[3427] in Central_America
New quotes for Sun Jun 9
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
Sun Jun 9 01:28:26 1991
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 91 01:27:59 EDT
From: root@charon.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
To: ca-mtg@bloom-beacon.mit.edu
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dhbernst (David H Bernstein):
Last login:
Sat Jun 8 21:52:07 EDT 1991
Teaching: 1.973 -- Geographic Information Systems for Transportation
Planners and Engineers
M,W 4:30 - 6:00 Room 1-242
Research: Congestion Reduction Policies
Transportation and Land-Use Interactions
Visualization and Data Management in Transportation
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jcbourne (Juliet C Bourne):
Companionship, partnership, mutual reassurance, someone to laugh with
and grieve with, loyalty that accepts foibles, someone to touch, someone
to hold your hand -- these things are "marriage," and sex is but the
icing on the cake. (Lazarus Long)
[hey y'all, i'm back. aren't you, like, so thrilled?]
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jtkohl (John T Kohl):
From the May 1991 Computing Research News:
"Preparation the Key to Being Good Witness"
by Joan Bass
CRA Chair Paul Young recently testified before the House subcommittee on
Science ant he Subcommittee on Technology and Competitiveness. He was
not under oath and was there to inform the subcommittee of CRA's support
for the high-performance computing initiative. Although an
association's chair is most likely to represent the association's
membership at a congressional hearing, CRA's distinguished members could
be asked to testify in other capacities.
A hearing is used to gather information and is the most public stage of
a committee or subcommittee's work. The House holds about 3000 hearings
every session.
Appropriation hearings make little use of outsiders. Witnesses are
given less than five minutes to testify and rarely are asked to offer
advice. Hearings for both legislative proposals and oversight
activities make great use of outside recommendations, information and
analysis.
Generally, Congress holds a hearing before any major legislation hits
the floor of Congress. bills go before standing committees in the House
or Senate. Select committees are temporary panels that study a certain
policy and send the findings to congressional standing committees.
Before the hearing, the witness submits several dozen copies of the
testimony to the committee, and a congressional staffer writes a brief
and drafts questions. The witness is limited to making a 5- or
10-minute statement during the hearing.
"Get the key points in during that item and again when you are asked
questions," Paul S. Rundquist, a specialist in American National
Government with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of
Congress, said at the American Association for the Advancement of
Science meeting in Washington, DC.
Often only one committee member is present during the hearing, but the
full committee will read the written testimony. Witness panels are
common in congressional hearing.s Panel members can include agency
officials, think tank representatives, affected interest groups and
average citizens.
Opening statements are followed by questions "deliberately designed to
elicit controversy," Rundquist said. "The hearing is part public
theater, part research."
If you do not have the skills required to prepare good testimony, get
professional advice, said William G. Wells Jr., professor in the School
of Management Science at George Washington University.
"I have often been amazed that individuals who would never dream of
doing work in their own field without careful preparation will jump
into a congressional hearing in naive, amateurish ways and make
themselves look silly or poorly prepared," Wells said.
When preparing written testimony, you should provide a short overview of
your main points and findings. Sentences and paragraphs should be
simple and concise. Prepare the testimony around issues raised in the
committee's invitation to appear at the hearing.
Most scientists are not skilled at giving effective oral testimony, said
Dennis Barnes, associate vice president for government relations at the
University of Virginia. Written testimony appeals to reason, but oral
testimony should stir emotions.
Oral testimony should be simple, usually at an eighth-grade level.
complex ideas are hard to convey to legislators and the press in so
short a time. "Remember these are not your colleagues," Barnes said.
If the committee tells you your time limit will be five minutes, plan
for four. Typically time is tight, but most witnesses think the time
constraint does not apply to them.
In oral testimony, juicy anecdotes can be more effective than grand
facts, Barnes said. Especially for associations, a collection of
conventional wisdom is not as effective as the testimony of an
investigator who is affected by the issue.
The press and committee members love visuals, but graphs and bar charts
are "deadly" and not appropriate for the committee arena, Barnes said.
Experts differ on whether oral testimony is more effective when read or
extemporaneous. Good speakers are more interesting if they do not read,
but it is harder to be concise and stay on track.
You should know the names of the committee members and be able to
identify the chair, the ranking member and the member conducting the
hearing. Respect the decorum of the hearing and address the members
appropriately, such as senator, chair or madame.
Try to be responsive to questions, but avoid arguments with committee
members. If you take on a member, Barnes said, you do so "at your own
peril and you won't do your cause any good."
As hard as it might be, maintain your composure, even if bells and
whistles go off or a member reads a newspaper or talks to staff members
during your testimony.
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tytso (Theodore Y. Ts'o):
Ever see one of those annoying Russian dolls, designed to
promote paranoia and frustration among children (I mean, the one my
parents gave had fuming red nitric acid in the centre, which made the
thrill of solving the problem of opening all the dolls rather small)?
I think of women in kind of the same way, with many levels to discover,
and the occassional death trap along the way. Actually, no, I don't, but that
*is* how I view the little fasteners on bras. Who designs those things, anyway?
It can't be a man or they'd be easier to open, and it can't be a woman,
because what women would design an undergarment whose prime purpose seems
to be amputation of limbs though circulation disruption?
James Nicoll
(from alt.romance)
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setenv TEDPATH 253-8091:253-8400:253-7788:395-0154:393-9332
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