HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: markwc@barney.esl.com (Mark Christiansen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Uneven felt gravity
Date: 5 Oct 92 05:37:57 GMT
Organization: ESL Inc., Sunnyvale, CA

In article <48@fedfil.UUCP>
news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:

>In article <BvJuyC.9u8@world.std.com>
>twalters@world.std.com (Tim Walters) writes:
>
>> Ted's theory of a reduced "felt effect" of gravity 
>
>The theory isn't really mine in any sense.  The only thing which I have
>added to the idea, which wasn't there before, was the notion of contrasting
>elephants or sauropods to a scaled version of one of our strongest men.
>-- 
>Ted Holden
>HTE

I'm still trying to understand this "felt effect" idea (because nobody
has answer my question in previous posting).  Is the idea that certain
parts of the Earth had less attraction than others at some time in the
past or was the density of the whole Earth much lower?

Mark
-- 
   We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
   -- Wernher von Braun
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: huston@access.digex.com (Herb Huston)
Subject: Re: Creationist CRAPOLA!
Followup-To: talk.origins
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 09:47:19 GMT

In article <ke0qRB3w165w@mantis.co.uk> mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
>watson@sce.carleton.ca (Stephen Watson) writes:
>> David Irish (dirish@HQ.Ileaf.COM)
>> >(1) No problem accepting that there was death before Adam. After all,
>> >    what did carnivorous animals eat? Animals in the wild are adapted
>> >    for specific roles. Carnivours do not possess teeth that would
>> >    work very well if they had a vegetarian diet. Ever see a cat try
>> >    to eat grass or non-meat products? They have great difficulty, because
>> >    their teeth are not suited for chewing vegetable matter.
>>
>> (We interrupt this argument for an irrelevant digression on feline dietary
>> habits:
>> Actually it's not just the teeth: their digestive systems are not built to co
>> with vegetation as a normal diet: you need a LONG gut to extract nutrition
>> from plant matter.  Cats only eat grass (I have one who's *crazy* about it!)
>> for the fiber.

Teeth are part of the digestive system, but they fossilize better than the gut.
Cats also eat grass for the folic acid.

>More to the point, cats require taurine in their diet, and taurine can only
>be obtained from meat.

Taurine can be synthesized.  Whether vegetarian catfood is nutritious for
cats, though, is another question.

>Dentition is a bad way to determine whether an animal is "supposed to" eat
>meat or not.  Meat-eating humans often argue that humans are "supposed to"
>eat meat because we have incisors and little canine teeth; but next time you
>get a chance, look at the teeth of a gorilla.

Dentition is an excellent way to determine whether an animal is specialized
as an herbivore.  Human molars are smaller than those of gorillas or the
extinct robust australopithecines, and large molars are required for the
thorough grinding of plant material.  Gorillas and robust australopithecines
also have/had more powerful jaw muscles, as indicated by sagittal crests,
to perform this task.  The larger canines of apes are used for biting other
apes in fights or more commonly for intimidating the opponent by simply
pulling back the lips and exposing them to view.  For humans this latter
action survives as a relic gesture called snarling.

>[ Of course, because of "King Kong" most people probably think gorillas eat
>  meat... ]

Yes, but now there's _Gorillas In the Mist_.   Anyway, mountain gorillas
have recently been discovered to eat ants when they get the opportunity.
They don't "fish" for them the way some chimps go after insects.  Instead,
the gorilla rips open the mound and scoops them up.  Until the soldier ants
mobilize, that is.  When they begin stinging, the gorilla beats a hasty
retreat.

Follow-ups set to talk.origins.

