Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpfcso!daq From: daq@hpfcso.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: re: Love and War and Human Nature Message-ID: <9060027@hpfcso.HP.COM> Date: 15 Feb 90 20:42:00 GMT References: <1990Feb14.205012.16793@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA Lines: 81 Re: WAR and human nature >Speaking of soulmates, there was a boy I went out with in High School >(my first love) that I would have called my soulmate. He went into the >Marines at age 17 (I thought they only accepted 18 year olds??) and it >literally changed his personality. Before he went, he was rambunctious It is the goal of boot camp to change a person's personality to make them more controllable. >>understand and love. Humans are, by nature, greedy and selfish. >>I think I understand your feelings, but I am still cynical. I really >>do feel that war springs from something very fundamental in the >>human heart. I may not have argued very well for this, and I may >>be wrong, but I don't FEEL wrong. >Ayn Rand would never buy this. I don't FEEL you are right! :-) Human I have never read Ayn Rand, but a friend whose literary opinion I respect very much tells me she is quite tedious. Nevertheless, I will fully grant that feelings are not a good basis for a logical argument. However, the whole of human history certainly backs up my assertion. But I would like to explain what I meant about not feeling that I was wrong. You see, even though I am a peaceful man by nature, I have examined my heart very closely, and I know for a fact that there are circumstances under which I might declare war on my fellow men if I was in power or a postion to do so. I conclude that if I see this in myself, then there must be hundreds of millions of people who also have this within themselves. If this is the case, then we are NOT safe from war. And while you do not feel that I am right, my feeling certainly takes precedence if I declare war, because the only way you can stop me is to make war yourself. Do you see what I meant? I was not trying to say that I have better intuition or anything like that. I was merely saying that I see the black thing that causes war in my own heart, and I am just an average Joe, so I bet it is pretty common. >nature has long been an excuse for many destructive actions. It's >ironic, that "war" is excused as "human nature" but homosexuality >(much less destructive than war (sic)) is considered against "human >nature". I always felt that "human nature" was just about anything a >human might do and thus is a useless term. "I'm only human" is used as >an excuse not to grow, an excuse not to try. An excuse not to change. I think I see what you are trying to say, but not every person in the world is interested in "growth" and change. You must remember that many of us are highly motivated and educated and are probably still more under the grip of "human nature" than we realize. I WANT to grow and change, and I still find myself sitting in front of the television too much. I still find myself being petty at times and getting angry over things that I should not. Human nature stems from the fact that we are beings imprisoned in bodies with limited energy reserves and limited lifetimes. We are also subject to intense isolation as a consequence of our sensory input. You are absolutely right that "human nature" is too broad a term to be useful, but like you say, it is defined as whatever a human might do. I might confine that a bit to say that human nature is any action or motivation that might reasonalby be ascribed to a human that is probably sane. But it is precisely because that human nature and the human condition are so broad that I refuse to believe that one part of it will suddenly disappear from the race. >Subject: re: Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgh! >Gee, that's funny, this was my .plan (something people saw when they >checked if I was online) for quite some time. I agree totally, no >aaaaaaaaaarghuments here! Now don't go trying to turn this into a pun string. Doug (Cynic) Path: mit-eddie!mit-amt!snorkelwacker!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!jarthur!uci-ics!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpfcso!daq From: daq@hpfcso.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Passion and Life Message-ID: <9060025@hpfcso.HP.COM> Date: 15 Feb 90 03:17:04 GMT References: <9060024@hpfcso.HP.COM> Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA Lines: 14 >I was having a conversation with Betty Bo about the value >of frustration and anger in creativity. But I have been >wondering in a more general sense about how one maintains >passion in life. Sorry, that should have been Betsy Bo. I apologize for getting your alias wrong. That is the unpardonable sin. Sorry about that Bo. Cynic ---------- Path: mit-eddie!mit-amt!snorkelwacker!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!jarthur!uci-ics!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpfcso!daq From: daq@hpfcso.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Colorado Callahans Get Together Message-ID: <9060026@hpfcso.HP.COM> Date: 15 Feb 90 05:54:11 GMT Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA Lines: 10 Here is the report on the recent Colorado get together of Callahans posters: I met myself in my apartment and drank myself into a stupor. I had a hell of a time. I enjoyed it so much that I will probably do it again tomorrow. Doug Path: mit-eddie!mintaka!yale!