HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: twcaps@tennyson.lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Fuel misers
Date: 8 Sep 92 16:28:31 GMT
Reply-To: TWChan@lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
Distribution: alt
Organization: Department of Redundancy Department
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.12.117

baudais@bnr.ca (Michael Baudais) writes:

  +After months of a.f.u monitoring, it's time to add something to the
  +FAQ.  I read something along these lines every couple of years.
  +
  +Someone somewhere has invented a new engine/car/carbeurator/
  +fuel-injector that will allow cars to achieve 100 to 200 miles per
  +gallon.  The only reason we aren't driving these things is that the
  +Big Bad Oil Companies (BBOCs) have bought out the inventors to
  +preserve their markets.
  +
  +Anyone heard the same, and can we add it to the FAQ as a Fb?

No, because there is a line in the FAQ as follows:

Fb.Major firms/gov't suppress evidence of a super great product (car,light,etc.)

Terry "Good one though, isn't it?" Chan
--
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory                    Internet:  TWChan@lbl.gov
"[PBS viewers] are affluent, highly educated, the movers and shakers, the
 socially conscious and the well-informed.  What about the rest of us?"
                                      -- U.S. Senator Robert Dole
From: chuck_adams@qmail.ssc.gov (Chuck Adams)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: More FAQs than You Can Shake a Stick At...
Date: 4 Sep 92 21:40:40 GMT
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory

In article <26103@dog.ee.lbl.gov> twcaps@tennyson.lbl.gov (Terry Chan) writes:
>September 1, 1992.

{edited for brevity}

>
>      Official Usenet Alt.Folklore.Urban Frequently Posted Legends
>
>NOMINATIONS FOR THE OFFICIAL MOTTO OF A.F.U.

>   "Are you saying that some soaps are not detergents but that no detergents
>    are soaps?

Here I got all excited thinking I had "made" the FAQ, but all I got was this
lousy quote without attribution!

>Internet:  TWChan@lbl.gov                  This is illegal, but I know jujitsu
>Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory                         so I don't care.
>Berkeley, California  USA  94720                      

How about it, Terry?
look out, I may have to sic my Uncle Cecil on you. (Bob's my uncle, too!)

                      Chuck Adams,  WB5WRR   (The Chuckster)
                 Not an official document of DOE, SSCL, URA or EG&G
               Try Internet brand Tequila -  "A worm in every bottle"
             Internet:  chuck_adams@qmail.ssc.gov  (aka 143.202.130.11)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: richg@hatch.socal.com (Rich Greenberg)
Subject: Re: Third to Be Bombed
Organization: Hatch Usenet and E-mail.  Playa del Rey, CA
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 18:05:04 GMT

I am really amused by everybody who thinks they will be third.
Growing up in the shadow of the Big Apple (==New York City),
we all expected to be second, right after Washington DC.

Anybody who lives/lived in DC care to comment?

:-)  :-)     /* This Line Inserted For The Humor Impaired. */   :-)  :-)
-- 
                
Rich Greenberg - N6LRT - 310-649-0238 - richg@hatch.socal.com
From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: stupid cop tricks & t
Date: 15 Sep 92 05:44:03 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: alt
Reply-To: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

From today's San Francisco Chronicle, attributed to AP:

LOS ANGELES -- A Los Angeles County traffic control officer
issued a ticket to a parked car with a dead man slumped over
in the driver's seat with a bullet in his head, authorities
said yesterday.

Joe "Must have been a stage property for a snuff film" Chew
From: DSTEPHEN@cmsa.gmr.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Wild Chicken Flocks
Date: 9 Sep 92 13:34:25 GMT
Organization: GM Research Labs

In article <26170@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW) writes:
>with the truck accident. A lot more livestock-type animals are
>kept in the cities and 'burbs than one might imagine.  Someone not
>
This is certainly true.  I live in downtown Detroit ("Sorry I can't come to
the phone right now, I'm reloading") and am occaisionally awakened by a rooster
crowing.
From: mccoy@cayman.com (Michael McCoy)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Briant Gumble and NBC
Date: 10 Sep 92 17:00:15 GMT
Reply-To: mccoy@cayman.com (Michael McCoy)
Organization: cayman.com

Phil Kernick (phil@adam.adelaide.edu.au) writes:

>I heard a story that just smacks of being a UL...
>So the story goes...
>Briant Gumble was a janitor working at NBC, and at a time when it was
>politically expedient to have a negro working in front of the camera, was
>given the option of presenting the news.

