From: utzoo!decvax!ittvax!swatt
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: The Draft and Involuntary Service
Article-I.D.: ittvax.504
Posted: Tue Nov  9 16:03:55 1982
Received: Wed Nov 10 02:09:34 1982
References: yale-com.264

Have you ever noticed in conversation that you end up on a certain
subject and then are totally unable to figure out HOW you got there
from where you started?  Given the delays in USENET, net discussions
exhibit this characteristic in spades.

The current discussion on the draft started as a side comment by
someone that perhaps the government should just draft medical people
instead of trading education loans for some service time.

The current discussion on taxes got started the same way.

Now the discussion on financing education ITSELF started as a reponse
to someone's article on something else which used the phrase "education
as a right".  That article was part of a discussion about schools
requiring incoming freshmen to by personal computers to hook into a
campus network.

THAT discussion got started when someone posted a news release about a
joint vendor-university effort to develop such a network.  I think that
one was not in response to anything.

Mark Twain once said:

	"Science is wonderful.  You get such an incredible return
	in speculation for such a trivial investment of fact."

Netnews seems to be an exception to the general phenomenon of
attenuation, to wit: "you get such an incredible amount of feedback
for such a trivial amount of input."

All of this seems so bland and obvious that it probably won't provoke
much response, except for those people who feel compelled to reply
that it is all very bland and obvious ...

However, for all the rest, I will close with a quote from Ambrose
Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary":

	Army: 	noun. A class of non-producers which protects a nation
		by depriving it of everything likely to tempt an enemy
		to invade.

			- Alan S. Watt