Heinlein travelogue
Daryld Watson
looked for this book but the book stores in my area have never even heard of
it nor seen it. Is this book worth reading?
Thanks
Daryld
MajorOz
Although dated, it is worth reading for:
1. historical perspective
2. inspirational bits for later H novels
3. revelation of Virginia's influence on his writings.
It is, most likely, available from Amazon or you can get a reference
from the Heinlein Society website.
cheers
oz
Otzchiim
It got little publicity. The first time I actually saw a copy was
when it was remainered, and at least one rather knowledgable person
who has seen my collection did not know that it ever existed. More
worth reading than some of the early novels, much more so than most of
the commentary on him.
Mark Owings
Catherine Jefferson
I read it after it was republished in the early 1990s and showed up at
my local independent bookstore. It was a fun read, but I think mostly
for those who are already fans of Heinlein's work. Since the places and
times he discusses were fifty years or so out of date, I wouldn't
consider it a reliable travel guide at present. :-)
--
Catherine Jefferson <ar...@devsite.org>
Personal Home Page * <http://www.devsite.org/>
The SpamBouncer * <http://www.spambouncer.org/>
Dorothy J Heydt
Oh yes. I reread my copy maybe every six months. It is, of
course, hugely dated, having been written in 1952 or so. But
it's a very interesting glimpse into the Heinleins (though he
appears to have, um, fiddled with Virginia's image to make
her look like a more appropriately silly typical American
wife for the contemporary audience ... but then in any case
the book didn't get published in the fifties.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Dorothy J Heydt
Catherine Jefferson <spam...@spambouncer.org> wrote:
>Daryld Watson wrote:
>> I was wondering if anyone here has read Tramp Royale by Heinlein? Ihave
>> looked for this book but the book stores in my area have never
>even heard of
>> it nor seen it. Is this book worth reading?
>
>I read it after it was republished
REpublished? AFAIK it didn't get published at all in the
1950s -- there was a recession on and travel, as an activity
or a concept, wasn't selling well.
in the early 1990s and showed up at
>my local independent bookstore. It was a fun read, but I think mostly
>for those who are already fans of Heinlein's work. Since the places and
>times he discusses were fifty years or so out of date, I wouldn't
>consider it a reliable travel guide at present. :-)
Oh, no. But it's fun.
Evelyn Leeper
My 1992 review:
TRAMP ROYALE by Robert A. Heinlein
Ace, 1992, ISBN 0-441-82184-7, $18.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper
These days even death doesn't slow an author down much. This is
Heinlein's second post-mortem book (the first being "Grumbles from
the Grave"), there was also "Requiem" (which was mostly tributes
from other people, though he was listed as the primary author), and I
wouldn't doubt that there are more coming. But this volume has little
to recommend it except Heinlein's name.
As a travelogue it can most charitably be termed "of historical
interest." The trip described was taken in 1953 and 1954 (and the
manuscript written then), so conditions were very different than now.
Anyone reading this as current--as one is apt to do with such a new
book--will get a very out-dated view of the world. Unfortunately,
even keeping in mind that this is forty years old, one can't help but
carry away misimpressions. Heinlein's excoriation of New Zealand, for
example, was probably unfair even then, is certainly inaccurate today,
and yet still leaves a negative impression on the reader.
Everything people love or hate about Heinlein is here. Either he
patterned all his fictional characters' dialogue after the way he and
his wife Virginia talked, or (more likely) when he writes up dialogue
that supposedly took place, he remembers it as being the way his
characters would speak. In any case, Robert and Virginia Heinlein
sound just like two characters out of one of his novels, complete with
his patronizing and condescending attitude toward her. (Yes, it's her
business if she wants to put up with it, but when he puts it in a book,
the reader gets to object to it as well.)
Heinlein's politics also come roaring through. McCarthyism wasn't all
that bad, he says, because they were after Communists and because,
after all, no one was thrown in jail after they testified. (Failure to
testify led to being cited as in contempt of Congress, which at that
time did result in jail. Now, of course, it's the feeling of the
average citizen.) I wonder if he would have defended Meese's
intimidation of the distributors of "Playboy" et al the same
way--after all, there was really no force of law behind those
letters that his office sent to the stores saying that they might be
guilty of marketing pornography. When Heinlein asked to be taken to
the slums of Buenos Aires, he found them remarkably clean. The
possibility that he might have been taken to someplace other than the
worst slums did apparently occur to him, but he seems perfectly willing
to accept the driver's statement that these were the worst slums. His
judgements on the various governments are equally naive, and his
opposition to apartheid seems to focus rather more on how difficult it
makes it for a black man to buy a wife than on its obvious faults.
(But then his objection to the Aztec custom of sacrificing virgins
seemed to be more than they wasted a natural resource that way than
that human sacrifice was a bad thing.)
In the introduction it is claimed that this manuscript didn't sell at
the time because of the depressed publishing industry. (Depressed
because all the best people left because of McCarthyism? Sorry, that
was a cheap shot.) But I suspect it wouldn't have sold in any case.
It lacks the insight of the timeless travel journals (such as Charles
Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle", Cabeza de Vaca's "Adventures in
Interior America", or John L. Stephens' "Incidents of Travel in the
Yucatan", or even some recent works such as James Michener's
"Iberia", Vikram Seth's "From Heaven Lake", or Ronald Wright's
"Cut Stones and Crossroads". and consists more of complaints about
small ship cabins, bad food, and unfriendly customs agents. I've seen
better travelogues on Usenet. (Before anyone points this out, yes, my
travelogues are filled with minutiae as well. But they are written
primarily for family and friends who care about such things. I would
never expect anyone to publish, nor would I expect readers to pay
$18.95 for one.) "Tramp Royale" was published now only because
there is perceived to be a large audience for anything Heinlein wrote
or was connected with. If you're in this audience nothing I say will
deter you, but for everyone else, skip this book.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing
what is right. -Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
trag
> TRAMP ROYALE by Robert A. Heinlein
> Ace, 1992, ISBN 0-441-82184-7, $18.95.
> A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
> Copyright 1992 Evelyn C. Leeper
>
> (But then his objection to the Aztec custom of sacrificing virgins
> seemed to be more than they wasted a natural resource that way than
> that human sacrifice was a bad thing.)
<chuckle>
Dorothy J Heydt
Reminiscent of a line in Doc Smith's original Tedric story:
"Everybody* knew that to keep a society healthy its virgins
must be bred, not bled...."
*Everyone in the time-travelling future, anyway, as expressed
by the guy who's about to go back to Tedric's time and give
him tips on how to forge a meteoritic nickel-iron sword.
Which in turn reminds me of Miram Allen deFord's essay in
F&SF in 1956, entitled "News for Dr. Richardson," which
begins, "I am going to tell Dr. Richardson a secret. Women
are not walking sex organs. They are human beings. They are
people, just like men." (Richardson had written a previous
article suggesting that to keep the all-male Mars exploration
team happy, some women should be sent along to, um, relieve
their tensions.
Mike Schilling
Bill Patterson
Didn't see this at the time of Tramp Royale's original appearance..
Two mild objections: You have pulled the material about McCarthyism
out of context (and trivialized it, as well) to make a punching bag,
which is de gustibus I suppose. But the context in which it rose was
that what was going on in America was NOTHING AT ALL like South
American politics, and that McCarthy could get away with it because it
was a hands-on demonstration of why the experimental democracy of the
U.S. was a triumphant success in its own terms -- and the battle for
the minds of humans is not won. It's just as true now as it was then
that we wind up using the same language to talk about very different
experiences.
These are points worth remembering -- IMO _very_ worth recalling.
I don't know about your speculations as to why it didn't sell. The
various editors who read it at the time said it was an engaging book,
but it just wasn't what travel book readers wanted to buy. I remember
quite well When It Changed for travel books, and you can pinpoint it
precisely to the success of The Old Patagonian Express.
It's very much the kind of think Calvin Trillin, for instance, made a
career out of writing fifteen to twenty years later.
Louann Miller
> Which in turn reminds me of Miram Allen deFord's essay in
> F&SF in 1956, entitled "News for Dr. Richardson," which
> begins, "I am going to tell Dr. Richardson a secret. Women
> are not walking sex organs. They are human beings. They are
> people, just like men."
Good news: 53 years later, it's much rarer to have to beat men unconscious
on these occasions. I normally get by with a stern look myself.
Richard R. Hershberger
> "Tramp Royale" was published now only because
> there is perceived to be a large audience for anything Heinlein wrote
> or was connected with. If you're in this audience nothing I say will
> deter you, but for everyone else, skip this book.
