gsmith@garnet.berkeley.edu (Gene W. Smith) (10/16/89)
In article <35675@apple.Apple.COM>, chuq@Apple (Chuq Von Rospach) writes: >>I have no doubt that "rec.math" would be quite a >>different group to "sci.math" (not that sci.math is by any means perfect...). >You may not doubt that, but I do. If there were *both* rec.math and >sci.math, yes. Actually, rec.puzzles works to some extent as a rec.math. I wish more of the junk postings on sci.math could go there. If only creating sci.math.expert would clean out the trash, I would go for it, but I doubt it would work. >Or maybe: the history of comp.unix.questions and >comp.unix.wizards tends to show that if you create a 'beginners' group >and a 'serious persons' group the beginners will simply cross-post into >both places, since it's obvious they need the advice of the expert. And this is why, and why inane questions and discussions on groups like sci.math cannot be avoided. Despite what Oleg said, however, the discussions there are not all inane. >>and I tend to believe that skeptic >>should go in sci (as an important part of science is clarifying its >>fringes), though a case could be made for misc. >I could make a stronger case for soc, for the reason that the primary >function of the paranormal skeptics is not to bring a scientific basis to >the paranormal, but to use technology and logic to debunk paranormal >hoaxsters and bring rationality to society in it's views on the paranormal. The only science in the group now and about all there has been in some time is a totally irrelevant thread about the Earth going around the Sun, started by yours truly. And this is a just a flame-fest for science geeks anyway. -- ucbvax!garnet!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 "The *evident* character of this defective cognition of which mathematics is proud, and on which it plumes itself before philosophy, rests solely on the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of its stuff, and is therefore of a kind that philosophy must spurn." -- G. W. F. Hegel