceeds
> aren't entirely bad.
>
> We enjoy crises because they break down the everyday barriers between
> us and afford opportunities to overcome our routines and become more
> than ourselves. This is what's behind that great inadmissable fact of
> human history: War Is Fun.
>
> I think that far more people than we ever suspect secretly long for the
> opportunity to wholeheartedly give their all. Really big crises have
> the signal virtue of eliminating all other choices.
There's also a political element in all this. There are groups of people
who are convinced that the present culture is irredemably corrupt in one
way or another (dominated by evil secular humanists, or controlled by the
lawyers and big corporations), and see a civilization-ending crisis as an
opportunity for their particular group to rebuild things in their image.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
If music be the food of love, then some of it be the Twinkies of
dysfunctional relationships.
Jonathan Guthrie
I am responding to it and Mr. Plotkin's post simultaneously. This
shouldn't be any more confusing or less coherent than any of my usual
rantings. If it is, you have my profound apologies. Come to think of it,
you have my profound apologies, anyway.
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> Mike Kozlowski <mkoz...@guy.ssc.wisc.edu> wrote:
>> In article <84oa79$kv2$1...@nntp8.atl.mindspring.net>,
>> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>>>Jonathan Guthrie <jgut...@brokersys.com> wrote:
>>>> While there were some definite problems that were fixed, my company spent
>>>> precisely 0 hours and 0 dollars fixing Y2K in advance and, so far, have
>>>> spent about 2 hours fixing the one Y2K problem that did appear, which was
>>>> with my personal news server. From my perspective (and I've been on
>>>> record saying this for some months) Y2K really WAS never an issue.
>> Your perspective, I imagine, doesn't include a lot of mainframe stuff.
>> Over the last couple of years, I've worked in two places that relied
>> (still rely, actually) heavily on mainframe applications. In both places,
>> huge systems would have failed had they not been fixed -- accounting
>> systems, order systems, all sorts of things. I can absolutely guarantee
>> you that it would have been a disaster -- not in the TEOTWAWKI sense,
>> perhaps, but crippling anyway.
No, I don't do mainframe stuff. On the other hand, the first "Y2K"
stuff I ever heard of second-hand (as opposed to friend-of-a-friend)
was some mainframe fixes being done for Nationwide Insurance because
they used "9x" codes in the year field for special purposes.
Look, I SAID that there were some definite problems that were fixed.
It's even quoted up there, above! I think I may know about more of
them than you do. However, much of the money spent on "Y2K" was
simply wasted.
Also, many of the problems remain to surface. How long will it take
some people to realize that they're sending out letters with a year of
19100? or 1980? I'll need to see what my bills look like once I start
seeing those printing in the year 2000. (Billing and payment are two of
the few functions that almost always needs to have the date correct in
order to work properly.)
On the other hand, I just can't see and couldn't see ANY of the likely
problems being life-threatening for even one person.
>>>Today, nobody knows what *would* have happened without the repair efforts
>>>that occurred. There is no data.
On the contrary, there is plenty of data. There are many, MANY countries
that did essentially nothing to fix "Y2K". If you were paying attention
right there at the end, you heard a lot about them and how they weren't
likely to get through January 1 without a complete collapse. As far as I
know, they did not see any more difficulties than we did. I'd say that's
some data. There is correlation between money spent on Y2K and problems
seen on Januray 1, 2000.
The fact of the matter is, most of the money spent on Y2K in the US was
spent on testing, not fixing. Most of the problems found were cosmetic at
worst while many of the predictions were of the most dire nature. The
last Y2K seminar I attended (in November, and it featured a whole lot of
"it's probably too late to do anything") had a list of Cisco equipment that
wasn't going to be tested for "Y2K compliance" (whatever that is) among
them was a whole family of Ethernet switches. When I pointed out that
an Ethernet switch didn't need to know what time it was and so was
perfectly safe to use, I was blown off and told that I shouldn't use the
equipment because it's Y2K compliance couldn't be verified.
Not that it matters, my Ethernet switch is made by KTI, not Cisco.
>> Except that insofar as things were fixed, people have a pretty good idea
>> now what would have broken if they hadn't been fixed.
> And that's not insofar very much. We can estimate what individual problems
> may have occurred, by gathering data from a *lot* of people. (And I really
> hope someone does this research.)
> But the End-Of-It-All scenarios involved *cascades* of problems, problems
> preventing the solutions to earlier problems, tiny little problems slowing
> down the pace of otherwise unaffected systems, and so on. I don't think
> there's any meaningful way to estimate those nonlinear effects.
No, there isn't. On the other hand, the technology network that keeps you
alive is not supposed to fail. At all. Ever. For any reason. It is,
therefore, designed to survive anything the designers can think of
happening. In order to reduce the nonlinear effects, which are there
no matter what the source of the failure is, the network is designed to
fail in pieces and in well-defined ways. In a very real sense, the true
key to modern civilization is the electrical fuse.
"For want of a nail" and all that might sound like a plausible scenario,
but it ignores the reality of the people who keep the lights, water,
sewer, and telephone systems working. Any of HL&P's trucks carries
enough of the most commonly failing parts to handly any week's worth of
power outages around Houston. Stop light failures are common enough
around here, at least, that everyone knows how to handle them.
Airplanes don't need computers to get from point A to point B reliably.
There are backups for the backups and manual control is still an option
that is still sometimes used for a variety of reasons.
> I came home from a New Years party to find that my building power had been
> dead for a few minutes, around 1:00 AM on January 1st. I still haven't
> found the story behind that. If I'd been home, though, it would have been
> a tense few minutes.
The power lines around here are buried. That means that we usually survive
lightning storms without a glitch, but if something fails, it takes forever
to fix. Twice in the last year something has failed and caused power
outages to the neighborhood. Both times it took 8-10 hours to repair
whatever was wrong. On the other hand, if I can look over the next row
of houses and see the lights on, as was true both of those times, it's
more annoying than tense. Since you didn't notice the lights going out
wherever you were, I'd expect that you'd be able to tell that the power
failure was locallized.
At least I'd like to think that you hadn't taken complete leave of your
senses.
If you're still wondering what happened, I'd say that the best bet is
"sick joke", but I'm widely known as an odd individual.
--
Everybody get out of here, there's a lobster loose!
Oh! Holy COW! He's LOOSE!
Quickly cover yourselves with that butter and carry lemons, just in case!
Now, if you aren't attacked by a ravening lobster, it will be only because
I raised the alarm in time.
Bruce Baugh
>I'm not so sure it's exactly "anti-intellectual," because it's such a
>common attitude in smart people and self-identified intellectuals. You
Internalized self-loathing.
No, seriously, though, I do think that "anti-intellectual" applies to
the attitude even when an intellectual holds it. I don't expect any of
us to be altogether free of cognitive dissonance.
>a lot of people take on because it gives them permission to stop
>thinking very hard about anything involving government. Government is
Yeah. The bane of the easy generalization. All sf fans are
propeller-heads. All liberals are interfering moralizers. All
conservatives are heartless grasping bastards. All libertarians are
gun-toting lunatics. All...whatever.
>and nuanced distinctions. The first one takes us completely off the
>hook. Which is something much desired by many smart people, so that
>they can focus more on the things that actually interest them.
>Perfectly understandable -- and, in a small way, corrosive to
>democracy.
No argument there.
Kip Williams
portrayals of the home front in WW2. Maybe that's why it doesn't seem to
get much airing. Could it be the grown-ups who were kids then don't want
it known they were playing with live ammunition? Is it considered
imitable behavior? Maybe someone here thinks it's anti-British. Anyway,
I'm glad I bought a pre-rented copy. John Boorman's script, direction
and producing resulted in a real classic.