-- Herb Huston
From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Creationist CRAPOLA!
Date: 30 Sep 92 23:25:07 GMT
Organization: Wright State University

In article <7135@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM>, alanf@tekig6.PEN.TEK.COM (Alan M Feuerbacher) writes:
> In article <1143@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
> |....
> |Now, when one studies the array of teeth in mammals, the one whose teeth
> |are *most* similar to ours is the pig!  Pigs teeth are so similar to human
> |teeth that fossil pig jaw fragments can be confused with human jaw fragments
> |even by experts.   Now guess what, of all of the animals on the earth today
> |the one considered by nutritionists to have most nearly the same dietary
> |requirements to us is, ta da, the pig - it is the standard 'human stand-in'
> |in dietary experiments.
> |
> |Now, what is a pig, dietarily speaking?  It is the ultimate omnivore, it
> |will eat just about *anything*.  Guess what we are?  (Hint, try naming
> |something even remotely edible that some human culture somewhere does not
> |eat).
> 
> I once read an entertaining science fiction story where the protagonist
> was a biologist whose pet theory was that humans evolved from pigs.  :)
> His boss didn't appreciate it very much.  Wish I could remember the book.
> 
> Alan Feuerbacher
> alanf@atlas.pen.tek.com

I remember the story, maybe Asimov?  Sounds like his style of humor.  Actually
the protagonist used the 'humans evolved from pigs' theory to shoot down his
boss who was short, fat, pink and bald.  It wasn't really his pet theory,
just something he used to get to his boss.

Sue
From: Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Doing Ted
X-Sender: newtout 0.02 Oct  1 1992
Date: 01 Oct 92  15:23:00

 > From: dave@hpdstma.ptp.hp.com (Dave Waller)
 > Message-ID: BvBAq4.J86@scd.hp.com

 > **** WARNING! THIS IS A TEDSTER FICTIONALIZATION, MEANT ONLY FOR
 > ITS ****
 > **** HUMOR VALUE. PLEASE DO NOT ATTRIBUTE THESE THOUGHTS TO ME!
 >     ****

 >|> >2^8 = 64, the odds against all continents simply drifting
 >|>
 >|> First, 2^8 = 256; 2^6 = 64.

 > No it's not, Isaak, you bullshit con-artist. Due to the reduced
 > felt effect
 > of exponents, 2^8 = 64 in the antediluvian world. But I wouldn't
 > expect
 > anything as logical and self-evident as that to get through to a
 > monkey
 > descendant.

(more of the kind deleted)

 > ===========================================================

 > So, fellow readers, how'd I do? Although I may have used a few
 > big words that would give away immediately that I wasn't the
 > Tedster, looking it over it looks pretty close :-)

Bravo! I've seen the best known Ted impersonators at the Tedmania convention
in Vegas and i really think you've got a shot at making a career of it.


+--------------------------+--------------------------------------+
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---
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: lking@athena.mit.edu (Loren King)
Subject: Re: Methinks it's like a weasel (Blind Watchmaker)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 03:27:01 GMT


In article <1992Sep28.185351.19420@cs.joensuu.fi>, asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi
(Antti Siivonen) writes:

  [stuff deleted]


|> amorgan@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Crunchy Frog) writes:
|> >This is relevant??????  Fergit apes, just assume you pick letters at
|> >random.
|> 
|> 	Yes, but the probability of evolution is the same as a monkey would 
|> 	type the whole Shakespeare. The probability of one sentence is 
|> 	1 / 1+E40, which would lead to probability of 1/1+E12 per year per 
|> 	planet. And this was only the first sentence. 
|> -- 
|> 
|> 		Andreas - Siperian Sirri   Siberian Stint


  I remember Bertrand Russell wrote a brief tirade against
this sort of reasoning, pointing out that, if I get a taxi,
say #10923, and there are, I dunno, 20,000 cabs in the city,
that's a pretty improbable event.  However I don't think
anything of it.  Not a new story, and the analogy doesn't
quite hold, but it points out the weakness of the religious
mind-set: these people can't quite deal with contingency,
gratuitous being.  Religion always needs to posit a purpose ...
"what are the chances of ... isn't it too coincidental that ...
what about design? ..." and so on.
  In a 1947 debate Father Frederick Copleston had a debate with
Bertrand Russell about the existence of God, and the good
Jesuit was quite shocked when, after asking Russell if he
agreed with Sartre that "tous est gratuit," Russell replied that,
yes, the universe was more or less gratuitous, not in the sense
that it could have been something else, but just in the fact that
it is, rather than is not.
  Further, I think Antti should read *carefully* Dawkin's explanation
of this in the Blind Watchmaker ... it's in simple language.
I think also that, on the point about bounded discrete probabilities
in these sorts of models, Dr. Lila Gatlin did some work on this.  Am
I right?  Are her views considered respectable in Biological circles?
Just curious.

