HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com (wood,christopher)
Subject: Re: California to be Destroyed May 8, Nostradamus Says
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 22:10:00 GMT

In article <1993Jan11.115352.6063@linkoping.trab.se> ath@linkoping.trab.se (Anders Thulin) writes:

>There has been once fairly well-known interpretation of a verse that
>said something about a falling wall. Some claimed it predicted a
>catastrophe at Wall Street, 

N. predicts the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929! or 1987.  Or the fall
of Ivan Boesky.  Or ...

>some that it referred to California
>sliding into the Pacific some time during the 1990's -- I wasn't
>interested enough to remember.  It may be that that verse is popping
>up again.

Or is it the Berlin Wall?  N. got it right!  Waitaminnit, maybe it was
the Great Wall of China!  Hadrian's Wall, perhaps?  

>Are there any references to exactly *which* verse is being
>interpreted? 

Or which wall, or eagle, or lion, or ...

That's the problem with post-hoc assessments of ambiguous predictions...
so many events could have been predicted.

>Anders Thulin        ath@linkoping.trab.se        013-23 55 32
>Telia Research AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden


-- 
Chris Wood     Bellcore     ...!bellcore!prefect!ccw
                         or ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com
From: draper@odin.mda.uth.tmc.edu (E.J. Draper)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Velikovsky Criticisms Wanted
Date: 5 Jan 1993 21:32:07 GMT
Organization: U.T.M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
X-UserAgent: Nuntius v1.1.1d14
X-XXMessage-ID: <A76F599EB701019A@mdarpi1.mda.uth.tmc.edu>
X-XXDate: Tue, 5 Jan 93 21:28:30 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.182915.10798@psych.toronto.edu> Stuart Grant,
grant@psych.toronto.edu writes:
>I found _Scientists Confront Velikovsky_ quite good in dealing with
>_Worlds in Collision_, particularly Sagan's chapter. Can anyone 
>suggest a book that deals with Velikovsky's later stuff?

Check out some back issues of _The Sceptical Inquirer_.  I read an
article about two years ago, also written by Carl Sagan, that utterly
destroys Velikovsky.

It really shocked my that Sagan spent the amount of time he did in order
to rebuke Velikovsky.  As a matter of fact, I can't understand why
anybody would want to invest time and effort in dealing with such obvious
nonsense.


      |E|J-  ED DRAPER
 rEpar|D|<-  Radiologic/Pathologic Institute
             The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
             draper@odin.mda.uth.tmc.edu
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 16:43:36 EST
From: <SASTPH@vm.sas.com>
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: "Satanic Ritual Abuse" in the media

I noted in a recent sci.skeptic posting of a copy of an article in
the Weekly World News, that as many as 1 in 5 Americans may actually be
aliens in human guise.  This startling information was discovered
by "regressing" people under hypnosis, the same technique that is
being used to uncover memories of ritual abuse (and alien abduction,
for that matter).

Does this imply that 20% of the "people" suffering from ritual abuse
are actually aliens? :-)

Seriously, I'm a bit frightened by what seems to be "ritual abuse"
by so-called therapists using hypnotic regression to cause patients
to "discover" these obviously false (and frequently painful) memories.
I did not hear anything on "Primetime" that indicated that somebody
responsible in the medical* profession is investigating this particular
theraputic technique.  Does anybody know if that's happening?

*Assuming that psychology *IS* a branch of medicine.  Ref: sci.
philosophy.meta for the latest.
From: pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Will the -REAL- Christians please stand up? Was: What did Judas be
Date: 12 Jan 93 17:09:41 GMT
Reply-To: pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley)
Organization: Edinburgh University

Quoting dvp@oasis.icl.co.uk (Dave Parry) in article <1623@ozz.oasis.icl.co.uk>:
>kepley@cs.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>>   The Catholic Church is led by fallible men who make foreign policy
>> mistakes and have many skeletons in their closets

>Oh-oh, what happened to Papal Infallibility?

Ah.  That was a mistake...
  __                                  _____
\/ o\ Paul Crowley   pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk \\ //
/\__/ Trust me. I know what I'm doing. \X/ 
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.messianic,alt.atheism
From: billg@bony1.bony.com (Bill Gripp)
Subject: Re: Will the -REAL- Christians please stand up? Was: What did Judas be
Organization: LA&W RR
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 93 14:54:09 GMT

In article <1993Jan6.152611.19445@klaava.Helsinki.FI> cust_ts@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Tero Sand) writes:

>Finally, does this thread really belong in sci.skeptic?

