Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site phs.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!mcnc!duke!phs!paul From: paul@phs.UUCP (Paul C. Dolber) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: The Emerald City and net.rigmarole Message-ID: <1032@phs.UUCP> Date: Wed, 26-Jun-85 20:42:46 EDT Article-I.D.: phs.1032 Posted: Wed Jun 26 20:42:46 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 29-Jun-85 01:38:41 EDT Organization: Dept. Physiol., DUMC Lines: 69 Abridged from "The Emerald City of Oz," by L.F. Baum: Wizard: "Is this Rigmarole Town?" Boy: "Sir, if you have traveled very much you will have noticed that every town differs from every other town in one way or another and so by observing the methods of the people and the way they live as well as the style of their dwelling places it ought not to be a difficult thing to make up your mind without the trouble of asking questions whether the town bears the appearance of the one you intended to visit or whether perhaps having taken a different road from the one you should have taken you have made an error in your way and arrived at some point where --" Uncle Henry: "He might have said `yes' or `no' and settled the question." Omby Amby: "Not here. I don't believe the Rigmaroles know what `yes' or `no' means." Woman: "It is the easiest thing in the world for a person to say `yes' or `no' when a question is asked for the purpose of gaining information or satisfying the curiosity of the one who has given expression to the inquiry has attracted the attention of an individual who may be competent either from personal experience or the experience of others to answer it with more or less correctness or at least attempt to satisfy the desire for information on the part of the one who has made the inquiry by --" Wizard: "I'm quite sure that if we waited long enough and listened carefully, some of these people might be able to tell us something, in time." Omby Amby: "If those people wrote books, it would take a whole library just to say the cow jumped over the moon." Wizard: "Perhaps some of 'em do write books. I've read a few rigmaroles that might have come from this very town." Shaggy Man: "It seems to be the Land of Oz is a little ahead of the United States in some of its laws. For here, if one can't talk clearly, and straight to the point, they send him to Rigmarole Town; while Uncle Sam lets him roam around wild and free, to torture innocent people." --------------------------------------- Shall we fall behind the Land of Oz or shall we form net.rigmarole to which certain forms of address to the net such as those of excessive length or those found by means presently known or unknown to have an excessively low signal-to-noise ratio or to which articles from certain known abusers of the net who regularly send out articles of very low signal-to-noise ratio might be redirected from their intended posting sites (probably especially net.religion, net.philosophy, net.politics, and net.abortion though it is certain that other newsgroups suffer from the same problem) even though this might entail impinging on the free will (if such there be which is a difficult question to answer even after consulting many and diverse dictionaries and encyclopedias) of the authors of the re-routed news articles and result in the presently unknown implementers of this scheme to be characterized as Nazis or Commies or steatopygious hermaphrodites who should have been aborted since after all what is life anyway and why should we go on living when it's all just a bunch of damned chemicals which may or may not follow the second law of thermodynamics though certainly looking at this sentence and at the character of the net lately one would be hard pressed not to conclude that we could assume that the second law does hold for net communication at the least? Regards, Paul Dolber (...duke!phs!paul).