Some moments, it is possible to be very proud of the human race.

I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the
heavens, and they had no light.

Jeremiah 4:23 (King James Version)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050114/ap_on_sc/europe_saturn

Probe Enters Atmosphere of Saturn's Moon

31 minutes ago Science - AP

By MELISSA EDDY, Associated Press Writer

DARMSTADT, Germany - A European space probe plunged into the hazy,
mysterious atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan on Friday, and elated
mission controllers said it had opened its parachute to slow its
descent as it gathers data.

AP Photo

The Huygens probe had successfully restarted its systems and the
mission, which could provide clues to how life arose on Earth, was
going well, said Roberto Lo Verda, a spokesman for the European Space
Agency.

"It has entered the atmosphere, and entered it correctly," Lo Verda
said. "We know the batteries are switched on, the parachute has
deployed and it has slowed down sufficiently."

Mission officials - who have waited seven years for Huygens to reach
its destination - had tears in their eyes as the first signal was
picked up, indicating that the probe had successfully powered up
dormant systems and begun transmitting to its mother ship, the
international Cassini spacecraft.

ESA's science director, David Southwood, said the mission had
successfully passed a difficult and critical step. "We didn't promise
we could do this. We were pushing the limit just to do this," Southwood
said.

Huygens was spun off from Cassini on Christmas Eve to begin its
free-fall toward Titan, the first moon other than the Earth's to be
explored by spacecraft.

Named after Titan's discoverer, the 17th-century Dutch astronomer
Christiaan Huygens, the probe carries instruments to explore what
Titan's atmosphere is made of and find out whether it has the cold seas
of liquid methane and ethane that have been theorized by scientists.

Timers inside the 705-pound probe awakened it just before it entered
Titan's atmosphere. Huygens is shaped like a wok and covered with a
heat shield to survive the intense heat of entry.

Its slow parachute descent to the moon's reddish surface was expected
to take about 2 1/2 hours, during which it will use a special camera
and instruments to collect information on wind speeds and the makeup of
Titan's atmosphere. The data will be transmitted back to Cassini, which
will relay it to NASA (news - web sites)'s Deep Space Network in
California and on to ESA controllers in Darmstadt, Germany.

Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant
atmosphere. Rich in nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane,
its atmosphere is believed to be 1 1/2 times thicker than Earth's.

Alphonso Diaz, science administrator for NASA, said Titan may offer
hints about the conditions under which life first arose on Earth.

"Titan is a time machine," Diaz said. "It will provide us the
opportunity to look at conditions that may well have existed on earth
in the beginning. It may have preserved in a deep freeze many chemical
compounds that set the stage for life on earth."

Part of a $3.3 billion international mission to study the Saturn
system, Huygens is also equipped with instruments to study Titan's
surface upon landing. Scientists don't know exactly what it will hit
when it lands at about 20 kilometers per hour.

"It could land on something solid ... it could land in liquid methane,
which is what they think a lot of the black seas on Titan are," said
Alan Smith, deputy head of operations at ESA. "Because the temperature
is so cold and the pressure is so high, gases like ethane and methane
exist in liquid form, so it could well land in a sea of methane."

The probe floats and should survive such a landing, despite the
temperature of minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit. One hazard would be
landing on a solid slope in a position that doesn't permit a strong
signal back to Cassini.

Engineers at ESA are counting on the probe having at least three
minutes to transmit information and images from Titan's surface, before
its battery runs out or Cassini gets out of range.

The Cassini-Huygens mission, a project of NASA, ESA and the Italian
space agency, was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla.,
to study Saturn, its spectacular rings and many moons.

From:	darkness39 at yahoo.com
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	19 Jan 2005 01:53:26 -0800

'Red' in the sense of 'future leaders and thinkers of the British
Labour Party (aka 'New Labour')' ;-).

There isn't really a 'Red' and a 'Blue' America so much as shades of
purple and a marked split between rural/ exurban and urban/suburban.
It's become a lazy form of journalistic shorthand (David Brooks wrote
an article about it which mostly turned out not to be true but has
pervaded the popular consciousness).

From:	Asmodeus
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:49:45 GMT

darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1106128406.231729.99960
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

> There isn't really a 'Red' and a 'Blue' America so much as shades of
> purple and a marked split between rural/ exurban and urban/suburban.

I found this quite interesting:

*Political Platonists*

*/Jack Wheeler/*
*/Thursday, Nov. 20, 2003/*

Thanks and Thanks for Sharing

I’d like to say thanks for sharing to folks like J. Berryman, who wrote
me: “Americans left and right know that the cabal of Israeli neocons
that is in charge of our government is taking us to total destruction in
the same way that their group destroyed the Soviet Union. … This small
but deadly tribe of people (Jews) are herding us over the cliffs.”

Yet such revolting anti-Semitism as Ms. Berryman’s fuels only a portion
of those of the anti-American Right. The majority are conservatives
(especially the “paleo” variety as opposed to the “neo” conservatives,
who have no qualms about defending America) who have become infected
with same disease as libertarians – the philosophical infection of
Platonism.

*Platonic and Aristotelian Conservatives*

A Platonist is someone for whom only the ideal matters. The real world
never measures up. For Plato (428-348 B.C.), our world is an imperfect
and flawed reflection – a mere shadow on the cave wall – of the ideal
world, the World of Forms, wherein resided the perfect ideal cloud, the
perfect ideal tree, the perfect ideal person, and the perfect ideal
country.