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: boskone (a rather odd story...) Message-ID: <503@sixhub.UUCP> Date: 16 Feb 90 04:01:23 GMT References: <882@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <1990Feb14.144245.7620@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: *IX Public Access UNIX, Schenectady NY Lines: 31 In article <1990Feb14.144245.7620@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> adam@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (David C. Kaplowitz) writes: | A small elitist group (most of whom were pretty | influential tho ... ) decided they wanted to make the con their way. The group who do the work, did the work at Noreastcon, are going to do quite a bit of help at Chicon... that group. | It moved out to springfield, droped it's costume allowence, closed the | art show, ruled against filking, has a virtually invite only list, and | several other travesties. If you want to advertize your competing con that's fine, but there's some untruth and half-truth there... the con moved to Springfield because about 50 ill-behaved people trashed the hotel (actually several) and we were not very welcome at any hotel in Boston. Hall costumes were stopped because the hotel's mundane patrons complained, and those people are the bread and butter. The art show is not and never was closed, and the filk runs in two programming lines, one for bardic style. What that means is one for performers and one for sing-along. The con was advertized by handout at about eight other cons instead of running hospitality suites. The membership limit was set to all the people that three hotels could hold. Im surprised to see someone telling stories like that in here. If you want to tell about your convention, fine, please don't dump on ours. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc "Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon Path: mit-eddie!mit-amt!snorkelwacker!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!haste+ From: haste+@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Some Canasta, Some Physics, No Pizza, Less Music Message-ID: Date: 16 Feb 90 04:42:12 GMT Organization: Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 37 "I still haven't figured out what most of these cards are, but that's a red three. I feel it must be", says Oktave, and lays down a three of hearts. Dani looks in puzzlement at the two threes of hearts still in his hand and, reaching over, draws a card and discards it: Seven of spades. Oktave gives him a puzzled look: Someone here is not playing Canasta. He continues drawing, and flips over the second card: another seven of spades. A third. A fourth. "Maybe you'd better shuffle, Oktave. I could have *sworn* I used a one-to-one mapping, but..." >>Jilara watches the crowd of canasta and virtual musicians with >>bemusement. "Someone has been instrumental in toning up this place," >"Not musical puns!", cries Glitch. "Those are even cornea than the optical >ones we just squeeked through!" Clearly this is leading to either a spate of incredibly bad musical puns from the Glitch himself, or a reversion to even worse optical ones. A good time to raise a Profound Issue. "You know, in 'Mission of Gravity', you have a planet with a most unlikely shape. Call it 30,000 miles in polar diameter and 200,000 miles in equatorial diameter. Simak's contention is that the gravity is far stronger at the poles than at the equator. Now, I grant that the poles are far closer to the center of gravity. But very little of that gravity is vectored down. I'm not convinced that Simak is right, but my calculus isn't good enough to work the problem through. Any help on this problem would be appreciated, as it's pestered me for a good number of years now." ----- Dani Zweig haste+@andrew.cmu.edu Roses red and violets blew and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser Newsgroups: alt.callahans Path: mit-eddie!mintaka!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!pas From: pas@lcs.mit.edu (Paul A. Selkirk) Subject: Re: boskone (a rather odd story...) In-Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP's message of 16 Feb 90 04:01:23 GMT Message-ID: Sender: news@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu Organization: MIT References: <882@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> <1990Feb14.144245.7620@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> <503@sixhub.UUCP> Date: 16 Feb 90 03:44:22 Lines: 26 Now just a dogbone minute! We at Arisia have no bone to pick with NESFA or Boskone. adam@chaos.foo makes no claim to represent the committee, and indeed he does not. For one thing, we are not the "old Boskone committee," or any such. We have some former (and present) NESFAns, but the founders are the UMass/Amherst folk that put together Not-Just_Another-Con. We noted the conspicous and continued absence of any medium-to-large general-interest con in the Boston area, so we decided to do something about it. Thas all. The persistent rumors indicate, shall we say, a widespread ill-will generated by Boskone's sudden move out of the city. But what the hell, the Boskone committee can run any kind of con they like. We're just running the kind of con we like. OK? (flame off) (shameless-plug on) Come to our con. You'll have a great time. We've pandered to every special- interest group that bothered to get involved in the planning, so there's Something for Everyone. Arisia Feb 23-25, 1990 Lafayette Hotel (Downtown Crossings) Boston, Mass. $35 at the door Paul Selkirk, Registrar and factotum Newsgroups: alt.callahans Path: mit-eddie!mintaka!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!pas From: pas@lcs.mit.edu (Paul A. Selkirk) Subject: Exuse me... Message-ID: Sender: news@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu Organization: MIT Distribution: alt.callahans Date: 16 Feb 90 10:41:12 Lines: 17 A long-haired stranger entered the Place. "So this is callahans," he thought, much in the way he had first thought "so this is sushi," or "so this is Laphraoig." Making his way to the bar, a conversation caught his ear. Not wasting an opportunity to make new friends, he immediately sat down at the table and launched into a short harangue. With Feeling, as Arlo used to say. He pulled some flyers from a decrepit knapsack, and handed them all around. Having said his piece, he continued his trip to the bar, giving flyers to all who would take them. Finding an empty stool at the end, he ordered a Dragon Stout, and helped himself to the Free Lunch. Eventually, he left. (Sorry, no .sig -- can't stand them.) Path: mit-eddie!bbn!granite!mwolf From: mwolf@granite.cr.bull.com (Mary-Anne Wolf) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Once again, Love Keywords: Is it too soon? Message-ID: <1990Feb16.163034.29271@granite.cr.bull.com> Date: 16 Feb 90 16:30:34 GMT References: <3126@pur-phy> Reply-To: mwolf@granite.cr.bull.com (Mary-Anne Wolf) Organization: Bull HN Information Systems Inc. Lines: 51 A female voice comes from the vicinity of the ceiling. "Sir Bruce, I think you are correct in diagnosing your own symptoms as love, but whether it is 'too soon' is not really the issue. 