Andy Hickmott
wrote:
>
>There's also a political element in all this. There are groups of people
>who are convinced that the present culture is irredemably corrupt in one
>way or another (dominated by evil secular humanists, or controlled by the
>lawyers and big corporations), and see a civilization-ending crisis as an
>opportunity for their particular group to rebuild things in their image.
>
Personally, I was looking forward to rebuilding it even more corrupt
than before.
--
Andy Hickmott
How fleeting are all human passions compared with
the massive continuity of ducks. [Dorothy Sayers]
Richard Brandt
> John Boorman's movie _Hope and Glory_ is a delightful personal memoir of
> being a kid in WW2. Boys playing in bombed houses, missing school,
> living with Grampa... no clue as to personal danger or larger
> implications. "Thank you, Adolf!" indeed. (Hey, I had to mention him!
> They said it in the movie!)
Ever see "From Adolf with Love", from DANGER UXB? That was one
of the best series ever televised, it was. I'll have to show it
to Michelle; our public library has the whole thing on tape.
(Somewhere near the tapes of THE PRISONER, which unfortunately
are shelved by episode title...)
--
= Richard Brandt http://www.suite101.com/myhome.cfm/rsbrandt =
"Usenet will get you through times of no cable better than
cable will get you through times of no Usenet."--Kip Williams
Maureen Kincaid Speller
>m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk (Maureen Kincaid Speller) wrote in
><3879f5fd...@news.demon.co.uk>:
>
>>
>>I know I am becoming terribly misanthropic as I grow older but I get
>>the distinct impression that there are a lot of people in the UK who
>>actively enjoy crises, to a certain level at least, and bitch if
>>they're deprived of their 'fun' but who have no real concept of what
>>it might have meant if utilities and food distribution networks had
>>really crashed spectacularly ... because that kind of thing only
>>happens somewhere else.
>
>
>I can't speak specifically to "a lot of people in the UK," but I do
>think that many people secretly enjoy crises, and while this attitude
>is in many ways thoughtless, the human impulses from which it proceeds
>aren't entirely bad.
>
>We enjoy crises because they break down the everyday barriers between
>us and afford opportunities to overcome our routines and become more
>than ourselves. This is what's behind that great inadmissable fact of
>human history: War Is Fun.
>
>I think that far more people than we ever suspect secretly long for the
>opportunity to wholeheartedly give their all. Really big crises have
>the signal virtue of eliminating all other choices.
Neatly argued, and for the most part I agree entirely. I think what
makes me uncomfortable is not so much the secret longing to give one's
all ... this impulse I understand ... but that related need to be part
of the action without necessarily contributing significantly and
usefully to what was going on.
In its mildest form, it's perhaps most obviously expressed in people
slowing down as they pass a road accident, or stopping to stare as the
firemen run in and out of the house, but I particularly noticed it
after the Paddington rail crash, when the authorities were trying to
work out exactly how many people might have died, and talked about
'hoax' calls to their hot-lines. When picked apart, this seemed to
consist of people who vaguely thought that someone they knew slightly
might have been on the train. I couldn't understand it at first but
realised later that it was their way of getting close to the action.
Vaguely repellent, certainly a nuisance, but ... well, human nature.
But there's another thing I notice, and that's how a fair number of
people in this country, if media reports are to be believed, have a
very skewed view of what constitutes an emergency. I've heard several
reports recently about the kind of thing that people use 999 for ...
I've got a headache, I've had a toothache for three days, and a whole
bunch of other relatively minor and mainly inappropriate things, the
kind of thing that makes me think 'well, why didn't they do ... or
...'
One might add in here research which suggests that as our lives become
safer, levels of certain stress-related hormones drop; while some
people deliberately seek out thrills (the bungee-jumpers), and others
function happily at levels of moderate stress, those with the lowest
levels of the hormone actually become more fearful about smaller
risks, and I can see a situation where people, while recognising the
need for risk, for a crisis, for excitement however dubiously
acquired, are losing the capacity to appreciate what it is they are
asking for.
Maureen Kincaid Speller
<r...@fiawol.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Sun, 02 Jan 2000 15:07:13 GMT, Kip Williams <ki...@home.com> wrote:
>
>>John Boorman's movie _Hope and Glory_ is a delightful personal memoir of
>>being a kid in WW2. Boys playing in bombed houses, missing school,
>>living with Grampa... no clue as to personal danger or larger
>>implications. "Thank you, Adolf!" indeed. (Hey, I had to mention him!
>>They said it in the movie!)
>
>The film critic Barry Norman got into an argument with his father, the
>director Leslie Norman (he directed _Dunkirk_, among others), over
>this film. Norman Sr was appalled by the film since he remembered the
>war as a time of great fear and anxiety but Norman Jr - who's of the
>same generation as Boorman - argued that, no, the film had it right
>and for a child in WWII Britain, that's *exactly* how it was. My
>parents, aunts, and uncles were all children over here during WWII and
>they report the same thing. They all had a great time. I have no doubt
>their parents viewed the situation entirely differently.
>
>As soon as the air raid sirens sounded the all clear, the boys would
>all race from their shelters to collect all the shrapnel, discarded
>casings, and other war-related debris they could. This was traded with
>others much like, say, baseball cards. Some years afterwards, when my
>uncle Jack had moved away from home, my grandmother checked out the
>attic where Jack kept these souvenirs. IIRC, she found several
>unexploded shells, an unexploded incendiary, and the like. She had
>them removed by an army bomb disposal team.
Alan Garner has commented that he believes the generation of
children's writers who came to prominence in the nineteen-sixties,
himself included, were profoundly influenced by their wartime
experiences. At the lecture I attended, he told very similar stories
about rushing out to collect hot shrapnel, although he then tellingly
contrasted this with being at the cinema and seeing the pictures of
concentration camps, and finding that adults were unwilling or simply
unable to explain what was going on.
In my own family, I remember my mother's stories of wartime almost as
an extended picnic on a golden sunny day (she lived in the country and
was not evacuated) and yet set that beside my grandfather, her
father's experiences during the Siege of Malta, and being on the
Lancastria when it was bombed, experiences about which he never spoke
and yet which have dominated the family ever since.
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <8EAF6EA...@166.84.0.240>, p...@panix.com (P Nielsen
> Hayden) wrote:
>
>> We enjoy crises because they break down the everyday barriers between
>> us and afford opportunities to overcome our routines and become more
>> than ourselves. This is what's behind that great inadmissable fact of
>> human history: War Is Fun.
>>
>> I think that far more people than we ever suspect secretly long for the
>> opportunity to wholeheartedly give their all. Really big crises have
>> the signal virtue of eliminating all other choices.
>
> who are convinced that the present culture is irredemably corrupt in one
> way or another (dominated by evil secular humanists, or controlled by the
> lawyers and big corporations), and see a civilization-ending crisis as an
> opportunity for their particular group to rebuild things in their image.
I smell a lot of pure revenge fantasy too.
It's the perfect scenario. You survive, your tribe survives, and all the
smug inferior bastards that ever done your wrong are dying slowly and
horribly. Right outside your door. And you don't even have to commit
violence; you just keep your door locked and let them do it to themselves.
Even better, you can *act* on this scenario. By going out and buying a
hundred pounds of dried beans (last month), you were doing everything you
could to turn the fantasy into reality. How many revenge fantasies have
that advantage?
I realize that's a pretty uncharitable interpretation. (And the "you"
above is purely hypothetical -- not intended to refer to any reader.) But
I skimmed comp.software.year-2000 for a few weeks before Odometer Day, and
I really felt like some posters were motivated, in part, by this sort of
thinking.