By contrast, an Aristotelian is someone for whom the ideal is not a
separate reality but a mental construct for the purpose of understanding
and improving the real world.

Although he was a student of Plato’s and taught at Plato’s Academy
school in Athens, Aristotle (389-322 B.C.) broke with his teacher and
established his own school, the Lyceum. Aristotle was interested in
explaining the real world, not some unachievable ideal world of
imaginary perfection. For something to be morally good, for example,
Aristotle would insist it had to be good/ for/ somebody, some real
person or persons. Nothing can be “good” all by itself as some Platonic
ideal or abstraction.

We can thus make a distinction between /Platonic Conservatives/ and
/Aristotelian Conservatives/, which is more useful and explanatory than
the labels of “paleo” and “neo,” which are really just non-descriptive
names or titles.

You’ve heard the admonition “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the
good.” That’s an Aristotelian talking. For Platonic Conservatives, not
only /must/ the perfectly moral, perfectly Constitutional America be the
enemy of the real America of today, but the latter is depraved precisely
because it comes up short for not achieving the ideal.

In other words, Platonic Conservatives despise the real, actual America
for not living up to the ideal America, thus condemning it as immoral
and sinful.

An Aristotelian Conservative, on the other hand, looks at the real world
and asks, “What country in the world today is morally better than
America? What country in the past was morally better than America today?
By any set of moral criteria in terms of political, economic and
religious freedom, what other nation comes close to America?”

No matter what the criteria involved, it would not involve a comparison
between ideals, between imaginary fictions, but between real historical
societies past and present.

The only country that could give today’s America a run for its morality
would be a historical America at some point in its past, when, for
example, the courts respected and upheld the Constitution far more than
now. Would that point, however, be when we still had slavery? Jim Crow
laws? We must compare America today with an American past that was real,
not an idealized fiction (as G. Gordon Liddy does in his book, “When I
Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country”).

/The moral bottom line is: In the real world right now, not in some
perfect ideal world in never-never land, there is no country on our
planet less deserving of being morally despised than America./

*Reality and the Alternative*

Certainly there is justification in being furious at renegade federal
courts trashing Christianity and the Constitution, at the endless
slaughter of babies in the womb. Certainly America can morally improve
itself and vastly so.

Yet America, warts and all, still remains a magnificently moral nation,
the great majority of its citizens peaceful and decent human beings, a
country worth our pride and love and patriotism.

The same applies to our president, George W. Bush. Liberals hate him for
his virtues, because his honesty, decency and integrity contrast so
blatantly with the vice-ridden character of his predecessor. Platonic
Conservatives hate him because the perfect must be the enemy of the
good, because he does not live up to the Ideal Conservative President.

Sure, there is a plethora of political errors I think GW has made, such
as allowing domestic spending to explode and not trying to throw every
illegal alien out of the country.

Yet contemplate the alternative. Try imagining the state America would
be in if The Atrocity of September 11 had been committed under a Gore
presidency. The voices of the Left would have risen unchecked to claim
that America somehow deserved it, we would have sunk into a quicksand of
demoralized gloom, the economy would have collapsed, and the thousands
of human beings slaughtered at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
would have died in vain

A Clinton or Gore would have responded to The Atrocity by lobbing a few
ineffectual cruise missiles (“Monica Missiles”) at Osama bin Laden, sat
around wringing their hands, afraid to do anything serious lest “the
whole Moslem world be against us,” while the rest of America sat
cowering in fear of the next terrorist assault.

This is what OBL expected of us. He expected GW to be no different from
a Bill Clinton or Al Gore. As Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator would
say, “Big mistake.”

When one compares the real George W. Bush to the real alternatives, not
a fictional ideal, there is a need to thank Providence for such awesome
good fortune.

*Jane Fonda Libertarians*

While Platonic Conservatives may recognize this truth, it may be more
difficult for Rothbardian Libertarians, for they are Ultimate Political
Platonists.

The reason is that for Murray Rothbard, the founder of the Libertarian
Party, his theory of anarchism was far more important than reality.

For him to make any reasonable case for an anarchic America, there could
not exist an actual real enemy that required a large military defense.
To accept the reality of the evil and danger of the Soviet Union would
mean the abandonment of his anarchism as a possible ideal. Rather than
change his theory, Rothbard chose to deny reality. In an act of true
Orwellian Double-Think, he maintained that the Soviets were peace-loving
and America the imperialist aggressor.

And so Platonic Libertarians and Conservatives have done the same with
America vs. Moslem Terrorists and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. For those who
have been infected with anti-Semitism, they do the same with Israel vs.
Palestinian terrorists.

Those most infected with anti-Americanism have become Jane Fonda
Libertarians who want America to lose and are rooting for the Ba’athists
and al -Qaeda terrorists to win.

They will howl in protest over this, just as defenders of Jane Fonda
denied they were rooting for the Viet Cong. Nonetheless, Jane Fonda
Libertarians hope and pray that America will suffer defeat and
humiliation the way we did in Vietnam.

But Santayana had it backward. History does not repeat itself, and those
who do not understand this are doomed to never learn from it. Iraq is
not Vietnam, and this time we get to win.

