Apollo BBS Archive - April 1990

Apollo BBS Archive - April 20, 1990

Mail from Beauregard Dog
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 09:33:01

No thanks, I'm going to try to continue being a non-felon.
[A]bort, [C]ontinue, [I]nsty-reply or [Z]ap:Insty-reply

Enter a line containing only an [*] to stop
 1:Lets you, Melissa, Peter, Zak, Mike and I get together some tee-shirt 
 2:evening at the Gallery.  Bring some blank shirts and we will imprint them 
 3:for you, free.  
 4:
 5:We can tape record our conversation after a j

Mail from Beauregard Dog
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 19:20:40

[A]bort, [N]ew only, [R]ead or [S]kip:Read

Can you make an XXL (extra extra large) t-shirt with the "Just say No"
slogan on it?  I have a friend who wants to buy one.
[A]bort, [C]ontinue, [I]nsty-reply or [Z]ap:Insty-reply

Enter a line containing only an [*] to stop
 1:Our initial purchase of 17 dozen did not include xxlarge but our next 
 2:purchase will.  We are in the process of obtaining prices from other tee 
 3:shirt companies.
 4:
 5:Does your friend have a blank shirt or perhaps could buy on in his size.  
 6:for $3. we will imprint it.  -Rod

Public & Free Bulletin Board command:$C

Message: 64876
Author: $ Paul Savage
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: John/conversion
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 05:24:40

 That isn't all that much of a conversion, really. More of a welcome
modification, I would say. Since reading, writing, grammar and the related
subjects are all integral parts of that phenomenon known as communication, I
would modify my position also to include those. Good thoughts.

Message: 64877
Author: $ Paul Savage
Category: News Today
Subject: Insurance repeal
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 05:29:00

 It is predicted that the proposed repeal will have a hard time clearing the
senate, but even if it should pass I doubt that I would give up my
insurance. With all the insanities I see on the valley streets daily,
insurance coverage is as essential as the engine or tires on my vehicles!
 It sure would be nice to see the law of supply and demand work in the
insurance industry though!

Message: 64878
Author: $ Daryl Westfall
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Jeff/64834
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 06:57:26

What's a "Christian-agnostic"? Sounds like a contradiction in terms.

Message: 64881
Author: $ Daryl Westfall
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Jeff/Beau/Mych/Ann
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 07:10:45

Ok, about that conversation we were having in the FILm SIG...

[To Ann:]
But as he was true man, don't forget he was also true God. He followed the
whole of the Law. He knew temptation, but was without sin. He did not say
anything that didn't need to be said. (His comments at Luke 2:49 and Mark
3:32-34 were not 'sass,' but truth.) Too many people want to portray him as
nothing but a mere man.

[To Rod:]
Jewish, I agree. Iranian, that I dunno.
Please elaborate on your "play" theory. Are you attempting to refer to the
Biblical recorded history of Christ? Or something else?

Message: 64882
Author: $ Ann Oudin
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Daryl on Christ
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 07:33:11

And too many people want to portray Him as too much God and not enough man!
 
He Himself said that He didn't do anything that we couldn't and that
includes the miracles! That He was the Son of God and that we all are!

BTW - I never read in the Bible where it was expected to believe in Christ
as the Savior and then go out and sin and say "well, I'm a sinner and can't
help it, but I believe, therefore I'm saved" etc. etc. I beleive that one of
the things He was telling us, showing us was that if He can do it, we can do
it! Where, for example, was He tempted, over came - that we could not over
come?? I think Christians for the most part use this as an excuse for their
sins! So called sin can be controled! -=*) ANN (*=-

Message: 64883
Author: $ Roger Mann
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: book/jeff
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 08:16:55

I'm convinced. I'll have to get that book. Was it one of those you ordered
when you joined the Macmillan Science Book Club ?

Message: 64884
Author: $ Roger Mann
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: jeff/dinner
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 08:26:40

Very interesting. I assume it is part of the same book. In reliability
theory there is the law of diminishing returns invoked in terms of creating
redundant systems. Eventually, the increase in reliability is overcome by
the increase in unreliability introduced by the addition of new components.
When I worked for Control Data in the Seymour Cray days, the computers did
not have parity checks on memory access. Cray believed that the parity
checking circuitry would introduce errors more often than errors would occur
in the core memory. Of course, with the advent of chip memory that all
changed. I'm looking forward to the continuation of your dinner with weapon
systems. Good stuff.

