From: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!wagner
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: More Historical Material on Universal Service
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.387
Posted: Sat Nov  6 12:00:38 1982
Received: Sat Nov  6 13:31:36 1982
References: uofm-cv.138

Charles comment about women in service makes me think of the
Israeli army, where women serve.  Mostly they fill support
positions - my girlfriend of the time was a communications
officer (I cant remember if it was telephone or radio) - 
but if they ask, I think they can now get into front line
combat.  The remaining assymettry (I am told) is due to the
fact that the society as a whole feels that they are still
underpopulated, and keeping the women a bit safer is worth
the social cost of keeping them out of front line combat.
No flames, please, about whether Israel *really* is 
underpopulated, whether Israel should have the right to a
compulsory draft, or whether should exist.  My only point
was that Israel runs a whole army with almost no exclusion
of women from active duty.  

  Incidentally, I think it is a poor reflection on the 
reactions of some people on the net that I (and many others)
have to spend a significant part of each submission delimiting
the things we did *not* say.  I am not sure where the problem
is - perhaps I dont spend enough time writing my submissions
and making them unambiguous; perhaps others dont read them
carefully enough before responding to things I didnt say. In
other broadcast media (radio, TV), the people who do the
programming (not computer ~) are trained specially in things
that arent relevant here, like voice control to be understandable,
but also in chosing words and avoiding regionalisms and 
ambiguities.  Being a broadcast medium of a mass of people,
the net does not have this pre-filtering on its content.
Is this problem solvable?  Mini-courses on net etiquette
before one is allowed on sounds so authoritarian and downright
stupid, but look at how much more useful and workable the
ham frequencies are than the CB ones (and also inaccessable,
of course).  I dont know the answer; I only barely know how
to phrase the question, but I think the various problems we
have with misunderstanding-type flames (as opposed to 
genuine differences of opinion) demonstrate that we have a
genuine problem.

  Enough.  Thoughts, anyone?

Michael Wagner, UTCS (decvax!utzoo!utcsstat!wagner)