>P.S.  It was difficult to phrase the UL in a way that did not sound racist.

And you almost made it. Really.

Michael "Now if you had said shoe-shine boy..." McCoy



================================================
Will beta test for food...
From: ssouth@hpldsla.sid.hp.com (Steve South)
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:09:21 GMT
Subject: Re: Third to be bombed...
Organization: HP Scientific Instruments Division - Palo Alto, CA
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban

As every true Brit knows, the second target was England. This is on the 
grounds that it is the largest US aircraft carrier.  :-)

I once lived in the centre of a triangle whose vertices were formed by:

1. AWRE Aldermaston. About 5 miles from my home, AWRE is the UK's Atomic
   weapons research establishment.

2. ROF Burghfield. ROF means "Royal Ordnance Factory". 1.5 miles down the
   road from chez nous. Ordnance, in this case, means the things that make
   the *really* big bangs. Rumours abound about tunnels connecting ROF and
   AWRE.

3. RAF Greenham Common. Theoretically a Royal Air Force base. Actually
   operated by the US Air Force. A large number of cruise missiles were
   stationed there. Located about 10 miles from my home.

I felt perfectly secure living there, as I had the comforting thought that,
if the button did get pressed, then as long as I was at home I was pretty
sure of relatively painless vapourisation. Hindsight suggests that I may
have been mistaken. After all, the Russians are not without heart, and I am
sure they would not have bombed Aldermaston and killed all their resident
spies ;-)


Steve South.
From: hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil (Dan Hoey)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: The Craig Conspiracy (Was Re: Credible Evidence?)
Date: 15 Sep 92 22:25:51 GMT
Organization: Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC

cromar@math.rutgers.edu (Scott Cromar) writes:

> How about we just add Craig to the afu list no matter how it turns
> out?  Like "Mark Weaver claims to have a snuff film but refused to
> show it on request," "Mark Weaver claims to have a snuff film and
> showed it to Craig," or whatever.  Craig has a point that he'd be
> going to an awful lot of work to check out the story.

Maybe we'd better consider adding ``Craig Becker'' to the FAQ.  If we
add ``Craig'' to the FAQ it might be misconstrued.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil

ObUL: The UK has seen a flurry of people changing their name from
      Shergold to some other name, because they couldn't get mail
      from overseas.  It was being routinely trashed by postal
      workers who ``knew the story.''
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: lawson@acuson.com (Drew Lawson)
Subject: Re: Briant Gumble and NBC
Reply-To: lawson@aldia.UUCP (Drew Lawson)
Organization: ACUSON, Mountain View, CA
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 19:58:51 GMT

In article <laqhatINN4di@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller) writes:

>In article <phil.715918202@adam.adelaide.edu.au> phil@adam.adelaide.edu.au
>(Phil Kernick) writes:

>>So the story goes...
>>Briant Gumble was a janitor working at NBC, and at a time when it was
>>politically expedient to have a negro working in front of the camera, was
>>given the option of presenting the news.
>>The rest is history...
>
>>P.S.  It was difficult to phrase the UL in a way that did not sound racist.

>How could this story, true or not, possibly be construed as racist?  


Probably just the idea that they had to grab the janitor and put him on
the air to get some color into the broadcast.  It could be taken as
negative toward Gumble (he got the job because he's black) or toward
all blacks (there were no qualified black applicants).  Either way,
tokenism can very easily look racist.  For good reason.

-- 
Drew Lawson                      If you're not part of the solution,
lawson@acuson.com                you're part of the precipitate
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: oberle@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov (Lawrence Oberle)
Subject: Re: Third to be bombed...
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: NASA Lewis Research Center
Date:  8 Sep 1992 12:38 EST  

In article <1992Sep4.184825.18056@ultb.isc.rit.edu>, bmb1021@ultb.isc.rit.edu (B.M. Buck ) writes...
>In at least two cities I've lived in (Charlotte, NC and Binghamton, NY),
>there is the claim that that city is "third" on the list of sites to be
>bombed by the Soviets

>Is this legend wide-spread?  If you've heard it for your locale, what is
>the supposed reason for being third?