Dave Weingart
>I skimmed comp.software.year-2000 for a few weeks before Odometer Day, and
I pretty much gave up on csy2k when I realized that we weren't going to
be faced with TEOTWAWKI (2 years ago or so?). Besides, if I'd wanted to read
misc.survivalism, I would have been reading misc.survivalism.
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK If you can read this,
mailto:phyd...@liii.com Y2K was over-hyped.
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux
ICQ 57055207
Evelyn C. Leeper
Evelyn C. Leeper <ele...@lucent.com> wrote:
> I have just finished splitting the larger bookstore lists into managaeable
> chunks and want to make sure that my naming conventions don't violate anyone's
> sensibilities. So here is what I have called them, with descriptions as
> needed:
>
> ...
Anyone who has further comments on this, please email them to me, as
the thread has completely drifted away from this and I am not reading
it any more.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Every day you're
alive is a special occasion. --Ann Wells
Marilee J. Layman
(Maureen Kincaid Speller) wrote:
>In its mildest form, it's perhaps most obviously expressed in people
>slowing down as they pass a road accident, or stopping to stare as the
>firemen run in and out of the house,
Years ago, when I worked with the teens at a church, the youth pastor
would always turn around and follow a fire engine. He even did this
with the church's school bus! I kept telling him it was dangerous,
but he thought it was fine.
--
Marilee J. Layman Co-Leader, The Other*Worlds*Cafe
relm...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group
Web site: http://www.webmoose.com/owc/
AOL keyword: BOOKs > Chats & Message > SF Forum > The Other*Worlds*Cafe
Bernard Peek
Speller <m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk> writes
>One might add in here research which suggests that as our lives become
>safer, levels of certain stress-related hormones drop; while some
>people deliberately seek out thrills (the bungee-jumpers), and others
>function happily at levels of moderate stress, those with the lowest
>levels of the hormone actually become more fearful about smaller
>risks, and I can see a situation where people, while recognising the
>need for risk, for a crisis, for excitement however dubiously
>acquired, are losing the capacity to appreciate what it is they are
>asking for.
There was some research done many years back that suggested a
physiological difference between introverts and extroverts. Extroverts
could keep their stimulation levels up by doing things and talking to
people. Introverts couldn't achieve the same level of stimulation by any
sensible combination of external stimuli, and instead rely on their own
internal stimuli. There seem to be a lot of physiological and mental
processes that rely on feedback loops that occasionally go out of
balance.
Some time later I formulated the law of conservation of misery. If
people don't have any real problems they will worry themselves into an
early grave with problems they create for just that purpose. We no
longer have the black death so we need something to replace it. I wonder
whether things will change now that we have at last moved to the
beginning of a new century.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
b...@shrdlu.co.uk
Kip Williams
>
> Kip Williams wrote:
>
> > John Boorman's movie _Hope and Glory_ is a delightful personal memoir of
> > being a kid in WW2. Boys playing in bombed houses, missing school,
> > living with Grampa... no clue as to personal danger or larger
> > implications. "Thank you, Adolf!" indeed. (Hey, I had to mention him!
> > They said it in the movie!)
>
> of the best series ever televised, it was. I'll have to show it
> to Michelle; our public library has the whole thing on tape.
> (Somewhere near the tapes of THE PRISONER, which unfortunately
> are shelved by episode title...)
I completely missed the series, but now that you mention it, I will keep
my metaphorical eyes open for it.
Well, of course you shelved THE PRISONER by episode title. Putting
numbers on it would kill its spirit.
Rich McAllister K6RFM
> Yes well, American sentiment being what it is, politicians get a lot
> more mileage out of visibly responding to crises than they get from
> anticipating them and quietly arranging to avert them.
>
The private sector is hardly immune. The IBM division I worked in had
a "President's Award" - which came with a lovely Lucite sculpture and
a $10,000 bonus check ("grossed up", meaning IBM paid the tax so it
was really $10K take home.) All recipients of the award got
it for heroically cleaning up the mess they had stupidly created in
the first place.
Rich
Richard Horton
On 03 Jan 2000 16:31:43 -0800, Rich McAllister K6RFM <r...@pensfa.org>
wrote:
We had a much smaller award at McDonnell Douglas (as was). 1% of
$10,000. Grossed up, though. But the results were often the same.
One award citation all but said so: "XX receives this award for coming
in over the weekend in an emergency to fix YY software bug." Well, it
doesn't say in so many words, but we all knew who wrote the original
software, therefore creating the bug.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Tom Womack
> I've heard several
> reports recently about the kind of thing that people use 999 for ...
> I've got a headache, I've had a toothache for three days, and a whole
> bunch of other relatively minor and mainly inappropriate things, the
> kind of thing that makes me think 'well, why didn't they do ... or
> ...'
I'd assumed it was because people didn't know the phone numbers for their
local police station, doctor and dentist, and in the state of pained
befuddlement which three days of toothache might provide, to dial 999 seems
so much more convenient than to scour the Yellow Pages for nearby dentists.
Not to mention that police stations are horribly overworked and therefore
very slow and inefficient at responding to low-priority messages.
Should I tell the police (via the police station number, of course) that a
house alarm is going off in my street, or is the annoyance to them likely to
exceed any utility the information might have?
An answer, I'd guess, is to have 888 be a low-priority automated hotline
('for your police station, dial 1, for doctor 2, for dentist 3, for plumber
4, for electrician 5, for locksmith 6' - and I'm sure I've missed something
critical in that enumeration). But I suspect this would be more than
hideously difficult to implement.
Tom
Mike Kozlowski
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>We had a much smaller award at McDonnell Douglas (as was). 1% of
>$10,000. Grossed up, though. But the results were often the same.
>One award citation all but said so: "XX receives this award for coming
>in over the weekend in an emergency to fix YY software bug." Well, it
>doesn't say in so many words, but we all knew who wrote the original
>software, therefore creating the bug.
On the one hand, I can see how one could rationalize that by saying that
making mistakes is inevitable, but heroically reacting to those mistakes
is still worthy of special recognition.
On the other hand, I'm reminded of the Dilbert cartoon where programmers
are rewarded for each bug they find...
Randolph Fritz
>common attitude in smart people and self-identified intellectuals. You
>thinking very hard about anything involving government. Government is
>government is bad and many politicians _are_ scoundrels. But the
>second attitude is one in which it's still necessary to make judicious
>hook. Which is something much desired by many smart people, so that
>they can focus more on the things that actually interest them.
>Perfectly understandable -- and, in a small way, corrosive to
>democracy.
>
Hmmm...that's an interesting reason.
I think also that people don't like depending on other people, or
even, sometimes, admitting the experts can be right. The application
to global climate change is, ah, "left as an exercise to the student,"
as the math texts says.
R.
Mike Kozlowski
Randolph Fritz <rand...@efn.org> wrote:
>
>I think also that people don't like depending on other people, or
>even, sometimes, admitting the experts can be right. The application
>to global climate change is, ah, "left as an exercise to the student,"
>as the math texts says.
I'm one of the last people who can be accused of anti-expertism; if
anything, I tend to be uncritically accepting of what experts and
authority figures say. Nevertheless, I was very deeply skeptical of
global warming hype for quite some time, because the accumulated mass of
evidence didn't seem to support the conclusion.
(I have since changed my opinion as new evidence has come in.)
Doug Wickstrom
<Ber...@shrdlu.com> excited the ether to say:
>I wonder
>whether things will change now that we have at last moved to the
>beginning of a new century.
Don't you suppose we'll actually have to do that little thing in
order to find out?
