Apollo BBS Archive - September 1990

Apollo BBS Archive - September 6, 1990

Mail from John Cummings
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 14:11:24

        Don't jump to so many conclusions. It is not necessary that it"would
have to enjoy the suffering that is on this planet." 
        The Christian theology on this point is valid, clear, and logical.
It is that the creator made man with the ability to use free will, to
choose. That aptitude made a "higher-class" being, if you will, than the
animal without that ability to choose, and the ability to evaluate.
        That aptitude permits man to do things, create things, enjoy beauty,
distinguish between truth and falsehood, experience bravery and nobility. It
also, of course, gives man the option to debase it. 
        The creator doesn't enjoy the evil--the creator deplores the evil,
suffers from it, hates it.  But in order to create a man with the ability to
choose good or evil, it must be a man with evil as an option.
        Therefore, it is man, not the creator, who is the source of evil.
        Earthquakes, desert sun, floods, etc., are not inherently evil, they
are the way the world works. They sometimes result in pain, but this is not
a deliberate punishment on man, it just the natural course of physical
events, neither good nor evil in and of itself.      
        By the by, do you agree that the world itself, not counting man, is
a pretty good place?    --John C.--

Mail to John Cummings
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 21:32:12

All animals have ability to choose, without exception.  Other species also
evaluate situations otherwise they wouldn't be in existence.

I think that man's days are coming to a close as we are the most illiterate
animal on this planet yet ask most any human and they will tell you that
they are the intelligent species and all others are stupid.

Yet it is us who are making the planet unfit for all species of plant and
animal including our own.  I see mothers pushing their baby strollers down
the street and I see puffs of black smoke filtering over the area.

The airplanes are spewing literally tons upon tons of raw pollutants in our
cities as well as in the upper atmosphere and this filters down upon our
farms and in our waters and over our cities.

We have enough weapons of destruction to destroy this planet many times over
and you have the gall to speak of man as an intelligent animal.  I don't get
it.

Man is the ONLY animal that is destroying all things beautiful on this
planet and if left to him then we'd have one giant parking lot for our
automobiles.  Visit one paraplegic ward in one hospital and multiply that by
every hospital in the city, the state, the nation, the world.  There are so
many victims of auto accidents and from man's wars it ain't funny.

Your philosophy is really screwed up with so many loose ends.  On one hand
you tell me that natural disasters are "just the way things work" are not
something that is done by this god of yours and then you say that your god
hates evil and suffers from it.  How utterly ridiculous and it doesn't even
make one iota of sense.

Yes, the world was probably once a beautiful place, BM (before man or bowel
movement; take your choice) but everything is tainted with poison.  

It would be fine with me if another meteor hit the planet and caused what
happened to the dinosaurs.  Of course you would say that it was an act of
god or mother nature I am not sure since you don't seem to be sure yourself.

Let's see if I have this right.  When an earthquake or toronado kills a lot
of humans then it is NOT an act of your god but is a natural disaster casued
the elimination of all humanoids on this planet then THIS would be a direct
result of an act by your god?  Did I get that.  I know you  never took so
big a natural disaster into account so I thought I'd help you a bit and give
you something more to ponder.  Religion is a disease.
                                Rod

Public & Free Bulletin Board command:$C

Message: 69227
Author: $ Jeff Beck
Category: Answer!
Subject: Max/perspicacious
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 02:16:36

It means keen sighted.  Used literally, it means you have good vision.  Used
figuratively (as I used it) it means that your "mental vision" (i.e.
judgement, or insight) is good.

Message: 69228
Author: $ Jeff Beck
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Mike/RADAR
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 02:32:52

First of all, thank you for replying.  I am not very familiar with the
history of RADAR, but understand that it was used quite effectively by the
British in the war, and that in 1943 the Germans stopped nighttime bombing
raids because of it.  I can see where the doppler shift might indicate
speed, but how would it indicate distance?  I think that timing the
intervals between transmission and reception are necessary for that.
 
I am still at a loss as to how such tiny intervals are ordinarily measured.

Message: 69229
Author: $ Jeff Beck
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Dean/Edsel
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 02:37:28

Most enlightening.  Tell them about the hood ornament...I thought that was
particularly amusing.

Message: 69230
Author: $ Jeff Beck
Category: Answer!
Subject: Rod/camps
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 02:55:04

I doubt many actually died from giving up hope.  Certain people might have
died by suicide; others might have died faster if their lack of hope caused
them to refuse to work, and thus be selected for gassing faster.  But in the
end, and while hope was intrumental in the survival of those who *did*
survive, the vast majority died anyway, hope or no hope.
You raise a good point regarding political image.  However, the death camps
were not prisoner of war camps.  There were of course, some prisoners of war
placed there (mostly Russians & Poles) but in general they held civilians.
They were not internment camps; they were murder factories, quite gruesome. 
I find it difficult to understand how you can defend the decision to
preserve one's image in favor of mercifully ending some lives and saving
exponentially more lives.  I think it could have been made clear to the
American public what was going on, and to some extent it was, but people
prefered not to believe the truth.  People often find it easier to selfishly
deny the truth in order to preserve their model of the world.  This is
frequently the case in child molestation incidents.  At any rate, we bombed
civilians all through the war...the fire storms which raged through German
cities like Dresden killed far more than the atomic bombs which were dropped
on Japan.  As for those railway lines...to the best of my knowledge, we did
NOT bomb them.  The trains ran on schedule.
We did not have satellites during WW II.