Message: 64885
Author: $ Mike Carter
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Jeff / Weapons
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 11:57:58

Are we turning into another Apro Poet ?

Message: 64886
Author: $ Mike Carter
Category: Drug Talk
Subject: Insurance Law
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 12:05:55

Yeah, I listened to them talk about it all last nite
on KFYI 910AM. It seems to me that this is wishfull thinking.
Most of the callers indicated much like you and I feel...that this
mandatory law hasn't done more than make rape and pillage of the
captive audience legal.
For $15,000 dollars of insurance some people are paying upwards of
$3500 a year...
Personally I say we should repeal insurance PERIOD and see the 
comming of groups who insure themselves. (A gathering of workers
say 20 to 30 all paying into a mutual like fund and having it invested)
Somewhat what the insurance companies are doing now.
 
ONly the rates would reflect not profit taking but saving.
 
Lawyers? I say AXE the entire LEGAL system (remember..it's NOT a
JUSTICE system anymore) and have open hearings in front of 100 peers..
the outcome of the open trial would be up to the 100...we could pay those
100 people 10,000 bucks apiece for a months duty and we'd save BILLIONS
on court appeals and such horses#!+. The 10 Grand would serve to ensure
plenty of non-excuse to do jury duty types.
 
But that would upset the gravy train of the Lawyers now, wouldn't it?
 
        -Me

Message: 64887
Author: $ Jeff Beck
Category: Answer!
Subject: Roger/book
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 21:14:43

No, I ordered this one through the Quality Paperback Book Club, which is
related to Book of the Month Club.  The book, Turbulent Mirror, sells in
stores for about $23.00, hardcover.  The QPBC edition, which as far as I
know, is the only source for a softcover edition of the book, cost around
$11.00 (I'm not sure on the exact price, as I "bought" it using bonus
points.)

Message: 64888
Author: $ Jeff Beck
Category: Answer!
Subject: Roger/dinner
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 21:19:38

Not the same book.  This book is called "Weapons Systems of the Twenty-First
Century: The Upside Down Evolution, published in 2105.  The work is in
three volumes.  The first presents the development of weapons from the year
1944; the second explains how the nuclear arms race gave rise to the
"unhumanizing" of warfare by transferring the production of weapons from the
defense industry to the battlefield itself; and the third deals with the
effect this greatest military revolution had on the subsequent history of
the world.
 
It's a quote from a paraphrasing (not mine) of the text, not the text
itself.

Message: 64889
Author: $ Jeff Beck
Category: My Dinner with...
Subject: Weapons Systems...
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 21:20:59

"Meanwhile, in the late twentieth century phase of the arms race, the role
of unpredictable chance increased.  When hours (or days) and miles (or
hundreds of miles) separate defeat from victory, and therefore an error of
command can be remedied by throwing in reserves, or retreating, or
counterattacking, then there is room to reduce the element of chance.  But
when micromillimeters and nanoseconds determine the outcome, then chance
enters like a god of war, deciding victory or defeat; it is magnified and
lifted out of the microscopic scale of atomic physics.  The fastest, best
weapons system comes up against the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which
nothing can overcome, because that principle is a basic property of matter
in the Universe.  It need not be a computer breakdown in satellite 
reconnaissance or in missiles whose warheads parry defenses with laser
beams; if a series of electronic defensive impulses is even a billionth of
a second slow in meeting a similar series of offensive impulses, that is
enough for a toss of the dice to decide the Final Encounter.
Unaware of this state of affairs, the major antagonists of the planet
devised two opposite strategies.  One can call them the "scalpel" and the
"hammer."  The constant escalation of payload megatonnage was the hammer;
the improvement of detection and swift destruction in flight was the
scalpel.  They also reckoned on the deterrent of the "dead man's revenge":
the enemy would realize that even in winning he would perish, since a
totally obliterated country would still respond, automatically and
posthumously, with a strike that would make defeat universal."