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what section or clause is it
contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from
their children, and compel them to fight the battle in any war in which the
folly or the wickedness of government may engage it?" --Daniel Webster
Maureen Kincaid Speller
>
>Some time later I formulated the law of conservation of misery. If
>people don't have any real problems they will worry themselves into an
>early grave with problems they create for just that purpose. We no
>longer have the black death so we need something to replace it. I wonder
>whether things will change now that we have at last moved to the
>beginning of a new century.
I've been wondering whether we will see a new mood of optimism now
we're writing 2000 on the cheques. Much too early to say, of course
(and it's difficult to be enthusiastic on the first working day of the
year when it's pissing with rain), but it would make a pleasant change
from people complaining because the world didn't go to hell in a
handbasket on December 31st.
Maureen Kincaid Speller
wrote:
>"Maureen Kincaid Speller" <m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk> wrote
>
>> I've heard several
>> reports recently about the kind of thing that people use 999 for ...
>> I've got a headache, I've had a toothache for three days, and a whole
>> bunch of other relatively minor and mainly inappropriate things, the
>> kind of thing that makes me think 'well, why didn't they do ... or
>> ...'
>
>I'd assumed it was because people didn't know the phone numbers for their
>local police station, doctor and dentist, and in the state of pained
>befuddlement which three days of toothache might provide, to dial 999 seems
>so much more convenient than to scour the Yellow Pages for nearby dentists.
>Not to mention that police stations are horribly overworked and therefore
>very slow and inefficient at responding to low-priority messages.
Y-e-s, but it still seems alien to me as an approach. Actually, having
thought about this a little more, I wonder if it's also that some
people need someone to tell them what they should be doing. I've grown
used to self-sufficiency over the years as I don't have a family
network to rely on and and geographically distant from my friends, so
I'm used to problem-solving. I wonder if some people have lost the art
of problem-solving so need to turn to some sort of 'authority' to sort
it out for them. In a strange and convoluted way, they are paying 999
the compliment of supposing it can solve their problems for them.
>
>Should I tell the police (via the police station number, of course) that a
>house alarm is going off in my street, or is the annoyance to them likely to
>exceed any utility the information might have?
Oh, I always tell them, just on the principle that people put alarms
on their houses for a reason, and I like to remind the police
authorities of the good old days when the fact that an alarm was going
off just might mean their services would be required. A pious if
doomed hope but one can but try, and I would not like to be accused of
not being a responsible citizen.
Slightly off at a tangent, I heard a report on national radio just
after Christmas, which explained how Folkestone was pioneering a
scheme where, by examining the spread of crimes in a given area over a
given time, police had been able to recognise certain days and times
when crimes would be most likely to happen, and by flooding the area
with police, they managed to cut down the crime rate. I trust the
police spokesman had a straight face when he explained that a
remarkable side-benefit was that by patrolling the streets they had
begun to learn where known criminals hung out, and who their
associates were. Fancy.
>
>An answer, I'd guess, is to have 888 be a low-priority automated hotline
>('for your police station, dial 1, for doctor 2, for dentist 3, for plumber
>4, for electrician 5, for locksmith 6' - and I'm sure I've missed something
>critical in that enumeration). But I suspect this would be more than
>hideously difficult to implement.
>
It's a nice idea but I'm sure people would still ring 999 so they
could talk to someone. I'm not a great fan of automated lines myself,
even the fairly straightforward ones(and please don't get me started
on this as I could bore for Britain about FemaleWarriorBookshopOnline
and their spiffy helpline)
Maureen Kincaid Speller
<mjla...@erols.com> wrote:
>In <388c4c82....@news.demon.co.uk>, m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk
>(Maureen Kincaid Speller) wrote:
>
>>In its mildest form, it's perhaps most obviously expressed in people
>>slowing down as they pass a road accident, or stopping to stare as the
>>firemen run in and out of the house,
>
>Years ago, when I worked with the teens at a church, the youth pastor
>would always turn around and follow a fire engine. He even did this
>with the church's school bus! I kept telling him it was dangerous,
>but he thought it was fine.
My mother was absolutely fanatical about hurrying us children away
from any kind of a 'scene' when I was young. On one level I suppose I
appreciate her thought but on another,as an adult I find myself
tremendously torn between wanting to stand and gawp when I see
anything going on and wanting to hustle myself away because that's
what I was taught to do, even while knowing that a natural curiosity
isn't necessarily unhealthy.
A more irritating corollary of this policy is that I find myself
entirely unable to deal effectively and firmly with being accosted by
drunks, beggars and Scottish Power salesmen who are, on the whole,
harmless (well, maybe not the salesmen) if seeking attention.
Randolph Fritz
One of our profs at UO, an environmental control systems expert, says
he thinks about 85% of the climatologists are convinced; for a recent
hypothesis that's a very high level of agreement. That seems to tally
with what I've been seeing in the press. Personally, I think it's
enough to base policy decisions on.
But a faction of the energy industry has spent an enormous amount of
money on persuading us--and especially the Congress--that there is no
problem. They were with Congress. And one of the ways they did it is
by taking advantage of that distrust.
It's odd...there's a classic science fictional story element that
consists of "scientists (or engineers) right, politicians wrong."
That seems to be the case with global climate change. But the story's
all different from the way it usually was told; current science is
critiqueing past engineering works, whereas in the stories it usually
justified them.
R.
Bruce Baugh
>>I wonder
>>whether things will change now that we have at last moved to the
>>beginning of a new century.
>Don't you suppose we'll actually have to do that little thing in
>order to find out?
We have.
Look, most people realize that "the Sixties" refers to the period from
1963 or 1964 to 1974. In precisely the same way, "the 20th century" and
"the second millennium" refer to conceptual units that may not precisely
synchronize with a rigid definition of calendrical units.
Social eras are not facts of nature, but descriptions of belief.
Therefore, if people believe themselves to be in a new century, they
are, and no quantity of niggling to the contrary will change that. And
yes, I do think it's niggling to insist that the vast majority of people
are wrong about something that is by definition a matter of perception.
If you can't live with the ambiguity implicit in "the 20th century as a
state of mind" and "the 20th century as demarked by the calendar", life
will hold many more disappointments than this.
Bjørn Vermo
wrote:
>
> On the other hand, I just can't see and couldn't see ANY of the likely
> problems being life-threatening for even one person.
One of the things I know was fixed, was in life-support systems used
for intensive care at hospitals. Given that, without any awareness of
potential Y2k problems, the hospitals would have (as usual) been
understaffed during the holidays, I think it is highly probable that
lives were saved by the precautions which were taken.
The most important part of avoiding the problems was to recognize and
make public the possibility of failures. Even without fixing bugs,
that awareness alone was enough to prevent most disasters. I doubt the
Russians fixed all bugs in their military systems, but knowing about
the issue was enough to deal rationally with any problems. And who
knows what the U.S. would have done when most of their spy satellites
went bad simultaneously if nobody had been prepared for problems?
Ailsa N Murphy
Mike Kozlowski <mkoz...@guy.ssc.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>I'm one of the last people who can be accused of anti-expertism; if
>anything, I tend to be uncritically accepting of what experts and
>authority figures say. Nevertheless, I was very deeply skeptical of
>global warming hype for quite some time, because the accumulated mass of
>evidence didn't seem to support the conclusion.
>
too warm for a jacket yesterday. :P
>(I have since changed my opinion as new evidence has come in.)
>
Cool.
I have had occasion lately to use the line "Just because experts
believe it and scientists accept it, doesn't necessarily mean it;s
wrong."
