Right here on the Spring we had an event that shocked even the hoary old WELL. Sunday, we all went live and really "met" one another for the first time, I only wish I had pumped it up more on the spring. Next Sunday we'll do it again. It was a gas, gas, gas. See Mikes topic 26 in this conference. What should we call this? Sunday Night Live on the Spring?

About the canabis thing out of the 265 chemicals in tobbaco I think 80 of them cause cancer. out of the 18 chemicals in pot none are known too cause cancer... also a hemp plant produces forty percent more wood products than the trees being cut down now. I wouldn't mind being able to smoke my coffee table occasionally. hahahah DROOL,

*smile*

Yeah, cannabis is great apart from the mind-threatening hallucinations and permanent psychological disturbances (e.g. Schizophrenia)

Wow, that explains a lot....

aha!

Where in the world did you hear that pot causes schizt. I know that it can stunt your emotional growth if you start at a young age. I think you've been watching to many of those old anti-pot movies. Did you know thatthe gov. did a test were they gave a mentally disturb man some L.S.D and twelve hours later {when he came down} he was no longer clasified as mentally disturbed. If you ever get to the library of congress you should look up these facts. Knowlege Is Power. {or at least understanding..} I do not condone the use of L.S.D. {at least not the street stuff, never know whats in that crap} Remember the gov. has all of the best drugs. And clinton did inhale... And probly still does. Drool

read it in a newspaper article, quoting some recent research at a UK university. I'll look it up again and post it for you

this is an extract, since the article is about 500 words -- BEGIN QUOTE "We do not yet know enough about its causes to say how schizophrenia can be prevented, but one specific factor is important: drug use." SANE continues by pointing out that cannabis can cause ahllucinations and paranoid delusions similar to those found in schizophrenia. The psychotic effects induced by these drugs do not always clear up readily, and there is some evidence that they may tr igger a prolonged schizophrenic illness. In addition, such drugs can cause a relapse in an established illness. Most doctors have harrowing stories of psychotic breakdown after a young person has been exposed to cannabis. Detailed research is scant, although a study of the role of cannabis in precipitating schizophrenia in Swedish men who had undertaken national s ervice seemed tod demonstrate a clear link. It is usually considered unlikely that smoking cannabis could be a primary cause of schizophrenia, but likely that it could be a factor in the condition's development in those who are unfortunate enough to have a genetic susceptibility. ... Apart from its intoxicating effects and any persistent damage to the psyche, cannabis may also cause acute anxiety or a panic reaction, particularly if the plant has been bred to give a high yield of cannabinoids, a type of cannabis referred to as "skunk" . Panic attacks may be treated with benzodiazepines, acute psychotic reactions with neuroleptic drugs. Smoking cannabis mixed with tobacco combines the delterious effects of both plants on the air passages. The ill effects of cannabis are not confied to the brain and lungs. it also causes impotence in men, reduces the sperm count and alters the reproductive hormonal systems. babies born to cannabis-smoking mothers are smaller than average, and feed and set tle less well. -- END QUOTE Dr Thomas Stuttaford, The Times (Tuesday, 17 March, 1998)

Helen Huth died crossing the bridge over the river in Cape Girardeau Missouri. She was a college student. I loved her and I loved her poems. I got a batch of her poetry in the mail today from Merle Busch, who is trying to dig up some more of her work, about 150 poems, which we are praying are not lost forever. What a loss for the world, that she died so young and didn't get to keep writing these poems and that we only have a few scraps from her prolific output. Reading these today, tears came to my eyes, and I had to go for a long walk in the woods.

A few of the ones I got are posted in the poetry conference. In a topic called Helen Huths poems.

forgive me Paul, I do not know of the woman you speak... but I will wander over to 'poetry' and see what I can discover.

I think you will discover some magic.

Today at 1:55 is the start of Spring! We should have an online cyberparty! It's also this Spring's anniversary.

Yee-haw!!!

WooWoo!