*Goodbye to Plato*

It is time for conservatives and libertarians to abandon their
Platonism, and love America as she is, not only for what they want her
to be or used to be. It is time to abandon Plato, stop fixating on a
dream-land America, and start thinking like Aristotle. The best way to
achieve a freer and more virtuous America is to start with appreciating
the freedoms and virtues America already possesses.

/Jack Wheeler is editor of To The Point, a geopolitical intelligence
service at www.tothepointnews.com/.

--
/"\ ||
\ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN || An American Hero
X AGAINST HTML MAIL || Sgt. Rafael Peralta
/ \ AND POSTINGS || http://tinyurl.com/4usq9

From:	Asmodeus
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sun, 16 Jan 2005 14:36:32 GMT

darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1105729307.572284.163560
@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> Some moments, it is possible to be very proud of the human race

It's not hard at all, provided you don't swallow the "all European
descent white people are evil and must be destroyed" bullshit the
universities are teaching. Examples abound. Newton. Einstein. Oh,
they go on and on and on. Mozart. You know, all those "dead white
males" that don't really count any more.

And the Huygens landing is very kewl. Very cold too, but that's
another issue.

--
/"\ ||
\ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN || An American Hero
X AGAINST HTML MAIL || Sgt. Rafael Peralta
/ \ AND POSTINGS || http://tinyurl.com/4usq9

From:	Joe
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sun, 16 Jan 2005 08:56:25 -0800

In article ,
asmodeus@REMOVEinsightbb.com says...
> It's not hard at all, provided you don't swallow the "all European
> descent white people are evil and must be destroyed" bullshit the
> universities are teaching. Examples abound. Newton. Einstein. Oh,
> they go on and on and on. Mozart. You know, all those "dead white
> males" that don't really count any more.

Have you ever taken a college course on Mozart? Or are you relying on
your Rush Limbaugh connections for this information?

From:	Philip_the_Foole
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sun, 16 Jan 2005 18:19:33 GMT

Joe wrote:

> In article ,
> asmodeus@REMOVEinsightbb.com says...
>
>>It's not hard at all, provided you don't swallow the "all European
>>descent white people are evil and must be destroyed" bullshit the
>>universities are teaching. Examples abound. Newton. Einstein. Oh,
>>they go on and on and on. Mozart. You know, all those "dead white
>>males" that don't really count any more.
>
>
>
>
> Have you ever taken a college course on Mozart? Or are you relying on
> your Rush Limbaugh connections for this information?

Joe, please don't ask Asmodeus to think, especially in mid-rant.

The unaccustomed strain could kill him.

Your Humble Jester,

Philip the Foole

They called the river "the river."
They called the drum "the drum."
- Ancient Kung Foole Proverb

There are campfire legends that the plainsmen spin
Of a man who was nothing like Paladin
Couldn't ride, couldn't shoot, but he won his fame
Because everything he said, said backwards was the same.
Palindrome, Palindrome, what's in a name?
- The Ballad of Palindrome (by Riders in the Sky)

From:	bum-up at yahoo.com
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:39:28 GMT

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 18:19:33 GMT, Philip_the_Foole
wrote:

>Joe, please don't ask Asmodeus to think, especially in mid-rant.

I think I'd modify that to, "Please don't ask Anybody to think,
especially in mid-rant." And, whatever he might learn about Mozart in
college (or anywhere else) that implies he isn't a dead white male is
mistaken, although I think a "dead white naughty boy" is more accurate
in his case.

--
bum_up@myrealbox.com

Reply to this address; mail sent to the address in
From: will disappear into a black hole. :)

From:	Binder
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sun, 16 Jan 2005 10:49:01 -0800

Joe wrote:
> In article ,
> asmodeus@REMOVEinsightbb.com says...
>
>>It's not hard at all, provided you don't swallow the "all European
>>descent white people are evil and must be destroyed" bullshit the
>>universities are teaching. Examples abound. Newton. Einstein. Oh,
>>they go on and on and on. Mozart. You know, all those "dead white
>>males" that don't really count any more.
>
>
>
>
> Have you ever taken a college course on Mozart? Or are you relying on
> your Rush Limbaugh connections for this information?

Mozart?

Hell, I'm having trouble seeing how Newton and Einstein are irrelevant.

Now, Columbus really qualifies as an irrelevant "dead white male:" rape,
pillage, murder, and the bringer of syphillis to Europe. Wonder why they
don't teach those insignificant little facts in school?

From:	DonSideB
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	17 Jan 2005 14:18:21 GMT

In article <10uldqe6cdr2k1b@corp.supernews.com>, Binder
writes:

>
>Mozart?
>
>Hell, I'm having trouble seeing how Newton and Einstein are irrelevant.
>
>Now, Columbus really qualifies as an irrelevant "dead white male:" rape,
>pillage, murder, and the bringer of syphillis to Europe. Wonder why they
>don't teach those insignificant little facts in school?
>

I think you are missing the point. There appears to be a strong movement in
academic circles to dismiss or denigrate the accomplishments of Western
civilization, and to focus on the evils done by explorers and scientists in
order to devalue the good they accomplished.

Columbus can hardly be regarded as irrelevant, even if you do not approve of
his actions. The simple truth is that the American Indians were doomed as a
culture the moment the existence of the Americas was generally known. If it had
not been Columbus and Spain, someone else would have moved in. These continents
were not going to be left to go to waste supporting a stone age culture.
Natural selection applies to cultures just as surely as to species. Could the
conquest have been done with more sensitivity and humanity? Probably, but the
end result would have been the same.

