### 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.