Don't laugh, everybody ... but when I was growing up, Cleveland, Ohio was 
supposed to be #3 behind Washington, DC  and New York City (probably 
because the Soviet spies knew about the Wingdings font, then in its 
planning stages)  

Anyway, back to reality -- the supposed reason why Cleveland was #3 was
two-fold (1) all the steel mills along the Cuyahoga river (yeah, that 
Cuyahoga river), and (2) the (or one of the) Nval Finance Center(s) is
here.  IMHO, neither reason was sufficient.  

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
Larry Oberle  (216) 433-3647          NASA Lewis Research Center 
email: oberle@ariel.lerc.nasa.gov     MS 77-1 / 21000 Brrokpark Rd.
  or:  oberle@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov    Cleveland, Ohio   44135
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-(And YES, I LIKE CLEVELAND!!)-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

 .. We have met the enemy, and he is us!!   (Pogo)
From: obrien@netcom.com (Robert O'Brien)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: What makes an urban legend work?
Date: 7 Sep 92 08:47:43 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)


In response to my offer to provide (limited) firsthand knowlegde of the
'chicken gun' used to test F-16 canopies,

russ@bbxrbk (Russ Kepler) writes:
>
>What are the most common chicken calibers?
>
>-- Russ "straight line" Kepler

I doubt you were serious, Russ, but you've made me realize I didn't pay
a lot of attention to the 'muzzle' of the gun.  I think it was about nine
inches inside diameter.  I was led to believe the chickens were chosen 
such that they would
approximate about a certain percentile of the seagull population, smaller
than 'average' but I don't know by how much.  I would guess 25-30th pctl.

	Bob 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: tad@ssc.wa.com (Tad Cook)
Subject: Re: Multimillion-$ jury award
Organization: very little
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1992 06:41:58 GMT

In article <1992Sep6.050633.25803@PA.dec.com> snopes%club33@stlth.enet.dec.com (snopes) writes:
>
>In article <1992Aug27.004149.314@midway.uchicago.edu>, 
>  thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank) writes...
>
>>Of course, these were the two elements that made the story an urban
>>legend about how amok the legal system was running...
>
> In a similar vein (this may have been covered in misc.legal; I'm sure Ted
> will know if it has):
>
> A few months ago in this newsgroup, several people were bemoaning how
> scads of plaintiffs were winning absurdly high awards in ridiculous personal
> injury and product liability cases, mostly because their lawyers made sure
> that any people of intelligence were excluded from juries.  It was suggested
> that we and the legal system would all be better off if these types of cases
> were decided by judges, who are "obviously" more intelligent and
> better-educated than laymen, rather than juries.  I quote from an article in
> the July 23 1992 edition of _The Wall Street Journal_:
>
>       Judges, More Than Juries, Side With Personal-Injury Plaintiffs
>
(article deleted)

The Wall St Journal had another interesting article recently about
punitive damages.  There is another myth going around that punitive
damages are arbitrary and excessive.  This one is promoted by Dan Quayle's
"competetiveness council."  Turns out that there have only been a few
hundred punitive damage awards in the past 25 years in the USA, and
that many of them were reduced or overturned on appeal, AND that MOST
of them were for ASBESTOS lawsuits!


-- 
 Tad Cook     |  Phone:  206-527-4089  (home)     |   MCI Mail: 3288544   
 Seattle, WA  |  Packet: KT7H @ N7DUO.WA.USA.NA   |   3288544@mcimail.com 
              |  Internet: tad@ssc.wa.com        or...sumax!ole!ssc!tad
From: 00mlschmalz@bsu-ucs.uucp
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Third to be bombed...
Date: 10 Sep 92 05:33:36 GMT

arielle@taronga.com (Stephanie da Silva) writes:
> I always heard Houston was high on the list because of all the oil
> refineries and because of the Port of Houston (third largest port in
> the U.S.)
> Stephanie da Silva                                    arielle@taronga.com
> "I am *not* Tuskernini -- and this is an excellent disguise!" -- Tuskernini

Hey... I'd always heard that Muncie, Indiana had the third largest port
in the U.S....  Do you suppose that we ALL hear that about our cities??