This is true of most books by established authors only published
posthumously. There are exceptions, but for the most part the reason
the book wasn't published in the author's lifetime is immediately
obvious. This isn't to say that it ought not be published or read. I
am happy to have read Jane Austen's juvenalia, for example. But such
books are to be read in the spirit of learning more about the author
more than for their own sake.
Richard R. Hershberger
Bill Patterson
Well, that's certainly one way of taking it, but I got something else
out of it as well. First of all (agreeing with you), yes, it's an
ingratiating book, charming the reader along with it, and it did give
me some additional insights about a particular time in Heinlein's
career, when being ingratiating he viewed as a legitimate and
important part of his artistic toolkit (and went on to write Double
Star and The Door into Summer with a year or two thereafter, and that
sense of being ingratiating as an important goal of his writing is one
of the things he gave up in 1959), but I also got a look back at
myself and the world I inhabited as a pre-teenager. Now I was almost
forty when I read it, but I got a sense of having the input of an
experienced adult commenting about things I had experienced myself,
and my world expanded, and I better understood thinks like
interactions I had with an Ecadorian foreign exchange student when I
was in high school (which would have been, let's see, thirteen or
fourteen years after the events of the book and twenty-five years or
so before the book was published.
Quadibloc
I've always felt that since apparently some men lack real empathy and
concern for women as human beings, pointing out that in addition to
causing unjustified life-long feelings of shame and guilt, in addition
to taking away a great deal of its victims' ability to ever be happy
again, that rape also is a "waste" of a resource might at least reach
additional unconcerned men, to obtain their support as well for
greater efforts to suppress this crime.
Of course, too, we know _why_ the Aztecs sacrificed virgins. To have
their young men encouraged to commit aggression against others as a
way of obtaining wives. Other societies have tolerated polygamy
apparently to the same end, given their past careers of expansion by
fire and sword. Or make that fire, sword, and flying airplanes into
buildings.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> Which in turn reminds me of Miram Allen deFord's essay in
> F&SF in 1956, entitled "News for Dr. Richardson," which
> begins, "I am going to tell Dr. Richardson a secret. Women
> are not walking sex organs. They are human beings. They are
> people, just like men." (Richardson had written a previous
> article suggesting that to keep the all-male Mars exploration
> team happy, some women should be sent along to, um, relieve
> their tensions.
Either they can send a team of astronauts to Mars which consists of a
number of husband-wife teams, or they can select their astronauts from
the (admittedly smaller, given their continuing lack of opportunity)
pool of qualified candidates who are inherently superior in their
ability to survive without sexual gratification... yes, I do mean
sending an all-woman team of astronauts to Mars.
Of course, the inference that Dr. Richardson didn't know that was
unjustified. The fact that prostitutes exist doesn't prove women
aren't people.
Male weakness doesn't mean women _should_ be treated like commodities,
only that there is the temptation to do so.
Also, it is known from Antarctic experience - recent Antarctic
experience, IIRC - that sexual jealousy is highly disruptive. A crew
of five men and two women can get along with mutual respect and no
hanky-panky for a couple of weeks on the Space Shuttle, but, no, I
would not be inclined to consider such a crew ideal for a voyage to
Mars.
John Savard
Dorothy J Heydt
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>On Jun 18, 3:35�pm, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>> Which in turn reminds me of Miram Allen deFord's essay in
>> F&SF in 1956, entitled "News for Dr. Richardson," which
>> begins, "I am going to tell Dr. Richardson a secret. �Women
>> are not walking sex organs. �They are human beings. �They are
>> people, just like men." �(Richardson had written a previous
>> article suggesting that to keep the all-male Mars exploration
>> team happy, some women should be sent along to, um, relieve
>> their tensions.
>
>Either they can send a team of astronauts to Mars which consists of a
>number of husband-wife teams, or they can select their astronauts from
>the (admittedly smaller, given their continuing lack of opportunity)
>pool of qualified candidates who are inherently superior in their
>ability to survive without sexual gratification... yes, I do mean
>sending an all-woman team of astronauts to Mars.
Well, that was the last paragraph or two of deFord's article.
Suppose, she suggests, that we were to reverse the terms?
Suppose we were to send to Mars a team of women scientists ...
and take along a few male, um, what word shall I use, gigolos
maybe? to relieve *their* sexual tensions. I am sure this
suggestion would shock Dr. Richardson to the core.
>
>Of course, the inference that Dr. Richardson didn't know that was
>unjustified. The fact that prostitutes exist doesn't prove women
>aren't people.
But it might provide clues to the fact that so many people,
mostly men, think women aren't people.
>
>Male weakness doesn't mean women _should_ be treated like commodities,
>only that there is the temptation to do so.
And that a reputable scientist, male, assumes that it's
perfectly all right to accommodate their temptation with
female commodities.
>
>Also, it is known from Antarctic experience - recent Antarctic
>experience, IIRC - that sexual jealousy is highly disruptive. A crew
>of five men and two women can get along with mutual respect and no
>hanky-panky for a couple of weeks on the Space Shuttle, but, no, I
>would not be inclined to consider such a crew ideal for a voyage to
>Mars.
Why, then, not just send an all-male or all-female crew with
no "comfort people" of any sex, and if they feel urges, let
'em masturbate.
I have no sympathy for any person, male female or what-have-you,
who says "I need sex." S/h/it doesn't. S/h/it only *wants*
it.
Quadibloc
> I have no sympathy for any person, male female or what-have-you,
> who says "I need sex." S/h/it doesn't. S/h/it only *wants*
> it.
It is true enough that it is not a necessity of _individual_ survival.
It is, however, a necessity of reproduction (well, at least it _was_,
until modern technology came along) and humans are mortal.
As a result, selection would be expected to cause people to seek sex
with an urgency comparable to that with which they seek air, water, or
food. People with a habit of forgetting to breathe would not have
lived to be our ancestors... and those who omitted to have sex would
similarly have been eliminated.
This doesn't mean that I have "sympathy" in the sense of accepting
this as an excuse for rape. But it does mean that I think it would be
a terrible mistake to underestimate the disruptive potential of sexual
desire in our social planning. Politicians who would have enough sense
not to starve a lion, or get between a mother bear and her cubs,
however, allow the economy to malfunction so that young men cannot
quickly earn enough money to start a family once they leave school -
and they wonder why there are soaring crime rates.
John Savard
Bill Patterson
> But it might provide clues to the fact that so many people,
> mostly men, think women aren't people.
It's not *mostly* and it's not limited to men and it's not limited to
thinking about women as not being people. It's darned near
universal: almost NOBODY thinks of other people as people except
sometimes for a tiny group of others they think of as "us."
Teaching Empathy as a foundation for getting along with other people
is one of the major tasks of civilization, and it's the one you can
gauge the health of a culture by, and we've failed the test. I
believe you, Dorothy, are about my age or a little older, perhaps.
During my lifetime I've seen conventions that make life easier be
forgotten (remember walking on the right side of the aisle or
sidewalk?) and public displays of boorishness and pig-selfishness
become the norm rather than the exception. Even if it were possible
to talk on a cell phone while meeting with other people, for instance,
in 1961 (I was 10) it would have been regarded as shockingly rude.
And it is shockingly rude, among a host of other shockingly rude
behaviours we have become accustomed to suffering multiple times a day.
Dorothy J Heydt
Bill Patterson <WHPat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Teaching Empathy as a foundation for getting along with other people
>is one of the major tasks of civilization, and it's the one you can
>gauge the health of a culture by, and we've failed the test. I
>believe you, Dorothy, are about my age or a little older, perhaps.
Currently 67; born 1942. So about a decade older than you.
>During my lifetime I've seen conventions that make life easier be
>forgotten (remember walking on the right side of the aisle or
>sidewalk?) and public displays of boorishness and pig-selfishness
>become the norm rather than the exception. Even if it were possible
>to talk on a cell phone while meeting with other people, for instance,
>in 1961 (I was 10) it would have been regarded as shockingly rude.
>And it is shockingly rude, among a host of other shockingly rude
>behaviours we have become accustomed to suffering multiple times a day.
Not for nothing is one of Judith Martin's books entitled
_Miss Manners Saves Civilization._ If only she could.
Wayne Throop
: It is, however, a necessity of reproduction (well, at least it _was_,
: until modern technology came along) and humans are mortal.
Not exactly on the top-ten list of objectives of an early mars mission.
