Columns

Dear Editorbeing,

This article is submitted by Doc Logger (1:163/110, cherriot@magmacom.com) whose bleary eyes were caused by creating new Map projections to satisfy the geographic anomalies in Net163.

Roll da flic, Zorch....

Dear Reverend Visage,

The editors of Swamp Swine Magazine were a tadge concerned about the recent photo essay you submitted. They said that Sports Illustrated had already done the swimsuit issue theme and they could hardly discern which audience would be intrigued by scantily clad penguins. Did you send the right box of slides?

Not much has happened on the Western Front this week other than the fact that Bob "Noted" Satti used up a mere 37 words of his quota last week so we can look forward to perhaps as much as 54 stunning words of wisdom from him next week. I posted the survey results in the usual elflord echos where it served as a useful spacer between the avalanche of Tannacore trophalactic effluvia and the Tom Cole Charm School lessons. To his credit, Jerry Schwartz took the time to question the validity of the survey but didn't quite bring himself to say whether he disbelieved the results.

The elves in Net163's Sherwood Forest have added a node from Edmonton and a node from Rhode Island to their merry band. Needless to say, our lil' buddy Dallas Hinton has fired off the usual pre-policy complaint inquiries. Hint for Blondes: Yo Dallas, if NCs in your net weren't so busy threatening to excise sysops from the nodelist, perhaps they'd be happier to stay on as labourers in your Gulag. What is even more amusing about this latest exchange of grapeshot is that, after reading Bob "noted" Satti's last policy appeal decision wherein Satti whinged about not being asked for a geographic exemption; the NC-babe of net163 humoured him with a request. Bob "Noted" Satti sat on his prehensile thumbs and didn't deign to answer the request.

The much maligned Bob Kohl emerged from his bunker long enough to post a series of incomprehensible responses to his multitude of detractors. Of course, once his head was up above the foxhole, he took it in the shorts again for having violated the privacy of routed netmail. The RECs have resolved not to call for Kohl's removal as the Z1EC, but instead to ignore him in the hopes that he finds amusements more suited to his talents - like sanding wooden blocks, for example.

Our prayers and our edible underwear should go out to the multitude that is Zorch. Apparently one of his detractors has alleged that more than one vote was cast by one warm body in the Z1EC election. Zorch has stated that he has enjoyed the suppositions which either indicates that his detractors are sucking pipe, or else Zorch is suffering from a radish deficiency. Maurice Kimal, who would have made a great Young Republican when Nixon was clinging to his last venal months of power, has chastised Zorch's detractors for their "witch hunt tactics." His Zorchness recommended reading Ayn Rand's naive capitalist anthem "Atlas Shrugged" which I found amusing. Perhaps he would be delighted to know that the modern era Hank Reardons are 22 year old derivatives traders at Morgan Stanley who can pole-axe national monetary policy with just a few, ill chosen trades.

For this week's Chautauqua I would like to include a pithy quote from Wayne C. Booth's "Is There Any Knowledge That a Man Must Have?" The issue arose in a personal way when I noted that neither of my teenmonsters who are attending high school have had to write a single essay in school this year. My first and obvious conclusion was that they were being adequately trained to become the next generation of echomail participants where standards of literacy are no asset. In the case of my teenmonsters, what concerns me about the lack of essays was the more important issue of what sort of critical abilities can they hope to achieve if they are never compelled to use them. Anyway, here's Booth's commentary:

"The man who has not learned anything about how to understand his own intentions and to make them effective in the world, who has not, through experience and books, learned something about what is possible and what impossible, what desirable and what undesirable, will be enslaved by the political and social intentions of other men, benign or malign."

Booth doesn't say it, but I also wonder if there is a more prevalent ideology which suggests that the first preference of people is not to have their feet held to the flames of knowledge. Ignorance and irresponsibility are bedfellows. >From experience I surmise that one of the cruelest torments you can inflict on those who refuse to be educated is the insistence that they be responsible. This is the fly in the ointment of democracy because assuming an informed electorate is fallacious. This truth is used by disparate groups on the political spectrum. From the Dallas Hintons who assert the sysops are too dumb to choose their own masters, to the anarchists who assert that the only valid compact is one between individuals. I favour the latter reasoning but also recognize that between the choices of totalism and democracy, the latter is the lessor evil.

I must go Visage. I have promised to give a Theremin concert for a roving pack of whales in Rivierre Du Loup this evening. One has to take audiences wherever they can be found, as you well know. I hope your secretary appreciated the truckload of radishes that I thoughtfully had delivered to her room.

Regards,
Doc Logger
Tuber Tranquillity Research Centre,
Furlang Island, South Pacific