HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: chuck_adams@qmail.ssc.gov (Chuck Adams)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Fluorescent Pens
Date: 6 Apr 92 17:58:17 GMT
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory

In article <92Apr4.180911est.144362@explorer.dgp.toronto.edu> 
flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) writes:

>  As well, I have held in my very own hand an old device for cleaning
>  records whose label advertised (as if it was a good thing) that there
>  were radioactive materials inside.
>
>  However, this could have been a lie.


Not at all.....There are many antistatic products on the market that 
utilize small amounts of radioactive materials to produce ionizing 
radiation.  (Usually found in conjunction with brushes).  The action of 
using a brush on plastics (like a record) to remove dust would actually 
end up producing static electric charges which would attract more dust to 
the record than you had just brushed off.  The radioactive source 
neutralizes the static charges.

               Chuck Adams,  WB5WRR   (The Puhpxfgre)
                Internet:  chuck_adams@qmail.ssc.gov
   Disclaimer:  Not an official document of DOE, SSCL, URA or EG&G
                   "Curses!  Flamed Again"  - me
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.usage.english
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Subject: Re: Pleonasm
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 15:14:46 GMT
Organization: My Daddy, My Doggy, and Me
X-Bytes: 

Peter van der Linden writes:
>
>The technique of using more words than necessary (e.g. "he heard with his
>own ears") is called "pleonasm".  Please write that in big letters in your
>red books and don't forget it.  PLEONASM, peons.
>

The ornate should need no dispensation. This is a benighted world which
took "Form follows function" as a carte blanche to erect history's
ugliest buildings.

But, please note and don't forget, that the quoted material above is
from a man who needs three words for a last name. Perhaps Peter is a 
little testy on pleonasm. Pleonasty, perhaps?

-- 
Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu>  
You know, there's many a damned fool woulda swallered that.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: mikkelson@breakr.enet.dec.com (snopes)
Subject: Re: Falling bullets on Marilyn's Parade
Organization: Still waiting for the snuff films . . .
Date:  6 APR 92 22:56:41    


In article <1992Apr6.231149.15738@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, 
  hucke@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Matt Hucke) writes...

>Asimov died this morning of kidney failure.  

And, strangely enough, nobody has seen Marilyn vos Savant since then.
Coincidence?  You decide.

- snopes

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "An idea or belief is not necessarily true or false because your parents,   |
|  your friends, or you or your children have believed it."                   |
|                                                           - Abel J. Jones   |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  David P. Mikkelson   Digital Equipment Corporation   Culver City, CA  USA  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.religion.kibology
From: tel@adimail.uucp (Terry Monks)
Subject: Re: Tomato Flavor Chewing Gum
Organization: Automata Design, Inc.
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 13:15:24 GMT

bediger@isis.cs.du.edu (bruce allen ediger) writes:
: 
:stugg about chewing gum.
:

But what I want to know is: what *is* bubble gum
flavour? Is it a flavour of anything occurring in
nature? Especially of interest to me now that I 
have found a Peruvian soft drink that is bubble
gum flavoured.

Terry "gt a gd sig f mo pa" Monks
-- 
Terry Monks        Automata Design Inc    (703) 472-9400

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: jgoldber@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Joel Goldberg)
Subject: Re: Goats and Cars: The mathematical solution
Organization: University of Toronto Chemistry Department
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 14:40:54 GMT

In article <1992Apr8.194450.28103@pony.Ingres.COM> gmcquary@Ingres.COM (George F. McQuary) writes:
>Goats and cars, a mathematical solution.
>
>The problem:
>------------
>
>Monty Hall is going to give away a car. You are given a choice of doors,
>one of which contains a car, the rest containing goats. After you choose,
>Monty shows you that all the doors except one (and the one you picked) had goats
>behind them. He now gives you a choice of switching doors... should you?
>
>For n doors, you have a 1/n chance of picking correctly the first time.
>Assuming n>=3, Monty then shows you goats behind n-2 doors.
>The car must be present. The chances therefore of the car appearing behind the
>door he allows you to switch to are now 1-(1/n) or (n-1)/n.
>
>So if Monty shows you 100 doors, the chance of picking the car on your first
>pick is 1/100, or 1%. Monty now trots out a herd of 98 goats and gives you
>a choice of keeping your pick or exchanging it for the unseen remaining
>door. You know one of the two doors must have a car. The car is now
>99% likely to be gotten if you switch. You should switch.
>
>Likewise, if there are three doors, you are 1/3 or around 33% likely to
>get the car on the first pick. Monty trots out a goat and leaves the other
>door still undisclosed, but offers you a switch. The car is 2/3 or approximately
>67% likely to be gotten if you switch. You should switch.