-Ailsa
--
There is no forgetting sorrow an...@world.std.com
There is no regretting love Ailsa N.T. Murphy
All we really do is borrow all the dreams we're dreaming of
We can never know tomorrow, all we have is giving love today
-Midge Ure
Kip Williams
>
> In article <1ta37s87b30pd544b...@4ax.com>, nims...@worldnet.att.net wrote:
>
> >>I wonder
> >>whether things will change now that we have at last moved to the
> >>beginning of a new century.
>
> >Don't you suppose we'll actually have to do that little thing in
> >order to find out?
>
> We have.
>
> Look, most people realize that "the Sixties" refers to the period from
> 1963 or 1964 to 1974. In precisely the same way, "the 20th century" and
> "the second millennium" refer to conceptual units that may not precisely
> synchronize with a rigid definition of calendrical units.
>
> Social eras are not facts of nature, but descriptions of belief.
> Therefore, if people believe themselves to be in a new century, they
> are, and no quantity of niggling to the contrary will change that. And
> yes, I do think it's niggling to insist that the vast majority of people
> are wrong about something that is by definition a matter of perception.
> If you can't live with the ambiguity implicit in "the 20th century as a
> state of mind" and "the 20th century as demarked by the calendar", life
> will hold many more disappointments than this.
The problem is that we have 'the 60s' and 'the 70s' and so on (notice
which decades I think of first, kiddies). Technically, I've recently
read that those are supposed to start on ones as well, but nobody can
keep that straight. I tried asking Abe Lincoln (channeled, of course)
when the century started, but he just gave me some irrelevant story
about calling a sheep's tail a leg.
Nancy Lebovitz
Maureen Kincaid Speller <m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Alan Garner has commented that he believes the generation of
>children's writers who came to prominence in the nineteen-sixties,
>himself included, were profoundly influenced by their wartime
>experiences. At the lecture I attended, he told very similar stories
>about rushing out to collect hot shrapnel, although he then tellingly
>contrasted this with being at the cinema and seeing the pictures of
>concentration camps, and finding that adults were unwilling or simply
>unable to explain what was going on.
>
_Elidor_ was very much about the aftermath of WWII--iirc, the church
was a ruin because it hadn't been rebuilt yet, and there was an acute
sense of how doing the right thing could endanger innocent third
parties.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
October '99 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Nancy Lebovitz
Bruce Baugh <bruce...@sff.net> wrote:
>In article <8EAFB90...@166.84.0.240>, p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>
[the belief that it's better to respond to crises than to do boring
undramatic effective maintenance]
>>I'm not so sure it's exactly "anti-intellectual," because it's such a
>>common attitude in smart people and self-identified intellectuals. You
>
>Internalized self-loathing.
>
>No, seriously, though, I do think that "anti-intellectual" applies to
>the attitude even when an intellectual holds it. I don't expect any of
>us to be altogether free of cognitive dissonance.
>
Maybe "anti-thought" would be more exact than "anti-intellectual". Imho,
the belief that one ought to "do something" is a primary American trait,
and that something does *not* include planning.
And I think those Nike commercials are pernicious.
Nancy Lebovitz
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>
>But the End-Of-It-All scenarios involved *cascades* of problems, problems
>preventing the solutions to earlier problems, tiny little problems slowing
>down the pace of otherwise unaffected systems, and so on. I don't think
>there's any meaningful way to estimate those nonlinear effects.
>
My nightmare was Y2K problems amplified by a big blizzard over major
cities. Looks like global warming prevented any chance of that one.
Jason Stokes
wrote:
>In article <84odm3$lki$1...@nntp3.atl.mindspring.net>,
>Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>>
>>But the End-Of-It-All scenarios involved *cascades* of problems, problems
>>preventing the solutions to earlier problems, tiny little problems slowing
>>down the pace of otherwise unaffected systems, and so on. I don't think
>>there's any meaningful way to estimate those nonlinear effects.
>>
>My nightmare was Y2K problems amplified by a big blizzard over major
>cities. Looks like global warming prevented any chance of that one.
Actually global warming has the potential to alter the equilibriums and
functioning of various climactic systems, increasing climate
variability and therefore potentially producing more blizzards (even
while increasing the average temperature overall.) This is a practical
example of mathematical chaos at work.
--
Jason Stokes: js...@bluedog.apana.org.au
Mike Kozlowski
Maureen Kincaid Speller <m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I've been wondering whether we will see a new mood of optimism now
>we're writing 2000 on the cheques.
It seems to me that there's already a mood of optimism in the air 'round
here -- just take a look at the stock market.
And while I've been an optimist for some time, this new mood has me
somewhat worried -- because when most people are worried about the future,
I can be confident that any problems will be recognized and dealth with;
but when most people are optimistic, there's a risk that serious problems
will be waved off until it's too late. I'd be a lot more sanguine if more
people were a lot less so.
On the other hand, maybe I'm just an incurable contrarian.
Avedon Carol
Kincaid Speller) wrote:
>I've been wondering whether we will see a new mood of optimism now
>we're writing 2000 on the cheques. Much too early to say, of course
>(and it's difficult to be enthusiastic on the first working day of the
>year when it's pissing with rain), but it would make a pleasant change
>from people complaining because the world didn't go to hell in a
>handbasket on December 31st.
I'm hoping that Tony Blair's new mood of optimism on New Year's Eve
had a hangover the next morning, personally. All that nonsense about
bottling and selling it struck me as a bit scary coming from him -
there was a gleam of religious revival in his eye, I thought.
Tom Womack
> And who
> knows what the U.S. would have done when most of their spy satellites
> went bad simultaneously if nobody had been prepared for problems?
Yes, that was an interesting report to see on the front page of the Times
... though I thought the journalist was being rather naive in criticising
NATO for giving a briefing saying 'our systems have not had Y2K problems'
while the satellites were still out. I'd put "Our spy satellites have
stopped working" only a little above "The rifles issued to our guards have
no ammunition" in the list of Things Not To Say In Public.
Tom
Maureen Kincaid Speller
wrote:
>In article <388f53c4....@news.demon.co.uk>,
>Maureen Kincaid Speller <m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>Alan Garner has commented that he believes the generation of
>>children's writers who came to prominence in the nineteen-sixties,
>>himself included, were profoundly influenced by their wartime
>>experiences. At the lecture I attended, he told very similar stories
>>about rushing out to collect hot shrapnel, although he then tellingly
>>contrasted this with being at the cinema and seeing the pictures of
>>concentration camps, and finding that adults were unwilling or simply
>>unable to explain what was going on.
>>
>Not quite the same thing, but I got the impression that Garner's
>_Elidor_ was very much about the aftermath of WWII--iirc, the church
>was a ruin because it hadn't been rebuilt yet, and there was an acute
>sense of how doing the right thing could endanger innocent third
>parties.
I think that _Elidor_ is less about the direct aftermath of WWII,
although the church was almost certainly destroyed by bombs, but more
about the effects of the renewal of post-war society. (Having said
that, Garner has said that during the writing of _Elidor_ he listened
to Britten's War Requiem every day and his portrayal of Malebron was
influenced by the statue of St Michael on the outside of the new
Coventry Cathedral.)
I've always taken the actual time period of the book as being sometime
in the mid-1960s (it was published in 1965), when a lot of rebuilding
was going on, not just repairing war damage but also replacing
Victorian back-to-back houses with more modern dwellings, with indoor
sanitation and so on. That's what's actually happened to much of the
area containing the real Thursday Street (not to mention a good number
of other towns and cities).
You also have the fact that the family is shown moving from the city
centre to the country (actually to Alderley Edge, though it's not
specified in the novel, and is actually rather less rural than it was
... and a recent moderately successful tv adaptation had the family
move to Sale, a fairly upmarket Cheshire town), marking its increasing
affluence but counterpointed by the rather uncomfortable attempts to
blend into the local society. Also, Roland, the youngest child, is
going to a different school to his brothers; he's won a place to what
is clearly, if you know the geography, Manchester Grammar School
(Garner's own school) and thus indicative of shifts in the family
relationships too. We can already see that Roland doesn't really get
along that well with his brothers and this is likely to set him
further apart.