--
don

Someone has to die young for the human species to evolve,
It might as well be people I don't like.

SSBB Diplomatic Corps: Tidewater Virginia

From:	Malcolm Weir
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:34:43 -0800

On 17 Jan 2005 14:18:21 GMT, donsideb@aol.combackatyu (DonSideB)
wrote:

>In article <10uldqe6cdr2k1b@corp.supernews.com>, Binder
> writes:
>
>>
>>Mozart?
>>
>>Hell, I'm having trouble seeing how Newton and Einstein are irrelevant.
>>
>>Now, Columbus really qualifies as an irrelevant "dead white male:" rape,
>>pillage, murder, and the bringer of syphillis to Europe. Wonder why they
>>don't teach those insignificant little facts in school?

>I think you are missing the point.

Mainly because it's fiction.

> There appears to be a strong movement in
>academic circles to dismiss or denigrate the accomplishments of Western
>civilization, and to focus on the evils done by explorers and scientists in
>order to devalue the good they accomplished.

The operative word in the above is "appears". As in, "appears to the
ignorant and selfish".

>Columbus can hardly be regarded as irrelevant, even if you do not approve of
>his actions.

Of course he can!

It's quite clear that he didn't actually have much to do with any
actual discovery, and in fact was more-or-less totally lost!

>The simple truth is that the American Indians were doomed as a
>culture the moment the existence of the Americas was generally known. If it had
>not been Columbus and Spain, someone else would have moved in. These continents
>were not going to be left to go to waste supporting a stone age culture.
>Natural selection applies to cultures just as surely as to species. Could the
>conquest have been done with more sensitivity and humanity? Probably, but the
>end result would have been the same.

Don, Columbus didn't colonize North America.

Malc.

From:	Binder
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:46:37 -0800

Malcolm Weir wrote:
> On 17 Jan 2005 14:18:21 GMT, donsideb@aol.combackatyu (DonSideB)
> wrote:

....
>>Columbus can hardly be regarded as irrelevant, even if you do not approve of
>>his actions.
>
>
> Of course he can!
>
> It's quite clear that he didn't actually have much to do with any
> actual discovery, and in fact was more-or-less totally lost!

He got lucky until he arrived in the Indies; after that, he was
frequently totally incapacitated by syphilis, and when he wasn't, he was
a maniac. He appeared to possess neither ethics nor morals.

From:	Jason Crowell
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Mon, 17 Jan 2005 13:38:54 -0500

In article <20050117091821.09687.00000044@mb-m13.aol.com>,
donsideb@aol.combackatyu says...
> In article <10uldqe6cdr2k1b@corp.supernews.com>, Binder
> writes:
>
> >
> >Mozart?
> >
> >Hell, I'm having trouble seeing how Newton and Einstein are irrelevant.
> >
> >Now, Columbus really qualifies as an irrelevant "dead white male:" rape,
> >pillage, murder, and the bringer of syphillis to Europe. Wonder why they
> >don't teach those insignificant little facts in school?
> >
>
> I think you are missing the point. There appears to be a strong movement in
> academic circles to dismiss or denigrate the accomplishments of Western
> civilization, and to focus on the evils done by explorers and scientists in
> order to devalue the good they accomplished.

I don't think so. It seems that there's an even stronger movement to
dismiss the bad and concentrate on the good things that were done, and
moreso, to concentrate on a romanticized version of history.

Very few historical figures wore "white hats" or "black hats", most wore
a hat in a shade of grey. We were lucky that most of our historical
figures wore hats that tended to be light grey.

From:	Asmodeus
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:56:06 GMT

Jason Crowell wrote in
news:MPG.1c55d0443283f3a498969a@news.comcast.giganews.com:

> I don't think so. It seems that there's an even stronger movement to
> dismiss the bad and concentrate on the good things that were done, and
> moreso, to concentrate on a romanticized version of history.

Where "romanticized" is anything that does not declare that
Americans and Europeans were the bane of the world. I've seen
that one before.

When it comes to romanticism, it's the liberals who have never
let go of the nineteenth century, the myth of the noble savage
who lives "in harmony with nature," and all that nonsense. And
let's not forget Marx, speaking of the era.

--
/"\ ||
\ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN || An American Hero
X AGAINST HTML MAIL || Sgt. Rafael Peralta
/ \ AND POSTINGS || http://tinyurl.com/4usq9

From:	Binder
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:37:13 -0800

DonSideB wrote:
> In article <10uldqe6cdr2k1b@corp.supernews.com>, Binder
> writes:
>
>
>>Mozart?
>>
>>Hell, I'm having trouble seeing how Newton and Einstein are irrelevant.
>>
>>Now, Columbus really qualifies as an irrelevant "dead white male:" rape,
>>pillage, murder, and the bringer of syphillis to Europe. Wonder why they
>>don't teach those insignificant little facts in school?

> Columbus can hardly be regarded as irrelevant, even if you do not approve of
> his actions. The simple truth is that the American Indians were doomed as a
> culture the moment the existence of the Americas was generally known. If it had
> not been Columbus and Spain, someone else would have moved in.

Eaxctly! How can you make my point for me and miss it completely at the
same time?

