3.1213 Gort: in film and in human self-conception (55)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Sun, 25 Mar 90 18:06:59 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1213. Sunday, 25 Mar 1990.
(1) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 90 00:33:00 EST (10 lines)
From: Robert Kirsner (213) 825-3955 <IDT1RSK@OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: Re: 3.1207 Was fuer ein Detail? (22)
(2) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 90 01:55:00 EST (23 lines)
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: Re: 3.1198 discomfortable questions (68)
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 90 00:33:00 EST
From: Robert Kirsner (213) 825-3955 <IDT1RSK@OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: Re: 3.1207 Was fuer ein Detail? (22)
The film in question is THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951), based
on the short story FAREWELL TO THE MASTER by Harry Bates. The film
is worth seeing since, with the exception of 2001, it can
justifiably be called the ONLY science-fiction film ever made
in the US, the others (including ET) being either Space Opera
or Disneyoid fantasy.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------29----
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 90 01:55:00 EST
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@OAC.UCLA.EDU>
Subject: Re: 3.1198 discomfortable questions (68)
Dear Willard, It is not the machine, per se, but those who like to play
with it and as someone increasingly chopped into manydifferent
categories for investiag tion by the USA IRS, I can tell you that the
enhanced computer power has given the incompetents at the IRS hundreds
of more things, micro details to look at i n my tax reports, and then an
excuse to spend a month a year discussing them wi th me, which is very
expensive for the taxpayer. And since I have everything th se days on a
programmed expense sheet, I get the response from the inviestigato r: I
am averwhelmed byu the details, the facts, the receipts, and I cant take
t he time to review them, so off with your shoes, wallet and etc. It is
interesti ng, how it works. Of course, then one takes all the thousands
of items to the A ppellate level, where the investigators are more
highly paid then than the illi terate underlings, and they get irritated
by all the answers...so, as Thoreau suggested, the course he foresaw for
theindividual, in 1828, was to be the grai n of sand that causes the
gears of the machine to jam...hard, but interesting, as long as the
regime remains lawful...although the tax gatherer is the one per son
ungoverned by law in the USA! But that is an archaic thing too, death
and g the taxgatherer are certain, and no laws can restrain them.
Machines are but in carnations, as it were, of those two personified
evils in our universe. Jascha Kessler