Our fourth anniversary, since we officially went live on the web on the exact beginning of Spring four years ago. And this is the tenth anniversary of the Spring as an organization which started on this date in 1988. We'll be live on the web at 1:55 pm today CST if anyone wants to call in or post something (I'll read it aloud via our realaudio server).

boing, boing--happy spring!

A new topic, number 260 has been started to discuss the potential for bring the show "My Solitary Elegance" to Austin. from Karen Hannum (sunflower@well.com): A friend of mine from England is bringing her show on Jane Austen, "My Solitary Elegance", to the US for a very limited run. It has enjoyed a great deal of success in England and Scotland including being featured on BBC2. It will be performed in San Franciso from October 2nd-5th at the Jane Austen Society of North America AGM. She has some open dates from the 6th through the 8th and would be interested in filling these bookings. Perhaps at a college or some other venue. If anyone is interested - please contact me at and I can put you in touch with her. Thank you...

Oh, I didn't mention that this topic is in the austen conference. I plan on attending the international Jane Austen conference in SF and promote the Spring's austen conference. Also, I've registered the name austen.com

Good Will Hunting. Titantic. New topics in the movies conference. Have you seen these? Comment in movies!

If you drop in tonight or later on, come by and comment on this years Oscars in topic 29. Hot. Now.

mikeg, Well without getting long winded you did say the sickness was potentialy pre-exsisting sickness,. If pot was not illegal people would not get peranoid and annxious. as for impotence, I have aa very high sperm count and am expecting a strong and healthy baby boy to arrive any day. as for sexual drive well three times a day doesn't sound like a {decreased sex drive} as you so said. If you take a trip to Amterdam, you would see that somking hemp,pot,skunk,red hair sinns.,ganja, the bomb, bolo rolo,canabis,canaboid,the huch-cauw,a blunt, or canabis sativa, mota, purple, blue, green, or gold haired marajajuana, is not so detrimental to a persons health as you might be lead to beleive by the Ronald Regan, Nancy Drew (just say noer's} people. theend drool...

Funny, I always pictured Nancy Drew for a "Mary Jane" girl....

I think I saw that movie...

purty graphics! The visuals almost make up for the ridiculously slow pace through a browser.

You at home, or a different setup at school?

at home. and now I'm at home again, up at a ridiculously early hour, suffering from a bad case of insomnia. *sigh*

Did you drink too much caffeine. I'm in California up at a ridiculously early hour cause I'm still on Austintime. I'm out here because my mom's condition is pretty serious. Lung cancer from years of smoking. She's having an opertion and some chemo treatmetns this week.

good luck, Paul. To you and your mom. Sounds like nasty stuff, I'll be thinking good thoughts. No, not too much caffeine. Rain. It rains so rarely in Colorado through the winter that when it starts up in Spring it's always too loud for me to sleep. Snow is very quiet coming down *smile* I wasn't up for too long. The whirr of the computer soon lulled me back to sleep.

I love the sound of rain when I don't have to get up and go out in it. Lying in my bed at about 5am, the weather lashing against the glass, is one of my favourite times. And, moving back on topic, the new community I'm involved in developing, Farrawae, seems to have accelerated from an absolute stop to a snail's pace, which means things are happening! You can check out the website (I encourage you to do so - get a feel for what we're doing!), and then drop into the Farrawae conference to catch up on what's been going on!

My best wishes, also, Terry...

My big news: SPRING BREAK!!! starts now! all the kiddos are on busses and I'm hankering for a magarita!

I'm in Walnut Creek with my son watchin' the Final Four and taking care of mom. Party on Stace. Where ya goin for break?

terry, very sorry about the family illness, i understand now why you have been scarce. hope everything goes well

Thanks orange. Mom is doing well. And I'm tripping around with my kid in SF and Santa Rosa and trying to hook up with some old friends like fig@well.com

And we're back. We're having problems with the domain change. Please email terry@spring.net if you notice that our system is down. And I'll get it back up and running Sorry for the downtime folks!

