Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!decwrl!ucbvax!GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU!gsmith From: gsmith@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP Newsgroups: alt.flame Subject: Maroney Arcives, vol II Message-ID: <8710030737.AA26141@garnet.berkeley.edu> Date: Sat, 3-Oct-87 03:37:53 EDT Article-I.D.: garnet.8710030737.AA26141 Posted: Sat Oct 3 03:37:53 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 4-Oct-87 04:38:52 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: gsmith@garnet.berkeley.edu () Organization: Garnet Gang Gems of Wisdom, Inc. Lines: 532 These are the horrible, nasty things Maroney was whimpering about: Date: Fri, 31 Jul 87 06:00:20 PDT From: hoptoad.UUCP!tim@cgl.ucsf.edu (Tim Maroney) To: postmaster@brahms.Berkeley.EDU Path: hoptoad!ptsfa!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU!obnoxio From: obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Dave Smeds (really: management vs. art) Message-ID: <8707281220.AA12134@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 28 Jul 87 12:20:24 GMT References: <464@phoenix.PRINCETON.EDU> <2544@hoptoad.uucp> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central Lines: 171 I'd really like to move this discussion to rec.arts.misc, but since not enough of you voted for it in the first place, I'm not moving it there. In article <2544@hoptoad.uucp>, tim@hoptoad (Tim Maroney) writes his usual stupid drivel: >Gosh! You mean if I have book which explores new forms of the novel but >can't be published because it's not commercial enough, all I have to do is >spend a few thousand spare dollars, and then, whee, it's publication city? Yes. Being sarcastic about it doesn't make it false. >What could be freer than that? It's not as if you are asking something that >couldn't even be seriously considered by 75% of the country, after all. I was unaware that 75% of the country were trying to publish their latest novel. If you have evidence that indicate otherwise, please post it. Actually, this country has hundreds of "little" magazines/presses that are into literary experimentation, and have their own devoted readerships. There are several viable commercial publishers who actively support new forms of the novel. Grove Press is probably the best known in America. I've got a few stray catalogues buried somewhere from all sorts of artsy publishers. >And by the way, I'm sorry to read about your arithmetic deficit, but we have >these new machines called calculators now that might help. And AI programs that can knee jerk as stupudly as Maroney are just around the corner.... > Self-publication >using a $.10/page photocopy machine is outrageously expensive, far more so >than vanity publishers. Yes. That's why smart people go to places that charge $.025/page. > A vanity press could be expected to charge you >perhaps $5-10/copy for a medium-well-bound book of 250 pages. On a >photocopy machine, even ignoring the binding costs, that's $25.00 a copy. It's only $6.25/copy if you shop around first. Heck, you could cut that in half if you were desperate and first photoreduced the pages. (Gosh, I love seeing Tim's attempts at sarcasm. Few people can set them up to explode in their own face as accurately as Tim can. I have to wonder whether he does it on purpose.) >>In the Soviet Union, photocopiers are few and carefully guarded, to >>prevent access by the samizdat press. > >Which flourishes regardless. Yes. There's so much excitement at typing up a fresh copy of the novel you've just read off a lousy carbon copy, especially with thoughts of Siberian labor camps and fear of KGB exposure to add to the spice. Unlike us lazy Amerikanski who just spend our stealings from the slave- working proletariat at bookstores or who visit public libraries even, and lazy Amerikanski authors who use Xerox machine to self-publish away when all those >>>"free" (actually very expensive) presses [,controlled] by a high-finance >>>capitalist power elite that pulls the strings in all American business[,] conspire to prevent him from publishing his masterpiece. If they didn't pull the strings at all those photocopying places, somebody might publish his own work even! Yes, it's tough all over. By the way, the reason samizdat can flourish in the Soviet Union is that the country is too damned big to get registration of typewriters to work, the way it's done in Romania. > In addition, literary magazines in the Soviet >Union are now almost completely uncensored. Really? Why then does samizdat still flourish? You can't have it both ways. I'll believe glaznost is for real when they publish Solzhenitsyn and allow access to USENET. >>If all else fails, an >>incompetent, impoverished, and cowardly author has one final recourse >>in the "free" world, assuming, that is, that he has access to a computer. > >I see. Any author who isn't published under capitalism is "incompetent, >impoverished, and cowardly". Give me a fucking break! Give *you* a break? You must be kidding. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Michael's statement seems quite reasonable to me. It takes a special kind of bravery to suffer through 40-60 rejections--many of them offering to publish in exchange for mostly "minor" changes--of your great masterpieces while utterly broke. So it was with Samuel Beckett and his first two pub- lished novels _Murphy_ and _Watt_. Anthony Burgess, in contrast, was a major coward and bowed down to his American publisher and let them excise the last chapter of _A Clockwork Orange_. (Personally I think the book is better that way, but that's not my point.) Somehow it seems utterly obvious to me that impoverished authors can't afford special editions of their own works. Am I missing something? It seems even more obvious to me that incompetent authors might have trouble getting published. Not always, of course--there are many short cuts--but incompetence does tend to make things more difficult. >And do you really think that impoverished people have computers; I know some who do. > that it is >free to upload a 40K book; If you ask around, you can get access. It isn't hard. Really, it isn't. > that you can write a serious book and have >another full-time job at the same time; Gee Tim--are you willing to give me $40K so that I don't have to work for a living next year or so and can go write a serious book? I mean, my hero *is* Samuel Beckett, but there must be a better way than living in massive penury for the better part of two decades when it comes to turning the literary world upside-down. > that anyone on USENET would have >anything but the harshest criticism of anyone who uploaded 40K of book? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Really, Tim, since when has flaming meant a damned thing to *you*? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Why do you suddenly expect flames to matter to someone else? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! >Seriously, guy, you are far out of touch with reality. Think about it for once in your otherwise void existence: it's not so out- rageous that someone might dump interesting excerpts on the net, and then sell copies off-line to those interested in more. That wouldn't take 40K. >May I ask what social class you have been raised in? May I ask what the final score was at the basketball game that the doctors played with your head when you were born was? >Gasp! You mean that some good art has been produced under capitalism? In >that case, I retract my entire argument. Tim--leave sarcasm in the hands of the talented few. You're definitely not one of them. > Dynasty is the >Shakespeare of the 20th century. I suppose Tim never heard of "All in the Family" or "M*A*S*H" or "Hill Street Blues". Otherwise why would he deliberately pick the stupidest analogy possible? > Meanwhile, the Russians preserve idiotic >art forms that are being laid to a well-deserved final rest for >unprofitability here; silly stuff like dance that no red-blooded American >male would be caught dead near anyway. Ballet is being laid to its final rest in this country? Do you just make it up as you go along, or are really as ignorant as your postings would indicate? I really can't tell sometimes. 'fess up. > Yes indeedy, my consciousness has >been raised. Mark this day on your calendars, folks. "Tim. No brains. I checked. Very bad." ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 "We can pay farmers not to grow crops, but we cannot pay artists to stop making art. Yet something must be done." --Jacques Barzun Date: Fri, 31 Jul 87 06:02:25 PDT From: hoptoad.UUCP!tim@cgl.ucsf.edu (Tim Maroney) To: postmaster@brahms.Berkeley.EDU Xref: hoptoad talk.religion.misc:4608 talk.politics.misc:6132 Path: hoptoad!ptsfa!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU!obnoxio From: obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,talk.politics.misc Subject: Re: An Interesting Few Messages on Hate Literature Message-ID: <8707291423.AA20160@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 29 Jul 87 14:23:20 GMT References: <2564@hoptoad.uucp> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Followup-To: talk.politics.misc Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central Lines: 97 I don't quite see what the religious angle was here. Perhaps Tim was confused. In article <2564@hoptoad.uucp>, tim@hoptoad (Tim Maroney) writes: >Israel is one of the most militaristic, genocidal, and tyrrannical nations >on the planet. That's right Tim. Of course, you've also said that it's just as diff- icult for an author to publish in the United States as the Soviet Union. > I have personally debated pro-Israeli Orthodox Jews >on CompuServe who called for theocracy; Oh my. Does this mean I'm supposed to kiss your tuchis now, oh great one? >I am not saying that Jews are intrinsically evil. Generous to a fault, aren't you? Hurm. I've never said that Tim Maroney is intrinsicially stupid. > I don't believe in good >and evil. Oh. So it wasn't such a big deal after all. Personally, I don't know if I believe if intelligence exists. But you've convinced me to believe that stupidity exists, Tim. > I am citing this to show that your comparison is rather facile, >that Arab nations are no more or less a world threat than Israel. Tim cites the fact that he's argued on CompuServe, and--poof!--he's got the Mideast situation a l l f i g u r e d o u t. You are making this up as you go along, aren't you? I'm going to wake up from this dream in five minutes, right? I really am responding to an AI project, is that it? > As I have >already shown, Judaism is a very misogynist religion; As you have already shown? That's complete bullshit. Echoing your favor- ite hysterical, but politically correct, authors is not providing an argu- ment. Pointing out that Judaism is not the same as modern feminism is not the same as proving that it's very misogynistic. I don't know whose anti-Semitism is worse: your implicit and rather hateful claim to know the only proper way of evaluating Judaism or Jay-El's occa- sional, but totally obvious, little remarks. >I am hardly the only person on the net who has noticed that Martillo fairly >seethes with hatred for Arabs, Possibly you are. I've mostly noticed his vilest invectives are directed toward Muslims, and then some miscellaneous flames about Ashkenazi and Germans. My memory fades after this--does he also seethe with hatred against leftist self-hating Jewish intellectuals? Or was it intellectual leftist self-hating Jews? Or Jewish intellectual leftist self-haters? As I said, my memory fogs at this point. > that his pretenses at scholarship are shallow >affectations, What pretense? I think Yakim generally knows what he's talking about, as well as anyone else on the net ever does. You, however, will blabber on about your great eclectic background, but have rarely shown an ability to digest what you actually read even at the most literal level. (Check out t.r.newage--where Tim once again shoots himself in the foot, unable to even identify who is and who isn't a Brahms Gangster! Ayuck yuck yuck.) I asked you in r.a.comics to stop merely echoing your "politically correct" buzz- words, and you got your nose bent all out of shape, going on and on about how you aren't a member of any political party, as if I has said you were, or somehow concluding, since I don't think YOU are capable of arguing worth shit for any damn cause in the world, I must be in favor of oppression of women and god knows what else. > and that he functions on the same level as the average Klan >pamphleteer. Hardly. Yakim is one of the few posters who frequently provides impres- sive documentation for what he says. I strongly disagree with the final logic whereby he makes his conclusions from his posted documentation, and am almost universally appalled by his conclusions. Your flaming of his article on Islam & Circumcision, calling it all sorts of slanted propagandizing, was oh so typical. I read his article straight through and after the first 50-100 lines of pro forma Yakim, which I ig- nored, came ~900 lines of the most amazing stuff. As Yakim said, he went to that great effort SO THAT US NET.READERS COULD FORM OUR OWN OPINION. I came to the exact opposite conclusion that Yakim did, just from his excerpts. You, by the way, function on the same level as the average reader of Klan pamphlets. (Golly, this style of posting is real easy, Tim.) ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 Date: Fri, 31 Jul 87 06:10:50 PDT From: hoptoad.UUCP!tim@cgl.ucsf.edu (Tim Maroney) To: postmaster@brahms.Berkeley.EDU Path: hoptoad!ptsfa!ames!sdcsvax!ucbvax!BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU!obnoxio From: obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (the Comedian) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics Subject: Re: Watchmen Movie: actors Message-ID: <8707300646.AA24099@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 30 Jul 87 06:46:24 GMT References: <10005@orchid.waterloo.edu> <611@microsoft.UUCP> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (the Comedian) Distribution: world Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central Lines: 10 In article <611@microsoft.UUCP>, ellene@microsoft (Ellen Eades) writes: >In article <10005@orchid.waterloo.edu> datanguay@watbun.waterloo.edu (David Tanguay) writes: >> Tim Maroney == Dr. M., > > Tim as Rorschach, You're both nuts. Tim is most accurately cast as Captain Carnage! ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 Poor Bubastis will go nuts. The readers will go nuts. Timmy IS nuts. Date: Fri, 31 Jul 87 06:19:15 PDT From: hoptoad.UUCP!tim@cgl.ucsf.edu (Tim Maroney) To: postmaster@brahms.Berkeley.EDU Path: hoptoad!ptsfa!ames!ucbcad!zen!ucbvax!BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU!obnoxio From: obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers Subject: MATHENAUTS Message-ID: <8707301559.AA27360@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 30 Jul 87 15:59:08 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central Lines: 182 Here's another attempt at a review on my part. But be warned, I don't know beans about how-to-review. Spoilers, if any, will be utterly minimal. Also be warned that my views are strongly colored by the fact that I am a mathematician, and am not impressed by stories that merely translate a mathematical notion into words somehow. As a final caveat, I had read the book when it first came out a month or two ago, and only just recently got my copy back. MATHENAUTS: Tales of Mathematical Wonder edited by Rudy Rucker Published in the US by Arbor House $9.95 trade paperback I suppose I'd rate it [***-] on Chuq's scale. The cover is lovely. I'd have preferred something by Fomenko or Varo my- self, but it's no big deal. This book claims to be the first anthology of mathematical fiction since Clifton Fadiman's two famous florilegia. That's probably correct, and in particular the book can't help be compared to them. First off, Rucker's introduction is pathetic. No wonderful descriptions of mathematics or mathematicians like Fadiman had. Sentences like "The great thing about mathematical science fiction is that it gives the reader the weirdness of math without the work." or "I'd like to sit those scof- fers down and make them read [...,] not so much because they would love the story, but rather because it would *confirm their worst suspicions*." make me want to throw up. Not even Asimov in the best of 19xx anthologies' introductions causes me to think "ghetto". Part of what contributes to this feeling, beyond the quoted efforts on Rucker's part, was his inability to find >anything< outside of the mainstream of industrial strength science fiction, in losing contrast to Fadiman's "here's a bunch of stories that I liked, and so will you!". Not even one stupid limerick! Fadiman found fantastic mathematical items from Plato, Houseman, Leacock, Beckett, Que- neau, etc. Has Rucker read--or known anyone who has read--a scrap even of Kafka, Borges, Calvino, Stoppard, T S Eliot, etc? It's a rhetorical question, yes, but a loud and enthusiastic "HECK NO" answer wouldn't sur- prise me. He ends his introduction verbally pullulating over possibili- ties yet to come--if Rucker's so bloody impatient, he could go to a lib- rary instead of being such a narrow-minded whinger. Feh. To top it off, the introduction contains, would you believe, a fatal spoiler for Larry Niven's famous story "Convergent Series". If you are the type who has to read the introduction early and somehow have never ever read this Niven story--read the introduction *second*. Gack. On to the stories. Isaac Asimov "1 to 999": a Griswold story--see his _The Union Club Mys- teries_ for more. For this anthology, it's a complete throwaway. Norman Kagan "Four Brands of Impossible": the weirdness can't hide the conventional plot. I don't know if I like the story or not. Greg Bear "Tangents": an '80s reworking of "The Captured Cross-Section", mixed in with somebody's well-known personal tragedy. It won the Nebula award, yes, but with competition like the first Asimov Susan Calvin story in XXX years, what's the point? The story was perfect on its own--it just suffered from being too familiar. Rudy Rucker "A New Golden Age": what a surprise! I liked this story. Af- ter his hatchet job of an introduction, and my worthless attempts to read _White Light_, I did not expect much from RR. Then again, his popular- izations are actually quite good. (I wish authors would make up their minds as to whether to be good or bad once and for all!) Ruth Berman "Professor and Colonel": a throwaway of a sketch. Anatoly Dnieprov "The Maxwell Equations": an excellent, "different" story; it's Russian science fiction mixed with horror from the early '60s. Martin Gardner "Left or Right?": this is the "Esquire" story mentioned in _The Ambidextrous Universe_. It's a shame that MG is embarrassed by the fact that it's "out of date" scientifically, and, like _The Island of Five Colors_, deliberately left it out of his own recent fiction anthology. Sigh. It's one classic of a '50s story. Ian Watson "Immune Dreams": it's in the anthology because the author phrased his pseudoscience in terms of catastrophe theory. Whooptie-doo. Not a bad story, actually, but I couldn't help comparing it, to its disadvantage, with Norman Spinrad's "Carcinoma Angels". Kathryn Cramer "Forbidden Knowledge": experimental weirdness. It's whole point, I believe, centers on a famous (to a mathematician, natch) passage from Irving Kaplansky's classic _Fields and Rings_ that probably sounds multiply bizarre if you don't know any mathematics. (KC got the quotation ever so slightly incorrect!) The word games were rather obvious from the beginning to me, as was the Kaplansky connection, and overall, I thought the story was a waste. I know of exactly one fellow math grad student who liked it. George Zebrowski "Goedel's Doom": standard science fictional nonsense about Goedel's theorem. Delightful popcorn. Douglas Hofstadter "The Tale of Happiton": reprinted from _Metamagical Themas_. This is a prime example of how not to write social/political satire: it's fictional content is too thin. It probably was appropriate within its original context as a parable. Separated off, it's a loser of a story. Don Sakers "The Finagle Fiasco": a good, silly story about Murphy's law. Larry Niven "Convergent Series": one of the few stories where the math- ematics is a relevant a part of the story. Not only is it perhaps the greatest pact-with-the-devil story ever written, it is one of the best short shorts period. But you all know that, right? Martin Gardner "No-Sided Professor": another MG classic with relevant usage of mathematics. And another bad reflection on the anthology--too many of the few good stories are already familiar from Fadiman. William F Orr "Euclid Alone": an OK story. In my copy, the picture of an Alexander horned sphere came out unimpressively. I recommend tracking one down in Hocking&Young _Topology_, the source mentioned in the story, or better yet, the frontpiece in Rolfsen _Knots&Links_. The intellectual debates are on level with the net. (If you don't recognize the title allusion, you'll find it in the table of contents of one of the Fadiman books.) Marc Laidlaw "Love Comes to the Middleman": both a delightful conceit and story: a universe with a doubly infinite scaling. (ML also wrote "Nutri- mancer", by the by.) Robert Sheckley "Miss Mouse and the Fourth Dimension": oh wow wow what a delightful story! A genuinely successful cross between the fourth dimen- sion and the occult. Any other story I've read along those lines made me wince. So why didn't anyone think of this idea before? Amazing. Isaac Asimov "The Feeling of Power": the famous story about the rediscov- ery of arithmetic. You probably read it in Fadiman and a billyun other places. Sigh. Henry H Gross "Cubeworld": an utterly preposterous bit of zaniness. A defi- nite not-to-be-miss of a story. Frederik Pohl "Schematic Man": a throwaway plot and story--take it or leave it. Gregory Benford "Time's Rub": what a sad waste of fiction. The whole point was to work Newcomb's paradox into a story. There was nothing else, really. If you haven't seen the paradox before, the story might seem profound. To me, it's a nothing story with a loud look-at-me! gimmick. Rudy Rucker "Message Found in a Copy of *Flatland*": again RR surprised me. A delightful story. Norman Kagan "The Mathenauts": his famous story. Just silliness, really, with a million in-jokes that only a mathematician could get. NK took tea jokes seriously and wrote them all down. I suppose if one didn't know any better one might find the story profound--I honestly can't tell at all--but really, having a character shout "Holy Halmos" is on par with Robin from the TV Batman. I first read it in a Judith Merril(sp?) anthology for best of 1965, where it contained a special glossary for the funny gibber--and again NK was joshing away. (And if you don't know what pataphysics is-- sigh, what's the point of saying the obvious yet again.) Coincidentally let me mention that the August '87 issue of IASFM (the one with "Nutrimancer"!) contained *two* excellent stories about mathematicians, as if to mock RR's weak anthologizing efforts: Lisa Goldstein "Cassandra's Photographs": a fine story about you-know-who and hence you-know-what. My only complaint with the story *is* the casting of the main character as a mathematician. It was done, as far as I can see, because of some retarded stereotype that mathematicians, by their very nature, lead rigid, patterned, controlled lives. If I were Tim Maroney, I'd start drooling pathetically contra this point at this point, but I'll skip it. (Actually, the main character is a statistician. Whatever.) Kim Stanley Robinson "The Blind Geometer": hardly science fiction actually, just a near future mystery/thriller. It's plot is routine and disposable, but that hardly matters. The perspective gained from the first person blind protagonist is intense. In particular, the working out of his geometrical cum haptic perspective of the world, and how it carries the narrator along through the plot, is remarkable, and remarkably well handled. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 A man does not walk down the street giving a haughty twirl to his moustaches at the thought of his superiority to some variety of deep-sea fishes. --G K Chesterton