Message: 69231
Author: $ Jeff Beck
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Beau Dog/RADAR
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 03:01:44

Interest is subjective.  Right now I am interested in how they time such
short intervals using ordinary equipment (and how they did back in the days
of vacuum tube computers the size of large rooms).
Can you tell me?

Message: 69232
Author: $ Steve MacGregor
Category: Answer!
Subject: Radar
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 04:45:05

  What a silly question.  Since all you can get from radar is either the
distance to an object or its velocity (depending on how it's set up), and
either one is going to result in a measurement, and measurements are not
reality, what difference does it make?
  If the cop says that you were going forty MPH in a twenty-five MPH zone,
what meaning does the statement *really* have?  The mapping of data onto a
coordinate system?  There's no such thing, except in our minds.

       ======  Pascal  =(O,O)=  Hoot!  MacProgrammer  ======

Message: 69233
Author: $ Steve MacGregor
Category: Joke
Subject: Previous
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 04:52:13

  What a stupid answer!  Just because there's no physical reality to a
"foot" or a "second" doesn't mean we can't measure things and use the
measurements.
  I would guess that early radar ranging used some kind of analog computer
to scale the results.  You could use an oscilloscope, for instance.  Make a
trace go across the screen at a speed you know (and you can make it go
across in milliseconds, if you like, of course).  Then you add a pulse as
you transmit the radar signal, and add the returning signal, which will make
the trace jump some time later.  You can measure the distance between the
two pulses, and know how long apart they happened.
  Analog circuitry is *very* fast, especially compared to old-time digital
computers, which would definitely not be capable of handling a job such as
this.
  And yes, I'm sure that police radar would measure the *frequency* of the
returning signal, probably hererodyning it against the outgoing signal.

          We all live in a   ____nhnnn__________   yellow subroutine

Message: 69234
Author: $ Paul Savage
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Annie/weather
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 05:32:56

 Annie dear, monsoons are an established weather pattern. The word even
shows up in the dictionary. "Gustnado" was some weatherman's invention,
undoubtedly dreamed up when he ran out of Rolaids. Why they just didn't call
it what it apparently was, a good sized dust devil, is beyond me.

Message: 69235
Author: $ Paul Savage
Category: Politics
Subject: Melissa/CPS
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 05:47:05

 While I totally agree with you that not even one child should ever be
abused, raped, tortured, mutilated or otherwise violated, I still say that,
all things being equal, the job of raising and nurturing children is the
responsibility of the parents, not the state. Any bureaucratic system that
invades the privacy of the family to the detriment of individual rights,
either the rights of the parents to discipline and protect, or the rights of
the children to a reasonably secure family bond, begs to be severely
regulated at best, or absent regulation, be abolished. 
 THere are laws already on the books that deal with assault against anyone,
including children, and I do not believe that an autocratic, high-handed
bunch of bureaucrats are necessary to enforce them.
 The situation has gotten so now that parents have to be cautious even when
it comes to simple discipline, such as spanking a child for wrongdoing, in
fear of some mignon of government stealing their child from them, and that,
my dear Melissa is a classic example of the pendulum swinging too far in the
opposite direction.

Message: 69236
Author: $ Ann Oudin
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Pauley on monsoons
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 08:15:08

Pardon me but I think the word 'monsoon' does not apply to our summer
weather! I could be wrong, but it seems to me I read once that it isn't so.
That the weather people just coined that phrase years ago. But I will admit
that 'Gustnado' doesn't even sound remotely like a weather word! 
                           -=*) ANN (*=-

Message: 69237
Author: $ Ann Oudin
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Death camps
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 08:23:19

My personal opinion is that we should have only bombed the railways, roads
etc. and that's all! Ditto with the A-bomb! We, American committed the worse
atrocity in the history of mankind by using that bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki when we could have dropped it in the ocean nearby to show them our
strength. It ended the war alright but we must live with a conscious
knowing what horror we did to fellow humanbeings, regardless if they were
our enemy or not! That is the one and only thing I'm totally ashamed of
America for doing. -=*) ANN (*=-

Message: 69238
Author: $ Melissa Dee
Category: Answer!
Subject: Paul - Parenting
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 08:36:10

I agree.  I think the job of parenting should be done by the parents and not
the state.  The state definitely does a lousey job.
BUT
What are we to do to make sure that people out there procreating like crazy
are taking care of their children?  I wish there was some sort of limit or
restrictions on who could have children.  I don't have any idea what sort of
test or whatever could be fair since most people "can just tell" that
someone is going to be a good or bad parent and there aren't many objective
means of figuring or proving this.
There was a line in _Parenthood_ that addresses this point:
"You have to get a licence to drive.  They even make you get a licence to
fish!  But they'll let any Tom Dick or Harry become a father."
 
