The Philosopher's Stone

    Roger Bacon
    
    
    THE WONDERS OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY...?

    Time marches ever onward, inexorable and generally bastorial,
    whilst Bacon ambles along slowly behind like a small boy hoping
    that if he dawdles enough he will escape Mum's clutches but fat
    chance, as usual!

    Here on my desk sits a laptop, a Tandy 1400 LT and I also got
    delivery of a ...wait for it Zenith equipped with TWO CPU's (an
    8085 and an 8088) plus a mind blowingly huge ten, yes I said TEN,
    megabyte Winchester, cor, wow, far out!

    ...and very grateful for the both of them, let me add hastily lest
    I be thought of as ungrateful, which are being added to my
    Cavalcade of Computing which in case you didnt know is a personal
    museum of planned obsolescence that I use to teach kids with by way
    of introduction to the real horrors behind the thin veneer of
    Onward & Upward, heh, heh!

    Alright so this LCD display is less than mind blowing but its a
    nice tidy little machine, albeit somewhat weighty.

    Never got to play with a hard drive before, takes a bit of getting
    used to especially since its not quite as idiot proof as I'd hoped, 
    tried to transfer this program onto it and apparently succeeded but 
    where is it?  Back to the good ole floppies again..!   
    Nevertheless, I'm quite impressed, particularly as it means that 
    anything I might go out and get in the laptop genre will, by the 
    law of development, be that much better than this, hopefully a bit 
    faster too, as this thing is a bit of a turtle compared to my 
    Amiga...of which more anon.

    Anon.

    Goodbye Commodore and thanks for all the fish!  Yes, its taken
    three years but you've finally managed to alienate me with your 
    combination of insufficient to non-existent customer support, surly 
    and inadequate dealerships, blind disregard for the mother lode of 
    user support on which you've been coasting for far too long and 
    general disregard for the laws of survival in consumer land.

    I dont know what Apple, IBM and Sony are up to (if anything - after 
    all, corporate giants tend to be more interested in ass covering 
    than innovation) but if I were you, Commodore, I'd be looking for a 
    good line in caskets and a suitable place to start digging the 
    hole...

    My next computer will be whatever fits the multi-media bill the 
    nearest, doesnt cost an arm and a leg and uses file and screen 
    formats that are as universal as possible to the next generation of 
    average machines.

    This rules out Targa equipped 486's (with or without the amazing 
    Intel lobotomy chip) any of the current Macs and just about 
    everything else on the market at the moment or in the immediate 
    future of, say, two years.

    Until then I'll just have to soldier along with the Amiga 1000 for 
    video work, IBM for text and telecommunications and Mac for DTP, 
    avidly reading the mags and hoping that some boffin somewhere has 
    drawn the obvious conclusion too and is doing something about it.

    Meanwhile I'll buy a nice little laptop powerhouse and by the time
    you read this the Pork Barrel should be up and running, which is 
    the working title for Bacons soon to be launched BBS...

...wow, can't you see America rushing out to buy modems even as I
type!? Nope, nor can I and why would anyone want to log onto a BBS run 
by an absent minded, surly, opinionated old curmudgeon who is a self 
confessed idiot (as in idiot proof and proud of it!) and general 
subscriber to the irrational and unfashionable idea that there's 
nothing wrong with caring for one another and ruthlessly expunging 
clever, cocky little know-it-alls from the airwaves along with a wide 
variety of other undesirables none of whom will be made welcome.

    Hey, I'm an Alien, don't forget!  It's your constitution, not mine!
    Freedom of speech? Get real, it depends on your platform.  Jesus, 
    yes! Swaggart, no! This of course is diametrically opposite from 
    the less reactionary views of some of my friends and advisors but I 
    thought I'd just warn you now, so you don't have to wait with bated 
    modem.

    I'm a great believer in human diversity and that includes opinions, 
    practices and viewpoints but I reserve the right not to propogate 
    those with which I personally disagree.  My argument is that it's 
    my phone line and you are a guest in my electronic house, so to 
    speak, which does not automatically give you the right to behave in 
    a way that offends me.  Some of the things that offend me are 
    anti-religious sentiment - I think that people's religious beliefs 
    should be respected and accomodated as long as their practices do 
    not involve curtailing the freedom of others to express their 
    particular views on the subject - pornography, which I find morally 
    repugnant and gratuitous violence ditto.

    (How to get hate mail!)

    Actually though, the point of this particular outlet, is to supply
    information rather than to act as a general forum though one hopes 
    that it will evolve to that point as part and parcel of the 
    information interchange.  I cant really be more specific except to 
    say that the BBS is designed to be a clearing house for educators 
    and pupils which is at least in part the reason behind the somewhat 
    draconian infringements upon what some will insist upon perceiving 
    as their civil liberties.

    Being an educator of young children forces one to confine oneself 
    to a narrow range of expressed opinion concomitant with the 
    probable audience which effectively constrains one to 'the moral 
    high ground' as one principal put it to me when I lost my temper 
    and used plain speech in the hearing of a minor! (Figure it out for 
    yourself!)