   and in 
PCT601%sirius.ukc.ac.uk@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU (Robryche)

adds;
"
But look at it this way. Forget about the first choice anyway. At the second
choice, one goat having been removed, there will be two doors, one with a goat
and one with a car, you will be standing in front of one of them. Since you
dont know what's behind the doors, there's a fifty percent chance that you're
standing in front of the one with the car. Therefore, Whether you switch or
not, there's a fifty percent chance you'll get the one with the car. So to
switch or not to switch is just down to the gambler in you."

Which is incorrect, because Monty isn't always going to open the door
he _did_ open---it depends on what you originally did. Anyway, one can use
this principle to modify the problem somewhat and arrive at a cute
result:

3 doors, Monty always opens door n+1. ie. if you choose door 1, Monty
opens door 2; you door 2, Monty door 3; you door 3, Monty door 1.
Of course this means that sometimes the car is revealed, and you lose
immediately. However, suppose a goat is revealed. In this case, there
is a 50-50 chance that the car is behind either of the two remaining
closed doors.

So, imagine two parallel games, one with the original rules and one
with the n+1 rules. Assume further that a goat is revealed in the n+1
game. From the point of view of what the audience at home sees, the
two games are identical, but in the first the contestant should switch
and in the second it doesn't matter.

Joel "80,000 hours by age 16" Goldberg
From: tzf@cs.arizona.edu (Theron Friedman)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Falling Bullets
Date: 7 Apr 92 00:17:48 GMT
Reply-To: tzf@cs.arizona.edu (Theron Friedman)
Organization: U of Arizona, CS Dept, Tucson

There has been more recent activity on this fault. There was an earthquake
(4 or 5 on the Richter, I think) in the late 1970's; we felt a few
tremors (3rd floor of an oldish house) in Ann Arbor, and later saw a
news report saying that the epicenter was near St. Louis.

terry :i felt the  earth move that time: friedman
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Subject: With every rebeat of my heart (was: That caff-ff-ene th-thing
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 17:23:48 GMT
Organization: My Daddy, My Doggy, and Me
X-Bytes: 

Caffeine is not an innocuous drug. As a  practicing caffeine addict in
the early part of this century (1973) I consumed so much Coca-Cola that
I developed an extra little heart beat. It was warm and cuddly, but
it had to go. I wrapped it in a blanket, pinned a little note to
its blanket, put it on my grocers door step, and switched to root
beer. Unfortunately, I later became a programmer and union rules
being what they are...

-- 
Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu>  
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.urban:11982 alt.folklore.science:1370
From: don@syscon.rn.com (Don McLane)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: Cable TV cheater spotters (was Re: FCC Call letters)
Date: 9 Apr 92 17:07:04 GMT
Organization: Syscon International - Corporate Headquarters

dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap) writes:

>In article <22499@dog.ee.lbl.gov> jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov writes:
>>A superheterodyne receiver like a TV generates and amplifies 
>>its intermediate-frequency (IF) signal all the time regardless 
>>of what channel you're on or where the rf input is coming
>>from.  The local oscillator (LO) frequency varies depending
>>on what channel you're watching, however.  If the cable uses
>>a channel on which no one in town broadcasts, and they kept
>>picking up the corresponding LO signal from your house, they
>>might be able to infer that you were watching the cable.  The
>>signal is very weak from an FCC type-accepted TV set, and
>>they'd have to have good equipment and skills to figger it out.

The local oscillator frequency is not likely to be a very good
indication of what you're watching.  Many reciever setups have
multiple stages of frequency conversion, such as when the signal
is first converted to Ch. 3, then later converted to the IF proper.
In addition, I don't think the local oscillator uniquely specifies
the channel being viewed, i.e. different LO freqs could give the
same IF componant among the various sums and differences that 
occur when signals are mixed.

