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- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!sgigate!sgi!fido!leej
- From: leej@sgi.com (Lee Jones)
- Newsgroups: rec.scuba
- Subject: Re: Sharks: Search and destroy??? (listen up!)
- Message-ID: <1ejgsaINNh56@fido.asd.sgi.com>
- Date: 20 Nov 92 20:12:58 GMT
- References: <18NOV199221412504@trentu.ca> <1992Nov20.034615.10362@reed.edu> <1992Nov20.181502.12947@netnews.whoi.edu>
- Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
- Lines: 33
- NNTP-Posting-Host: diver.asd.sgi.com
-
- In article <1992Nov20.181502.12947@netnews.whoi.edu> dremsen@mbl.edu (David Remsen) writes:
- >
- >I support any petition against this decision.
-
- Nobody's offering a petition. This is one of those things where you have to
- "take pen in hand" (more likely sit down at your computer) and write a
- frigging letter. One of the things I found fascinating about this whole
- process was reading about how the TV networks count opinions. Of course, they
- have the Nielson ratings, but if somebody calls up the network to voice an
- opinion about the show, they count that as x viewers that think the same
- thing but didn't go to the trouble to call. Furthermore, if a person *writes
- a letter* to the station, that counts as y phone callers - same rationale.
- "x" and "y" (which I don't remember) are BIG numbers - like 50 and 100
- respectively. So, if you write a letter to a company or governmental
- agency, they treat it like a BIG DEAL because very few people are willing
- (or capable?) to write an intelligent opinion about something.
-
- Now, stop supporting petitions and write a letter.
-
- William Paty
- Director of Land and Natural Resources
- P.O. Box 621
- Honolulu, HI 96809
- Fax: 808-587-0390
-
- For what it's worth, I've decided for myself that fax's count as much as
- letters that go through the snail mail. The difference in cost (phone
- charges - $.29) is small, it gets there faster, and I get a warm fuzzy
- feeling that they actually got it. It's also within my definition of
- reasonable civil protest to tie up their fax machine with tiger shark
- complaints while they're trying to use it for other things.
-
- Regards, Lee
-