'First year physics major' sounds like the object of your attention is maybe 18 or 19 years old. That young, it is very common to want to date many people, if only to find out what works and what does not. Many people don't really know what they want, even if they find it. She obviously likes you. She apparently trusts you. That does not imply that she would want to date you to the exclusion of all other men. I did fall heavily in love my sophmore year in college, and I did only see that one person thereafter, but both the exclusivity and the length were unusual among my friends. My mother used to tell me 'you don't have to marry them' in order to date them. My mother also used to tell me 'Faint heart never won fair lady.', which means that if you want love, it is necessary to make yourself vulnerable. If you let yourself care, you can be hurt. Avoiding the pain also misses the joy, and having done that for the last few years, I don't recommend it. In your situation I would do one of two things. The nice, kind, honorable thing to do is to hang on, remain her friend to whatever degree of specialness she defines. The advantage is that this is very nice to her. The disadvantage is that she may "fall in love" with someone else, and you will feel heartbroken and also torn because you would both want and not want to destroy that other relationship. I know myself well enough to predict that that is what I would do, and I'd also kick myself for it. The selfish, risky, somewhat nasty thing to do is to try to make HER jealous. This requires a co-conspiritor of the opposite sex, unless you don't mind using people. If the object of your attention is afraid of losing you to someone else, then she may want a more exclusive relationship with you, which is what I think you would like from her. The risk is that someone shy, or who does not know for certain that you are what she wants, will "cross you off the list" of available people, and perhaps giving up all hope even if she IS interested. It would also break HER heart, even if only temporarily, for which she won't thank you. You can also do both of the above, nice one first. I cannot recommend 'throwing yourself at her' because it sounds like that could scare her away and you two could not be friends after that. Hope this helps. Good luck!" Mary-Anne Wolf "All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals." -- Path: mit-eddie!mintaka!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: re: Love and War and Human Nature Message-ID: <505@sixhub.UUCP> Date: 16 Feb 90 13:51:26 GMT References: <1990Feb14.205012.16793@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> <9060027@hpfcso.HP.COM> Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: *IX Public Access UNIX, Schenectady NY Lines: 24 In article <9060027@hpfcso.HP.COM> daq@hpfcso.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom) writes: | I have never read Ayn Rand, but a friend whose literary opinion | I respect very much tells me she is quite tedious. Second-hand opinions are worth what you pay for them. I admit that I rarely reread anything other than _Atlas Shrugged_, but I have just started my third paperback copy (last year), after reading the first two to death over the course of a few decades. I have a hardcover copy at home, but the paper goes with me. I think that's a good place to start Rand, and the fact that it stays in print should give you a clue that there are a reasonable number of us who seriously like her. Some of the political stuff *does* get repititious on the reread, but the plot and characters are worth it. "my opinion" -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc "Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon Path: mit-eddie!mintaka!think!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Some Canasta, Some Physics, No Pizza, Less Music Message-ID: <506@sixhub.UUCP> Date: 16 Feb 90 13:58:34 GMT References: Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen) Organization: *IX Public Access UNIX, Schenectady NY Lines: 35 In article haste+@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig) writes: | "I still haven't figured out what most of these cards are, but that's a red | three. I feel it must be", says Oktave, and lays down a three of hearts. | Dani looks in puzzlement at the two threes of hearts still in his hand and, | reaching over, draws a card and discards it: Seven of spades. I know that feeling... when my friend was playing pinochle he used to get hands that had no count and no trump. "A handful of blue nines" he called them. | "You know, in 'Mission of Gravity', you have a planet with a most unlikely | shape. Call it 30,000 miles in polar diameter and 200,000 miles in | equatorial diameter. Simak's contention is that the gravity is far stronger | at the poles than at the equator. Now, I grant that the poles are far closer | to the center of gravity. But very little of that gravity is vectored down. | I'm not convinced that Simak is right, but my calculus isn't good enough to | work the problem through. Any help on this problem would be appreciated, as | it's pestered me for a good number of years now." First help: author was Hal Clement, and I expect to see him tonight at Boskone. Second help: it wasn't just the distance, the planet was spinning very fast and centrifugal force was what made the weight (not the gravity) less at the poles. General comment: someone did a story about a planet who's equator was moving very close to orbital speed. Caused all sorts of stuff, including cheap space launch. Unfortunately I think that if such a thing could stay together it would eventually lose most of the atmosphere. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc "Getting old is bad, but it beats the hell out of the alternative" -anon