Path: mit-eddie!rutgers!uwm.edu!rpi!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!apple.com!zardoz From: zardoz@apple.com (The One Eyed Man) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Vacation's End Message-ID: <6099@internal.Apple.COM> Date: 9 Jan 90 22:34:01 GMT References: <6092@internal.Apple.COM> Sender: usenet@Apple.COM Organization: Apple Computer, Inc. Lines: 21 The one eyed man lays a dollar down on the bar. Mike pulls something brown and alcoholic from below the bar bar fills a clean glass. "Nice to see you back," he says. "Nice to BE back, Mike," the man says, flipping his cloak back with a free arm. "A vacation is nice when you get it. IF you get," he says. "But it's nice to be back." He strides over to the worn white line at the fire place. "To good friends all..." ************************************* * When you do it to me, it's discrimination * When I do it to you, it's AA ************************************* -- These are my ideas. Oy vey, are they mine. -- zardoz Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!think!bbn!granite!MWolf From: MWolf@granite.cr.bull.com (Mary-Anne Wolf) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Hello Summary: "Hello" and more on walking down streets Message-ID: <1990Jan10.223352.12432@granite.cr.bull.com> Date: 10 Jan 90 22:33:52 GMT References: <561@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> <12757@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <4605@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM> <11676@csli.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: mwolf@pws.bull.com (Mary-Anne Wolf) Organization: Bull HN Information Systems Inc. Lines: 90 A shimmering silvery-grey, almost transparent bubble drifts silently through the door, that's THROUGH the door. The door is still closed. Inside the bubble, which slowly fades to invisibility, a woman sits cross-legged, suspended a comfortable distance off the floor. She has golden blonde hair, large brown glasses, and a voluminous black cloak. "Hi folks! I'm Mary-Anne. I'm new here, although I have been invisibly listening into your conversation for a while. Problem is, telaudience doesn't let you answer." She floats gently toward the bar, draws a crisp new dollar bill out of her cloak. She lets it drop toward the bar. Mike puts his thumb on it before it slides off the edge onto the floor. "A Mean Pink Barbarian Drink, if you please." Mike hands her a tall glass with something fizzy and pink with a slice of lime floating on the top. She drinks it with obvious enjoyment, and when almost finished, eats the lime-slice, and floats to the fireplace. "To understanding - both sympathy and clear seeing." "I am interested by Rob Sartin's assumption that the woman who turned around to face him on the dark street expected him to physically attack her. Certainly, the woman to whom he was replying talked about 'fighting off' people, but I think that what keeps women scared is a less drastic and more common kind of attack, the kind that says 'you don't have a right to be here' or, to put it more clearly, 'I have the right to make you as unhappy as I want, just because I feel like it. You don't have to do anything for me to assume you deserve it, and I don't expect to be punished for it.'" "I'm talking about the obscenities yelled (almost invariably by drunken young men) out of moving cars, or by slightly older men from the scaffolding of contruction projects, whose targets spend the next few hours feeling angry and frustrated, because there's nothing they can do to retaliate. I'm talking about the young toughs who walk in a manner that says that everybody else had better get out of their way or else get an elbow in the gut, or about a couple of adolescent boys I remember in New Haven Connecticut who enjoyed throwing themselves in front of cars and bicycles because they enjoyed the attention, but who were extremely rude to anyone who told them off. I'm talking about the oblivious parent who CANNOT take their toddler by the hand and decide just WHAT part of the sidewalk they mean to walk on. I mean, no-one wants to step on a kid, and an undirected toddler is often all over the place and continuously in the way. The parents count on that. Even worse are the parents who cannot or will not silence their child's eardrum splitting screaming in a shopping mall, and who ignore it hoping the child will stop, instead of taking the child to somewhere where everybody else does not have to listen to it." "It's an implicit power thing. I'm not sure why women feel this more than men, but I AM sure that (except for the case of parenting children, which may actually belong in a different category because the parent is probably not even thinking about the target) most of the 'attackers' are male, and more of the targets are female." "There's a story I heard 3rd-hand which might offer ideas. I may not have all the details accurate, but you'll get the idea. A good-looking heterosexual man was walking past a gay bar. The gay men who were hanging out outside of the bar started whistling at him and yelling good-humored flattering personal remarks ('nice