{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/923",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 923,
    "subject": "A Solar Labyrinth: Dialing",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-07-05T22:04:21+00:00",
    "last": "1998-07-06T01:20:46+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0122@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-05T22:04:21+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) A Solar Labyrinth: Dialing",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "While I think William Ansley's rebuttal of my tv-as-labyrinth theory was\nwell argued, and I enjoyed prion's alternate intrepretation, I still feel\ncompelled to quote the following from Gene Wolfe's Introduction to STOREYS\nFROM THE OLD HOTEL:\n\n\"'A Solar Labyrinth' is another favorite. Labyrinths seem to fascinate just\nabout everyone, and for a while I was almost equally interested in what\nused to be called dialing.\"\n\n\"Dialing,\" for those who of us who first came to tv in the late 40s/early\n50s, involved the manual tuning in of a television station, which in those\ndays, before the advent of remotes and solid-state electronics and\nbroadcasting standards, had to be done by hand on a station-by-station\nbasis--very similar to how radio still is on occasion, when you have to\nnudge the selection dial to pick it up better. Sometimes as well the\nchannels would drift, and you would have to retune them, and sometimes you\njust plain couldn't dial them back in at all, so you'd often miss the end\nor beginning of your program.\n\nWe don't call it dialing it any more (although the construction of sun\ndials is *still* called that), because it's been made obsolete by\ntechnology. \n\nNot that I'd expect any of you \"kids\" to know that, of course.\n\nGrampa Scolex (who, yes, still misses the old days)"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0015-0124@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "William H. Ansley",
        "address": "wansley at warwick.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-07-06T01:20:46+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) A Solar Labyrinth: Dialing",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0015-0122@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Robert Borski wrote:\n\"'A Solar Labyrinth' is another favorite. Labyrinths seem to fascinate just\nabout everyone, and for a while I was almost equally interested in what\nused to be called dialing.\"\n\n\"Dialing,\" for those who of us who first came to tv in the late 40s/early\n50s, involved the manual tuning in of a television station, which in those\ndays, before the advent of remotes and solid-state electronics and\nbroadcasting standards, had to be done by hand on a station-by-station\nbasis--very similar to how radio still is on occasion, when you have to\nnudge the selection dial to pick it up better. Sometimes as well the\nchannels would drift, and you would have to retune them, and sometimes you\njust plain couldn't dial them back in at all, so you'd often miss the end\nor beginning of your program.\n\nWe don't call it dialing it any more (although the construction of sun\ndials is *still* called that), because it's been made obsolete by\ntechnology."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hi, Robert.\n\nI hope you realize that I am not going to take anything you post to this\nlist seriously ever again. I mean, you *know* you are not going to convince\nme that Wolfe meant \"manual tuning in of a television station\" by dialing\n(assuming *anyone* ever did). You even give the only reasonable\ninterpretation (\"the construction of sun dials\") in your post, which I've\nquoted above. If we are going to go with less likely possibilities, why not\ndialing the telephone? (I am old enough to remember when *phones* had\ndials.)\n\nSo you were having a little fun with us. Well, I fell for it - hook, line\nand sinker. But from now on I'll try to go along with the gag and read all\nof your posts with a shaker or two of salt.\n\nWilliam Ansley"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}