The IF stage would radiate the channel being viewed, at a carrier
frequency of about 40MHz.  The picture tube would ratiate also
(perhaps more strongly), but at the video freq, a broad spectrum
from about 60Hz. to 4.5MHz.  I've also heard that the cable 
company can embed a signature in the video waveform to aid in
detection.

I don't know if they can really detect such low level radiation,
but I'm personally skeptical.  In any case, they could be easily
thwarted by some added sheilding.


      ----Don
From: f67709317@violet.ccit.arizona.edu (Greg Franklin)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Martial Arts UL
Date: 9 Apr 92 20:46:51 GMT
Distribution: world,local
Organization: University of Arizona
Nntp-Posting-User: f67709317

Brunvand should take a look at this one.  Especially since it was
labeled as "true" in rec.humor.funny.

=========
OK, it all started when my semi-mythical and nonexistant friend Ikiru
decided to teach karate on campus. He went through the whole process of
getting room permits and all, and decided to put together a poster to
advertise the class. So he read all those old Charles Atlas ads and those
endless ju-jitsu and hopkido blurbs in the back of the comic books, and he
came up with the following poster:

 /----------------------------------------------------------------\
 |                        M A R T I A L   A R T S                 |
 |                                                                |
 |           - Learn Ancient Asian Techniques                     |
 |           - Develop Impressive Skills                          |
 |           - Learn the Art of Control                           |
 |           - Build Self-Confidence                              |
 |           - Protect Yourself                                   |
 |           - Train with exotic Impliments                       |
 |           - Achieve your Maximum Potential                     |
 |                                                                |
 |         New Class meets on Tuesday and Thursday, 7:00 PM	  |
 |                                                                |
 \----------------------------------------------------------------/

The poster was adorned with a large script Japanese character, which Ikiru 
admitted to me was the character for nori, the seaweed that one uses for 
wrapping sushi. But nevertheless, the poster was pretty impressive.

So Ikiru sent the design to the printer, got two hundred copies, and put
them up around campus.

Tuesday night comes, and he arrives at the gym at a quarter of seven. To his 
amazement, there are already around two hundred students there! Now, based 
on his beautiful poster, he had expected a decent-sized group, but this was
extraordinary!

He glanced at his poster, and discovered why. The printer had evidently 
reversed two letters when typesetting the poster: the "T" and the "I" in the 
title had been transposed...
-- 
Greg Franklin                             "Death is everywhere,
f67709317@ccit.arizona.edu          there are fries on the windscreen."
From: tjw@vm2.cis.pitt.edu
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Sidewalks and NOW CHAINGANGS!
Date: 6 Apr 92 19:16:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: vm2.1992Apr6.141639.1
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <mtpins.702576979@icaen.uiowa.edu>, mtpins@icaen.uiowa.edu (Michael T Pins) writes:

> I don't know about the above UL, but at the University of Iowa, there was
> one 'shortcut' between sidewalks that so many students took (it did cut a
> significantly shorter route) that there was a well worn path.  After 
> numerous attempts to stop the flow, the U gave up, took down the chains,
> and paved it.

At PENN STATE, around 1978, the University decided that the steel chains
that protected the grassy areas cost too much money to maintain.  So they
found some plastic chains the looked exactly like the steel chains.

Suddenly the plastic chains were found broken everywhere on campus.

Student revolt?  Evil frat boys destroying University Property? Space Aliens?
ELVIS?!?!

What the money conscious University officials did not realize was that
students used to SIT on the metal chains.  The new plastic ones would not
bear the weight of a person sitting on them.

So after a while they went back to the metal chains.  Perhaps the whole thing
was just an exercise to teach the kids not to sit on the chains.

Terry "That's the sound of men, working on the chain gang" Wood
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.urban:12068 misc.kids:12767
From: monson@diablo.amd.com (Steve Monson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,misc.kids
Subject: Re: Business cards
Date: 8 Apr 92 21:17:28 GMT
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Austin, TX

>Marianna, he has all the cards he needs and wants and more.  Literally, in
>fact, TONS more.  He doesn't want any more.
>
>Craig Shergold situation, which I'm sure they'll be HAPPY to dispense.  Right,
>I realize you're trying to do a good deed, but in this case the best thing
>you could do would be to nip this in the bud.