butt' etc.). The straight man said to a friend later that he had never until that moment appreciated why women had resented him making similar comments about them. He felt violated." "What I'm trying to say is that the 'attacks' that make people tense may not even be thought of as attacks by the 'attackers'. Certainly if something slightly more drastic (e.g. being pawed or pinched) MAKES a woman scared, then the little attacks will KEEP her scared. The cruel can be cruel without even realizing it, all in 'good fun' or in innocent obliviousness." "Glad there's not much of that nonsense here." "Aaaahhhh...being visible is SO conspicuous." She rises above people's heads and fades to invisibility as she rises. Mary-Anne Wolf mwolf@pws.bull.com (or, if you must, MWolf@granite.cr.bull.com) "When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long when you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows lies the seed that, with the sun's love, in the spring, becomes the rose." --- folk song, The Rose -- Mary-Anne Wolf Path: mit-eddie!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!haste+ From: haste+@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Life in cosmo Message-ID: Date: 10 Jan 90 03:05:13 GMT Organization: Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 61 greywolf@unisoft.UUCP (The Grey Wolf): > The materially wealthy *almost* never know true love; > the materially poor seem to be wealthier in almost every single way, be- > cause they find their wealth in knowledge, emotion, sharing and in every > single little thing that comes along, because they don't have much else > that they can do. > And since the majority of the materially wealthy never know true love > (because they are emotionally stunted in a *lot* of ways because they are > so often sheltered from the so-called 'scum' of the world), they play a > dog-in-the-manger role, saying, Well, if I can't have it, then neither Don't glorify poverty. (Where's my copy of "Major Barbara" when I need it?) It stinks. *Real* poverty means hunger and want, and that isn't a good foundation for "true love". Or for other kinds of emotional wealth: As the saying goes, last guys don't finish nice. As for the milder version of poverty which is all too prevalent in this country, I haven't observed that people living below the poverty line are happier than those living above it. On the contrary, that kind of poverty means lack of choice, lack of prospects, often lack of hope. >"But I ramble... I still bemoan the fact that things are cheaper to re- > place than to repair (unless you do it yourself...hmm, that could become > any self-respecting person's new pastime *real* fast if one gave it any > thought), and I am as resentful of it as anyone else here. I wish it > were the other way around. Money is how we measure economic value. Sometimes the measurement is distorted (for example, when we legislate that clean air and clean water should be treated as "free" goods) but by and large it reflects realities. Back when repairing, rather than replacing, was a central part of the virtue of thrift, replacement was also more expensive. Take my $5 watch, for example. ($8 with the battery.) My last one shorted out. I *could* have had it repaired. It would have cost me $20-$30 to pay the fair wage of a skilled technician. I naturally enough chose to toss it, and pay $5 for a new one. Because an hour of someone's time really *is* a lot more valuable than $5 worth of metal and sand and packaging. Glorifying poverty and the "old" virtues, and vilifying wealth is periodically fashionable, but if you think about it, it's *extremely* patronizing. Because the poor *seek* wealth. So you're forced to take the stance that they don't know better. That, for example, third worlders who are anxious to abandon their old culture for one that promises an end to starvation and infant mortality don't understand what they're losing. They understand. I know, you're talking about less extreme cases, aren't you? But the fact still remains that lack of "material wealth" looks a lot less pleasant to those who suffer from it than it does from the outside. Sigh. I had wrote this twice. The first time I scripted it out in the third person, with any number of cuticisms mixed in. But on reconsideration, I decided that I wanted to address what was said directly: The stereotyping seemed just as bald as any you might find in Cosmopolitan. And just as unhealthy. --Dani Naive are you/If you believe Life favors those/Who aren't naive. --Piet Hein (grooks) Path: mit-eddie!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hplabsz!sartin From: sartin@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Rob Sartin) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Richard Bach (was Re: doubt) Message-ID: <4606@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM> Date: 9 Jan 90 21:57:44 GMT References: <11631@csli.Stanford.EDU> <12756@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <11635@csli.Stanford.EDU> <12769@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <1990Jan8.060558.4052@csusac.csus.edu> Reply-To: sartin@hplabsz.UUCP (Rob Sartin) Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Software Technology Lab Lines: 9 In article <1990Jan8.060558.4052@csusac.csus.edu> scott@csusac.UUCP (L. Scott Emmons) writes: >I especially like his compilation of his experiences flying around the U.S. >(not to be confused with Illusions). Does anyone recall the title of this >work? I read it many upon many moons ago, but i don't recall the title. Richard Bach, _A Gift of Wings_ published by Dell Publishing, New York, New York, 1974. ISBN 0-440-34571-5. Rob Path: mit-eddie!rutgers!usc!