One of the strongest feelings I get off this book is the sense of the
loss of innocence which comes over and over again, mirroring perhaps
the realisation that the brave new post-war world isn't as idyllic as
people supposed it might be.
I think, more and more, I like _Elidor_ best of Garner's books. It's
so often forgotten, tucked away between _The Moon of Gomrath_ and
_The Owl Service_, and yet I think it contains much that is germane to
reaching any proper understanding of Garner's writing.
Bruce Baugh
>The problem is that we have 'the 60s' and 'the 70s' and so on (notice
>which decades I think of first, kiddies). Technically, I've recently
>read that those are supposed to start on ones as well, but nobody can
>keep that straight.
So who cares about "supposed to"? I'm serious about that. What do we
gain by insisting on a usage that will strike most people as
counter-intuitive and require constant explanation? I can defend a lot
of grammar by citing the gains of clarity and consistency. Right now I'm
not seeing the sort of confusion and general misunderstanding about what
anyone means when they refer to a decade or century or millennium that
would warrant constantly jumping on common usage.
Doug Wickstrom
Murphy) excited the ether to say:
>In article <84rl09$gfg$1...@news.doit.wisc.edu>,
>Mike Kozlowski <mkoz...@guy.ssc.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>
>>I'm one of the last people who can be accused of anti-expertism; if
>>anything, I tend to be uncritically accepting of what experts and
>>authority figures say. Nevertheless, I was very deeply skeptical of
>>global warming hype for quite some time, because the accumulated mass of
>>evidence didn't seem to support the conclusion.
>>
>Come to New England and see what passes for winter these days. It was
>too warm for a jacket yesterday. :P
Mike is in Madison, which had 6 inches of snow yesterday, and
temperatures 40 degrees cooler than Boston. (The Twin Cities are
just as cold, but got only a dusting.) Global warming looks like
a _good_ thing, sometimes.
As I understand the current thinking on global warming, it's
definitely happening, but why it's happening, how much further it
will go, what, if any, impact human beings are having on it, and
if it's necessarily a bad thing are very lively subjects for
debate. For myself, I point out only that it's happened before,
and that the crunches came when the climate cooled off again.
Beyond that, I don't have an opinion. I'm a historian by
training and an engineer by trade, not a climatologist.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing. 'Twas mine,
'tis his, and has been slave to thousands. But he that filches from me my
good name, robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed."
--William Shakespeare, "Othello"
Mike Kozlowski
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 4 Jan 2000 12:43:28 GMT, an...@world.std.com (Ailsa N Murphy) wrote:
>>Come to New England and see what passes for winter these days. It was
>>too warm for a jacket yesterday. :P
>
>Mike is in Madison, which had 6 inches of snow yesterday, and
>temperatures 40 degrees cooler than Boston.
Milwaukee, actually, but ditto on the snow. On the other hand, it was,
and I kid you not, 55 degrees on Sunday. In January. In Wisconsin. O
brave new millennium, that has such weather in it!
In a guilty moment, I wondered if there were any charities devoted to
buying up parcels of rainforest land, and then burning it to the ground to
hasten the onset of global warming.
Alison Hopkins
Maureen Kincaid Speller wrote in message
<snippage>
>It's a nice idea but I'm sure people would still ring 999 so they
>could talk to someone. I'm not a great fan of automated lines myself,
>even the fairly straightforward ones(and please don't get me started
>on this as I could bore for Britain about FemaleWarriorBookshopOnline
>and their spiffy helpline)
>
There are a number of police forces already looking at, or implementing
non-emergency numbers to try and resolve the "999" issue. One reason for
doing it - besides the obvious one of not tying up 999 circuits for real
calls - is that you don't need police operators to deal with non emergency,
and you can use more civilian staff to handle this type of call. Sussex
Police set up a non emergency number a while back which is working well and
has been widely publicised. Their chief constable is heavily in to customer
service and the use of technology, so this will be extended to include web
access, kiosks and "shops". And on that theme, local authorities have also
been directed to set up "one Stop Shops", where the information accessed is
the same regardless of the method used.
I agree with you on the IVR/automated line front, too. It's terrific
technology, and can be a real boon, but, oh, the number of TRULY badly
programmed ones you encounter... <sigh> Menus with ten options, too many
levels, not offering a real person early enough... ptach.
Ali
Bjørn Vermo
> In article <slrn872lbg....@garcia.efn.org>,
> Randolph Fritz <rand...@efn.org> wrote:
> >
> ... Nevertheless, I was very deeply skeptical of
> global warming hype for quite some time, because the accumulated mass of
> evidence didn't seem to support the conclusion.
>
One very interesting detail I always notice in articles about the
climate, is that the curves have a tendency to start at about the
coldest period we know about after the last time the ice melted. Our
Bronze Age ancestors were too busy running naked in the sunshine to
bother about recording average temperatures, but the bogs tell us that
the barren mountain ranges where reindeer roam and only small bushes
will grow (the location for the snow planet scenes in Star Wars) once
had mighty forests of oak.
As one climatologist said: "The odd thing with our climate the last
centuries is that it has been abnormally stable".
Jonathan Guthrie
> In article <84rl09$gfg$1...@news.doit.wisc.edu>,
> Mike Kozlowski <mkoz...@guy.ssc.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>I'm one of the last people who can be accused of anti-expertism; if
>>anything, I tend to be uncritically accepting of what experts and
>>authority figures say. Nevertheless, I was very deeply skeptical of
>>global warming hype for quite some time, because the accumulated mass of
>>evidence didn't seem to support the conclusion.
> Come to New England and see what passes for winter these days. It was
> too warm for a jacket yesterday. :P
One sample at one location or even ten winters worth of samples at one
location do not indicate a global trend.
As a counter example, I give you Houston, TX, which has been unseasonably
cold (well, cool, it never gets really cold in Houston) since October.
Around here "winter" (aka "the rainy season") doesn't usually start until
mid-December.
Word is that the average surface temperature of the entire earth is up
about a degree (about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last ten years or
so (which is about how long we've been able to measure the surface
temperature of the entire earth.)
Rob Hansen
Blair addressed a multi-faith gathering yesterday and called for the
new millennium to be "an age of faith". When they've bothered to
mention it at all, most Prime Ministers in my lifetime have seemed
more to be paying lip-service to religion rather than giving
expression to any sort of deep belief, which is how I prefer it. This
is clearly not the case with Blair, and his pronouncements have been
leaving me feeling increasingly queasy. We're not yet in James
Anderton territory, however. Fortunately.
--
Rob Hansen
================================================
My Home Page: http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/rob/
Feminists Against Censorship:
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/
Kip Williams
> As I understand the current thinking on global warming, it's
> definitely happening, but why it's happening, how much further it
> will go, what, if any, impact human beings are having on it, and
> if it's necessarily a bad thing are very lively subjects for
> debate. For myself, I point out only that it's happened before,
> and that the crunches came when the climate cooled off again.
Last ice age, we didn't have NYC and LA and all those other future
Atlantises to worry about. If the coastline rose, they pulled the
village back. Now if the coastline rises, the first thing will be all
the rich people who live on the coast will browbeat the government into
bailing them out over and over until the coastline is about fifty miles
beyond them.