From:	DonSideB
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	18 Jan 2005 21:20:59 GMT

In article <10uqpdatn931k2a@corp.supernews.com>, Binder
writes:

>>don't teach those insignificant little facts in school?
>
>
>> Columbus can hardly be regarded as irrelevant, even if you do not approve
>of
>> his actions. The simple truth is that the American Indians were doomed as a
>> culture the moment the existence of the Americas was generally known. If it
>had
>> not been Columbus and Spain, someone else would have moved in.
>
>Eaxctly! How can you make my point for me and miss it completely at the
>same time?
>
>

Perhaps I misunderstand your point. I am saying that the wrong acts of Columbus
cannot make him irrelevant. They can make in bad, but they can only add to his
relevance, not cancel it out.

--
don

Someone has to die young for the human species to evolve,
It might as well be people I don't like.

SSBB Diplomatic Corps: Tidewater Virginia

From:	Binder
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:00:28 -0800

DonSideB wrote:
> In article <10uqpdatn931k2a@corp.supernews.com>, Binder
> writes:

>> If it
>>had
>>>not been Columbus and Spain, someone else would have moved in.
>>
>>Eaxctly! How can you make my point for me and miss it completely at the
>>same time?
>>
>>
>
>
> Perhaps I misunderstand your point. I am saying that the wrong acts of Columbus
> cannot make him irrelevant. They can make in bad, but they can only add to his
> relevance, not cancel it out.

What makes Columbus irrelevant is that if he hadn't taken the trip,
others would have not long after.

OTOH, where he is relevant is in showing, with extreme clarity, how
little difference any particular discover makes in respect to the
discovery. Columbus wasn't the original discoverer of the Americas; it
was the society at the time that made the pillage of the New World possible.

From:	Malcolm Weir
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:31:10 -0800

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 14:36:32 GMT, Asmodeus
wrote:

>darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1105729307.572284.163560
>@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
>
>> Some moments, it is possible to be very proud of the human race
>
>It's not hard at all, provided you don't swallow the "all European
>descent white people are evil and must be destroyed" bullshit the
>universities are teaching. Examples abound. Newton. Einstein. Oh,
>they go on and on and on. Mozart. You know, all those "dead white
>males" that don't really count any more.
>
>And the Huygens landing is very kewl. Very cold too, but that's
>another issue.

That would be the very European society that Bond hates so much that
built and paid for Huygens.

Mind you, for a prat that whines about language so much, that "kewl"
crap from Clay "Hypocrisy-R-Us" Bond is amusing!

Malc.

From:	darkness39 at yahoo.com
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	19 Jan 2005 02:00:28 -0800

I was thinking of human beings when they put their mind to something
other than tearing each other apart.

17 years of collaboration at an institutional level between the US and
Europe, for the benefit of all mankind, puts some of the more recent
spats to shame.

From:	Asmodeus
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 16:52:32 GMT

darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1106128828.308284.267030
@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> I was thinking of human beings when they put their mind to something
> other than tearing each other apart.

I was thinking of human beings when they put their mind to something
other than allowing 6th century barbaric dictatorships to exist, so
they can line their pockets. Like elections in Afghanistan and Iraq,
instead of selling terrorists weapons and taking bribes from them,
or making excuses for them.

--
"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The
survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the
success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in
our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
--President George W. Bush
Second Inaugural Address

From:	darkness39 at yahoo.com
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	18 Jan 2005 01:11:37 -0800

I think what Wolf is pointing out is something of a revolution in
historiography in the last 20 years or so.

We can broadly assert that most of our history is written about the
doings of white males.

What the latest research is showing is that actually, they went places
in the world full of non-white men and women, and they went to those
places often with the backing of white women. Both these groups turn
out to have been much more influential than we thought: be it Byzantine
Empresses or women writers in the 18th Century (Jane Austen had a host
of peers who are only now being rediscovered).

Similarly, reevaluations of the preindustrial and early industrial
economies have shown how much of the GDP of the time was accounted for
by 'women's work'. And also of the salient role of non-white
communities in the exploitation of the Britsh Empire.

Of course this has modern political implications and its emergence is
partly as a result of changes in modern politics (dig far enough I
would say there are 2 key causative factors-- modern reproductive
technology and the decline of brute physical force industrial
production). But it is also intrinsically interesting for the study of
history. There was a revolution in the study of history about 50 years
ago (maybe earlier): 'history from below', when suddenly historians
became interested in the lives of ordinary people, not just the doings
of great statesmen. Much of this historiography was Marxist-inspired,
but that is not to say all social and economic history is all Marxist
or supports Marxist conclusions.

You can't tell history now without talking about how people lived, what
they ate, how they interrelated, what they did in their leisure time.
The 'battles and parliaments' of history is now just not enough of the
picture. Look at a popular (conservative) historian like Nial
Ferguson-- he writes about the cost of killing a soldier in WWI, and
the daily life of the average Indian peasant, pre and post Empire. As
'Tory' a modern historian as you can get, writing about the changes in
*society* that British Empire brought. Some of the best military
history now is about the experience of the common soldier on the
battlefield (guess what: through most of history he brought his servant
(often not white) and his camp follower (woman). In that sense, the
telling of history has been irrevocably changed.

The next wave of this has been to discover that 'ordinary people'
included the (majority) of the population which was not white male.
That is where the historical research has gone since the early 1970s,
and the field is all the richer for it.