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hplabsz!sartin From: sartin@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Rob Sartin) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Hello Message-ID: <4605@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM> Date: 9 Jan 90 21:38:27 GMT References: <561@m1.cs.man.ac.uk> <12757@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Reply-To: sartin@hplabsz.UUCP (Rob Sartin) Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Software Technology Lab Lines: 27 In article <12757@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> jmdoyle@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Jennifer Mary Doyle) writes: >No, indeed, it isn't. Especially walking after dark, that being the one I've >had a bit of self-experience with. Being a female college student is *not* >conducive to walking alone at night, therefore I don't do it, or very rarely, >at least. When I do, I am paranoid, and always looking around, ready to fight >off whoever comes at me. It is not a feeling I enjoy. At 5'11'' I am probably >taller than many assailants, yet I still feel fairly helpless. Grrr. This reminds me of one of the saddest enlightenments I've ever had. I was walking home one night at Cornell. I don't remember where I was going from, but it must have been my Freshman year because I was going to west campus (down the hill from the libraries and academic buildings). As I walked down the street I was gaining on a woman ahead of me. As she approached a well lit sign, she stopped and turned to face me. It was a few moments before I realized she was trying to see my face in the light so she could identify me if I attacked her and position herself for defense. The only thing I could think of was to keep my distance and try to act safe. I don't remember what I said, just that it wasn't meant to sound threatening and it wasn't meant to try and get acquainted (I figured that she was suspicious of me and wouldn't trust me). She stood there as I walked by. A small part of me died that night. I'll have a Diet Coke, Mike. I'm working on a paper and trying to lose weight anyway. Rob Sartin Path: mit-eddie!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!umich!sharkey!lopez!strike From: strike@lopez.UUCP (Tim Bowser) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Richard Bach (was Re: doubt) Message-ID: <1094@lopez.UUCP> Date: 10 Jan 90 03:37:25 GMT References: <11631@csli.Stanford.EDU> <12756@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <11635@csli.Stanford.EDU> <12769@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <1990Jan8.060558.4052@csusac.csus.edu> Organization: Great White North/UPLink, Marquette, MI Lines: 23 The novel is "A Gift Of Wings", and it is a compilation of his "Flying Magazine" articles and a few short stories that were never published before. Those of you who haven't read his other books in the flying vein are highly encouraged to do so. "Stranger To The Ground", his description of a flight over Europe during the Cold War days, is an excellent beginning book to learn his way of thought. As for "Gift Of Wings", my favorite story therein is "Think Black...". It has been a long time since I read it,only the feelings remain of the tale. If the article about his days with the BD-5J are in there as well, that is the best description of solo flight ever written. I still have the magazine here that the article appeared in, and to look at the photos accompanying it illustrates the lead chapters of "Bridge Across Forever" as nothing else can. One photo shows him lying on the grass, surrounded by his bevy of beauties (airplanes!). From reading the book, this article was written during the time he was working with Leslie Parrish on the second movie, although no mention of the relationship p is in there. -- Tim Bowser ("Strikemaster"), Hardware Maintainer| rutgers!sharkey!lopez!strike GWN UPLink! BBS, The U.P.'s UNIX Connection | or strike@lopez.UUCP Marquette, Mi. (906)228-4399 | else (906)346-6735 voice ----> "Advanced technology cannot be distinguished from a rigged demo." <---- Path: mit-eddie!rutgers!apple!