Marc "Any Port in a Storm" Schmalz
-- 
   Marc Schmalz, a.k.a. Sparky!!, a.k.a. Campus Activist         
   marc@bsu-cs.bsu.edu   00mlschmalz@virgo.bsuvc.bsu.edu  
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: wharmon@wpi.WPI.EDU (Warren Harmon)
Subject: Re: Ann Landers stops an urban myth!
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609-2280
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 09:07:09 GMT

When I heard the story about statues of horsemen and how many feet the
horses have in the air, it was regarding a statue of Lafayette in
Hartford, Connecticut.  (This is to prove I'm not making this up.)
On the ground in Lafayette's statue are, if I recall, three hooves and
one turtle.  The turtle has all four hooves (?) on the ground.

-wharmon@wpi

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: mdicker@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mike Dickerson)
Subject: Re: Third to be bombed...
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 13:58:19 GMT


Well where I grew up we never thought we were third.

We thought we were >first<.

But then, we lived about 20 miles from NORAD.

(For those who don't know, NORAD stands for North American RAdar
Defence, and is basically a huge underground command center built
underneath Cheyene mountain near Colorado Springs, Colorado.  It is
essentially a huge mountain on springs, with the command center under
it.  It was designed to survive a nuclear blast, which probably means
it has *lots* of warheads aimed at it.  Since it is generally
recognized that nothing *else* will survive, NORAD is equipped to take
over control after a nukefest.  Right now, they have links to radar
nets all around the USA and Canada, and they track *everything* in
orbit bigger than a certain, fairly small size.  They even give data
to NASA about orbitting junk so NASA can re-route the shuttle around
stuff big enough to do damage.  NORAD is responsible for detecting a
first-strike attack before the warheads hit, and launching a
counterattack.  There is also Looking Glass, which is basically an
aircraft which had a few of NORADs capabilites, but I don't think they
fly Looking Glass any more.  NORAD can even make its own air, since it
must seal itself off from the outside world in the event of a strike).

BTW: this "first"/"second"/"third" stuff is probably all wrong.  I'm
sure any attack would be simultanious.  Its not like somebody would
launch one individual warhead against target X, wait for it to hit,
then say, "OK, that one hit - lets try another!".  In reality it would
be many warheads all coming in at once, perhaps with slightly
different arrival times just due to different distances from the
launching points.  At any rate, NORAD and several other places are
much more important than Washington DC, strategically.  Ain't nothin'
in DC but politicians.  The Bad Guys probably *want* to leave the
politicians around after a war (along with the lawyers) so there would
be somebody to throw a monkey wrench in the re-building process and
generally hamper things as much as possible.

   /M
 
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: snopes%club33@stlth.enet.dec.com (snopes)
Subject: Re: Viruses
Organization: Just put everything on the floor; I can find it.
Date:  9 SEP 92 20:20:44    


In article <Bu2qIA.H7I@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>, 
  phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) writes...

>Actually, it's not extinct.  Smallpox cultures are maintained at Atlanta,
>Georgia, and someplace in the former USSR, just in case they have to brew up
>a vaccine again.

An article about insects in the August 17 edition of _The New Yorker_ just
happened to contain a paragraph about this subject, including this sentence:

" . . . should we preserve the last remaining smallpox virus, kept in
containment at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta?"

I'm not sure whether the author meant to imply that this was the last smallpox
virus in the whole wide world, or if she was accurate in saying so if she did.

 - snopes        

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "In December 1942, Charlie Chaplin's testes, like those of every other man  |
|  on the planet, contained biological products in quantities sufficient to   |
|  impregnate every woman on the planet . . ."                                |
|                                      - Peter W. Huber, "Galileo's Revenge"  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  David P. Mikkelson   Digital Equipment Corporation   Culver City, CA  USA  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: art@world.std.com (Al Thompson)
Subject: Re: Eating Dogs
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
	<1992Aug31.190030.16394@news.nd.edu>
	<1992Sep1.071446.25598@wixer.cactus.org>
	<92246.150727WCE2@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 17:23:10 GMT

In article <92246.150727WCE2@psuvm.psu.edu> <WCE2@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:

   A couple of years ago, when I was in England, I saw an item in the
   TIMES that claimed that Orientals really did eat dogs as a delicacy,
   the dogs being first tied up and hung upside down, then slowly beaten
   to death.  The principle was that the adrenalin somehow tenderized the
   muscles and made the meat unusually tender.