Further, the turkey baster is fairly elementary technology
to be calling "modern".
: As a result, selection would be expected to cause people to seek sex
: with an urgency comparable to that with which they seek air, water, or
: food.
Nonsense. Air water and food are not even similar to each *other*
in their urgency-of-seeking, let alone to reproduction which has time
horizons orders of magnitude longer.
: This doesn't mean that I have "sympathy" in the sense of accepting
: this as an excuse for rape.
It does however mean your basis of thinking about it is sillybonkers.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
David Harmon
djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote,
>Which in turn reminds me of Miram Allen deFord's essay in
>F&SF in 1956, entitled "News for Dr. Richardson," which
>begins, "I am going to tell Dr. Richardson a secret. Women
>are not walking sex organs. They are human beings. They are
>people, just like men." (Richardson had written a previous
>article suggesting that to keep the all-male Mars exploration
>team happy, some women should be sent along to, um, relieve
>their tensions.
Description of the mars mission from the beginning of _Stranger in a
Strange Land_
" But the physical danger was judged to be less important than the
psychological stresses. Eight humans, crowded together like monkeys for
almost three Terran years, had better get along much better than humans
usually did. An all-male crew had been vetoed as unhealthy and socially
unstable from lessons learned earlier. A ship's company of four married
couples had been decided on as optimum, if the necessary specialties
could be found in such a combination. "
Dorothy J Heydt
Quadibloc
> On Jun 19, 1:22 pm, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
> > But it might provide clues to the fact that so many people,
> > mostly men, think women aren't people.
>
> It's not *mostly* and it's not limited to men and it's not limited to
> thinking about women as not being people. It's darned near
> universal: almost NOBODY thinks of other people as people except
> sometimes for a tiny group of others they think of as "us."
>
> Teaching Empathy as a foundation for getting along with other people
> is one of the major tasks of civilization, and it's the one you can
> gauge the health of a culture by, and we've failed the test.
If ten thousand people in South Korea or Japan were killed by a North
Korean nuke this would cause an unprecedented level of shock and
sorrow.
If the U.S. prevented this by invading North Korea, and a hundred
thousand people there - mostly innocent civilians who didn't choose
the kind of government they were cursed with - died, this would be
regretted, but regarded as an unavoidable necessity.
Since all innocent people are fundamentally equal, or equal "in God's
eyes", as some might say, doesn't that mean there's something terribly
wrong with us?
Maybe. If I could think of a way in which that we could be cured of
this defect - and yet still have the will to fight to survive in a
world that isn't as peaceful as we might like - I would be more
inclined to view this as a problem that needs to be fixed.
To my Stone Age way of thinking, the problem is not that we tend to
dehumanize enemy civilians. The problem is that there still exist
warlike dictators that might put innocent people in the situation of
being enemy civilians. What we need is a more peaceful world to live
in, not to become too nice to survive in the one we have.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> Nonsense. Air water and food are not even similar to each *other*
> in their urgency-of-seeking, let alone to reproduction which has time
> horizons orders of magnitude longer.
True enough. If I never oversimplified, we would be here all day.
I can't really blame you for feeling that my views are crazy. After
all, they sound like the beginning of an argument for taking rights
away from women.
Not talking about certain things because we're afraid of where the
argument might lead, though, is not a good idea. It leads, for
example, to ignoring the role of human population levels in resource
consumption and pollution.
Just on the newsstand the other day, I noticed a Scientific American
special with an article on that. But the article was sunnily
optimistic. No, slowing population growth doesn't mean horrors like
China's one-child policy! All we need to do is give women equal
rights, and the problem will solve itself.
Aside from the question of whether or not legal abortion doesn't
deserve to be described as a horror on the scale of Negro slavery,
another article I read noted that the problem of piracy in Somalia is
caused by all these young men in poverty without opportunities.
It's always young men, it seems, who join criminal gangs or become
terrorists, or whatnot, when their economic opportunities are limited.
What drives them and not other people?
Recognizing that what it is that they lack is the economic resources
to found a family - not silk shirts or video games - lets you know
what level of economic development is the critical priority for a
given area based on its social and cultural conditions. If you empower
women in one Third World country enough so that they can go to clinics
and get IUDs without being beaten by their husbands, you will succeed
in controlling its population. If you empower women in another Third
World country so that they support themselves and avoid marriage,
though, don't be surprised if a few decades down the road you see the
emergence of a violent terrorist movement that overthrows the
government.
Stuff that's on a DUH level of obviousness is being neglected thanks
to political correctness. I am not amused.
John Savard
Mike Ash
<614b9f14-6eaf-4965...@y6g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> It's always young men, it seems, who join criminal gangs or become
> terrorists, or whatnot, when their economic opportunities are limited.
>
> What drives them and not other people?
>
> Recognizing that what it is that they lack is the economic resources
> to found a family - not silk shirts or video games - lets you know
> what level of economic development is the critical priority for a
> given area based on its social and cultural conditions. If you empower
> women in one Third World country enough so that they can go to clinics
> and get IUDs without being beaten by their husbands, you will succeed
> in controlling its population. If you empower women in another Third
> World country so that they support themselves and avoid marriage,
> though, don't be surprised if a few decades down the road you see the
> emergence of a violent terrorist movement that overthrows the
> government.
Have you ever noticed that poor countries are the ones with the highest
population growth rate?
From the evidence, it would appear that poor young men with no economic
opportunities have no trouble obtaining sex or making babies. A lot more
of those babies die than would in a richer country, but, at the risk of
sounding extremely callous, they make up for it in volume.
I think your theory needs some more work.
--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Quadibloc
> Have you ever noticed that poor countries are the ones with the highest
> population growth rate?
>
> From the evidence, it would appear that poor young men with no economic
> opportunities have no trouble obtaining sex or making babies. A lot more
> of those babies die than would in a richer country, but, at the risk of
> sounding extremely callous, they make up for it in volume.
>
> I think your theory needs some more work.
In poor countries, the economic dependence of women on men is
increased and not decreased.
The young men with the problem are ones who have less economic
opportunities relative to others immediately around them. Some
proportion o fmen, though, as they get older, manage to have enough
money to start a family by the local standards for what is needed to
do this.
John Savard
Wayne Throop
: I can't really blame you for feeling that my views are crazy. After
: all, they sound like the beginning of an argument for taking rights
: away from women.
The conclusion you might or might not be headed towards has nothing
to do with why your assumptions are sillybonkers.
: Stuff that's on a DUH level of obviousness is being neglected thanks
: to political correctness. I am not amused.
Your assumptions about what motivates people are indeed "duh",
but probably not in the sense you mean.
Mike Ash
<2bc80d60-8736-46bf...@d25g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
So your claim is that the high rate of population growth in poor
countries comes entirely from men who dug themselves somewhat out of
poverty, married late, and then (apparently) had a ton of children?
Again, this does not appear to fit the facts.
Kurt Busiek
In a Savard post? You're kidding me.
All the troubles the world faces everywhere are caused by Muslims,
Communists and a lack of available nookie. We must protect our freedom
and ideals by never forgetting that American men are ravening beasts
who will riot in the streets killing Muslims unless we make their lives
better by quashing the Muslims (and the Commies) and making sure
there's enough available nookie to keep them quiescent.
These horrible ravening beasts are the best the world has to offer, and
in the name of freedom and idealism, we must make sure that anyone that
doesn't kowtow to their ravening beastly needs has their freedom
suppressed, and the ideals that we hold dear should be abandoned where
they conflict with this, so we can spread freedom and idealism by
force. Out of fear of outsiders and fear of ourselves. And in the
hopes of securing nookie for all who count -- that is, Western males
who don't follow unsettling religions -- because they're horrible
people who could turn rapist and murderer at any moment if they don't
get enough nookie, and therefore are the world's guardians of freedom
and idealism.
I wish I was making that up...
kdb
Quadibloc
> So your claim is that the high rate of population growth in poor
> countries comes entirely from men who dug themselves somewhat out of
> poverty, married late, and then (apparently) had a ton of children?
>
> Again, this does not appear to fit the facts.
No, it doesn't. Depending on what you mean by "somewhat out of
poverty".
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that since most poor
countries have strong religious beliefs present, the overwhelming
majority of children are born within marriage in them. They are born
to peasant farmers who are living in poverty. The age difference
between men and women in marriage also does tend towards, say, 10
years or more in a poor country, rather than 2 years as in the
advanced countries.