__________

Loren King
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: twalters@world.std.com (Tim Walters)
Subject: Re: Uneven felt gravity
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 00:33:14 GMT

In article <48@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
>In article <BvJuyC.9u8@world.std.com>, twalters@world.std.com (Tim Walters) writes:
>> Ted's theory of a reduced "felt effect" of gravity 
>
>The theory isn't really mine in any sense.  The only thing which I have
>added to the idea, which wasn't there before, was the notion of contrasting
>elephants or sauropods to a scaled version of one of our strongest men.

Ok then, according to the theory of a reduced felt effect of gravity
that you seem to believe in, would it be possible to say which areas
of the earth had reduced gravity and which did not?
-- 
Tim Walters	twalters@world.std.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: ingles@engin.umich.edu (Ray Ingles)
Subject: Re: Back to "Bales' scales"
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 92 03:26:27 EDT
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor

In article <7082@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM> bobb@tekig1.PEN.TEK.COM (Robert W Bales) writes:

[deletions galore]

>>>The second would be evidence showing that the actual history of life
>>>involved something other than creation.  In other words, evidence that
>>>"creation could not" or "creation did not."
>
>1. Showing creation could not.
>2. Showing creation did not.

[even more deletions]
 
 Bob, the question was, as near as I can remember, "What would it take
to disprove creationism?"

 Apparently we need to clarify it.
 
 What evidence would we need to produce to show that creation did
not occur as described in Genesis?
 Include in your answer at least one specific example, please. Ideally,
in the form, "If you found X, that would disprove or cast strong doubt
on creation."
 
 The upshot of this is, *How* do we...
 
 1. Show creation could not, or
 2. Show creation did not.

Sincerely,

Ray Ingles                  || The above opinions are probably
                            || not those of the University of
ingles@engin.umich.edu      || Michigan. Yet.
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Egg-shaped antediluvian world
From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Date: 28 Sep 92 06:12:30 EST
Organization: Wright State University 

In article <31@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
> In article <1992Sep23.235741.11710@csis.dit.csiro.au>, prl@csis.dit.csiro.au (Peter Lamb) writes:
> *news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
> *
> *
> *>A recent issue of the Aeon journal, which concerns itself with
> *>the nature of the antedeluvian world, carried my article concerning
> *>sauropod dinosaurs, as well as a somewhat longer and more interesting
> *>article by Lynn Rose involving continental drift theory.
> *	... ad tedium ...
> *
> *Ted, this is the same nonsense that you posted on 19 Jul 92 12:17:28 GMT
> *in <2823@fedfil.UUCP>. I posted a long refutation of Rose's babblings, and
> *never saw even the slightest disputation of them from you.
> *
> 
> Your "refutation" did not address any of the logical points which Rose made,
> your repeated claims to have refuted Rose ring hollow.  
> 
> Your plea that I stop posting this article for the benefit of newcomers or
> those who haven't seen it rings hollow.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ted Holden
> HTE
> 

Well, *I* would like to know if you possibly know how to edit a file!  You
keep mis-spelling Dr. McGowan's name in these posts.  Plus you very selectively
quoted his book.  Both of these have been repeatedly pointed out to you.  If
you want to come across as a real dou-fuss who can't straighten out an error,
then just keep reposting your stuff.

Sue
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Differing accounts of creation in Genesis
Organization: LLNL
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 18:33:50 GMT

In article <90379@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1992Sep24.143407.1005@dcs.warwick.ac.uk>, simon@dcs (Simon Clippingdale) writes:
@ > There are   n o t   two separate, conflicting accounts of creation in
@ > Genesis. The 'second' account is just a closer look at what happened
@ > in connection with the creation of man. Where are the conflicts?

@ The order of creation with respect to man/beast is specified in each
@ account and the two are plainly contradictory, certainly in the KJV:

>But certainly not in the Hebrew.  (I think this should become an FAQ
>pretty soon.)  Biblical Hebrew does not have a past or present or future
>tense.  It has a perfective (for completed actions) and an imperfective
>(for continuing actions).  Temporal sequence is thus ambiguous.