Or call 512.303.4000. Either way. Please let me know if you can't get in! Terry

Spring Break plans have changed a few times... first it was going to be Washington DC for a long weekend of museums, Ethiopian food, skating along the Potomac, etc. But since this is Cherry Blossom time, tickets were cost prohibitive. Then it was going to be four days of primitive camping in Fruita Wednesday - Sunday. Then it was going to be three days of primitve camping in Arches Nat. Park and Moab Sat - Tues. (Brandon's business travel keeps f***ing everything up!) BUt NOW it will be Stacey tagging along to Savannah GA w/ B on a consulting job and B taking an extra few days to play around in the garden of good and evil! I'm excited. And Saturday we biked thru Denver in search of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." BTW excellent book!

Terry, I too am sorry to hear about your mother's health problems. I'm sure it means a lot to her to have you there. Thanks again for helping me out last night. Enjoy the time you're having with your mom and son.

I'm in SF, and having a good time, the system seems to be having a few glitches every now and then but I emailed our system admin, jeff@www.spring.net about them. I just fixed the date. I notice we're having our year 2000 problem again. Yesterday we went and visited Brian Zisk (San Franziskgo website) in SF, and then met in a little bistro in Mill Valley with Cliff Figallo, who just got a conference hosting job with Salon. And then out to dinner at a great Thai place in Santa Rosa. Mom is doing well. And Shey is still beating the pants off me on the basketball court, it's hard to compete against 6'5" of muscle. I hope I can keep this system together with band aids till I get back, sorry for any downtime! The domain name change from spring.com to spring.net will fully take place in the next few days, so please remember our new address is http://www.spring.net

Or alternatively, it's always: http://206.97.234.70 In case our name server has fits.

Like this morning?

In the vc.6 topic (Virtual Communities) are details of Vassilios Koronakis (vassilio@well.com) affair with Stacy Horn. Some pretty juicy insider stuff about the doyenne of ECHO by one of its most controversial members. Sizzzling tale... j vc and read topic 6

Myretta emailed me a while ago and said we were down. So I just rebooted the server. Sorry folks, I been out doin' nonvirtual stuff today. In the event you notice you can't get in, please email jeff@spring.net and terry@spring.net And one of us will get things moving again. Wish I had heard about this sooner! I started a coupla new topics in genx. Check 'em out!

Sorry, Terry, I thought it was down cause you was grep-ing...

What me grep?

Well, I had heard that was the plan...

terry sorry about helen and your mom, hope she's doing well. live talks? oh my, not sure if i'm ready for that, everyone thinks i'm a kid when i answer the phone or answer the door-uh, is your mom there? *giggle* please post whenever you plan to have another one *smile*

Wanted. Person to drive my Buick Regal (30,000 miles on it) from the SF Bay area to Austin, Texas. I'll pay $200 and put you up for a week in Austin free and wine and dine you. Serious about this. I need to get this car out here.

So tempted... so tempted...

What else would it take, Stace?

I have several semi-serious inquiries so far but nothing solid. The car is in Walnut Creek, CA at my moms place. If you could do this Stacey, that would be great!

would you fly me out to SF, too? :-)

Nice try.

Hey Terry, why don't you get that author whose doing book signings in SF and Austin to do it? :-)

Autumn! What a knack for putting things together!

Here's a pointer to talk about the NBC miniseries that showed the other night: Merlin Find a discussion in topic 17 in 'babes' and in the tv conference.

(and just ignore anything I might say in either one... apparently I am tired past the point of my usual inabiliy to post coherently...)

Just regroup William and take another run at it, because you seem to have some insight and perception in this area of Arthurian legend (surpassing that of your knowledge of babe-onomics).

really?????

Surprised, Stacey?????

Gary Chapman asked me a question and a favor. You have probably heard about the shooting of Texas Monthly writer Jan Reid down in Mexico City last week. Jan is in the hospital in Houston now, recovering. (Jan is a friend of Garys.) A bunch of people in Austin are putting together a fundraiser for him at the Driskill Hotel on May 9th. Jan can't be there, obviously, because he'll still be in the Rehab Hospital in Houston. Gary was wondering is if I knew how we might get a live video feed over the net to Jan from the Driskill. They're going to check to see if there's a fast net connection in the hospital itself, but Gary'd like to investigate how he'd handle his end at the gig. So I'm volunteering and looking for someone to assist me, someone with a good on camera presence to interview folks.

yes WER. Surprised (and ticklish!)