Maybe if we had every couple who had to get blood tests for their marriages
to take some test and then based on that, given a restriction on how many
children they could have or whether they could have any.
I know, I know.  Just a  thought.

Message: 69239
Author: $ Melissa Dee
Category: Question?
Subject: Twilight Zone
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 08:36:51

Alright.  What the heck is going on here!

Message: 69240
Author: $ Roger Mann
Category: Answer!
Subject: Jeff/RADAR
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 08:43:31

In order to answer your question, one would have to understand how RADAR is
used to determine the speed of a moving object. I am not knowledgable about
RADAR, but I suspect the doppler shift due to the moving object's reflection
of the RADAR pulse is used some how to do a frequency comparison. That is
very old circuitry. And, quite frankly, 102 nanoseconds was a long time 
even during WWII. 

Message: 69241
Author: $ Roger Mann
Category: Politics
Subject: ASU/NEA
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 08:45:21

I heard on KJZZ this AM that ASU turned down a 10,000 dollar NEA grant
because ASU would not agree to a non-obscenity stipulation that was attached
to the grant. 

Message: 69242
Author: $ Roger Mann
Category: Politics
Subject: stooges
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 08:46:19

Arizona has no shortage of stupid people running for Governor.

Message: 69243
Author: $ Melissa Dee
Category: Answer!
Subject: ASU/NEA
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 10:21:21

You mean, ASU has a back bone?  Or is this an easy way to get out of funding
art on campus.
Speaking of which, have any of you seen what they've done?  The got some
"world famous" artist to put up three solor paneled scupltures on the
library lawn.  It blinds you everytime you look at it and it seem just
slightly out of place.

Message: 69244
Author: $ Roger Mann
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: jeff/points in space
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 12:42:10

-time Consider the following. I tie a rock to a string. I swing the rock
around in a circle, with me at the center. The string weakens and soon
starts to unravel. It breaks, and the object flies off at a tangent to the
circle. Now: consider the state of the string. At time T1, the string was
whole, at T2 the string was not whole. The string may have one of two
states: whole or broken. Consider the state change. How long does the state
change take. If it takes greater than zero time, then there must be a third
state to the string. Clearly, since the string can have only two states,
broken or not broken the string must break at a point in time. Now consider
the movement of the object in x,y,z space. Since the string must break in 
zero time, the state change of the object from under force F and not under
force F must take place instantaneously, since the object cannot be in a
third state. Since the state transition takes place instantaneously, the
object flies off at a tangent to the point X,Y,Z.
 
Therefore, there must be a point in space-time.

Message: 69245
Author: $ Sandi Marlin
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Rod/invasions
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 19:24:20

Invasions are a fact of life, from the Huns and Danes, to Alexander and on
further back into the mists of unrecorded history. It's not very nice but
unless EVERYONE agrees to stop having wars, no one can unarm. And I suspect
very strongly that there will always be someone who would like to go on a
conquest.

Message: 69246
Author: $ Rod Williams
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Jeff/camps
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 21:50:48

Jeff, I not so sure you got my point.  Political or otherwise I don't think
that any national head would make the decision to bomb living humans simply
because they WERE living.  

I think that you and I need to research WWII some more.

How come we didn't have satellites during WWII.  They would have been nice
to have.  In fact it would have shortened the war just as the A-bomb
shortened it.

My father-in-law was in the Phillipines as a forward observer for an
artillery regiment and he and his comrades were fully expecting to be
shipped out to mainland Japan in order to stop the Japanese.  But the bomb
changed all that.

Message: 69247
Author: $ Rod Williams
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Sandi
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 21:57:57

Agreed.  We just haven't mentally evolved far enough at this time in our
development.

It's a good thing that humans do not have the means of long range space
flights.  We've polluted enough already.

I could see it now.  Use the moon as a trash dump for New York and use Mars
as a hazardous waste dump.  

In any case it will be nice when our sun starts its predicted next phase of
burning the next compound up the element scale.

Message: 69248
Author: $ Rod Williams
Category: Chit Chat
Subject: Ann/bomb
Date: 09/06/90  Time: 22:00:31

You made a good point about showing the Japanese what power the bomb had. 
But did the U.S. have more than 2 bombs and were they easy to build back
then?

Perhaps because of Pearl Harbor the decision was made to drop it on a
Japanese city.  War is hell.