Kip Williams
>
> In article <3871EF74...@home.com>, Kip Williams <ki...@home.com> wrote:
>
> >The problem is that we have 'the 60s' and 'the 70s' and so on (notice
> >which decades I think of first, kiddies). Technically, I've recently
> >read that those are supposed to start on ones as well, but nobody can
> >keep that straight.
>
> So who cares about "supposed to"? I'm serious about that. What do we
> gain by insisting on a usage that will strike most people as
> counter-intuitive and require constant explanation? I can defend a lot
> of grammar by citing the gains of clarity and consistency. Right now I'm
> not seeing the sort of confusion and general misunderstanding about what
> anyone means when they refer to a decade or century or millennium that
> would warrant constantly jumping on common usage.
I'm talking about the changes in language. It had a strict meaning, and
over time that meaning has become muddied. It's not a question of who
cares, but of verifiable facts.
You snipped the reference to Abe Lincoln's story (actually a riddle).
Here it is:
How many legs does a sheep have, if you call its tail a leg?
Answer: Four. Calling it a leg doesn't make it so.
That was Lincoln for you: a man of the stuck-up elites. We know
differently now, of course. If TV commentators call it a leg, it's a
leg.
Sue Mason
of my own.
> That's what's actually happened to much of the
>area containing the real Thursday Street (not to mention a good number
>of other towns and cities).
When I was a kid, the map the kids find Thursday Street on was still
in Piccadilly Gardens. I remember going and looking up Thursday Street
on it but by then (mid 70's), it was long demolished.
>You also have the fact that the family is shown moving from the city
>centre to the country (actually to Alderley Edge, though it's not
>specified in the novel, and is actually rather less rural than it was
>... and a recent moderately successful tv adaptation had the family
>move to Sale, a fairly upmarket Cheshire town),
Peals of slightly hysterical laughter. Sale is one of the nastiest
parts of the Greater Manchester conurbation.
Not nasty in the same way as say Moss Side or Leavenshulme are, they
are rough areas with little money or amenities. Sale is nasty in that
particularly suburban way which makes me even more uncomfortable. I'd
go into pubs in Moss Side and feel reasonably safe, even if I might
get asked if I want draw about five times an hour.
Sale pubs are full of young men and laddish women drinking alco-pops
until they are insensible, fighting and vomiting in the streets then
going to work in soulless offices during the day.
Far more dangerous to weirdos like me than drug dealers.
Ten years ago, though, you would have been correct in describing Sale
as up market - though I'm not sure it was ever part of Cheshire, maybe
by a few yards.
I never forgave Elidor for not being the third book of the Alderley
Edge trilogy. Never forgave Alan for not finishing the story but he
moved on to higher things.
Sue (from the up market Cheshire town of Altrincham which is on the
same downward slide as Sale)
--
Sue Mason
s...@arctic-fox.freeserve.co.uk
Rick Keir
nims...@worldnet.att.net wrote:
> Mike is in Madison, which had 6 inches of snow yesterday, and
> temperatures 40 degrees cooler than Boston. (The Twin Cities are
> just as cold, but got only a dusting.) Global warming looks like
> a _good_ thing, sometimes.
That six inches was the first appreciable amount of snow Madison got
this winter; global warming can look quite a grand thing as one
shovels off the sidewalk.
On the other hand, climatologists think in terms of centuries,
not years, and it's sort of annoying to hear TV reporters
attribute various fluctuations in the temperature to any kind
of grand climate shift. "In other news, meaningless statistics
were up 3.52% this month."
Vicki Rosenzweig
>"Maureen Kincaid Speller" <m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk> wrote
>
>> I've heard several
>> reports recently about the kind of thing that people use 999 for ...
>> I've got a headache, I've had a toothache for three days, and a whole
>> bunch of other relatively minor and mainly inappropriate things, the
>> kind of thing that makes me think 'well, why didn't they do ... or
>> ...'
>
>I'd assumed it was because people didn't know the phone numbers for their
>local police station, doctor and dentist, and in the state of pained
>befuddlement which three days of toothache might provide, to dial 999 seems
>so much more convenient than to scour the Yellow Pages for nearby dentists.
>Not to mention that police stations are horribly overworked and therefore
>very slow and inefficient at responding to low-priority messages.
I was told to dial "0" for operator for that sort of thing--they'll
connect you to your local precinct, and can also get at the phone
directories and find you a dentist or such.
On the other hand, I've been startled at how few people know that,
at least in New York, if you don't remember where a museum is, all
you have to do is pick a pay phone and dial 411 and a helpful
person will tell you, at no charge.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html
Sue Mason for TAFF!
Vicki Rosenzweig
GMT:
>In article <84rl09$gfg$1...@news.doit.wisc.edu>,
>Mike Kozlowski <mkoz...@guy.ssc.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>
>>I'm one of the last people who can be accused of anti-expertism; if
>>anything, I tend to be uncritically accepting of what experts and
>>authority figures say. Nevertheless, I was very deeply skeptical of
>>global warming hype for quite some time, because the accumulated mass of
>>evidence didn't seem to support the conclusion.
>>
>Come to New England and see what passes for winter these days. It was
>too warm for a jacket yesterday. :P
"Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get." Or, if
you prefer, climate is about longer-term patterns and averages.
The high temperature in New York City yesterday was 64, which
set a new record--by two whole degrees Fahrenheit, and the
previous record wasn't from the last few years.
I don't doubt global warming, particularly, but occasional
warm winter days aren't the strong evidence for it.
Vicki Rosenzweig
+0000:
>On Tue, 04 Jan 2000 17:36:59 +0000, ave...@thirdworld.uk (Avedon
>Carol) wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 04 Jan 2000 08:51:28 GMT, m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk (Maureen
>>Kincaid Speller) wrote:
>>
>>>I've been wondering whether we will see a new mood of optimism now
>>>we're writing 2000 on the cheques. Much too early to say, of course
>>>(and it's difficult to be enthusiastic on the first working day of the
>>>year when it's pissing with rain), but it would make a pleasant change
>>>from people complaining because the world didn't go to hell in a
>>>handbasket on December 31st.
>>
>>I'm hoping that Tony Blair's new mood of optimism on New Year's Eve
>>had a hangover the next morning, personally. All that nonsense about
>>bottling and selling it struck me as a bit scary coming from him -
>>there was a gleam of religious revival in his eye, I thought.
>
>Blair addressed a multi-faith gathering yesterday and called for the
>new millennium to be "an age of faith". When they've bothered to
>mention it at all, most Prime Ministers in my lifetime have seemed
>more to be paying lip-service to religion rather than giving
>expression to any sort of deep belief, which is how I prefer it. This
>is clearly not the case with Blair, and his pronouncements have been
>leaving me feeling increasingly queasy. We're not yet in James
>Anderton territory, however. Fortunately.
Ignorant outlander time again: who is James Anderton? (I get the
sense of what you're saying, but details always help.)
Vicki Rosenzweig
>In article <1ta37s87b30pd544b...@4ax.com>, nims...@worldnet.att.net wrote:
>
>>>I wonder
>>>whether things will change now that we have at last moved to the
>>>beginning of a new century.
>
>>Don't you suppose we'll actually have to do that little thing in
>>order to find out?
>
>We have.
>
>Look, most people realize that "the Sixties" refers to the period from
>1963 or 1964 to 1974. In precisely the same way, "the 20th century" and
>"the second millennium" refer to conceptual units that may not precisely
>synchronize with a rigid definition of calendrical units.
The problem with that analogy is that, in that view, the Sixties
didn't begin on 1 January 1960 OR 1 January 1961 and end ten
years later; they were demarcated by significant events (and
which events count is the subject of endless discussion, so
the Sixties can have ended as early as Altamont and as late as
Nixon's resignation). In that worldview, I think the 20th century
may not have begun until August 1914 (the previous century stretching
from the end of the Napoleonic wars until the beginning of World
War I), and I'm not convinced that Dec. 31, 1999 contained any
event significant enough to make a change of century.
