3.1311 Responses: Play; Prolog; E-Texts; Parenting (112)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 24 Apr 90 18:06:18 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1311. Tuesday, 24 Apr 1990.


(1) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 13:28 CDT (21 lines)
From: 6067THOMPSON@MUCSD.BITNET
Subject: "Play" and Progress

(2) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 13:30 CDT (6 lines)
From: 6067THOMPSON@MUCSD.BITNET
Subject: "Play" and Progress #2

(3) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 13:22 GMT (24 lines)
From: CTILIT@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
Subject: Prolog for Macs

(4) Date: Sun, 22 Apr 90 21:08:42 -0400 (16 lines)
From: amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert A Amsler)
Subject: Re: 3.1306 What Good are E-Texts?
Forwarded by: Michael Hart

(5) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 10:08 EDT (31 lines)
From: LAPLANTE@UMTLVR.BITNET
Subject: RE: Surrogate Motherhood

(6) Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 09:04:47 MDT (14 lines)
From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz)
Subject: Re: 3.1309 ... Surrogate Motherhood

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 13:28 CDT
From: 6067THOMPSON@MUCSD.BITNET
Subject: "Play" and Progress

Regarding the role of play in scientific discovery and progress, one
might check Daniel J. Boorstin, _The Discovers: A History of Man's
Search to Know His World and Himself_, Random House, 1 983:

p. 309: a discussion of an "accidental" discovery Kepler made,
contributing to his theory of planetary motion;

p. 314: how children playing with lenses first produced a "telescope".

No citations are given for this information in the text, but annotated
bibliographies are included in the "Reference Notes" at the end of the
book.

I hope this contributes to the discussion!

Rich Thompson
6067THOMPSON@MUCSD.BITNET
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------12----
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 13:30 CDT
From: 6067THOMPSON@MUCSD.BITNET
Subject: "Play" and Progress #2

The page numbers from Boorstin's _The Discovers_ refer to the Random
House Vintage Edition of 1985. Sorry for forgetting to mention this the
first time.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------36----
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 13:22 GMT
From: CTILIT@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
Subject: Prolog for Macs

In response to Stephen Clausing's question about Prolog systems for NLP,
Logic Programming Associates Ltd. markets an excellent version of Prolog
for the Mac -- MacPROLOG v3.0. It is an industry-standard Edinburgh
Syntax Prolog system which is compatible with Quintus Prolog. It is
available from:

LPA Ltd.
Studio 4, RVPB,
Trinity Road,
London, SW18 3SX,
England.

Stuart might also like to think about using *Natural Language Processing
in Prolog* by Gerald Gazdar and Chris Mellish for his course. It was
published by Addison-Wesley in 1989. There are lots of exercises in
this which you can get on a disk from Gazdar and Mellish; the book is
also available for LISP and Pop 11, and in some ways seems to me a
better text for student use than the Allen.

Marilyn Deegan
Computers in Teaching Initiative Centre
for Literature and Linguistic Studies
Oxford
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 90 21:08:42 -0400
From: amsler@flash.bellcore.com (Robert A Amsler)
Subject: Re: 3.1306 Replies to Queries from 3.1297 and 3.1299; CD-ROMS (183)
Forwarded by: Michael Hart
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
What good are e-texts.

Only one answer is necessary on Earth Day.

Unlike ptexts, they don't destroy trees to make paper.

Sooner or later, the world will see this as an overriding concern
which will make things printed on paper about as reasonable
as printing on dried human skin.
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------35----
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 10:08 EDT
From: LAPLANTE@UMTLVR.BITNET
Subject: RE: 3.1309 Research Computing (History); Surrogate Motherhood (95)

Comparative law is definitely not my field, but I would like to point
out that the three countries were surrogate motherhood seems to have
become a social issue all rely on Common Law.

Here, in Quebec, surrogate motherhood has failed to become such an issue
because it has been swiftly settled by the courts: our Civil Code, which
is derived from the French one, contains general provisions that able
the courts to invalidate some contracts and it appeared that contracts
dealing with the "ownwership" of a human being could not be valid,
therefore depriving surrogate motherhood of any interest.

I would suggest, and I stress that this is only a suggestion because I
didn't check it, that surrogate motherhood appears as a social issue
solely in coutries relying on common law because most other nations use
some form of civil law that is not simply defined as a set of rules
regarding the obligations of the contractants and doesn't confine the
courts to the role of arbitrator when some conflict arises between those
contractants, but clearly states that, in some cases, contracts can be
invalidated even if the contractants do not disagree and gives the
courts power to do so.

As I already indicated, this is only an hypothesis.

Benoit Laplante
Departement de sociologie
Universite de Montreal
LAPLANTE@CC.UMontreal.CA
LAPLANTE@UMTLVR.BITNET
(6) --------------------------------------------------------------25----
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 90 09:04:47 MDT
From: koontz@alpha.bldr.nist.gov (John E. Koontz)
Subject: Re: 3.1309 ... Surrogate Motherhood

If STEVEC is looking for interesting father terminology, he might want to
investigate usage among the Nayar, a group in India which is always
worth consideration whenever one is interested in fine distinctions in
varieties of fatherhood. There is at least one excellent monograph or
long article on the subject that I have read in the past, but I don't
recall the reference. Perhaps someone else can help here? None of this
would apply to surrogate motherhood directly, since that is a very new
development.