At 1:28 PM 4/4/96, bryce@digicash.com wrote:
unsubscrive * Peter.Posch@koeln.netsurf.de
I suspect that this meme propagates (especially among non-native-English-speakers) via the list itself. Peter Posch probably saw one of the previous "unsubscrives" and is hoping it will work for him. Perhaps the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A good insight. Reminds me of the "cargo cults." (If you don't know the story, here's a brief version: Pacific Islanders saw Americans bringing riches and technological gew-gaws to their islands in WWII. Then they left, leaving cargo crates and whatnot behind. The Islanders believed if they fashioned radio headsets out of coconuts and radios out of old logs that they could bring the Great Birds from the Sky back. (*) This has since gotten currency--through anthropologists, Ayn Rand, Richard Feynman, and others--as a short-hand description for people engaging in magical thinking that the _trappings_ of something will sympathetically bring on the real thing. Some might say Java is a cargo cult...hmmmhhh, Java is a Pacific island....hmmmhhh.) (* Note: In this age of hypersensitivity, sometimes called political correctness, there are likely to be lurkers who suddenly jump up at this characterization of "native peoples" and decry my characterization of them as "savages" (even though I have not used this word nor this attitude toward them). And some will claim that if more American learned Bahasa Indonesia there would not be this cultural imperialism that is repressing all people of color. Hey, I don't repress no coloreds!) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."