From:	Asmodeus
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:52:56 GMT

darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1106039497.693868.208590
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

> I think what Wolf is pointing out is something of a revolution in
> historiography in the last 20 years or so.

And that's fine--until it crosses the line from include to
exclude, which is exactly what it's done. English departments
that don't offer a single course in Shakespeare. US History
that give Jefferson and the founding documents bare coverage,
but go on for days about the "hippie" revolution.

http://www.saf.org

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From:	darkness39 at yahoo.com
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	19 Jan 2005 01:56:58 -0800

Saying there is a difference between men and women is a *long* way from
being able to explain patterns in modern society.

The gap between *any two* individuals is likely to be much greater than
the gap between the average man and the average woman, on most
characteristics. And the gap between different societies in female
roles is so large that biologically-related explanations don't cut it:
why would Norway have 50% female parliamentarians and the US sub 10%?

This is the problem with the socio-biological stuff-- it's being
applied inappropriately. It's one thing to observe that girls and boys
learn mathematics differently, it's a lot harder to extrapolate that to
why there are more male law partners than female.

From:	Vorticity Kappa
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:17:09 -0500

wrote in message
news:1106128618.709109.113060@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Saying there is a difference between men and women is a *long* way from
> being able to explain patterns in modern society.
>
> The gap between *any two* individuals is likely to be much greater than
> the gap between the average man and the average woman, on most
> characteristics. And the gap between different societies in female
> roles is so large that biologically-related explanations don't cut it:
> why would Norway have 50% female parliamentarians and the US sub 10%?
>
> This is the problem with the socio-biological stuff-- it's being
> applied inappropriately. It's one thing to observe that girls and boys
> learn mathematics differently, it's a lot harder to extrapolate that to
> why there are more male law partners than female.

And yet, small differences *can* have profound results.

There was a computer simulation done a couple decades back in which "purple
families" and "green families" participated in a "housing market" on a grid
of "blocks" and "lots". A quite small preference by green families to live
next door to at least one family of the same color led over time, as
families moved, from a random scatter to mostly segregated neighborhoods.
In a climate of raging particularism and moral bullying based on past
injustice, a claim by green families that this pattern was proof of
discrimination against them, a "problem" requiring a "solution", might well
succeed.

The inference from "inequality exists" to "malign discrimination exists" is
not particularly strong, (although it has been, mischievously, blessed by
the courts). While reality does not permit such easy untangling of the
threads of systemic evolution, we should based on this demonstration adopt a
somewhat more skeptical view of such claims.

--
VK

From:	Malcolm Weir
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:41:02 -0800

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:17:09 -0500, "Vorticity Kappa"
wrote:

>There was a computer simulation done a couple decades back in which "purple
>families" and "green families" participated in a "housing market" on a grid
>of "blocks" and "lots". A quite small preference by green families to live
>next door to at least one family of the same color led over time, as
>families moved, from a random scatter to mostly segregated neighborhoods.
>In a climate of raging particularism and moral bullying based on past
>injustice, a claim by green families that this pattern was proof of
>discrimination against them, a "problem" requiring a "solution", might well
>succeed.

While interesting as an experiment, it failed as model since all the
greens had the exact same preferences, and there where no overriding
preferences (e.g. "being close to the schools").

>The inference from "inequality exists" to "malign discrimination exists" is
>not particularly strong,

Bogus. There *are* both. Identifying which is in action is a
problem...

> (although it has been, mischievously, blessed by
>the courts).

Nonsense. See above. You have to show that the specific cases *were*
not "malign" or otherwise.

Malc.

From:	darkness39 at yahoo.com
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	17 Jan 2005 09:11:32 -0800

No I am just remembering what I was taught.

You obviously teach at a very different university than I attended,
although mine was famously 'red'.

From:	bum-up at yahoo.com
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Wed, 19 Jan 2005 01:33:14 GMT

On 17 Jan 2005 09:11:32 -0800, darkness39@yahoo.com wrote:

>You obviously teach at a very different university than I attended,
>although mine was famously 'red'.

"Red" in which sense -- communist, or Bush-supporting Republican?

--
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Reply to this address; mail sent to the address in
From: will disappear into a black hole. :)

From:	Asmodeus
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 13:48:26 GMT

darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1105981892.121270.198360
@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> No I am just remembering what I was taught.

You've been away too long. Would you like to see some syllabi
from these courses? I can dig up plenty of them.

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From:	darkness39 at yahoo.com
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	16 Jan 2005 13:52:53 -0800

Actually the slant at my university (which was attended by about a
third of the governing party) was more along the lines of

'actually, history was largely written by dead white European males.
If you dig a bit deeper, you find a whole layer of pivotal people who
were black, women etc. who also played a huge role'.

From:	Asmodeus
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Mon, 17 Jan 2005 13:21:07 GMT

darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1105912373.739777.320260
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

> Actually the slant at my university (which was attended by about a
> third of the governing party) was more along the lines of
>
> 'actually, history was largely written by dead white European males.
> If you dig a bit deeper, you find a whole layer of pivotal people who
> were black, women etc. who also played a huge role'.

You'd better clean your ears. You're hearing the party line
instead of the crap that's being unloaded in the classroom.