Some years ago a friend of mine was starting a coffee house.  He didn't
make much money at it and was leery of closing it when he went out to
pick up provisions.  Next door was a chinese laundry, the old fashioned
kind with this elderly oriental gentleman ironing shirts all day long.
Now when Joe would go shopping, rather than close the store he would pop
into the laundry and ask Sam to keep an eye on the coffee shop.  Sam
being a nice fellow always agreed.

One day a friend of Joe's stopped by the coffee house.  He gave his pal
Joe a Chow puppy from a recent litter.  When the friend left Joe was
perplexed.  Because of his reduced circumstances he was living in the
restaurant and had no place to stash the dog.  What to do?  Joe had a
flash of insight.  Since Sam had been so nice watching the store when Joe
went out he decided to give him to Sam.  Sam thanked him profusely.

A couple weeks later Joe dropped in on Sam and said, "Sam, how's the
puppy?"

To which Sam replied, "He was delicious."


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: ramon@convex.com (Ramon Dominguez)
Subject: Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 22:18:39 GMT
Organization: The Arts Babblative and Scribblative
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

This urban legend died yesterday when Mrs. Fields herself appeared on "Home"
with Gary Collins and she gave her recipe for chocolate chip cookies on the
air.  If my VCR weren't broken, I'd have taped the segment, copied down and
posted the recipe for comparison with the UL version(s).  Oh, well.  Did
anyone else out there see this?

Mrs. Fields is actually an attractive woman of about 35 years.  For some
reason this seemed incongruous.  She said that she started her business
at 20 years of age.

-- 
Ramon Dominguez             | "Work is the curse of the drinking class"       
Convex Computer Corporation |                            --Oscar Wilde
ramon@convex.com            | "Ceci n'est pas une .signature file"
From: pratta@rpi.edu (Anthony Edward Prattico)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Sinking libraries
Date: 4 Sep 92 21:51:48 GMT
	<1992Sep4.122904.9317@geovision.gvc.com>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

In article <1992Sep4.122904.9317@geovision.gvc.com> pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin) writes:
[RPI stuff deleted]
>   Yeah right.  Buildings don't sink, they crack.  After they've cracked
>   enough, they fail.
>
>   I graduated as a Civil Engineer, with a major in Structural Engineering.  I
>   haven't practised, and I don't have my P.Eng, but I do know a few things
>   about structures.
>
>   Paul "I'm wearing my Iron Ring" Tomblin

a) Get a clue. If the tower of Pisa is cracked, then shouldn't it have fallen
   long ago? Lots of buildings sink, or settle. The house I live in at home has
   an attached garage that is sinking, hasn't cracked, and hasn't pulled away
   from the house.

b) Lighten up. We're talking about ULs here.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: harrys@ngc.com (Harry Saal)
Subject: Renewing Nickel Cadmium batteries
Summary: dropping the battery renews it claimed in letter to editor
Organization: Network General Corporation
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 18:33:52 GMT

PC Magazine (Sept. 29 1992) mentions a letter in The New Scientist  
(April 25, 1992) from Michael Bell (of Hitchin, Hertf.) that says:
"If you drop a 'tired' (nickel cadmium) battery about a foot onto a
concrete floor a few times it renews the battery wonderfully."

I didn't see this in the FAQ; perhaps this is a thread which has been
followed before. The obvious questions:

True? False? Does it work on other types of flooring? If so, from how
many feet? How many times is "a few"? What is the line between a battery
being "tired" and "dead"? Should I remove it from my laptop, or just drop
the whole computer in disgust?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: mjg51721@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael James Gebis)
Subject: Making ULs true
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 22:03:42 GMT

Does anyone out there have evidence of a situation where someone has heard
an UL and decided that it was just too cool, and that they themself had to
go out and do it?  Are there people who purposely tell people to "Help A
Dying Young Boy" even though they know the truth of the situation?

Better yet, are there people out there who read this channel and, with evil
intent, go out and SPREAD the very rumors they know are false?

Mike "Just-way-too-curious-and-bored-to-not-ask-silly-questions" Gebis

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban