TURMEL: Fracturing discussion?
Upon my return
after 2 weeks, what do I find making up the bulk
of the discussion on econ-lets? All about
fracturing discussion.
*Subject: Re: Making this list work for
all
*Date: Mon Nov 24 16:15:13 1997
*From: cs@oden.se (Christina Svensson)
*I don't have much time to spend on econ-lets
these days (and I rarely
*see anything that interest me), but as
I now dive back into it I see
*it's my favorite subject that is up again
:-)
JCT: That's right.
It is her favorite subject.
*For example I subscribe several list of
the type "interestgroups"
*where in one list we discuss how to deal
with our common interest,
*and in the other list how to deal with
more administrative matters
*off the group in itself.
*It is very easy to miss something interesting
and valuable because of
*the ob-focus of the list. (As the work-gang
thing that I only
*discovered because someone forwarded
it to me privately)
*Oh, why oh why can't we just split the
list..?
JCT: With one
list, she wouldn't have missed the good bit.
*Date: Mon Nov 24 19:36:08 1997
*From: bo.ljungqvist@ctv.gu.se (Bo Ljungqvist)
*Subject: Re: Making this list work for
all
*To: econ-lets@mailbase.ac.uk
*Please, let us not split this list!
*I do not find it difficult to select
from the list to read what
*interests me; sometimes about "workgangs"
sometimes about money
*theory. No one is forced to read everything.
The system with labels
*of topics works quit well. For example
it just take me some seconds a
*day to transfer the mail from John Turmel
into a safe place where it
*does not block my computer system and
where I can read it later if I
*want.
JCT: And I think
that is the problem with many of these other
people. They read their mail on-line because
they don't know how to
save their mail for later reading. Christina
has complained that she
hates my long posts because she knows
there's interesting stuff in
them but would prefer if I would not post
the parts she won't find
interesting. I put the TURMEL flag in
the topic so they have the
option of quick stowing for free off-line
perusal.
*Subject: Splitting the list.
*Date: Tue Nov 25 04:30:34 1997
*From: xuegx@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Tom Holloway)
*What I _don't_ want to share are absurdly
long and tedious speeches.
*If setting up a separate practical list
will be seen as 'separatist'
*and unconstructive, then I will not do
it. I already have 7 lists to
*contend with; my only wish was to create
a forum where practitioners
*could discuss day-to-day matters without
having to download the
*thoughts of Canadian candidates for office.
JCT: I could
understand his wanting to get away from my posts if
I was cross-posting to all 7 of his LETS
lists but I only post to one
of his 7 lists. I don't post to 6. How
is creating another list I
won't post to going to help? Don't the
other lists where I don't post
provide that silence six-fold?
*There is a simple practical solution which
I have adopted for the
*largest and most active of my lists.
If those subscribers who have
*long polemics that they wish to deliver
will put them on a suitable
*web-site, they can then use the EconLets
List to draw attention to
*them and provide the www or ftp address
so that they can be
*downloaded by those who want to read
them. It was also suggested....
JCT: And if many
people start offering lengthier discussions,
we'll have 20 or 30 web sites a day we'll
have to check out rather
than having it mailed to our boxes, the
whole purpose of a news list.
No thanks. As many of you may remember,
there was a similar movement
to get away from TURMEL posts in the ncf.ca.lets
newsgroup by creating
an ott.community.lets newsgroup as a place
where Ottawa LETS members
could hold discussions without TURMEL
by prohibiting cross-posting to
other related newsgroups. After a year,
it sits there empty of
contributions.
*Date: Tue Nov 25 07:26:52 1997
*From: edbenjamin@brookes.ac.uk (Elise
Benjamin)
*Despite being a professional typist (which
*does help to get messages out quickly)
I find I have little time to
*read many of the postings on this conference....
this then means that
*I have even less time to reply. It's
almost as if some contributors
*to the conference can't distinguish between
a simple question and an
*essay title - no offence meant it's just
that I always feel why use
*50 words when 20 will do.
JCT: Some of
us provide essay answers, she wants blurbs because
she can't speed-read to match her speed-type.
I can play up to 8 notes
a second on my accordion and I can type
pretty fast too. Nothing wrong
with essays.
**of Canadian candidates for office.
*Who could this be referring to I wonder!
JCT: The only
candidate to nationally raise LETS in the 1997
Canadian Federal General Election and
I'm proud of that notorious
distinction.
**they can then use the EconLets List to
draw attention to them and
**provide the www or ftp address so that
they can be downloaded by
**those who want to read them.
*I'm sure this, or something similar,
has been suggested before, which
*I presume is the reason why I haven't
received many Turmel postings
*recently!
JCT: No, if you
subscribe to econ-lets, you are getting a copy of
everything I post on public newsgroups.
You've missed nothing you
didn't skip over yourself.
This is just
another attempt to get away from Turmel's posts that
they hate to skip over. They search for
more and more newsgroups where
they won't tempted by Turmel's posts.
I'm used to it. It explains how
someone created the alt.fan.john-turmel
newsgroup.
Article #35950 (36119 is last):
From: mcr@amaterasu.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca
(Michael Richardson)
Newsgroups: alt.config,ott.general,ncf.general
Subject: PROPOSAL: alt.fan.john-turmel
Date: Wed Jan 22 11:49:40 1997
Many of you have enjoyed the posts
of Ottawa's John Turmel.
Many of you shudder when your newsreader
comes up with a subject
line "TURMEL". In any case, you know it
will be an interesting
day. Those of you with kill files probably
don't know what you
are missing.
Who is this man? Is John Turmel
his real name? Rumour has it
that he is fabulously rich. Others say
that is just posturing.
Charter:
alt.fan.john-turmel is a place
to post questions, queries, and
debate about this well spoken, widely
crossposted person. Where
else can you go and *know* you'll find
posts from this master of
words and rhetoric?
- --
:!mcr!:
| Network security consulting and
Michael Richardson |
contract programming
WWW: <A HREF="http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/Peo
JCT: So they shudder.
Yet, the first thing anyone reads when they
search the net for John Turmel is
http://www.interaus.net/1995/10/kooks.html
*Net Kooks
*by Morris Jones
*The term 'kook', according to one definition,
is a corruption of
*the word 'cuckoo', and carries exactly
the same meaning.
*Another contemporary Canadian Net kook
who is somewhat eclipsed by
*Bob Allisat's stellar performances is
John Turmel. His postings
*have reached Australia, the UK, and other
places where they are
*most unwelcome, such as his own nation.
Turmel pushes a strange
*blend of Christianity and economics,
and believes that he can
*derive differential equations by studying
verses from the Bible.
*The backlash against Turmel's messages
have followed a similar
*pattern, although someone in Canada recently
released a cancelbot
*against his postings to more than 14
newsgroups. Turmel is also
*still at large, so watch out for his
postings on aus.general or
*nz.general.
*Article #37885 (38072 is last):
*From: kamamer@io.org (karl mamer)
*Newsgroups: tor.general,ont.general,
*Subject: Kook of the Month, guess who?
*Date: Tue Aug 8 10:29:19 1995
*Newsgroups: alt.usenet.kooks
*Subject: KotM July - What, already?
*Organization: arcana on spec
*KOOK OF THE MONTH FOR JULY 1995 - John
"Turmoil" Turmel
*(johnturmel@yahoo.com)
*in tor.general,ont.general,can.general,can.taxes,
and a whole
*lotta other newsgroups, John leads a
One-Man Crusade to explain
*that Christ spoke in differential equations.
JCT: Of course,
a physics student took the same verse from the
Bible and derived the same differential
equation that I did so I don't
care how many people don't see it too.
Of course, many
LETSers get steamed is that I call myself the
LETS Papa Engineer because they think
I bring LETS into disrepute by
promoting it as my baby. I think not.
My only sin has been in
preaching loud, louder, loudest
that LETS are turning into bruisers
that are going to beat the usury banks
into submission.
I admit that
there are some topics like Poker hands that I do not
post to econ-lets and cross-post only
to alt.fan.john-turmel where you
can find everything, if it has to deal
with LETS economics, you get it
all if you subscribe econ-lets.
I myself would
be happy to see the LETS hardware technicalities
shunted away from the engineering division.
A CBC newscast once
defined the difference between an engineer
and a technologist in the
aero-space industry. When something with
the engine goes wrong, the
technologist gets out his tools and goes
in while the engineer gets
out the blue-prints and tells him where
to look.
I, as the world's
longest-serving professional banking systems
engineer, consider the technological aspects
trivial. Every casino
accounting software package is a 1/s software
capable of handling
not only personal credits, a la LETS,
but also collateral, a la banks.
No, the true
challenge is delivering financial freedom to the
whole world fastest and that needs Big
Money support for our grass-
root branches.
Econ-lets is
the only list where you'll find world engineering
analysis. Everything else is technician-talk.
There's nothing wrong
with technician talk but it doesn't help
when existing financial
networks can be programmed to run LETS
better than we locally often
could.
*Subject: Making this list work for all
*Date: Mon Nov 24 17:37:50 1997
*From: sparky@pipcom.com ("Chris Hohner")
*I would even like to see mainstream politicians
wade in; we're facing
*a promotional mission to Latin America
in January that will include
*the Canadian Prime Minister- a unique
chance to bring LETS to his
*attention, perhaps for the first time.
JCT: Eleven years
ago in 1986, Jean Chretien resigned his seat in
St. Maurice and I doubt he could have
missed Turmel promoting LETS on
my Creditist program in the by-election
after I made the news being
arrested for attempting to participate
in an election debate with his
Liberal protege. Besides, we'd bumped
into each other so many times on
Parliament Hill in my first 5 years of
weekly picketing of the Bank of
Canada and Parliament Hill that there
is virtually no chance he has
missed John Turmel screaming for National
LETS from every open
political pulpit in the land.
I hope you're
successful and if you do see Jean, make sure to
ask: Why didn't you see the benefit of
LETS 11 years ago? Had Jean
adopted LETS 11 years ago, the bad times
would have been avoided. And
his maker's going to hold him responsible
for the fact that there were
more children existing in poverty when
he was through than when he got
started, the true indictment of political
justice. There aren't many
political leaders who can boast having
reduced child poverty and those
who have are usually portrayed as "mad
dogs" in the news.
I think it's
a shame to spend time on such discussions but if not
dealt with decisively once in a while,
they do tend to dominate
discussion. I always play by the rules.
Set limits on volume which I
will stick to or get back to the topic
which you should stick to.