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From:	Wolf Whitewater
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:25:38 -0600

"Asmodeus" wrote in message
news:Xns95E154EE0855asmodeusinsightbbcom@63.240.76.16...
> darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1105912373.739777.320260
> @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
>
>> Actually the slant at my university (which was attended by about a
>> third of the governing party) was more along the lines of
>>
>> 'actually, history was largely written by dead white European males.
>> If you dig a bit deeper, you find a whole layer of pivotal people who
>> were black, women etc. who also played a huge role'.
>
> You'd better clean your ears. You're hearing the party line
> instead of the crap that's being unloaded in the classroom.
>

Actually, Asmodeus, independent research I've done for some of my
historically inclined hobbies suggests exactly that. While history was
written down by (victorious) white guys, nevertheless there's a ton out
there if one scratches the surface that suggests that history as we know it
wasn't quite as male-centered as we'd like to believe. I've been doing
non-professional, every-once-in-a-while, admittedly biased (on the pro-woman
side) research on women pre-1750 or so and it's amazing what I've been
finding, a lot of which contradicts what we've *all* been taught. Pivotal
people who were black, women, etc (and occasionally, black women ;>) pre
1750 were often playing large roles in what we tend to consider history.
Interestingly enough, a whole chunk of the past has been lost, and is just
now being revisited. I can't wait to see what develops.

Whitewater

From:	disgruntled pawn
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Tue, 18 Jan 2005 04:34:15 -0600

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:25:38 -0600, Wolf Whitewater wrote:

> "Asmodeus" wrote in message
> news:Xns95E154EE0855asmodeusinsightbbcom@63.240.76.16...
>> darkness39@yahoo.com wrote in news:1105912373.739777.320260
>> @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
>>
>>> Actually the slant at my university (which was attended by about a
>>> third of the governing party) was more along the lines of
>>>
>>> 'actually, history was largely written by dead white European males.
>>> If you dig a bit deeper, you find a whole layer of pivotal people who
>>> were black, women etc. who also played a huge role'.
>>
>> You'd better clean your ears. You're hearing the party line instead of
>> the crap that's being unloaded in the classroom.
>>
>>
> Actually, Asmodeus, independent research I've done for some of my
> historically inclined hobbies suggests exactly that. While history was
> written down by (victorious) white guys, nevertheless there's a ton out
> there if one scratches the surface that suggests that history as we know
> it wasn't quite as male-centered as we'd like to believe.

*pointing gun at foot* I'm not a historian, but this subject always
fascinated me. There are several accounts of women holding power overtly,
though they tend to be the exception more than the rule. Reading into
things, one often sees women working through manipulation behind the
scenes, and it's likely that many important decsions were the result of
this. Men tend to be physically stronger and thus the "dominant" gender
(no relation to WIITWD). I think gender roles as they've been presented
historically are simply a reflection of that, with any exceptions largely
glossed over specifically _because they were viewed as exceptions_. People
get used to this and unconciously assume the standard line when there is a
doubt. So bam, a "truth" has been created - much like how Jesus became
white. Because everyone else was, why shouldn't he be too?

One problems as i see it, is that the basic history education taught to
children still folows these teachings, even though many are known to be
false. Whenever some one tries to argue an alternative curriculum, they
get critized as pushing an agenda. And as a concession we get black
history month, women's history month, and so on. These still treat them as
seperate events, that are somehow not a part of "real" history, and i thin
that's a shame.

BTW, i've read that many beleive that the first tools were made by women.
However, as they were not stone they haven't survived the years. There is
further evidence in that female chimps are more skilled with tools than
their male counterparts. It has been suggested that this a result of a
societal role.

--
Error: File not found

From:	Malcolm Weir
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Tue, 18 Jan 2005 12:21:09 -0800

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 04:34:15 -0600, disgruntled pawn
wrote:

>*pointing gun at foot* I'm not a historian, but this subject always
>fascinated me. There are several accounts of women holding power overtly,
>though they tend to be the exception more than the rule.

Do the names "Elizabeth", "Mary" and "Victoria" mean anything to you?

While the line of secession to the throne of England makes it hard for
a woman to get the crown, when they did, they held power every bit as
firmly as their male counterparts.

[ Snip ]

>BTW, i've read that many beleive that the first tools were made by women.

Define "tool"....

>However, as they were not stone they haven't survived the years.

There are, clearly, vast quantities of stuff we don't know about
pre-history, and this sort of speculation is usually politically
motivated.

> There is further evidence

Ummm... to have "further" evidence, you first need "evidence"!

>in that female chimps are more skilled with tools than
>their male counterparts. It has been suggested that this a result of a
>societal role.

Sure. That makes things culturally dependent, too. So the factors
leading to proto-tribe X becoming tool users will be different from
the factors impacting proto-tribe Y, and thus it may be a male *or* a
female that becomes "the first" tool user, depending on
circumstances...

Malc.

From:	disgruntled pawn
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Tue, 18 Jan 2005 15:49:47 -0600

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 12:21:09 -0800, Malcolm Weir wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 04:34:15 -0600, disgruntled pawn
> wrote:
>
>
>>*pointing gun at foot* I'm not a historian, but this subject always
>>fascinated me. There are several accounts of women holding power overtly,
>>though they tend to be the exception more than the rule.
>
> Do the names "Elizabeth", "Mary" and "Victoria" mean anything to you?
>
> While the line of secession to the throne of England makes it hard for
> a woman to get the crown, when they did, they held power every bit as
> firmly as their male counterparts.

That's a perfect example of what i meant.