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!emd101 From: EMD101@PSUVM.BITNET Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: burning, burning Message-ID: <90009.195046EMD101@PSUVM.BITNET> Date: 10 Jan 90 00:50:46 GMT References: <6881@lindy.Stanford.EDU> Organization: Penn State University Lines: 29 In article <6881@lindy.Stanford.EDU>, GE.LJB@forsythe.stanford.edu (Louis J Bookbinder) says: > >"There were all these dead trees lying around on the streets, so I cut >off the branches and brought them in. Do people do that, normally?" > >"Ah, HAH!" nods Mike, "Christmas trees" > >Nick looks stricken. "You mean these were presents to those people?!!" > >"No, No, no problem. Every December quick-rich artists run up north and >cut down whole forests, bring the trees back to cities and sell them to >the masses. It is absolutely de riguer to have one in the home for >Christmas. Dec 26 it ends up on the curb." > >"Ozma! What a waste!" > >"You bet! But it's TRADITION" > A short girl in stocking feet looks up from a nearby table. 'It's really a shame,' she says. 'The least they could do is throw the trees back on the truck and take them back to the forest to rot there. At least it would do the soil some good. Same goes for the trees that never get sold. They just get dumped into the landfills by Christmastime.' She shrugs and turns back to her book. Path: mit-eddie!rutgers!psuvax1!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!arc!steve From: steve@arc.UUCP (Steve Savitzky) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Friends, Lovers, Places Message-ID: <760@arc.UUCP> Date: 10 Jan 90 06:20:05 GMT Reply-To: steve@arc.UUCP (Steve Savitzky) Distribution: alt Organization: Advansoft Research Corp, Santa Clara, CA Lines: 89 With a soft "plop," the medium-sized teddybear arrives on top of the bar, nearly unsettling one of the seemingly endless row of champagne glasses. The bear seems to be fading in and out, as if it was being simulated on a computer that was also running a few too many compute- bound processes. The bear's transformation to human shape is particularly clumsy today, involving a bounce off the floor. Steve stands up, grazing his head on the bar, and picks up a glass of champagne. He sips absently at the glass. "Good friends. Yes. When I moved out to CA for grad school I left a lot of friends scattered around the country. Used up a lot of stamps and phone time, too. They're just about all married now. (*sigh*) "It always seems to take a long time for me to make friends in a place, but I seem to put down long roots when I finally get around to it." One gets a fleeting image of a short version of one of Tolkien's Ents superimposed over the speaker. It seems incongruous. "I'm not the one to offer advice about finding friends and lovers-- mostly they've found me, and I've been lonely a lot. I'll say one thing, though: it's awfully nice when you end up being married to your best friend. I recommend it. "To Friends and Lovers!" <*CRASH*> Having thus demolished the glass the champagne was in, he turns to Mike, who says "Gin?" "Right." "How was your party, by the way? I was going to ask you last week but you never showed up." "I got busy, I'm afraid. The party was good, as usual. A little small, though; either people were busy or we didn't get the announcements out early enough. Maybe both. Had one person from here -- Hi Scott -- and one from work, which is about all I expect these days." * * * There is a longish pause during which Steve reverts to teddybear form, blinks out abruptly, and eventually reappears. There is a very large cat with reddish fur sitting on his shoulder, purring. "Who's the cat?" Mike asks. "This is Colleen. She doesn't say much in here because she doesn't express herself well in writing, but she watches over my shoulder every now and then." The cat purrs something. "She says to tell you about our Wednesday Open House. You see, usually we ask people to call us before they come visiting, but every Wednesday from half-past-noon on, there's *always* somebody home and people know they can just drop in. Sometimes it gets almost as weird as Callahan's. Anyway, if you're ever in San Jose you can look us up: Grand Central Starport--the Savitzky Household 343 Leigh Av, San Jose, CA 95128 (408)294-6492 (Between W. San Carlos and i280 near jct. 280x880) "And if you're feeling lonely, by the way, one of the best ways to deal with it is to find a Place. Callahan's is one, our house is another -- thanks to Colleen (she's the sociable one; I sometimes just crawl off in a corner). And if you can't find one, make one. Our open house started off a couple of years ago as a D&D gaming night. The hangers-on who weren't gaming (like me) would just talk, or play computer games, or sing, or sometimes just sit in a corner and read. Finally the D&D moved elsewhere, and it just got to be a random get- together. "Um, maybe one of these days I ought to talk about Households. And maybe even something about the Middle-Sized Bear, who you'll find in "Mark Elf" by Cordwainer Smith." He offers the last bit of gin to the cat, who laps it up and grins, and flings the glass into the fireplace. "To Places! May we all find some good ones." Steve and the cat fade out gradually. The last thing to disappear, not surprisingly, is the cat's grin. -- \ Steve Savitzky \ Grand Central Starport \ REAL hackers use an AXE! \ steve@arc.UUCP \ 343 Leigh Avenue \ #include \ arc!steve@apple.COM \ San Jose, CA 95128 \ h:408-294-6492 w:727-3357 \__________________________________________________________________________ Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!usc!