Because women die in childbirth, or are not given as much care as
children - or simply because, in a conservative nation, they are less
mobile than men, less likely to go to the big city in search of
opportunity (at least not *respectable* women: note here that
gonorrhoea causes infertility) many developing countries suffer from
unrest. Unrest they wouldn't have if all those young men could get
good jobs paying enough to let them send for brides from the
countryside to join them.
Now, you might argue, why did they go to the big city? Why didn't they
stay in the countryside, filled with contented married peasant
farmers? Beside the lure of an Internet connection, there is the fact
that if you have brothers, you can't both inherit the whole farm,
either one can inherit, or each can get half, or they can share. The
farms over there in the poor countries are small enough already. Think
primogeniture.
John Savard
Mike Ash
wrote:
> Communists and a lack of available nookie. [snip]
>
> I wish I was making that up...
Yeah, I know. The thing is, usually his wackiness is more crazy beliefs
than being directly counterfactual. He mainly talks about human
motivation and behavior, and that's fuzzy business even if he is clearly
outside the fuzz.
Here, he's actually going directly against reality, and I wanted to see
how he stood up to that. (Answer: not well.)
Dan Tilque
news:KLI5x...@kithrup.com...
> In article
> <65f5b536-08f1-4a58...@v23g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,
> Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>>
>>Either they can send a team of astronauts to Mars which consists of a
>>number of husband-wife teams, or they can select their astronauts from
>>the (admittedly smaller, given their continuing lack of opportunity)
>>pool of qualified candidates who are inherently superior in their
>>ability to survive without sexual gratification... yes, I do mean
>>sending an all-woman team of astronauts to Mars.
>
> Well, that was the last paragraph or two of deFord's article.
> Suppose, she suggests, that we were to reverse the terms?
> Suppose we were to send to Mars a team of women scientists ...
> and take along a few male, um, what word shall I use, gigolos
> maybe? to relieve *their* sexual tensions. I am sure this
> suggestion would shock Dr. Richardson to the core.
Reminds me of a short story from long ago (the 50s or so). Don't
remember the title/author exactly. I think the title was The Mighty
<name> (a personal name which I can't remember) and the author may have
been Eric Frank Russell. However, I can't find the story in the ISFDB,
so these suggestions are probably wrong.
Summary: The story was in the form of a history lecture about the first
manned expedition to Mars. When it came to selecting the crew, The
Powers That Be initially were going to select an all-male crew, but
there were protests from various quarters. To appease them, they decided
to randomly select the crew from all the graduates of the Space Academy.
Since male graduates outnumbered women graduates by a large ratio (at
least 10:1), TPTB figured they'd get an almost all-male crew anyway.
However, in the actual event, the crew turned out to be 29 women and 1
man.
Anyone recognize the story?
--
Dan Tilque
Butch Malahide
> "Dorothy J Heydt" <djhe...@kithrup.com> wrote in messagenews:KLI5x...@kithrup.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > In article
> > <65f5b536-08f1-4a58-89d2-7ae64fd74...@v23g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,
"Expedition", a short-short by Fredric Brown. "Mighty Maxon" was the
one male crew-member; the story explains how he came to have that
nickname.
Wayne Throop
: I think the title was The Mighty
Quinn? Boosh? Bee? Ducks? Um... Mouse?
"Even GI Gerbil and his Howling Groundhogs joined the desperate fray!"
--- The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse,
Leage of Super Rodents vs The Cow episode
Joy Beeson
wrote:
> Reminds me of a short story from long ago (the 50s or so). Don't
> remember the title/author exactly. I think the title was The Mighty
> <name> (a personal name which I can't remember) and the author may have
> been Eric Frank Russell. However, I can't find the story in the ISFDB,
> so these suggestions are probably wrong.
>
> Summary: The story was in the form of a history lecture about the first
> manned expedition to Mars. When it came to selecting the crew, The
> Powers That Be initially were going to select an all-male crew, but
> there were protests from various quarters. To appease them, they decided
> to randomly select the crew from all the graduates of the Space Academy.
> Since male graduates outnumbered women graduates by a large ratio (at
> least 10:1), TPTB figured they'd get an almost all-male crew anyway.
> However, in the actual event, the crew turned out to be 29 women and 1
> man.
>
> Anyone recognize the story?
>
I read it in a story collection in the high-school assembly hall. (Our
library covered one wall.) That would have been between 1957 and
1959; given school budgets, the book was probably old.
I believe the title was "Mighty Maxwell".
Joy Beeson
--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ -- sewing
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.
Greg Goss
>Summary: The story was in the form of a history lecture about the first
>manned expedition to Mars. When it came to selecting the crew, The
>Powers That Be initially were going to select an all-male crew, but
>there were protests from various quarters. To appease them, they decided
>to randomly select the crew from all the graduates of the Space Academy.
>Since male graduates outnumbered women graduates by a large ratio (at
>least 10:1), TPTB figured they'd get an almost all-male crew anyway.
>However, in the actual event, the crew turned out to be 29 women and 1
>man.
>
>Anyone recognize the story?
The story (as my memory is stirred by the description) takes the form
of a speech from some dignitary (Academy president? World President?
I forget) to the crew just before launch. It goes into great depths
about how their gender is stronger and better able to handle the
rigors of space, and how they are expected to be gentle with the one
member of the opposite sex that has been included on the mission. It
is only in the last sentence that we discover it's an almost-all-women
crew.
Could be a Russel. It's been a long time since I read it.
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
Butch Malahide
> On Sun, 21 Jun 2009 01:12:37 GMT, "Dan Tilque" <dtil...@verizon.net>
> wrote:
> > Reminds me of a short story from long ago (the 50s or so). Don't
> > remember the title/author exactly. I think the title was The Mighty
> > <name> (a personal name which I can't remember) and the author may have
> > been Eric Frank Russell. However, I can't find the story in the ISFDB,
> > so these suggestions are probably wrong.
>
> > Summary: The story was in the form of a history lecture about the first
> > manned expedition to Mars. When it came to selecting the crew, The
> > Powers That Be initially were going to select an all-male crew, but
> > there were protests from various quarters. To appease them, they decided
> > to randomly select the crew from all the graduates of the Space Academy.
> > Since male graduates outnumbered women graduates by a large ratio (at
> > least 10:1), TPTB figured they'd get an almost all-male crew anyway.
> > However, in the actual event, the crew turned out to be 29 women and 1
> > man.
>
> > Anyone recognize the story?
>
> I read it in a story collection in the high-school assembly hall. (Our
> library covered one wall.) That would have been between 1957 and
> 1959; given school budgets, the book was probably old.
Could it have been Clifton Fadiman's 1958 anthology _Fantasia
Mathematica_? That's where I read it.
> I believe the title was "Mighty Maxwell".
Close; actually it was "Mighty Maxon". I mean, that's the nickname
they gave the male crewman; the title of the *story* was "Expedition",
by Frederic Brown, as I mentioned earlier.
Mike Schilling
ISTR another story, where the crew of a space flight are described as
something like ":the twenty and the four"; the twist ending being, of
course, that the twenty are women and the four men.
Dorothy J Heydt
human population of Mars numbered sixty (one woman had had
twins).
>ISTR another story, where the crew of a space flight are described as
>something like ":the twenty and the four"; the twist ending being, of
>course, that the twenty are women and the four men.
Dammit, I remember that phrase too, and the fact that they
were keeping the meaning of it Dead Secret. But neither
title nor author.
Quadibloc
(in an expression of what characterizes some of my postings, not an
expression of his own opinion)
> All the troubles the world faces everywhere are caused by Muslims,
> Communists and a lack of available nookie.
I do regret that my postings have impressed you so unfavorably.
I make no apology for believing that countries like the United States
of America, or Canada, or Norway, or Denmark, or Greece, or Israel are
examples of countries where people are free... and that they are
indeed "the best the world has to offer".
Nor do I apologize for noting that Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, Kim
Jong-Il, Hu Jintao, and Medvedev and Putin are causing a lot of
trouble in this world.
Russia, although having cast off Communism, has now embraced a toxic
nationalism that led them to driving the Chechens into the arms of al-
Qaeda through indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and, later, it
promoted an uprising among Russians in Georgia (who were settled there
by Stalin during the Russian Communist occupation of Georgia) using
false claims of persecution as a pretext for annexing part of that
country, in a manner reminiscent of Hitler's annexation of the
Sudetenland.
I realize that people are being told by the respectable and proper
news media that Osama bin Laden is every bit as unrepresentative of
the Muslim world as Timothy McVeigh is of Americans. How dare I differ
from the wise counsel of the politically-correct?
