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Vanguard Boojum, v. 1, issue 1
5
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Vanguard Boojum #1 page three (... continued) Bright Sayings: K.M.R.I.A, like Myles Crawford says. ...Free Cigars: I wonder just how many of our politicos will catch that buried catcall, and whether B. Goldenberg would have called it Churchillism? As for those last two lines, Curfew considers them libelous. ... PS: Incompetent? Surely Kubilius will rise to your defense! I'm sorry if our compartmentalization of Cavil did your Field Report any disservice; it's probably, Doc and I being the kind of persons we are, that a good many pomposities are still slipping into Renascence despite the care recent Vanguard reviews have needled us into taking to forestall it. I don't believe, however, that this particular situation is anywhere near as important as your protest tends to make it. ... P.-N.: The current of interest in mental institutions brings to my mind the Sunday-Supplement scare of some years ago, when the Reader's Digest and other such rags published statistics alleging to show an exponentially rising curve in the insanity-frequency, and there was a good deal fo extrapolation about the probable date when everyone in the world would be knitters of invisible wool. (Lewis Padgett sets the date in the May Astounding, I notice; there were several other stories around the same period I mention -- Doc can doubtless list them -- dealign with the same thing.) The first thorough treatment of this alarming idea was, I believe, Max Nordau's Degeneration, published in English in 1895. In both cases the alarm was completely non-rational. Nordau's based on a person hatred for and ignorance of then-modern intellectual currents, and the Digest's on a Mathusian misuse of statistics in vacuo. I should not be surprised if the wave of mental imbalance naturally engendered but he war and the atomic jitters should revive this myth; perhaps the trend you discuss is the first term in the new series? CONSTITUTION In substance, it seems satisfactory: however, the mechanics of keeping it up to date and easily constable bid fair to become a sort of Old Man of the Sea to the Official Managers. So far we have seven Manager's Rulings, and after the club is five years old, the roster of such rulings will probably be longer than the Constitution itself. consider that they will be in no significant order -- except that of issuance, which is hardly a useful arrangement -- and that a number of them are bound to be in contradiction to the letter of the Constitution itself. Take #6, for instance: it seems rather silly to bother stencilling Paragraph C of the Article 5 when this thing is lurking on the back page: except for the traditional inviolability of a constitution to anything but a majority vote, it would have been only sensible to know out the existing Paragrapg C and insert the ruling in its place. I should like, therefore, to propose an amendment, as follows: "All rulings made by the official Manager shall be considered automatically as proposed changes in, or additions to, the constitution, subject to protest by the membership. If such rulings have not been challenged during the year in which they were made, they shall be inserted directly into the pertinent Article of the constitution at the end of that year. Challenged rulings shall be submitted to the Official Ballot and must pass by a plurality in order to be inserted. While we're about it, this is a good place to announce my candidacy for Official Manager for 1947.
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Vanguard Boojum #1 page three (... continued) Bright Sayings: K.M.R.I.A, like Myles Crawford says. ...Free Cigars: I wonder just how many of our politicos will catch that buried catcall, and whether B. Goldenberg would have called it Churchillism? As for those last two lines, Curfew considers them libelous. ... PS: Incompetent? Surely Kubilius will rise to your defense! I'm sorry if our compartmentalization of Cavil did your Field Report any disservice; it's probably, Doc and I being the kind of persons we are, that a good many pomposities are still slipping into Renascence despite the care recent Vanguard reviews have needled us into taking to forestall it. I don't believe, however, that this particular situation is anywhere near as important as your protest tends to make it. ... P.-N.: The current of interest in mental institutions brings to my mind the Sunday-Supplement scare of some years ago, when the Reader's Digest and other such rags published statistics alleging to show an exponentially rising curve in the insanity-frequency, and there was a good deal fo extrapolation about the probable date when everyone in the world would be knitters of invisible wool. (Lewis Padgett sets the date in the May Astounding, I notice; there were several other stories around the same period I mention -- Doc can doubtless list them -- dealign with the same thing.) The first thorough treatment of this alarming idea was, I believe, Max Nordau's Degeneration, published in English in 1895. In both cases the alarm was completely non-rational. Nordau's based on a person hatred for and ignorance of then-modern intellectual currents, and the Digest's on a Mathusian misuse of statistics in vacuo. I should not be surprised if the wave of mental imbalance naturally engendered but he war and the atomic jitters should revive this myth; perhaps the trend you discuss is the first term in the new series? CONSTITUTION In substance, it seems satisfactory: however, the mechanics of keeping it up to date and easily constable bid fair to become a sort of Old Man of the Sea to the Official Managers. So far we have seven Manager's Rulings, and after the club is five years old, the roster of such rulings will probably be longer than the Constitution itself. consider that they will be in no significant order -- except that of issuance, which is hardly a useful arrangement -- and that a number of them are bound to be in contradiction to the letter of the Constitution itself. Take #6, for instance: it seems rather silly to bother stencilling Paragraph C of the Article 5 when this thing is lurking on the back page: except for the traditional inviolability of a constitution to anything but a majority vote, it would have been only sensible to know out the existing Paragrapg C and insert the ruling in its place. I should like, therefore, to propose an amendment, as follows: "All rulings made by the official Manager shall be considered automatically as proposed changes in, or additions to, the constitution, subject to protest by the membership. If such rulings have not been challenged during the year in which they were made, they shall be inserted directly into the pertinent Article of the constitution at the end of that year. Challenged rulings shall be submitted to the Official Ballot and must pass by a plurality in order to be inserted. While we're about it, this is a good place to announce my candidacy for Official Manager for 1947.
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