Back on the tickle contest thing again, are we?

In topic 8 in the art conference, Lenadams Dorris vegas@well.com Enigma is the focus of discussion, visit her website and comment. Lenadams: Hello, everyone...I've been pretty absent lately, mostly because my cafe, the Enigma, has been so terribly busy. We're up to 14 employees now! We were honored to again win in the 1998 Best of Las Vegas Awards, this time for "Best Art Scene." Many of you have stopped by to visit when in Las Vegas, which is wonderful. You may be interested to know that we are about to celebrate our fifth anniversary, with ten days of art, music and spoken word events. I redesigned our web site to bring it all up to date, and included an ongoing scrapbook of pictures of the Enigma and its people and things, if you want to get a better idea of what we look like. Some of you will remember that on our third birthday in 1996, a lot of WELLbeings sent postcards to help us celebrate our grand re-opening after renovations. While many of those cards are still around, many have been lost to time and careless coffee drinkers. If any of you are into it, we'd love to get a bunch of new cards from all over the world (in the scrapbook you can see some of the cards pasted to the front of the coffee counter...) People love seeing all the cards, and we love hearing from our far-flung friends. If you want to send postcards, our address is: Enigma Garden Cafe (or just "Enigma") 918 South Fourth Street Las Vegas, NV 89101 Thanks everyone...even when I am not online so much, you are my extended family who has helped keep me going all these years. Smooch!

In the media conference, linked to the news conference: Item 30 entered Sat, May 2, 1998 (08:58) by Paul Terry Walhus (terry) Live from LA, it's suicide on the freeway! They just has a live broadcast of a freeway suicide in LA, with closeup shots of someones head being blow off as they popped off a shotgun. We are at the point where everyone must know everything that's going on as it happens. Both a new low in journalism and a taste of the future.

euwwww

Riette is on a roll in philosophy. She's got the scoop on truth, wisdom and even started up a new topic. Glad to see Riette jumping in to this little known backwater of the Spring.

Riette has taken philoslophy by storm. I think she's a night person!

New topic in travel: England.

wooo hoooo.....i'm pilin' in there!

Windows Conference: Texas vs. Microsoft (AG wants to raise campaign funds and keep job. Bolt from sky tells him he is barking up wrong tree.) Texas Puts Off Action Against Microsoft (05/12/98; 8:58 p.m. ET) By Kora McNaughton, TechWeb Pressure from Texas-based licensees of Microsoft Windows has given pause to that state's attorney general, Dan Morales, who was expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft later this week. In a statement issued Tuesday, Morales said, "Before contemplating any legal action against Microsoft, I feel it is prudent and wise to personally hear the concerns of our Texas-based companies." Morales will meet with the Companies over the next few weeks. Morales said his office has received letters from several Texas computer executives worried that a lawsuit against Microsoft would "negatively impact" their companies and the state as a whole. Morales' postponement of any action is an additional boost for Microsoft, which won an important victory against the Justice Department Tuesday when a federal appeals court ruled that Internet Explorer may be bundled with Windows 98. Expectations have been building that several state attorneys general and the Justice Department were readying broad antitrust complaints against Microsoft, but Morales' statement indicates such lawsuits may not happen for weeks, if at all.

The tv conference: 5 19 Seinfeld Tomorrow night, Thursday, is the Last Seinfeld. Some folks are watching jsut for the commercials. The show about nothing is no longer. Just re-runs for here on out. The cast is going to be on the Tonight Show.

