From: boswell@well.sf.ca.us (Gerard Van der Leun)
Subject: Scientific Truth Is Not Found in Threats
Followup-To: sci.physics
Organization: edge.com
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 14:20:02 GMT

This was first posted to sci.physics.new-theories. Several members
of this group have asked that it be reposted here. I apologize if
you have already seen it.

=========


In article <BzuF2v.8MD@well.sf.ca.us>, sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack
Sarfatti) wrote in alt.sci.pyhsics.new theories:
>  
> Mr. Wolff,
> Be advised that I am checking your credit for assets and it is my intention
> to bring a lawsuit for malicious slander, libel and defamation of character
> against you personally and against your employer Computervision.
> 


Jack honed this vile form of attack over on the WELL where he at various
times threatened to call people I worked with, sue me, and even send either

the local law enforcement officers after me in San Francisco and in Boston.
I also think he promised to have me incarcerated in a federal loony bin as
soon as he could get his contacts among the Fed. Law Enforcement to come
around. There were several other items on his list, but the threatened
suit thing is his standard response. Anyone who "crosses" old Jack can
be assured of the same treatment. It is his way of dealing with truths
that he can't stand. He's been doing this for months on the WELL. People
now just ignore him and forget most of the topics he posts in.

You see, Jack is a blowhard. A pathetic one at that. But if someone
calls attention to this rather than just killfiling him, he can't take it.
And he immediately starts to emerge as his true self, the online bully.

You see, Jack is the hero of his own life, and woe be unto those who
pop a clown nose on him and depict him as Bozo. 

The threats against a person's livelihood and the threats of suits are
standard operating procedure for Sarfartti. He is terminally clueless
as to the nature of the Net and the nature of discourse here. He's just
your average bandwidth pig with delusions of grandure. He'd like to
chill discourse through threat and bluster. He cannot stand seeing
himself as others see him. It is, after all, not a pretty picture.

> Your have screwed yourself, wiseguy, by your remark:
> "I've also taken the liberty of putting a few of your words in all-caps."
> whose intent and implication is to portray me as a crackpot by willful
> malicious distortion of my actual text which is, I assume, privileged
> intellectual property.
 
As many will attest, satire is a protected form of speech. Whether Jack's
words are "property" will be debated here for aeons. Whether his words
are "intellectual" in any sense other than "pseudo-" is something we shall
all decide for ourselves. Whether or not Jack has any notion of real 
freedom of discourse, all here may judge.

> At the very least you have displayed poor judgement in your Employer's eyes
> by using their
> id and making hem party to a very interesting lawsuit breaking new ground
> in the protection of
> intellectual property on usenet.

This is Jack attempting to paint himself as a "patron" of the Net. I'll
believe it more when he writes the first $5,000 check as a retainer to some
lawyer.
 
> At the very least I will be happy to hear that you have been fired by
> Computervision.  If they fire you, I will not name them in the lawsuit.

Can any here doubt the mean and small character exemplified by this
statement? Can any here respect a person so miniscule and vitupritive
as to even write these words? Can any here believe that the mind capable
of this has the smallest modicum of self-respect? 

>I will be contacting the CEO of your company shortly.

The really awful part here is that Jack will actually do things like this.
Do we really feel that such actions represent people acting in the finest
traditions of the Net? I think most of us who understand the nature of
free expressions would also understand that this sort of behavior by any
of us is one of the lowest things a NET user is capable of. 

What's next when such low things go on? Shall a person's postings to
alt.sex several years back be printed out and sent to their hometown
paper, their employer, their parents? Shall political opinions expressed
during the last elections be sent to the government? Shall people such
as Jack be anything other than shunned and killfiled if they persist?
 

>And let this be a
> warning to anyother half-cocked computer cowboys out there. In the old west
> these matters of honor were settled with six-guns, today it is expensive
> lawsuits - and I enjoy litigation!  Like Dirty Harry said: "Make myday!"
> I'm brimming with Christmas Spirit!

The sub-text here is that Jack has lots of money to blow off on lawsuits
and will sue to silence anyone who doesn't respect what cannot, by any
human terms, be respected. The reality is most likely that we have found
a mind whose main object of manipulation is itself, a mind that spends its
time sitting in darkness fostering ancient wounds and cursing the
outer world that simply refuses to understand its innate brillilance,
that just will not see or recognize the wonder and the glory that is
Jack Sarfartti, cosmophysicist. 

> 
> For the record - as of this date Dec 25, 1992, I would not award myself the
> Nobel Prize in physics, nor do I think I deserve one, nor have I ever
> implied as much. The reason I do not deserve a Nobel Prize is that my
> prediction that quantum connection communication is possible, in
> particular, that the polarization of one photon in a photon pair can be
> controlled at a distance according to the specific formular sin2@cos7& (@&
> defined elsewhere) from the timelike future as well outside the lightcone,
> has not been confirmed by experiment.

On the WELL, where Sarfartti first cut his keyboard chops he has for many
months now been posting in a topic that is, with only occassional lapses,
populated only by himself. Many of these ramblings are embalmed there.
Including the yearning for the recognition of Ye Olde Nobel Prize when
that damned old experiment gets around to happening. 

> 
> If, one day,my specific prediction with my specific device is confirmed
> then no doubt many would think I should get the Nobel Prize - but that is,
> at this time, purely hypothetical fantasy,  for you Mr Wolf to distort my
> text so as to make it appear otherwise is a rape of my mind!

Actually, it is impossible to out-parody Sarfartti. He is a master of
self-parody. As for a rape of the mind, well, there has to be a mind
to rape if mind-rape is going to be committed.

The only hypothetical fantasies going on around here are self-created.
Sarfartti is a small human being. His own words reveal his scale.

And that's the fact, Jack.
Newsgroups: sci.physics