poli-sci (07/09/82)
>From JoSH@RUTGERS Thu Jul 8 23:09:56 1982
Poli-Sci Digest Fri 9 Jul 82 Volume 2 Number 152
Contents: Censorship
Voting Rights
All The Various Mailing Lists
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Date: 6 Jul 1982 2340-PDT
From: FC01 <FC01 at USC-ECL>
A new issue (an old issue?)! I recently saw a copy of a letter requesting a
certain group of researchers not to present publicly the results of their
work. I think it has something to do with 'national security' although it
did not say so explicitly. Perhaps the whole concept of 'censorship' is worthy
of discussion, but I am interested in specific information about scientific
censorship including court rulings, legal opinions, scientific opinions, flames
about your experiences with this, etc.
I am partially yours,
(name not disclosed for security reasons)
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Date: 8 Jul 1982 02:33:12-PDT
From: npois!npoiv!harpo!decvax!minow at Berkeley
Subject: The right not to vote...
In Scandinavia, where the voting rates average around 90%, there is
a tradition of "roesta blank" -- voting a white (i.e., blank) ballot.
This gives the message "I voted, but didn't agree with any of the
alternatives." The only time I looked, there were about 4% white
ballots in Sweden, which is about the voting percentage of the
least popular of the major parties (the Left Party Communists).
It would be very interesting if the Australian ballot method could
be implemented on a large scale in the U.S. There, you rank your
preferences. If nobody gets a majority of first-place votes, the
ballots which gave first-place to the least popular alternative are
pulled. They are then assigned to their respective second-place
choices, and so on. This guarantees an eventual majority decision.
(Sorry if the above was unclear.)
The Australian ballot is used here for Science Fiction Hugo ballots,
and I have seen it in one smallish Massachusets town meeting.
Martin Minow
decvax!minow @ berkeley
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Date: 6 Jul 1982 2325-PDT
From: Zellich at OFFICE-3 (Rich Zellich)
Subject: Mailing-list for "List of lists" update notices
For those of you not previously aware of it, I maintain a master list
of ARPANET mailing-lists/digests/discussion groups (currently 756
lines or ~29,000 characters) on OFFICE-3 in file:
<ALMSA>INTEREST-GROUPS.TXT
For ARPANET users, OFFICE-3 supports the net-standard ANONYMOUS
login within FTP, with any password.
To keep people up to date on the large number of such lists, I have
established a mailing list for list-of-lists \update notices/. I do
not propose to send copies of the list itself to the world at large,
but for those ARPANET users who seriously intend to FTP the updated
versions when updated, I will send a brief notice that a new version
is available. For those counterparts at internet sites who maintain
or redistribute copies for their own networks (DECNet, Xerox, etc.)
and can't reach the master by ARPANET FTP, I will send out the
complete new file. I do \not/ intend to send file copies to
individual users, either ARPANET or internet; our system is fairly
heavily loaded, and we can't afford it.
There is no particular pattern to the update frequency of INTEREST-
GROUPS.TXT; I will occasionally receive a burst of new mailing-lists
or perhaps a single change of address for a host or mailing-list
coordinator, and then have a long period with no changes.
To get on the list, send requests to ZELLICH@OFFICE-3, \not/ to the
mailing-list this message appears in.
Cheers,
Rich
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End of POLI-SCI Digest
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