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To: tdt-distrib@ldc.upenn.edu
From: J michAel schuLtz <mschultz@unagi.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: TOPIC LIST 3
Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 15:55:14 -0400 (EDT)
I want to echo Jaime's point that we should be inclusive but not to
such a degree that the topic is not temporally confined.
> 56. James Earl Ray Case
>
> Seminal Event:
> WHAT: Martin Luther King's murder, Ray's arrest
> WHERE: Nashville, TN
> WHEN: MLK was killed April 4, 1968.
>
Jaime> We need a decision here. Should the seminal event be Ray's arrest 30 years
Jaime> ago, or the more recent mistrail/new-trial activity? I would vote for
Jaime> the latter. Then, be inclusive of King's family's involvement, Ray's
Jaime> health and death, etc. etc. Otherwise it is just not temporally
Jaime> confined -- and we would need to include article's on clearly
Jaime> unrelated topics such as Andrew Young's career turns (they were
Jaime> significantly shaped by King's death) and all kinds of diverse branching
Jaime> consequences that developed over the past 30 years -- an impossible
Jaime> task for humans or machines at this juncture.
So, for topic 38
> 38. LaSalle's Boat
>
> Seminal Event:
> WHAT: Divers have found the wreckage of LaSalle's ship the "Aimable"
> WHERE: Texas
> WHEN: 3/3/98
I would argue that the event is the discovery not the ship wreck three
centuries ago. In this particular case the point may be mute, but in
general we need a principal that limits the temporal scope, otherwise,
a "big-bang" could subsume everything. Maybe another way to look at it
is that the (time) "spans" which link stories to a seminal event should
not vary "too" wildly.
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Last updated Wed Sep 9 09:40:49 1998