---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 10 Jan 95 21:02:06 PST From: Greg Bailey <greg@minerva.com> Subject: Re: CBS/C.Chung Plan Hit Job on Internet? Non sequitur, I think, Helen. The above reads like a lame lemma of the Gun Control theorem and is based on the same fallacious premises. Information is not intrinsically harmful. People are. Information and other means need not be controlled. People must control themselves. If the people in a society cannot control their temptations to do evil with whatever means are available to them, the society cannot be called civilized by any reasonable criteria. Making information available is not a crime. Blowing people up is a crime, and those who do it should pay pay pay. Any discipline worth studying gives its students the means to do good as well as evil, and at least in theory the more they know the greater their potential to act in either direction. Throughout history damn fools have tried to limit the scope of evil by limiting information. All it has demonstrated is that by doing so one can hamstring constructive activity while accomplishing nearly zero against evil due to its tenacity. It is my opinion that the most evil thing anyone can advocate is the limiting of information, especially since in many cases those who propose to do the limiting do not even faintly understand the info themselves. It is also my opinion that to resist any efforts to limit availability of information is *not* to bury one's head under the sand. Not at all. All the theory aside, any elementary school kid who pays attention and knows how to read can easily acquire the art of making gunpowder. At least this was true in the fifties when I was at that age, and being boys my friends and I of course spent many a happy hour out in secluded fields blowing things up in various ways. This sort of thing is basic information that anyone brighter than a rock can come by. Connie Chung displays an astounding level of ignorance by suggesting that high technology has much of anything to do with the phenomenon she reports upon. Instead she should be asking why kids now feel they should blow up people and property instead of old castaway junk. *That* is the story, not the Internet, not Encyclopaedia Britannica ... quoting from this year's edition, by the way, from our kids' book case: gunpowder ... The first such mixture was black powder, which consists of a mixture of saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulfur, and charcoal. When prepared in roughly the correct proportions (75 percent saltpetre, 14 percent charcoal, and 11 percent sulfur), it burns rapidly when ignited and produces ... Because the burning of black powder is a surface phenomenon, a fine granulation burns faster than a coarse one ... [more straightforward practical information follows] I wonder if Connie reads the encyclopedia. I wonder if she even has one? Grins... Greg Bailey | ATHENA Programming, Inc | 503-621-3215 | ---------------- | 24680 NW Dixie Mtn Road | fax 621-3954 | greg@minerva.com | Hillsboro, OR 97124 US |