Over in alt.peeves, they have made a verb out of wee Craig's name, to wit:

Shergold (v.t.) to deluge with cards, mail, samples, or just stuff, till the
		recipient is buried up to his neck, and can't stand the sight
		of another single response!!
		(or words to that effect)

So, if anyone posts this ridiculous story again, just Shergold the jerk!

Steve
-- monson@diablo.amd.com
	The tide gone out for good
	Thirty-one words for seaweed		"The Death of Irish"
	Whiten on the foreshore.		by Arden Carl Mathew
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: jdnicoll@watyew.uwaterloo.ca (James Davis Nicoll)
Subject: Re: Carbonated Beverages
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 20:25:24 GMT

	On the other end of the fizziness scale:

	I prefer my pop (hmmm. make that 'soft drinks') flat. 
To this  end, I sometimes drop a candy into my 7-Up, to provide
a larger surface for the bubbles to form on.

	A few weeks ago, I noticed that the bottle of 7-Up I was
going to drink had unusually large bubbles in it and was producing
them fairly quickly. When I dropped the candy into the drink, it 
explosively ejected about half of the contents of the torpedo of
7-Up. The peak of the spray reached about five feet up the wall.

	Anyonew have any ideas why this partucular bottle reacted 
so violently?

							James Nicoll
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.urban:11711 alt.religion.kibology:1524
Organization: Arizona State University
Date: Tuesday, 7 Apr 1992 10:21:43 MST
From: <ICLNM@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.religion.kibology
Subject: Re: Tomato Flavor Chewing Gum
 <1992Apr5.181344.11306@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>

In article <1992Apr5.181344.11306@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>, bediger@isis.cs.du.edu
(bruce allen ediger) says:
>
>Who gets to designate the correspondence between some artificial flavor and
>a real-life fruit/meat/seasoning?  I mean, "grape" koolaid (tm, i presume)
>doesn't even taste faintly like real grapes.  And Jello(tm) brand gelatin:

There was a story in the paper this morning (The Arizona Republic) reporting
that science has isolated the chemical that gives beef its flavor.  They
predicted that it would be used extensively to flavor soups, vegetable dishes,
etc.  Now they are working on chicken, pork and fish.

I can see it now.  Beefsteak bubble gum.
Loyd Means
Phoenix AZ
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson)
Subject: Re: Taboo loot (was Re: VDB pennies (was Re: Initials on the Subway Token))
Organization: Famed Parquet Floor
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 03:14:03 GMT

In article <31378@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> ecovingt@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Maiko Covington) writes:
>	Final question: Does anyone out there know how they get the
>sukashi (the watermark) into the Japanese and Korean money? That's
>the drawing that when you hold the bill up to the light you can see
>a portrait on the bill that is not visible otherwise.
>

Watermarks are generally made by forcibly squishing the image into
the paper at a late state in its manufacture.  Picture a printing
press with a lead image and no ink squeezing into wet, semiformed
paper.

Phil



-- 
|play: phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG; {ames|pyramid|vsi1}!zorch!phil                |
|work: phil@gsi; sgi!gsi!phil            | Phil Gustafson                   |
| "Better a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy"          |
|                                      Fred (not Steve) Allen               |     
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.urban:12150 alt.mcdonalds:445
From: slb3y@cc.usu.edu (Unterhund)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.mcdonalds
Subject: Re: McMouse!
Date: 13 Apr 92 09:20:29 MDT
Distribution: na
Organization: United Order of Non-joiners

In article <Qdu9Mza00iUxA26cER@andrew.cmu.edu>, dc4l+@andrew.cmu.edu
(Dean Calloway) writes:
> 
> BTW I found a bone in a cheeseburger from McDonalds one time.  Does this
> qualify?

     No, but finding real cheese would.