	But look at more than the verb tenses. I'm told that many of
the sentences in Genesis 1 and 2 are preceded with a particle
translated as "and", "then", or "and then", depending on the context.
In effect:

	Then this
	...
	Then that
	...
	Then the other thing

	Temporal order is clearly indicated -- for both creation
stories.

	I feel that this attempt to argue away the inconsistent
chronological ordering when one puts the two tales together is pure
special pleading. Each tale, however, is fairly coherent (I'm not
going to insist that each one is _perfectly_ coherent, however); it's
just the two together that produce the blatant contradictions.

	Not only the order is different, but other things. For
instance, in the first story, God seems very happy with what he has
done, while in the second story, God does not seem very happy with the
way Adam and Eve had behaved. Also, in the first one, we get the
impression of an orderly, step-by-step creation, concluding with God
taking a rest after he was all done (Oh, it's so tiring to create a
Universe!). In the second one, God as to create animals for Adam,
having discovered that he was so lonely; when he discovers that he has
not succeeded, God creates Eve for him.

	I suspect that these two stories were included in the same
book because both were "recognized traditions", as it were, no matter
how embarrassing the two tales look side by side.
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: The new and improved Ted - NOT!
Keywords: lime pie
Date: 29 Sep 92 02:34:44 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Sep28.183939.8385@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> tlode@nyx.cs.du.edu (trygve lode) writes:
|
| 
|Even being extremely conservative, we've shown that the Holden Number
|"upper limit" that you have been using in your arguments is off by a
|factor of at least 27, nearly ten times what you suggest would be
|required to make an ultrasaur theoretically capable of standing;

Yikes, and all that *without* correcting the weight estimates for the
ultrasaur!  Now add in the fact that he consistantly overestimates the
weights by 2-4 times, and you get a conservative minimum discrepancy
of about *54*!


-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Xref: sparky talk.origins:12273 sci.skeptic:17181
From: ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Object-oriented creation
Date: 30 Sep 92 11:30:31 GMT
Reply-To: ncramer@labs-n.bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Interzone Office
NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com

grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards) writes:
|ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) writes:
|: Maybe G*d's manager stuck him with C++?
|We all know that all really cool supreme beings use Smalltalk.

Actually, my son, We prefer CLOS.

__
NL
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: morgan@sitka.triumf.ca (Morgan Burke)
Subject: Re: Darwinism is dead !
Organization: TRIUMF, Vancouver BC
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 18:13:17 GMT

In article <7184@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM> alanf@tekig6.PEN.TEK.COM (Alan M Feuerbacher) writes:
[re: fruit flies recovering lost eyes after a few generations]
>  In _The Ghost in
>  the Machine_ (1967) Arthur Koestler, a strong critic of the
>  mechanistic biology underlying neo-Darwinism, commented,
>
>    The traditional explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is that
>    the other members of the gene-complex have been `reshuffled and
>    re-combined in such a way that they deputise for the missing normal
>    eye-forming gene.' [...]  The
>    recombination of genes to deputise for the missing gene must have
>    been co-ordinated according to some overall plan....

I'm no biologist, but there are a few fallacies in this line of reasoning
that leap out even at me.

Did these researchers actually perform lengthly studies of fruit fly
DNA sequences to confirm that the "eye" DNA disappeared?  Or did they
just assume that the lack of eyes meant the lack of an eye gene?

The fact that a fruit fly has no eyes does not mean that it has no
genes for eyes.  A far more likely explanation (to me) than the deletion
of whole gene complexes is that minor mutations acted to suppress the
development of the eyes.  The "eye" DNA simply got ignored, and added to
the large tracts of junk DNA that all organisms have.  Error correction
or a counter-mutation in a later generation simply re-activated the gene
that was there all along.