>>BTW, i've read that many beleive that the first tools were made by women.
>
> Define "tool"....

I mean some object designed, however crudely, to accomplish a specific
purpose. Alternatively somethig that has been adopted as a means of
accomplishing a goal. I do not mean an object of oppurunity, as in
your hand happens to land on a rock while being attacked.

>>However, as they were not stone they haven't survived the years.
>
> There are, clearly, vast quantities of stuff we don't know about
> pre-history,

of course

>and this sort of speculation is usually politically motivated.

I would not agree that that is usually the case. Evidence can show thhings
one way or another.

>> There is further evidence
>
> Ummm... to have "further" evidence, you first need "evidence"!

Yes, not the best transition, but i was going from the statement of
females as early tool users into chimps where it there has been seen
stronger proficiency. It would not be considered the "primary" activity,
but it is a lif sustaining one.

>
>>in that female chimps are more skilled with tools than
>>their male counterparts. It has been suggested that this a result of a
>>societal role.
>
> Sure. That makes things culturally dependent, too. So the factors
> leading to proto-tribe X becoming tool users will be different from
> the factors impacting proto-tribe Y, and thus it may be a male *or* a
> female that becomes "the first" tool user, depending on
> circumstances...
>

It's the reason why they are more skilled that i think is significant.
They are not the primary hunters (which for humans is mostly an issue of
males haveing greater physical strength), their role is better facilitated
by becoming skilled in the use of tools. Not weapon tools, but other tools.
Clearly it is impacted by socieity, but at its root there is the
difference between the male and female.

--
Error: file not found

From:	Sockermom9
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	19 Jan 2005 01:07:53 GMT

Pawn writes:

>> Define "tool"....
>
>I mean some object designed, however crudely, to accomplish a specific
>purpose. Alternatively somethig that has been adopted as a means of
>accomplishing a goal.

You mean like Chimpanzees? On behalf of all womanhood, thanks.

Lynn

From:	SilverOz
Subject:	OT competent women was Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Tue, 18 Jan 2005 21:14:05 GMT

In soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm on Tue, 18 Jan 2005 12:21:09 -0800
Malcolm Weir wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 04:34:15 -0600, disgruntled pawn
> wrote:
>
>
>>*pointing gun at foot* I'm not a historian, but this subject always
>>fascinated me. There are several accounts of women holding power overtly,
>>though they tend to be the exception more than the rule.
>
> Do the names "Elizabeth", "Mary" and "Victoria" mean anything to you?
>
> While the line of secession to the throne of England makes it hard for
> a woman to get the crown, when they did, they held power every bit as
> firmly as their male counterparts.

Hrm.. Bloody Mary's not the best example for that, she was not all that
firmly seated, especially after her marriage, and I think not really in
charge on her own account, but doing a fair bit of payback for others.
(And perhaps not all that sane either, think of the phantom pregnancies)

Anne deserves a mention I think, not famous but as competent as many and
more than some.

I note that in Oz, girls are starting to overtake boys in all
examination results at high school level. Used to be that they mainly
did well in English and History and similar, now they are topping Maths
and Science subjects too. Some say this is because boys aren't trying
anymore, although the scores achieved and the standards set don't seem
to be any different to the previous.

I believe that the two main reasons women were not in charge in proportion
to numbers over history are the need for physical strength and the need
to care for children. Physical strength is not so much needed now,
and women are certainly saying they prefer a different life to that of
baby factory...

I seem to recall an aid worker saying the first thing she was asked by
women in poor villages in Africa was for contraception.

Maybe what we need is Bujold's uterine replicators!

SilverOz

--
========================================================================
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http://www.peter-masters.com
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From:	Asmodeus
Subject:	Re: OT competent women was Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Sat, 22 Jan 2005 14:02:29 GMT

SilverOz wrote in
news:slrncuquph.cto.SilverOz@zeus.zipworld.com.au:

> I note that in Oz, girls are starting to overtake boys in all
> examination results at high school level. Used to be that they mainly
> did well in English and History and similar, now they are topping Maths
> and Science subjects too.

I'm quite sorry to say that isn't happening here, at least
not according to the last published stats I saw.

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From:	Binder
Subject:	Re: OT competent women was Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:03:51 -0800

SilverOz wrote:

> I seem to recall an aid worker saying the first thing she was asked by
> women in poor villages in Africa was for contraception.

If I only had a memory! I recall someone saying something to the effect
that the easiest way to elevate a society was to make inexpensive and
effective contraception available. Wish I could remember who it was and
precisely what they said...

From:	Patsy
Subject:	Re: OT: Huygens has landed on the surface of Titan
Date:	Tue, 18 Jan 2005 01:20:46 +0000

> I've been doing
> non-professional, every-once-in-a-while, admittedly biased (on the pro-woman
> side) research on women pre-1750 or so and it's amazing what I've been
> finding, a lot of which contradicts what we've *all* been taught. Pivotal
> people who were black, women, etc (and occasionally, black women ;>) pre
> 1750 were often playing large roles in what we tend to consider history.
> Interestingly enough, a whole chunk of the past has been lost, and is just
> now being revisited. I can't wait to see what develops.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about history, but
surely by admitting that your research is biased you are shooting your
own argument in the foot. Basically you seem to be saying "My biased
research shows that the biased stuff written down is wrong." which
doesn't make sense.
Patsy