Patrick "hold the plastic" Clark
-- 
Patrick S. Clark            | "Got to pay your dues
Internet:  slb3y@cc.usu.edu |  If you want to sing the blues
Bitnet:    slb3y@usu        |  And you know it don't come easy."       
Disclaimer:  Ringo Starr's song.  I claim the unattributed stuff.
From: tim@tcom.stc.co.uk (Tim Kennedy)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Polio immunizations
Date: 16 Apr 92 09:33:29 GMT
Organization: BNR Europe

In article <1992Apr10.205944.3429@anasaz> morris@anasaz (Bob Morris) writes:
>I had a conversation yesterday wherein I repeated a "fact" I had heard,
>but when questioned, had to admit I had no reliable source.  I told
>the questioner I would get the truth from a.f.u, so here goes:
>
>I heard that the Sabin oral polio vaccine was a live virus and as such
>was contagious.  The Sabin vaccine is the one administered on sugar
>cubes.  If enough people in an area received the vaccine orally
>(75-80%?), they would pass it to the others so everyone would be
>vaccinated.
>
>Does anyone have adequate medical background and history (or age) to
>verify or deny this?  Is this why we all got the vaccine at the same
>time?
>

The British papers recently reported a case where a man caught polio after
changing the nappy of his recently-immunised baby nephew.

				Tim

--
In 1988 BBC Radio One listeners voted for  | T. Kennedy <tim@tcom.stc.co.uk>
the alltime greatest single.  Way ahead of | Dept 30730 NME, BNR Europe,
Strawberry Fields and Stairway To Heaven,  | Oakleigh Rd South, London N11 1HB.
at no. 1 was I Owe You Nothing by Bros.    | LUFC, Yorkshire's No. 1.
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.urban:11945 alt.folklore.science:1366
From: chuck_adams@qmail.ssc.gov (Chuck Adams)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.folklore.science
Subject: Re: FCC Call letters
Date: 9 Apr 92 19:47:15 GMT
Article-I.D.: sunova.1992Apr9.194715.7463
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory

In article <1992Apr9.162555.4618@e2big.mko.dec.com> 
moroney@ramblr.enet.dec.com writes:

> The 4-5 gap is used for radio control, pagers, an airport beacon at 75 
MHz,
> and in Europe there's a ham band there.  There is/was a little-known 
Class A
> CB band somewhere around 460 MHz in addition to the well-known Class D at
> 27 MHz, don't know if it's still used.

Class A CB is still alive and kicking.....its often referred to by its 
other name:  GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service)  There are eight 
repeater channels allocated to the service in the 460 Mhz range.

               Chuck Adams,  WB5WRR   (The Puhpxfgre)
                Internet:  chuck_adams@qmail.ssc.gov
   Disclaimer:  Not an official document of DOE, SSCL, URA or EG&G
                   "Curses!  Flamed Again"  - me
From: warren@nysernet.org (Warren Burstein)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Iron in blood setting off metal detectors
Date: 15 Apr 92 18:48:04 GMT
Reply-To: warren@nysernet.org
Organization: Mail to News Gateway

In <1992Apr15.023602.8348@sleepy.UUCP> chris@sleepy.UUCP (Chris Mills) writes:

>A friend of mine says he read somewhere that there are people that accumulate
>iron in their bodies to the extent that they set off metal detectors in
>airports.  Anyone hear this?  Is it an U.L.?  Is it true???

It is TRUE, but after passing thru a NUMBER of metaL detectorS they
usually comebe invisible and then HAVE no further problems with Metal
DetectorZ.

Warren "EINSTEIN proved it, or was it FERMI?" Burstein
-- 
/|/-\/-\          The entire kitchen is		Jerusalem
 |__/__/_/        still full of strange hamantaschen
 |warren@         And the custodian
/ nysernet.org    is starting to get worried.
From: csuah@warwick.ac.uk (~WISP at CU~)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Falling bullets on Marilyns Parade
Date: 9 Apr 92 08:17:49 GMT
Organization: Computing Services, Warwick University, UK

In article <1992Apr6.171341.12598@anasaz> morris@anasaz (Bob Morris) writes:
>Well, I read Ms vS/s column in the Sunday newspaper yesterday and noticed
>that she claims to be in the Guinness Hall of Fame (not just the book)
>as the highest IQ ever.  Can anyone confirm/deny this?

She must have a pretty awesome IQ if it's true. Last time I looked (~10yrs
ago), that 5 yr-old Korean boy still had it, with an IQ of about 205! Maybe
she's in the Hall of Fame as the highest ADULT IQ ever?

Later,

The Wisp [Idiot Quotient 200+...]
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Chris Williams <csuah@uk.ac.warwick.csv> aka <csuah@csv.warwick.ac.uk>
"Tony Greig in the slips, legs apart, waiting for a tickle"
                                      Brian Johnson (thanks to A. Simha 8^>)