We all carry numerous genes that can lay dormant for generations before
being reactivated.  Most obvious are genes for various sexual
characteristics.  For example, assume my paternal grandmother had large
breasts.  This genetic characteristic could be carried by her decendants,
including my father and I, in whom the gene is not activated.  Eventually
the gene may get passed to my daughter, in whom the gene is activated.
Although we would probably say she got her bust from her great-grandmother,
she in fact got it from me, despite the fact that my own chest is hairy
and flat.  According to the logic of the above "biologists", my daughter's
breasts were an incredible example of recombination of genes to deputise
for the large breast genes that went missing for a few generations.
A patently silly deduction.

I think Dawkins discusses something along these lines in _TBW_.

-- Morgan Burke (morgan@reg.triumf.ca)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: New Evidence for Creation!
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 21:33:49 GMT

In article <91106@rphroy.ph.gmr.com>, hamilton@hydra.cs.gmr.com (William E.
Hamilton CS50 CS/50) writes:
> >A least-squares fit to this data yields the following precise equation
> >for body temperate vs. time:
> >
> >	Temperature = -0.0032258064 * Year + 104.6258063552   .
> >
> You have data at only two points on the time axis. Trying to infer
> time-dependent behavior from only two points seems foolhardy to me.

  I was thinking about this last night, and it occurred to me you have 3 data
points available.  When Farenheight set his temperature scale he wanted 0 to be
the coldest thing he could find (frozen sea water) and 100 to be body
temperature.

  Now the standard story is that he just mismeasured the average human body
temperature (18th century thermometers are not known for their incredible
accuracy).  But if we make the standard creationist assumption that all data
points are exact . . .

 |  __L__   *******************************
-|-  ___    * Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub   *
 |  | o |   * kv07@iastate.edu            *
 |/ `---'   * Iowa State University       *
/|   ___    * Math Department             *
 |  |___|   * 400 Carver Hall             *
 |  |___|   * Ames, IA  50011             *
 J  _____   *******************************
From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: a clarification from Ted?
Date: 5 Oct 92 01:49:48 GMT
Organization: HTE

In article <pwcprwd@lynx.unm.edu>, rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
 
> >There were no animals on the southern hemisphere.  I mean, why live  
> >in darkness when you could live in light [?]
 
> 	WHOA!  Hold on a second.  I can't see how else this could be  
> interpreted, but I'll give you the chance to clairify anyway: Are you  
> really saying there were no animals living in the southern hemisphere  
> during the time of "reduced felt effect of gravity" - the time of  
> dinosaurs and Pangea - i.e. the early Mesozoic (Triassic) in  
> conventional geology - because there was no light?  

No light, and no land to live on.  Think about it.  All the land was in
one place, Pangaea, anmd all the land was directly under whatever had
pulled it all into one place, the which location coincided with the
North magnetic pole, since the whole thing was electromagnetic.

Only a fish with a love of darkness would have been living in the southern
hemisphere.

Naturally, given such conditions, magnetic and geological poles were
the same.



-- 
Ted Holden
HTE
From: amorgan@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Crunchy Frog)
Subject: Re: Darwinism is dead !
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 18:55:16 GMT

In article <n0abet@ofa123.fidonet.org> 
  Laurence.Vanhelsuwe@f8.n252.z2.fidonet.org writes:
>Hi All (biologists),

Do I count?  I'm just a lowly computer scientist.
 
>I've just been reading in a VERY interesting book which attacks Darwin's
>theory of evolution based on natural selection.
> 
>It's written by a molecular biologist and as far as I could glance doesn't
>contain the "G" word...

I wonder where this person got his/her degree.  Actually the writer is
probably male, females have more sense.

>It comes up with some very convincing arguments.
>For example: there's no evidence WHATSOEVER when analysing DNA sequences that 
>any species is more or less "evolved" or primitive than another one. In other 
>words amphibians are NOT inbetween fish and reptiles for example.

If the author actually believes that evolution turns organisms from
more primitive to more advanced, or that there is any such thing as
more or less evolved then this seems to be as good a reason as any to
reject the book.

>Another argument which he uses is to reject the idea that a RANDOM process
>(mutation of genes) could produce any length of DNA which produces anything as 
>intricate and complex (and working!) as even a simple bacterium...

Agreed.  Fortunatly evolution doesn't work by just random processes.
Lucky break for us.

>Laurence

C Frog
Newsgroups: talk.origins