For the record, while I'd like centuries to run 100 years each
(consensus a century ago was that the 20th century began in
1901, not 1900), I recognize that all calendars are arbitrary
and you can begin a century any time you feel like: me, I think
I'll start mine at the beginning of the Year of the Dragon.
>
>Social eras are not facts of nature, but descriptions of belief.
>Therefore, if people believe themselves to be in a new century, they
>are, and no quantity of niggling to the contrary will change that. And
>yes, I do think it's niggling to insist that the vast majority of people
>are wrong about something that is by definition a matter of perception.
>If you can't live with the ambiguity implicit in "the 20th century as a
>state of mind" and "the 20th century as demarked by the calendar", life
>will hold many more disappointments than this.
Sure, but the same is true of those who, insisting that social
eras are descriptions of belief, won't accept that some people
believe themselves to be in an old century, and no amount of
brandishing majorities at them will change that.
Vicki Rosenzweig
> mkoz...@guy.ssc.wisc.edu (Mike Kozlowski) wrote:
>
>> In article <slrn872lbg....@garcia.efn.org>,
>> Randolph Fritz <rand...@efn.org> wrote:
>> >
>> ... Nevertheless, I was very deeply skeptical of
>> global warming hype for quite some time, because the accumulated mass of
>> evidence didn't seem to support the conclusion.
>>
>One very interesting detail I always notice in articles about the
>climate, is that the curves have a tendency to start at about the
>coldest period we know about after the last time the ice melted.
Some of the curves are based on Greenland ice cores and are good
for about 100,000 years, which is well after the last time the
ice melted. (I'm assuming you aren't thinking in terms of the
last time there were no glaciers on Earth, which was before there
were humans.)
>Our
>Bronze Age ancestors were too busy running naked in the sunshine to
>bother about recording average temperatures, but the bogs tell us that
>the barren mountain ranges where reindeer roam and only small bushes
>will grow (the location for the snow planet scenes in Star Wars) once
>had mighty forests of oak.
>
>As one climatologist said: "The odd thing with our climate the last
>centuries is that it has been abnormally stable".
Sure, and we've built a large and complex civilization on that
stability. And the climate is looking weirder and weirder the
more data they collect: everything is connected in weird ways.
One plausible scenario is, roughly, as follows:
(1) the Earth warms by a few degrees (for this purpose, the
cause is irrelevant).
(2) the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean melts (it's already a
good deal thinner than when first measured--the climatologists
are debating whether this is part of a long-term cycle and
no big deal, or whether it's a third of the way to vanishing).
(3) the warming of the Arctic Ocean disrupts the Atlantic Ocean
currents, notably the Gulf Stream.
(4) glaciers cover most of Europe.
In other words, we could have global warming *and* a new ice age,
a local one perhaps, but hardly trivial for the millions of people
who live there.
Marilee J. Layman
<fn...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>
>Maureen Kincaid Speller wrote in message
>
><snippage>
>
>
>>It's a nice idea but I'm sure people would still ring 999 so they
>>could talk to someone. I'm not a great fan of automated lines myself,
>>even the fairly straightforward ones(and please don't get me started
>>on this as I could bore for Britain about FemaleWarriorBookshopOnline
>>and their spiffy helpline)
>>
>
>There are a number of police forces already looking at, or implementing
>non-emergency numbers to try and resolve the "999" issue. One reason for
>doing it - besides the obvious one of not tying up 999 circuits for real
>calls - is that you don't need police operators to deal with non emergency,
>and you can use more civilian staff to handle this type of call. Sussex
>Police set up a non emergency number a while back which is working well and
>has been widely publicised. Their chief constable is heavily in to customer
>service and the use of technology, so this will be extended to include web
>access, kiosks and "shops". And on that theme, local authorities have also
>been directed to set up "one Stop Shops", where the information accessed is
>the same regardless of the method used.
Yeah, our city is looking into putting in a 311 line (911 is our
emergency) because it isn't usually that people think something's an
emergency, it's that they're too lazy to look up the regular phone
number, so they call 911. 311 will be easier to remember, and is
already being used in some cities, so may become a standard like 911
is.
--
Marilee J. Layman Co-Leader, The Other*Worlds*Cafe
relm...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group
Web site: http://www.webmoose.com/owc/
AOL keyword: BOOKs > Chats & Message > SF Forum > The Other*Worlds*Cafe
Avram Grumer
> You snipped the reference to Abe Lincoln's story (actually a riddle).
> Here it is:
> How many legs does a sheep have, if you call its tail a leg?
> Answer: Four. Calling it a leg doesn't make it so.
How many fingers does a typical person's hand have, if you call a thumb a
finger?
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
If music be the food of love, then some of it be the Twinkies of
dysfunctional relationships.
Richard Horton
On Wed, 05 Jan 2000 04:08:26 GMT, Kip Williams <ki...@home.com> wrote:
>Bruce Baugh wrote:
>
>> I'm more interested in the matter of going about convincing people to
>> change, as a changer and changee. Do the people who wish to insist that
>> there's a uniquely right start of millennium and that it's not the one
>> most people think find that their insistence accomplishes much?
>
>The King James Bible says that pi = 3. Many, many people believe
>this Bible is infallible. Should we determine the value of pi with
>measuring tools and calculations, or should we just take a poll?
>Does it matter how much pi is? "Survey says..."
Pi is 3. To one significant digit.
Sorry, but this is one of the most tiresome statements I keep seeing.
The verses in the Bible which seem to say pi=3 are clearly not meant
to be read to any more precision than one significant digit, and it's
plain silly to try to "disprove" the Bible by this one statement.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Tim Illingworth
m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk "Maureen Kincaid Speller" writes:
>I think that _Elidor_ is less about the direct aftermath of WWII,
>although the church was almost certainly destroyed by bombs, but more
>about the effects of the renewal of post-war society. (Having said
>that, Garner has said that during the writing of _Elidor_ he listened
>to Britten's War Requiem every day and his portrayal of Malebron was
>influenced by the statue of St Michael on the outside of the new
>Coventry Cathedral.)
>
>I've always taken the actual time period of the book as being sometime
>in the mid-1960s (it was published in 1965), when a lot of rebuilding
>was going on, not just repairing war damage but also replacing
>Victorian back-to-back houses with more modern dwellings, with indoor
>sanitation and so on. That's what's actually happened to much of the
>area containing the real Thursday Street (not to mention a good number
>of other towns and cities).
I need to reread it, but it was something of a shock to me walking
home from work one night in 1973 to realise that I was walking
through the setting of Elidor. (Most of) the streets were still
there, but the church stood alone in parkland. Memory says it had
stained glass which reflected the setting sun at the right time of
year. Memory may be lying, of course.
All the Best,
Tim
--
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Tim Illingworth t...@smof.demon.co.uk Go not to Usenet for advice, for
Coveney, tim...@compuserve.com they will say both 'No' and 'Yes'
Cambs, UK 10014...@compuserve.com and 'Try Another Newsgroup'
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Bernard Peek
<mkoz...@guy.ssc.wisc.edu> writes
>In article <38afa662....@news.demon.co.uk>,
>Maureen Kincaid Speller <m...@acnestis.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>I've been wondering whether we will see a new mood of optimism now
>>we're writing 2000 on the cheques.
>
>here -- just take a look at the stock market.
Yup!
Today it dived. Possibly because the American market used up all of the
spare optimism yesterday. (The UK market was closed yesterday.)
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
b...@shrdlu.co.uk