Well, it certainly is a core American value, and one I support as
well, that all people should be free to practise their own religious
belief, and of course this includes Islam.
But the Islamic world is not just like America. It isn't a place of
pluralistic values against which Osama bin Laden stands out in stark
contrast. In many places in the Islamic world, minority non-Muslims
are persecuted in one way or another. And the hostility towards Israel
endemic in the Muslim world is another symptom of this - while it is
true that Palestinians today are in an awkward situation, the cause of
that situation is the past attempts of Arab countries to drive Israel
into the sea, and suicide bombings and other terrorist acts.
Basically, the Arab outrage in 1948 when Palestine was partitioned
had, at its root, the belief that Jews, not being Muslims, were so
inferior that the idea of Jews rebelling against persecution and
violence by Muslims, and insisting on governing themselves separately,
was an offence against God. Until this kind of thinking is stamped out
completely, the mentality behind terrorism will still be rampant in
the Islamic world. They have to get it through their heads that
fairness is for everyone, not just for Muslims, and if they treat non-
Muslims unfairly, this can and will have territorial consequences for
them, and there's no use crying about it.
And then there's the other little matter.
I also do not apologize for encouraging our politicians to recognize
that human beings still have an animal nature, despite their cultural
accomplishments. Things like hunger and fear will rip away our
civilized veneer.
To maintain a peaceful and ordered society, one that is able to
function efficiently and therefore to maintain and defend itself, the
government should act to maintain contentment among the people. This
becomes difficult when one does not know how to define or measure
contentment.
So one sees people arguing that, yes, fewer people own houses and cars
than in 1950, but boy, look at all the computers and color TV sets
we've got. The claim that we're not as wealthy now as in the early
1960s, then, must be silly!
But they're ignoring the fact that a car is what you use for taking a
girl out on a date, and a house is where you raise a family. Love and
personal relationships are more important to human happiness than
electronic toys.
As I've noted, I don't think that Americans are a mass of slavering
rapists. I think that discontent will find other manifestations. Among
those who are poorest and most alienated, people who can't find jobs
making cars will instead try to get money selling drugs. Elsewhere,
discontent might manifest itself in an unrealistic degree of labor
union militancy - leading to premature plant closures.
The solution to economic difficulties is obvious. Print more money and
hand it out to stimulate the economy. But that will just cause
inflation, and plunge the country into debt, unless the appropriate
precautions are taken.
Basically, one wants to give everyone who is unemployed the
opportunity to work... without increasing, in the slightest, the
amount of foreign products the country imports. Imports can only be
allowed to increase in response to a successful increase in exports -
just like a family can only increase its spending in response to an
increase in its cash income.
One does not want the kind of protectionist measures that cause every
country to radically decrease its imports. But if countries aren't
allowed to raise tariffs in a controlled way to permit them to
stimulate their own domestic economies, and they aren't under current
international trade agreements, then they don't dare stimulate their
economies enough to put their labor force into full production. There
is no excuse for a country with such abundant resources as the United
States to suffer from unemployment. Enough farmland, enough mines, and
enough factories exist to produce abundance for all Americans.
But that means we do have to consciously choose jobs for everyone over
a higher standard of living, built on cheap imports, for the lucky
few.
John Savard
Dan Tilque
Thank you. That's it. I'd remembered everything about the story except
for those pesky names (title/author/characters).
--
Dan Tilque
Kurt Busiek
> On Jun 20, 2:27�pm, Kurt Busiek <k...@busiek.com> wrote:
>
> (in an expression of what characterizes some of my postings, not an
> expression of his own opinion)
>
>> All the troubles the world faces everywhere are caused by Muslims,
>> Communists and a lack of available nookie.
>
> I do regret that my postings have impressed you so unfavorably.
So you decided to type it all over again, in the apparent hope that
doing so would be more convincing the four-hundred-and-seventh time.
Your simultaneous conviction that the best the world has to offer are
demented animals one hairtrigger away from an orgy of rape and murder,
along with your apparent conviction that the very ideals that lead to
beliefs like "Those who would trade liberty for security deserve
neither" are best maintained by trading liberty for security would be
sad, if they weren't so...
Nah. They're just sad. In a freakish, cognitively dissonant,
theater-of-the-absurd way.
kdb
Mike Ash
wrote:
> On 2009-06-20 22:46:01 -0700, Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> said:
>
> > On Jun 20, 2:27�pm, Kurt Busiek <k...@busiek.com> wrote:
> >
> > (in an expression of what characterizes some of my postings, not an
> > expression of his own opinion)
> >
> >> All the troubles the world faces everywhere are caused by Muslims,
> >> Communists and a lack of available nookie.
> >
> > I do regret that my postings have impressed you so unfavorably.
>
> So you decided to type it all over again, in the apparent hope that
> doing so would be more convincing the four-hundred-and-seventh time.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Louann Miller
@news.eternal-september.org:
>> So you decided to type it all over again, in the apparent hope that
>> doing so would be more convincing the four-hundred-and-seventh time.
>
> When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and can't change the
subject.
Bill Patterson
> Mike Ash <m...@mikeash.com> wrote in news:mike-0BB2B4.08100021062009
Nice aphorism (not the mangling of Maslow -- the fanatic one); I don't
think I've run into it before. It has a turn of the twentieth ring to
it -- Winston Churchhillish, maybe?
MajorOz
You have pretty much described the situation here in the Ozarks. I
weep for the young ladies recently graduated from high school. They
( I am generalizing here, there are always exceptions ) don't leave,
as nice ladies stay near family. The young men who are worth a shit
realize they have to GET THE HELL AWAY to amount to anything --
college, military, the big city/big job. The girls are then left with
the trash that remains, repeating the cycle.
cheers
oz, but the country is so lovely, and the hunting....the fishing......
MajorOz
You apparently have trouble understanding simple declarative
sentences. I guess terminal agenda-parasitism will do that.
cheers
oz
Mike Schilling
This from someone who can't understand a simple joke about song
titles.
William December Starr
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> said:
> I realize that people are being told by the respectable and proper
> news media that Osama bin Laden is every bit as unrepresentative of
> the Muslim world as Timothy McVeigh is of Americans. How dare I differ
> from the wise counsel of the politically-correct?
Ohmigod, you mean, Timothy McVeigh *is* representative of Americans?
-- wds (damn, I gotta get me a helmet)
William December Starr
Louann Miller <loua...@yahoo.com> said:
> A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and can't change
> the subject.
I've always heard that the other way around, with "won't" and
"can't" switched. (Or did you deliberately invert it there?)
-- wds
Butch Malahide
> In article <Wd2dnfWHAf--pqPXnZ2dnUVZ_jli4...@giganews.com>,
> Louann Miller <louan...@yahoo.com> said:
>
> > A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and can't change
> > the subject.
>
> I've always heard that the other way around, with "won't" and
> "can't" switched. (Or did you deliberately invert it there?)
Bartlett's (15th ed.) has this lame aphorism (attributed to Churchill)
in the form: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't
change the subject."
Quadibloc
> In article <dfaa5d4b-8843-4067-aaf0-c18cf0e12...@z16g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
> Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> said:
>
> > I realize that people are being told by the respectable and proper
> > news media that Osama bin Laden is every bit as unrepresentative of
> > the Muslim world as Timothy McVeigh is of Americans. How dare I differ
> > from the wise counsel of the politically-correct?
>
> Ohmigod, you mean, Timothy McVeigh *is* representative of Americans?
No. Nor do I mean that Osama is fully representative of Muslims. Just
not _quite_ as unrepresentative of them as Timothy McVeigh is of
Americans.
And how do I justify this horrifying conclusion?
Because Christians have been targets of *mob violence* in Indonesia.
Because the Egyptian government has to retain laws discriminating
against Christians there due to popular pressure. So large numbers of
people, not just a few isolated individuals, in at least some areas of
the Muslim world actually approve of the notion that non-Muslims are
inferior creatures - the notion that animates Osama bin Laden.
So George Wallace would have had to have masterminded a plot to fly
airplanes into buildings in black Africa before I could agree that
there was a legitimate case for a moral equivalence between the Muslim
world and the United States. Perhaps the politically-correct do have a
point, and the two are not quite as far apart as I would like to
think, though...
John Savard
Wayne Throop
: So George Wallace would have had to have masterminded a plot to fly
: airplanes into buildings in black Africa before I could agree that
: there was a legitimate case for a moral equivalence between the Muslim
: world and the United States.