    The hypocrisy of this situation is, of course, immediately obvious 
    but the reality of litiginous parents (or their legal advisors) 
    coupled with chicken hearted administrations has cost plenty of 
    teachers their positions for the crime of behaving 'normally' or 
    appearing to behave in a manner that might be seen as sanctioning 
    behavior that is every day fare on TV but unacceptable from 
    educators.  Yes, its bullshit but its also the harsh reality we 
    have to live with and I, for one, am not prepared to go to the wall 
    just to uphold a point.

    Its gotten to the point where we all have to carry rubber gloves to 
    handle a bleeding child with and are supposed to carry around spray 
    bottles of dilute bleach for the same reasons and if we so much as 
    touch one we can be accused of assault whilst parents are perfectly 
    happy to abrogate their reponsibilities and expect us to provide 
    pastoral care that is otherwise lacking, all the while maintaining 
    some weird kind of force field between ourselves, our private lives 
    and our charges as though we existed in different dimensions from 
    everyone else.

    Beam me up Scotty, there is DEFINITELY no intelligent life down
    here!

    No, of course I don't put on the damn gloves (has anyone stopped to
    consider the possible psychological trauma of a generation of 
    children who grew up with adults who wouldnt handle them without 
    donning rubber gloves, first? Should do wonders for the growing 
    ranks of the wetsuit brigade!) because they're MY children by 
    default but it does give me a chance of getting infected with AIDS 
    which, incidentally, is getting close to being commonplace in 
    schools in that there are more than a few schools with one or more 
    infected children.

    On the other hand - you'll be glad to hear - I dont touch them 
    unnecessarily either (though I could think of several who could use 
    a good hug) because God forbid it gets me painted as some kind of 
    weirdo with human emotions and for much the same reason I do not 
    tell them or their parents that I love them as I am, of course, an 
    emotionless 'educator' not a human being at all and anyway who 
    needs love in this modern world?

    Perhaps its me, perhaps I shouldnt be a teacher at all, perhaps I
    shouldnt even be writing this or even thinking anything of the 
    kind.  Just to really put the Seal of Disapproval upon the whole 
    thing - at least insofar as a fairly vocal segment of the 
    population is concerned - I might as well add that I'm a Christian 
    albeit probably not a particularly shining example of one (who is?) 
    and that I believe in God does not make me a bigoted loony nor does 
    it exempt me from responsibility or due consideration of the 
    viewpoints of others.

    If, after all that, you ever want to read another of my articles or
    log onto the Pork Barrel (if and when it emerges from the vaporware 
    stage) then I will be glad to know that I am not alone in my 
    strange little oasis compounded of old fashioned values and latter 
    day humanism.

    Amongst my friends and acquaintances are drug abusers, adulterers, 
    fornicators, homosexuals, criminals (various - convicted or 
    otherwise) and a wide variety of other practices none of which I 
    espouse but neither do I sit in judgement of them, knowing my own 
    faults only too well and having veered from the straight and narrow 
    too often to be in any position to pontificate on the mistakes of 
    others.  I only mention this in support of my contention that one 
    has a perfect right to be selective about what parts of the human 
    spectrum one cares to display for the edification of others which 
    is why I insist upon the editorial right to shape my BBS the way I 
    want.  
    
    This, in answer, to many previous discussions on the subject
    with the Editor who does not agree with me although he somehow yet
    manages to keep ModemNews a liberal yet basically inoffensive
    publication to the majority.  His argument is, if I understand it,
    that it is better to create a forum which is theoretically open to
    anything but which by example tends to naturally exclude extremes
    by gentle dissuasion and concensus rather than by forceful
    censorship and it is a tenet that has served him well with the help
    of his contributors and audience.

    My problem is that I am specifically aiming at two opposing groups, 
    teachers and students Grades 6 thru 8 the latter having not had
    access to this kind of service before and therefore, from 
    experience, one expects a certain amount of abuse judging from 
    previous encounters.  There is likely to be a certain amount of 
    opinionated disapproval from a certain adult section of the 
    community that still entertains the idea that repression equals 
    solution (if you cant see it, its not there - or the Ostrich 
    Theory) and so a harmless exchange of banter on the message base 
    could very well result in the suspension of service.  Just to make 
    matters worse there is another group of students who are quite 
    likely to try and ruin the service simply because it amuses them to 
    do so and that is why I have decided to adopt a Draconian editorial 
    stance.  Last but not least, living in a community that is 
    predominantly Christian, with all that implies regarding subject 
    matter, opinion, language and practice one would be well advised to 
    exercise careful judgement to avoid generating unfavorable albeit 
    opinionated comment.

    Given all that plus the work it entails, why bother?  Nothing 
    ventured, nothing gained, at least the experience will teach me 
    something, I suppose!

    Our famous Philospher can be found at his own BBS;

    Wing'n'a Prayer
    804 824-5443
    2400 baud