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!vu-vlsi!nlp From: nlp@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU (Nick Pine) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Life; and Masks Message-ID: <2894@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU> Date: 11 Jan 90 05:05:47 GMT References: <1990Jan9.073457.12286@agate.berkeley.edu> <20940025@hplred.HP.COM> <12843@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Reply-To: nlp@vu-vlsi.UUCP (Nick Pine) Organization: Villanova Univ. EE Dept. Lines: 15 Our very own Mutant for Hire writes: >> [Hey, Mike, do we allow Plants in now? There's a Pine over in the corner, >> arguing with Jilara, and i'm not sure whether to leaf it alone or not. >> "Just don't needle it about its kingdom."] >It's probably just pining away about trying to turn over a new leaf or knot. >Besides, in my past experience around these creatures, one thing about your >basic tree rings true: its bark is far worse.... I believe the traditional talk.bizarre response is: I'm a frayed knot. Oh leaf me knot to, --Pine Path: mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!apple!usc!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!vu-vlsi!nlp From: nlp@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU (Nick Pine) Newsgroups: alt.callahans Subject: Re: Panama Message-ID: <2901@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU> Date: 11 Jan 90 12:15:25 GMT Reply-To: nlp@vu-vlsi.UUCP (Nick Pine) Distribution: alt Organization: Villanova Univ. EE Dept. Lines: 69 Doesn't Nick ever give up? Well, he's sort of intense, and stubborn, but these thoughts still trouble him, and this is the sort of place . . . Nick takes the floor. Callahan objects. It's hard to stand on thin air. Nick puts the floor back. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Akio Morita, the president of Sony, was once asked about the Japanese invasion of American consumer markets. (This was when Detroit was making big cars. Wait, Detroit is still making big cars. Oh, I forgot, the energy crisis is over.) He said something like: "We are not invading. We make products that American people like, and they buy them." Suppose, just suppose, that the President's Commission on the Quality of Life (CQL) finds that television is corrupting the hearts and minds of American children, and adults. They suggest a tax--oops--revenue enhancement program to gradually reduce the problem. Bush thinks (there are a lot of hypotheses here) and decides to implement it, since more money is needed for defense, also. The first year, everyone must pay a tax of $20 on each televison in the house, declaring them on their federal income tax returns. Compliance is not good. The second year, the fee is raised to $50, and TV detector vans with directional antennas begin roaming local neighborhoods to look for unregistered televisions, and note which channel is being watched, strictly for statistical purposes. (Ordinary TV sets emit a faint radio signal when operating, and such vans are used to look for unlicensed televisions in France and England now.) If your TV is not registered in the computer, you pay a $1000 fine... This works better. The third year the license fee is raised to $200, about the level in Europe now. Meanwhile, the German government tightens electronic noise pollution standards, and specifically requires that imported televisions be well-shielded, to greatly reduce the emitted signal. Personal privacy is an issue. The Japanese begin selling well-shielded televisions in Germany, having anticipated this need. Soon they are selling them in France and England, too. The license fee system no longer exists in Europe, mainly because the TVs are undetectable. Some of the well-shielded TVs show up in the US. The president is upset. The license fee is now $1000, with a $20,000 penalty for an unlicensed TV. Jail terms have been discussed. The president says the well-shielded TVs are Un-American, and corrupt the minds of our children (there has been no American TV manufacturer for years.) We negotiate with the Japanese government and manufacturers. The president says negotiations are not going well. The license fee is now $2000. More well- shielded TVs show up here. The program IS working, by the way. People are outdoors more, and talk to each other. Other people watch unlicensed, well- shielded TVs in small secret groups. More people smoke than watch television. The Japanese manufacturers refuse to stop making well-shielded TVs, citing the European market, and it is hard to tell one from another by looking at them. More and more are imported, using various tricks. The CIA is asked to help. Akio Morita is killed in an automobile accident, and our president deeply mourns the passing of this international business leader and friend. Sony continues making well-shielded TVs. A few weeks pass, and our president appears on TV one Monday morning: "My fellow Americans, yesterday our brave American soldiers invaded Japan. I was forced to make this decision with a heavy heart..." ~~~ the end ~~~ Well, it makes an interesting story, anyway, Nick