Riiiiight. Which leads to the "well at least we're not as bad
as Saddam/Osama/Hitler/J.BadguyDujour" ploy. Which, even when true,
is lame, and is not exactly a rousing endorsement of the benevolence
of a status quo and/or course of action.
Therenow. Is that sufficiently godwinized? Prolly not, but I tried.
We thought about it for a long time, "Endeavor to persevere."
And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared
war on the Union.
--- Lone Watie
Quadibloc
> is not exactly a rousing endorsement
Not intended to be; the intent was to admit the other side did have a
point too: the Islamic world does not have a monopoly on bigotry.
John Savard
Louann Miller
9935-20a...@g20g2000vba.googlegroups.com:
> Bartlett's (15th ed.) has this lame aphorism (attributed to Churchill)
> in the form: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't
> change the subject."
Quoting from memory, so I'm not surprised the wording slipped. I knew I was
quoting but couldn't remember from who.
Butch Malahide
> "Dan Tilque" <dtil...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >Summary: The story was in the form of a history lecture about the first
> >manned expedition to Mars. When it came to selecting the crew, The
> >Powers That Be initially were going to select an all-male crew, but
> >there were protests from various quarters. To appease them, they decided
> >to randomly select the crew from all the graduates of the Space Academy.
> >Since male graduates outnumbered women graduates by a large ratio (at
> >least 10:1), TPTB figured they'd get an almost all-male crew anyway.
> >However, in the actual event, the crew turned out to be 29 women and 1
> >man.
>
> >Anyone recognize the story?
>
> The story (as my memory is stirred by the description) takes the form
> of a speech from some dignitary (Academy president? World President?
> I forget) to the crew just before launch. It goes into great depths
> about how their gender is stronger and better able to handle the
> rigors of space, and how they are expected to be gentle with the one
> member of the opposite sex that has been included on the mission. It
> is only in the last sentence that we discover it's an almost-all-women
> crew.
That's a different story: "Survival Ship" by Judith Merril. The bulk
of the story is a speech given *after* the launch, by the ship's
captain, to the female members of the crew. The final paragraph:
[BEGIN QUOTE]
Over the sober silence of the crew, the captain's voice rang out.
"Lieutenant Johnson," Melnick called to the golden-haired, sun-tanned
woman near the door, "will you call the men in from the tank rooms
now? They can finish their work after dinner."
[END QUOTE]
Butch Malahide
wrote:
That's "Survival Ship" by Judith Merril, the same story Greg Goss
asked about.
Mike Schilling
> On Jun 21, 2:35 pm, wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr)
> wrote:
>> In article
>> <dfaa5d4b-8843-4067-aaf0-c18cf0e12...@z16g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
>> Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> said:
>>
>>> I realize that people are being told by the respectable and proper
>>> news media that Osama bin Laden is every bit as unrepresentative
>>> of
>>> the Muslim world as Timothy McVeigh is of Americans. How dare I
>>> differ from the wise counsel of the politically-correct?
>>
>> Ohmigod, you mean, Timothy McVeigh *is* representative of
>> Americans?
>
> No. Nor do I mean that Osama is fully representative of Muslims.
> Just
> not _quite_ as unrepresentative of them as Timothy McVeigh is of
> Americans.
>
> And how do I justify this horrifying conclusion?
>
> Because Christians have been targets of *mob violence* in Indonesia.
Good Lord! I'm so relieved that undesirables have never been the
target of mob violence in the US.
Mike Ash
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
The best part of this is that if you bring up, say, persecution of
supposed Communists during the McCarthy era, he will probably go on at
length about how McCarthy was averting a terrible threat and the fact
that history has completely discredited him is just an evil plot by his
political enemies.
Mike Schilling
Right. I must have read it in (checks ISFDB) _Tomorrow, the Stars_
[1].
1.Edited by Fred Pohl under the pen name "Robert Heinlein"
Mike Schilling
I was thinking more of things like the Greenwood massacre.
Mike Ash
"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Well yes, but government persecution is at least in basically the same
category.
I imagine he'll come up with ways to make these other ones be a good
thing too, though.
Wayne Throop
: Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
: Not intended to be; the intent was to admit the other side did have a
: point too: the Islamic world does not have a monopoly on bigotry.
Yes, but taking the stance that "it's OK for us to push them around and
bully them, because a) we're not pushing and bullying them around as much
as Saddam/Osama/J.BadguyDujour is, b) we're not as evil towards them as
they are to us, and c) if we didn't get all macho and push them around,
it'd get all pent up and we'd explode and nuke them, so it's all for
their own good, really" is still pretty lame.
( I exagerate your position for effect... but only slightly.
You've used arguments that boil down to the above naic honestly t. )
Wayne Throop
: The best part of this is that if you bring up, say, persecution of
: length about how McCarthy was averting a terrible threat and the fact
: that history has completely discredited him is just an evil plot by his
: political enemies.
Oh no, not at all. He'll go on about how they weren't treated
as badly as scapegoats were treated by J.Badguy Dujour.
Hey, at least they weren't blackba..... um, at least nobody
was thrown in jai... um, at least nobody was execu...
well *fewer* had *really* bad things happen to them, so there.
Or so I'd expect.
Kurt Busiek
You missed the bit about "They want to force us to live live by their
rules, so we should force them to live life by our rules, even if it
means killing millions of them and coercing them with the threat of
destruction. Our rules are freedom, and therefore better."
And he seems genuinely baffled that anyone wouldn't appreciate being
forced at gunpoint to adopt Western values. I agree with him that
they're better, but I'm still able to see that exporting them at the
barrel of a gun is not freedom to those being forced into them.
kdb
Quadibloc
> And he seems genuinely baffled that anyone wouldn't appreciate being
> forced at gunpoint to adopt Western values. I agree with him that
> they're better, but I'm still able to see that exporting them at the
> barrel of a gun is not freedom to those being forced into them.
Oh, I can see _that_. The only reason I think we may need to use force
in that part of the world is to protect ourselves from force. With
"ourselves" defined broadly, to include Israelis and Danes and Coptic
Christians and Maronite Christians or the people of Darfur, Muslim as
well as Christian.
It's just that, given that terrorism is not as visible as tanks and
airplanes, putting a stop to it is likely to require extensive
intervention. The idea is to change the psychology of the region, so
that there is a deeply-ingrained sense that the notion of taking up
arms, instead of simply pleading or begging, to effect a change to a
perceived injustice can only lead to disaster, not to a desired
resolution... and an abandonment of any ambition to push around
members of other faiths. Apparently, the region suffers from a lack of
mono-amine oxidase.
Thus, I would expect, for example, that there should have been a
massive intervention in the Sudan long ago. The people being pushed
around by the Janjaweed should return home - in perfect safety,
because they are returning in triumph. The area of the country which
supported the misbehaving regime... would bear the costs of repairing
the damage from the conflict. And any attempts at rebellion are
crushed. The black people of the south, being liberated by us, both
Christian and Muslim, should be grateful, and get along in peace. The
Arabs of the north... all we ask of them is that they fight no more,
forever.
John Savard
David DeLaney
>Right. I must have read it in (checks ISFDB) _Tomorrow, the Stars_ [1].
>
>1.Edited by Fred Pohl under the pen name "Robert Heinlein"
...oKAYthen.
Dave "this makes my attempts at listing actual names even more convoluted, you
realize" DeLaney
PS: We never see a _crayon_ name.
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Quadibloc
> The best part of this is that if you bring up, say, persecution of
> supposed Communists during the McCarthy era, he will probably go on at
> length about how McCarthy was averting a terrible threat and the fact
> that history has completely discredited him is just an evil plot by his
> political enemies.
Oh, no. McCarthyism was genuinely bad.
People were being persecuted for any involvement with left-wing
beliefs in reaction to the cruelties and exploitations of the
Depression era. The genuine menace of Communist espionage was used as
a pretext to go after people who were loyal Americans, but whose
politics created problems for Big Business or for certain churches.
John Savard
MajorOz
...please continue. I haven't heard this one.
oz
Bill Patterson
>
> - Show quoted text -
Actually Judith Merril did more of the legwork than Pohl. Come to
think of it, I don't remember seeing any correspondence to or from
Pohl about this book at all - though of course, Merril may have been
fronting the couple's communication.
But, still, considering the amount of actual discussion of contents
that went on among the editorial team on Tomorrow, the Stars, I don't
think any of the four Heinlein credits in the Preface should have been
left out.