"Such was the direction the arms race was taking, and such was its
destination, which no one wanted but no one knew how to avoid.
How does the engineer minimize error in a very large, very complex system?
He does trial runs to test it; he looks for weak spots, weak links.  But
there was no way of testing a system designed to wage global nuclear war,
a system made up of surface, submarine, air-launched, and satellite
missiles, anti-missiles, and multiple centers of command and communications,
ready to loose gigantic destructive forces in wave on wave of reciprocal
atomic strikes.  No maneuvers, no computer simulation, could re-create the
actual conditions of such a battle.
Increasing speed of operation marked each new weapons system, particularly
the decision-making function (to strike or not to strike, where, how, with
what force held in reserve, at what risk, etc.), and this increasing speed
also brought the incalculable factor of chance into play.  Lightning fast
systems made lightning fast mistakes.  When a fraction of a second
determined the safety or destruction of a region, a great metropolis, an
industrial complex, or a large fleet, it was impossible to achieve military
certainty.  One could even say that victory had ceased to be distinguishable
from defeat.In a word, the arms race was heading toward a Pyrrhic situation.
On the battlefields of yore, when knights in armor fought on horseback and
foot soldiers met at close quarters, chance decided the life or death of
individuals and military units.  But the power of electronics, embodied in
computer logic, made chance the arbiter of the fate of whole armies and
nations."

"Moreover -- and this was quite a separate thing -- blueprints for new,
better weapons were developed so quickly that industry could not keep pace.
Control systems, targeting systems, camouflage, maintenance and disruption
of communications, the strike capability of so-called conventional weapons
(a misleading term, really, and out of date) became anachronisms even before
they were put into the field.
That is why, in the late eighties, production was frequently halted on new
fighter planes and bombers, cruise missiles, anti-missiles, spy satellites,
submarines, laser bombs, sonars, and radars.  That is why prototypes had to
be abandoned and why so much political debate seethed around successive
weapons that swallowed huge budgets and vast human energies.  Not only did
each innovation turn out to be far more expensive than the one before, but
many soon had to be written off as losses, and this pattern continued
without letup.  It seemed that technological-military invention per se was
not the answer, but rather, the speed of its industrial implementation.
This phenomenon became, at the turn of the century, the latest paradox of
the arms race.  The only way to nullify its awful drain on the military
appeared to be to plan weapons not eight or twelve years ahead, but a
quarter of a century in advance -- which was a sheer impossibility,
requiring the prediction in advance of new discoveries and inventions
beyond the ken of the best minds of the day."
 
(to be continued)

Message: 64892
Author: $ Daryl Westfall
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: I Shall Now Eat Crow
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 22:59:21

   I had the understanding from what I USUALLY find to be a RELIABLE
source that the cross on the Danforth chapel was to remain there in
accordance to the wishes of the Danforth's. Therefore, I jumped the gun,
expecting to find evidence to prove the claim, and understood it to be true.
 
   I have now, information from a much more reliable source, who is also a
close friend, and a student at ASU. Here's where I start seasoning my crow.
 
   The cross was not planned to top the chapel. Yes, it was not even in the
original blueprints. One of the builders (apparently) just decided to put
one on it.
 
   Now, before anyone goes pointing fingers or anything like that, please
notice; I am making a public correction of my mistake. I am not slinking
away from my error.
 
   However, my friend and MORE reliable source also brings up another
question. What about the Kachinas that can be found in several of the
buildings on campus? What about the paintings depicting Indian religious
ceremonies which can also be found in campus buildings? Are these not
promoting Indian religions? And what about "Sparky?" The devil is a part of
Judeo-Christian beliefs, and Satanism is a heretical offshoot of Christian
beliefs. These all promote religion. Are we to be fair? Or hypocritical?
As the cross came down because it promoted religion, what about these?

Message: 64893
Author: $ Daryl Westfall
Category: Answer!
Subject: To several...
Date: 04/20/90  Time: 23:00:45

Many interesting questions are being posed, and all deserve well-researched
replies concerning the person and work of Christ. I will respond to as many
as I can, as soon as possible.

Message: 64894
Author: $ Rod Williams
Category: Answer!
Subject: Daryl/5 act play
Date: 04/21/90  Time: 01:27:17

No, I simply stated that I believe the story of Jesus was written for local
rulers in order to keep the masses in line.

Basically the times were hard (boy, the more things change, eh?) and the
people who were being used the most needed something that would satisify
them, ergo Christianity.  

These days many people still need that kind of 'fix' in order to cope with
everyday stresses.  Just knowing that one will spend all of eternity in
peace and joy is akin to some drugs.

Everyone needs some sort of crutch.  I belive I'll take reality.  I can
handle it.