Daniel Cardenas wrote: The Justice Conference will focus on topics of criminal justice. Sample top ics could be Death Penalty v. Life, rehabilitation v. punishment, juvenile justice, women in prison, ethnic makeup of jails and prisons. Also could talk about serial killers, famous prisoners now in prison, current prison cases, laws, crime, statistics, studies, etc.. It could go into Native American law, white collar crime v. blue collar, constitutional law. My plan for getting conversation going, is to talk to friends of mine to signing up, also, since I am new, I havent participated in any conversat ions yet. Through those conversations, I could steer people to the Justice conference. So, now there is a 'justice' conference. j justice

Austin's still "smokin'". Literally. A surreal pall hangs over us as smoke blows in from Mexican fires out of control. Check out topic 28 in the austin conference or topic 7 in the environment conference (they're crosslinked). air Austin The Mexican government procrastinates and the US Governement does a "study" while Austinites choke.

I hope Riette sticks around, I look forward every day to reading her cool insights in the philosophy conference. New in the spirit conference, a topic on the Sufi Order and Sufi dancing.

you mean like the Kavadi(sp?)?

Guess who's back? Howard Fredrics! Great!

Jim Moss aka Leplep Le Plep is doing his fair share in Philosophy, also, things are getting quite interesting in there... and, this in from Wolf (and edited, a little, of course...): Hi Wer!! Dude, thanks for writing me. It's good to hear from familiar folks. You can write here all the time, I do have regular access to it. As for the Spring, I do that when I'm not working and won't be on it as often as before for the time being. It's very very hot here, but it's not too bad. Drink lots of water and stay cool. Got up to 120 the other day, whew! But it's a dry heat *laugh*. Talk later, Elke :) mswolf68@hotmail.com

oh, yeah, and I updated the GenX Storybook annex page at http://www.spring.net/~spew/chap1.html

I've just opened a new topic in Spirit, which I would like to link to Philosophy -"Why Christianity is not Religious"

But, Christianity is WAY to religious...

sorry, I seemed to have lost an o while camping... how are we gonna go about this semantic wrestling match, Mike? see you there...

Terry has moved into his new casa, and won't be back on here full time until his ISDN line gets installed somewhere around the 4th or 5th of June...(I think, however, he is sneaking around here tonight)

Yup, dialin' in. My isdn line goes in on the 4th. I'll be havin' another pool party soon. I'm sittin' here with my notebook by poolside, with the tv cranked up on the music awards. Swimmin' rockin' out and lurkin' the Spring a bit.

News conference. Obits. Phil Hartman of SNL fame. Shot dead, possibly by his wife who killed herself.

I'm sorry I haven't been around much. It's Early Finals time here at Sussex again, which means that I'm studying like crazy (just as I should be now...) I will be around occassionally, but not much. However, after June 25 I will be back, with the trauma of 14 examinations over!!!

So, that's where you've been all this time - I was beginning to worry; thought you got run over by a car or something. I didn't know you were English; I just love England and Scotland - I go there at least once or twice a year. It is just so beautiful with the rolling landscapes, quaint little towns, and the people are incredibly nice. I even married one of them! Anyway, I hope your exams will be going well, and hope you'll be back more often after that.

Good luck on your finals, Mike!

14 examinations?!?! how many classes are you taking?

excuse me, I'm butting in for a second, the GenX Storybook pages can now be found at http://www.spring.net/~spew/genxstory/chap1.html http://www.spring.net/~spew/genxstory/chap2.html come by and read 'em, puh-leeeze! now, back to our regularly scheduled conversation...

The index page is up for the GenX Storybook...it's at http://www.spring.net/~spew/genxstory/indeX.html it's kinda graphic intesive, let me know what ya'll think...

Thoroughly Modern Jane This conference is for fiction using Jane Austen characters in non-Regency settings. Fiction based on Jane Austen and set in her period is at The Republic of Pemberley Your host is Carolyn http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/browse/modjane/all This has been in the works for a while, and the time was ripe to announce it. Credit is due to Amy and Myretta, the wonder workers from the Republic of Pemberly, a board that was incubated right here on the Spring.

The announcement is at: http://www.pemberley.com/pemb/admin/fiction/webbbs/boi.html and there is a little discussion on the help board at: http://www.pemberley.com/pemb/admin/help/index.html

and if anyone has noticed, there has been more modjane-ing than firthing lately, so there's already plenty o' stuff to read...

The austen.com domain name expired. And I renewed it with the help of a couple of donations.