Another ridiculous fandom factoid made up out of thin air.
Matthias Warkus
[on women]
> inherently superior in their
> ability to survive without sexual gratification...
Boy, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
mawa
Matthias Warkus
> On Jun 19, 2:22�pm, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>
>> I have no sympathy for any person, male female or what-have-you,
>> who says "I need sex." �S/h/it doesn't. �S/h/it only *wants*
>> it.
>
> It is true enough that it is not a necessity of _individual_ survival.
>
> It is, however, a necessity of reproduction (well, at least it _was_,
> until modern technology came along) and humans are mortal.
>
> As a result, selection would be expected to cause people to seek sex
> with an urgency comparable to that with which they seek air, water, or
> food. People with a habit of forgetting to breathe would not have
> lived to be our ancestors... and those who omitted to have sex would
> similarly have been eliminated.
>
> This doesn't mean that I have "sympathy" in the sense of accepting
> this as an excuse for rape.
Liar.
mawa
Matthias Warkus
> Thus, I would expect, for example, that there should have been a
> massive intervention in the Sudan long ago. The people being pushed
> around by the Janjaweed should return home - in perfect safety,
> because they are returning in triumph. The area of the country which
> supported the misbehaving regime... would bear the costs of repairing
> the damage from the conflict.
Yeah, because of course in any kind of conflict, how nonconventional
and asymmetric it may be, there are always precise regions where each
of the conflicting groups are based.
mawa
Matthias Warkus
> On Jun 20, 5:39�pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> On Jun 20, 1:45�pm, Mike Ash <m...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>>
>>> So your claim is that the high rate of population growth in poor
>>> countries comes entirely from men who dug themselves somewhat out of
>>> poverty, married late, and then (apparently) had a ton of children?
>>
>>> Again, this does not appear to fit the facts.
>>
>> No, it doesn't. Depending on what you mean by "somewhat out of
>> poverty".
>>
>> I could be wrong, but my understanding is that since most poor
>> countries have strong religious beliefs present, the overwhelming
>> majority of children are born within marriage in them. They are born
>> to peasant farmers who are living in poverty. The age difference
>> between men and women in marriage also does tend towards, say, 10
>> years or more in a poor country, rather than 2 years as in the
>> advanced countries.
>>
>> Because women die in childbirth, or are not given as much care as
>> children - or simply because, in a conservative nation, they are less
>> mobile than men, less likely to go to the big city in search of
>> opportunity (at least not *respectable* women: note here that
>> gonorrhoea causes infertility) many developing countries suffer from
>> unrest. Unrest they wouldn't have if all those young men could get
>> good jobs paying enough to let them send for brides from the
>> countryside to join them.
>>
>> Now, you might argue, why did they go to the big city? Why didn't they
>> stay in the countryside, filled with contented married peasant
>> farmers? Beside the lure of an Internet connection, there is the fact
>> that if you have brothers, you can't both inherit the whole farm,
>> either one can inherit, or each can get half, or they can share. The
>> farms over there in the poor countries are small enough already. Think
>> primogeniture.
>>
>> John Savard
>
> You have pretty much described the situation here in the Ozarks. I
> weep for the young ladies recently graduated from high school. They
> ( I am generalizing here, there are always exceptions ) don't leave,
> as nice ladies stay near family. The young men who are worth a shit
> realize they have to GET THE HELL AWAY
Your region/country/continent is weird. In rural Europe, it's usually
the smart girls who leave and the dumb boys who'll stay (exaggerating a
little).
mawa
Matthias Warkus
> Of course, too, we know _why_ the Aztecs sacrificed virgins. To have
> their young men encouraged to commit aggression against others as a
> way of obtaining wives.
Say what?
mawa
Kurt Busiek
<War...@students.uni-marburg.de> said:
Hammer. Everything a nail.
Can't change mind, won't change subject.
Take your pick.
kdb
Ahasuerus
> On Jun 21, 5:03 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > > That's "Survival Ship" by Judith Merril, the same story Greg Goss
> > > asked about.
> >
> > Right. I must have read it in (checks ISFDB) _Tomorrow, the Stars_
> > [1].
> >
> > 1.Edited by Fred Pohl under the pen name "Robert Heinlein"
>
> think of it, I don't remember seeing any correspondence to or from
> Pohl about this book at all - though of course, Merril may have been
> fronting the couple's communication.
>
> But, still, considering the amount of actual discussion of contents
> that went on among the editorial team on Tomorrow, the Stars, I don't
> think any of the four Heinlein credits in the Preface should have been
> left out.
>
> Another ridiculous fandom factoid made up out of thin air.
This anthology was used as a guinea pig for "bizarre pseudonym cases"
at the time when ISFDB-2 was designed and implemented. It was
partially cleaned up after the fact, but there were some loose ends
left. I have changed it to credit Heinlein, Pohl, Merril, Truman
Talley and Walter Bradbury as per the introduction (we can remove the
last two if their contributions do not merit separate credits.) Sorry
about that!
Louann Miller
@news.nnrp.de:
Never will, the way he's going.
David Johnston
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>On Jun 19, 6:04�pm, Bill Patterson <WHPatter...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jun 19, 1:22 pm, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>>
>> > But it might provide clues to the fact that so many people,
>> > mostly men, think women aren't people.
>>
>> It's not *mostly* and it's not limited to men and it's not limited to
>> thinking about women as not being people. �It's darned near
>> universal: �almost NOBODY thinks of other people as people except
>> sometimes for a tiny group of others they think of as "us."
>>
>> Teaching Empathy as a foundation for getting along with other people
>> is one of the major tasks of civilization, and it's the one you can
>> gauge the health of a culture by, and we've failed the test.
>
>If ten thousand people in South Korea or Japan were killed by a North
>Korean nuke this would cause an unprecedented level of shock and
>sorrow.
>
>If the U.S. prevented this by invading North Korea, and a hundred
>thousand people there - mostly innocent civilians who didn't choose
>the kind of government they were cursed with - died, this would be
>regretted, but regarded as an unavoidable necessity.
Regarded by the time travellers?
David Johnston
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>Of course, too, we know _why_ the Aztecs sacrificed virgins. To have
>their young men encouraged to commit aggression against others as a
>way of obtaining wives.
No, what I know is that they killed man and woman alike. If anything
they preferred male sacrifices.
Mike Schilling
As I tell my kids when they won't try a new dish, "Good. More for me.".
Kurt Busiek
That was simply to demonstrate how women didn't need sex, of course,
and were therefore ideal for space missions.
kdb
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Not just Europe -- that's the pattern in most of Asia, too.
However, that's because the boys who stay stand to inherit the land,
and the girls who leave can reasonably expect to find work as
receptionists/salesclerks/factory girls/whatever.
In many parts of the U.S., though, inheritance isn't necessarily going
to happen at all*, and if it does it may well be a daughter who
inherits, rather than a son; meanwhile, it's easier for rural males to
find work elsewhere, as the receptionist/salesclerk/factory girl jobs
are being taken by city girls or immigrants, but there's a lot of
demand for mechanics/carpenters/construction workers.
==
* For one thing, fewer and fewer offspring WANT to inherit land;
they'd rather have their parents sell the homestead to developers or
agribusiness to pay for their retirement, and just leave cash, rather
than land, when they finally go.
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm selling my comic collection -- see http://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight0.html
Butch Malahide
That's where I looked it up before I posted my answer, but I probably
first read it in Worlds Beyond, the short-lived magazine edited by
Damon Knight.
Quadibloc
> However, that's because the boys who stay stand to inherit the land,
> and the girls who leave can reasonably expect to find work as
> receptionists/salesclerks/factory girls/whatever.
>
> In many parts of the U.S., though, inheritance isn't necessarily going
> to happen at all*, and if it does it may well be a daughter who
> inherits, rather than a son; meanwhile, it's easier for rural males to
> find work elsewhere, as the receptionist/salesclerk/factory girl jobs
> are being taken by city girls or immigrants, but there's a lot of
> demand for mechanics/carpenters/construction workers.
Of course, what I was thinking of was sub-Saharan Africa.
The boys who stand to inherit the land stay in the country; their
younger brothers go to the city desperately to find work.
The girls tend to stay at home, if their families can afford to feed
them until they marry. For a young woman to go to the city on her own
is very dangerous; it's all too easy to end up being tricked or
kidnapped into prostitution.
That's the sort of picture I was thinking of, and I didn't think it
was that strange - unfortunately.
John Savard
Bill Patterson
>
> - Show quoted text -
I appreciate the cleanup. If it would help, I can get from my notes
of the the Heinlein archive when it was still sealed a listing of the
appropriate correspondence that passed among the five of them. It's
all available now in the online archive, but godonly knows how it's
*organized* (for some values of "organized").
Both Truman (Mac") Talley and Walter Bradbury did participate in the
editorial process, but not to the same extent as Heinlein and Merril.
They both read and commented on the first and second round of
manuscript selections, for example.
If I had to put it in descending order of amount of work it would be
(1) Merril for doing all the legwork of gathering the nominated
stories and sending them around and getting the permissions on the
finished work; (2) Heinlein for general oversight of the selection
process plus the introduction; (3) Bradbury for more comments on
contents than Talley but (4) Talley did make some comments on
selection. (5) Pohl comes last simply because I dont recall any
direct input from him, but he may deserve to be higher on the list --
after Heinlein, say, but before Bradbury -- simply because his
participation might well be hidden in Merril's.
Ahasuerus
> of the the Heinlein archive when it was still sealed a listing of the
> appropriate correspondence that passed among the five of them. It's
> all available now in the online archive, but godonly knows how it's
> *organized* (for some values of "organized").
>
> Both Truman (Mac") Talley and Walter Bradbury did participate in the
> editorial process, but not to the same extent as Heinlein and Merril.
> They both read and commented on the first and second round of
> manuscript selections, for example.
>
> If I had to put it in descending order of amount of work it would be
> (1) Merril for doing all the legwork of gathering the nominated
> stories and sending them around and getting the permissions on the
> finished work; (2) Heinlein for general oversight of the selection
> process plus the introduction; (3) Bradbury for more comments on
> contents than Talley but (4) Talley did make some comments on
> selection. (5) Pohl comes last simply because I dont recall any
> direct input from him, but he may deserve to be higher on the list --
> after Heinlein, say, but before Bradbury -- simply because his
> participation might well be hidden in Merril's.
Thanks for the clarifications! I have copied the relevant section of
your post (and the URL of this message in the Google Groups archive)
to the Notes field of the ISFDB title record. Of course, feel free to
submit any changes/additions/deletions either here or directly via the
ISFDB interface -- submissions are usually processed within 2-24
hours. Admittedly, our editing interface is still clunky, but we are
working on improving it again now that we have more programmers on
staff.
Paul
ROTFLMAO!!
"McCarthyism" per se, was nothing more than a drunk finding a way
to scare people and gain political power. Didn't work for long. Hurt a
lot of people with drunken accusations along the way.
Pretty much any other explanation of it is rationalization.
-Paul
Joseph Nebus
>On Jun 21, 10:53=A0pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> John Savard
>...please continue. I haven't heard this one.
You know that once you hear it you can't un-hear it without a
massive neurological trauma.
--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... which the management can not promise will result just from
the hearing ...
Mike Schilling
> MajorOz <Maj...@centurytel.net> writes:
>
>> On Jun 21, 10:53=A0pm, Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>>> John Savard
>
>> ...please continue. I haven't heard this one.
>
> You know that once you hear it you can't un-hear it without a
> massive neurological trauma.
"The bad news is that, at least temporarily, you've lost a significant
amount of cognitive function. The good news is ..."
Piwne Oczy Ma
> Why, then, not just send an all-male or all-female crew with
> no "comfort people" of any sex, and if they feel urges, let
> 'em masturbate.
Don't be absurd. You actually want to design the mission in a way minimizing
the cost or what?
If we want efficiency we can simply continue to send the kind of low cost,
low risk robotic missions that serve little useful purpose, but at least are
both cheaper and more capable than manned missions.
But, obviously, we don't want efficiency, so the proper way to go about
exploring space is to use expensive crewed spaceships, preferably designed
by entrenched bureaucracies and manufactured by politically connected
companies in swing states.
Quadibloc
>
United States. Many prominent voices were heard criticising those who
called attention to the abuses of Nazism as troublemakers who were
risking drawing the country into war.
After Pearl Harbor, of course, America did enter World War II quickly
enough, but there were still those who grumbled that F.D.R. had
somehow engineered America's entry into the war. As a result, after
the war, information about how the PURPLE cipher was broken became
public considerably sooner than it would normally have been
declassified.
There was, of course, no witch-hunt of people like Lindbergh or Ford
who spoke up in favor of isolationism.
After World War II, when Russia exploded an atomic bomb in 1948, and
it was discovered that this was aided through espionage - and when the
countries of Eastern Europe were prevented, through subversion and
assassination, after the war, from returning to independence and
democracy, this came as a shock to the American people.
Unfortunately, this was exploited by a lot of people - not just
Senator Joseph McCarthy. While it wouldn't do to go after prominent
businessmen who put themselves in embarrasing positions before Pearl
Harbor, artists and intellectuals were fair game for people who wanted
to terrify non-conformists into submission by digging up dirt.
This tragedy created deep divisions among the American people. Under
John F. Kennedy, things were clear and plain - Communist Russia was an
evil and cruel dictatorship that was clearly America's enemy, but that
did not mean that people who didn't realize that back when the
government itself was saying otherwise during World War II, or who
mistakenly flirted with the wrong left-wing groups in the 1930s when
genuine injustice was rampant, ought to be hunted down - that would be
a truly un-American activity.
But there were those whose bitterness from the wounds of the McCarthy
era prevented them from seeing both sides of the truth, and thus as
the Vietnam War wore on, an influential segment of American public
opinion again tried to claim that the U.S.S.R. was not as bad as
generally believed. So you had the spectacle of Jane Fonda visiting
Hanoi, for example.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> If we want efficiency we can simply continue to send the kind of low cost,
> low risk robotic missions that serve little useful purpose, but at least are
> both cheaper and more capable than manned missions.
>
> But, obviously, we don't want efficiency, so the proper way to go about
> exploring space is to use expensive crewed spaceships, preferably designed
> by entrenched bureaucracies and manufactured by politically connected
> companies in swing states.
The useful purpose of sending people to Mars is this: so that they
might build a permanent colony there using the local resources to grow
food and construct habitation...
so that they will be out of reach of North Korean missiles and
whatever the Iranian government or al-Qaeda might seek to throw at
civilization... and even out of reach of Russia, should it decide to
follow up its annexation of Georgia's Sudeten Russians with a program
of world conquest.
The survival of liberty on the Earth is not certain. Thus, we must
make the survival of liberty (somewhere, period) certain the only
other way we can.
John Savard
Piwne Oczy Ma
> The useful purpose of sending people to Mars is this: so that they
> might build a permanent colony there using the local resources to grow
> food and construct habitation...
Oh, have mercy. I'm sick and tired of people thinking the universe is a
Heinlein juvenile (where Mars is just like the American West). The only
plausible way to "colonize" space is to do it with advanced automation. Are
commercial satellites crewed as envisioned by early SF? For obvious reasons
they are not.
If one really insists on building colonies capable of sustaining human life
outside of Earth that can be accomplished by robots, though I have no idea
why anyone would actually bother in the foreseeable future. Any exploration
of space should have the aim of exploiting space on behalf of Earth. When
will colonies on other planets be an asset rather than a drain on resources?
Not anytime soon. You want to subsidize human populations on other planets
when people on Earth are starving? Fine, but do it with your own, rather
than public, money.
Crewed human space missions are great publicity stunts, but otherwise a
waste of resources. Crews only cause needless problems. The best way to deal
with these problems is to limit the size of the crew, preferably to zero.
Louann Miller
@nemesis.news.neostrada.pl:
> Oh, have mercy. I'm sick and tired of people thinking the universe is a
> Heinlein juvenile (where Mars is just like the American West). The only
> plausible way to "colonize" space is to do it with advanced automation.
Don't be so mealy-mouthed. Tell us what you REALLY think.
(have you met Charlie Stross over there in the corner, btw?)
MajorOz
> When
> will colonies on other planets be an asset rather than a drain on resources?
> Not anytime soon. You want to subsidize human populations on other planets
> when people on Earth are starving? Fine, but do it with your own, rather
> than public, money.
...said American isolationists to astronaut Columbus.......
"no gold there, Chris; why bother?"
cheers
oz
Mike Schilling
Columbus was a dope.
David Johnston
If the Americas had been solid rock, with no land life whatsoever,
they would not have been wrong.
Mike Schilling
But Columbus wasn't looking for America. He was looking for Asia and
great wealth in the spice trade.