We've been trying to get it out of alt.messianic too, but so far it
continues to "live" there.

Would all future responders edit the newsgroups line to just alt.atheism?
From: biow@cs.umd.edu (Christopher Biow)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: "Satanic Ritual Abuse" in the media
Date: 11 Jan 93 19:48:35 GMT
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742

In article <1993Jan11.181752.6816@cs.unca.edu> kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:

>>[referring to ritual satanic abuse therapy and its skeptics]

>I think we better be careful that we don't just begin a new witchhunt with
>the therapists as target.  If these "memories" are not real, the therapist
>may be unwittingly providing the opportunity for these people to fantasize,
>but that doesn't necessarily mean they are "causing" the "memories".  

Maybe some sort of hunt is exactly what we need. We have an entire 
profession offering health-related services without a solid science
to back them up and without any good evidence to show greater than
placebo-level effects of their therapy. Class after diagnostic 
class of their prospective patients have been stripped away from 
them, as hard sciences have produced effective therapies for 
some conditions, and explanations of why psycho-therapy could not 
possibly address the problems in other conditions.

Yet we still have therapists being funded by government and insurance
money, paid in proportion to their educational level (without evidence
that the therapists' education has any favorable effect on patients).
And a group of such therapists have just invented an (unfalsifiable) 
grand conspiracy theory to open up a huge new group of patients in 
need of their "therapies."

For a man-in-the-street to provide someone an opportunity to fantasize
is fine. For a "health professional" to do that with my tax or insurance
dollars is another matter. For him to do that with a patient's own 
dollars is just as bad.
From: sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: blue skies, again
Date: 4 Jan 93 17:12:22 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

In article <1993Jan1.201550.1@stsci.edu>, zellner@stsci.edu writes (quoting 
me):


|>  > and 2) scattered light is radiated light (it's 
|>  > absorbed and re-radiated by the scatterer). 
|> 
|> I have to disagree here, unless you want to make it a matter of semantics.
|> When light is diffracted by an edge or reflected by a mirror, do you call that
|> absorption and re-radiation?  In the Huygens sense, OK, but it has nothing to
|> do with atomic energy levels or re-thermalization, etc., it's just physical 
|> optics.  When water waves are scattered around some obstacle, do you call 
|> that absorption and re-radiation?

Of course it's semantics: everything's semantics.  Oops, I'm not on sci.
philosophy.meta anymore.  I was just thinking microscopically (an easy 
habit to get into, in high energy physics).  Sure, reflection, refraction, 
and diffraction can all be thought of as (coherent) re-radiation effects, 
but it's usually easier to treat them as effects of the bulk properties of 
the medium (at least in the first two cases -- I'm a little shaky on 
diffraction).  In the case of scattering, on the other hand, the scatterer 
is typically small compared to the wavelength of the light, and it's 
easier to treat it as a driven radiator.  At any rate, that's the only 
way I know of to get the right frequency dependence (which is to say it's 
the only one I've seen, and I'm not about to derive anything myself -- 
doesn't mean other approaches aren't possible).  To quote Jackson's 
_Classical Electrodynamics_,
	The scattering of electromagnetic waves by systems whose 
	individual dimensions are small compared with a wavelength 
	is a common and important occurrence.  In such interactions 
	it is convenient to think of the incident (radiation) fields 
	as inducing electric and magnetic mutipoles that oscillate 
	in definite phase relationship with the incident wave and 
	radiate energy in directions other than the direction of 
	incidence.
Of course, I have no idea what the original poster meant by radiation.  

-- 
Steve Schaffner        sschaff@unixhub.slac.stanford.edu
	The opinions expressed may be mine, and may not be those of SLAC, 
Stanford University, or the DOE.
From: DSTEPHEN@cmsa.gmr.com
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Why does Eire get so much press?
Date: 8 Jan 93 17:49:42 GMT
Organization: GM Research Labs

In article <1993Jan7.130047.1723@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com>
(relgov) writes:
>Recent posts suggest Belfast with a population of 1.5 million?  Detroit's
>population is below 1.0 million and has been for awhile.  Furthermore, the
>murder rate is ~550/yr as I recall reading recently.
>
I'm not sure if anyone cares, but for the record, Detroit's population is
reportedly about 1,050,000 (1990 census).  In 1992 there were 588 reported
murders in Detroit, down from a peak of about 650 in 1987.
The murder capital of the US has been Washington DC for some time.

Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Subject: Re: interminable ad hominem argument
Reply-To: grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards)
Organization: Rosemount, Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:57:51 GMT

ata@hfsi.uucp (John Ata - FSO) writes:

[I deleted the smiley at the end of each line so I could re-format]

: 
: I can't resist :) How about: Some scientists have been known to
: fradulently report their results which sometimes go undetected for a
: while, perhaps not at all.  Therefore, any scientific results that
: are published should not be believed.  "What", you say? "These
: cheaters not "real" scientists"?  What is a scientist? After we get
: about two or three definitions: Well obviously, it is impossible to
: define a scientist since we can't make up our minds. Therefore a
: scientist is anything you define it to be.
: 
: Does this sound familiar?
: 

Yes, they were real scientists, and they were wrong.  Scientists make
mistakes -- they lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, and flip through
the channels while other people are trying to watch the TV.  Science
makes no claims of moral superiority as does religion.  Science claims
to describe the world around us in qunatifiable terms using
descriptions that allow us to predict events.  This is does.

Scientists, however, have to prove they are correct before others
believe them.  [I use the word "prove" loosely -- report procedures
and results, make and test predictions, have results verified by
others, etc.]  I can prove to you that under non-relativistic
conditions F=ma.  What demonstrable, falsifiable claims does
christianity make?

The church demands that it's pronouncements be believed without doubt
or evidence.  Science doesn't make that demand.

--
Grant Edwards                                 |Yow!  I'm pretending I'm
Rosemount Inc.                                |pulling in a TROUT!  Am I
                                              |doing it correctly??
grante@aquarius.rosemount.com                 |
From: jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (J. Giles)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Glub Glub... Any Floods in Human History?
Date: 12 Jan 93 20:17:15 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory

In article <NICHAEL.93Jan12094135@kariba.bbn.com>, nichael@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer) writes:
|> [...]
|> In any case, the bottom of the North Sea is covered with the stumps of
|> the trees that once grew there.

And, in the other direction, the sea level along the eastern seaboard
of the US was once much higher (or the continent was lower).  The existing
coastal plain is former continental shelf.  The line of the former coast
is marked by a so-called "fall-line" - a line where there's an abrupt
rise in the land.  This is the line at which all the rivers on the
east coast had rapids and falls so they were not navigable beyond
(unless you portaged around the problem).  Naturally, this is the
place along the rivers at which cities grew up: they had water power
from the abrupt altitude change and they were a natural spot for an
inland port.

Source: "The Making of a Continent", Ron Redfern. (Also a video documentary.)

Of course, this high sea level almost certainly predates any human presence 
in the area.  Since that was the original question, I believe this is not
the kind of example that was sought.

-- 
J. Giles
Xref: sparky sci.skeptic:22349 alt.paranormal:2780
From: pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal
Subject: Re: California to be Destroyed May 8, Nostradamus Says
Date: 12 Jan 93 17:08:47 GMT
Reply-To: pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley)
Organization: Edinburgh University

At least they have the grace to predict something from Nostradamus
*before* it happens.
  __                                  _____
\/ o\ Paul Crowley   pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk \\ //
/\__/ Trust me. I know what I'm doing. \X/ 
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: ata@hfsi.uucp (John Ata - FSO)
Subject: Re: interminable ad hominem argument
Reply-To: ata@hfsi.UUCP (John Ata - FSO)
Organization: HFSI, McLean VA.
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 04:30:55 GMT

In article <1993Jan4.193810.3651@rosevax.rosemount.com> grante@aquarius.rosemount.com (Grant Edwards) writes:
>zellner@stsci.edu writes:
>: 
>: |> >>Thousands (if not millions) of people have been tortured and killed in
>: |> >>the service of christianity.  
>: 
>:  >  - Hitler was Roman Catholic.
>:  >  - Atheists were not allowed to become member of the SA 
>: 
>: There have been plenty of wicked people who really believed in the 
>: conservation of energy and momentum.  Does that imply that such beliefs
>: are incorrect?
>: 
>
>If the laws of conservation of energy and momentum were claimed to be
>the one-and-only source of morality and ethics, then the existence of
>"wicked" people who claimed to believe in the conservation of energy
>would be problematic.
>
>However, the laws of physics do not claim to provide any moral or
>ethical guidance.  Thus the existence of wicked people who believe in
>the conservation of energy and mementum says nothing about the
>validity of those beliefs.
>

I can't resist :) How about: Some scientists have been known to		:)
fradulently report their results which sometimes go undetected for	:)
a while, perhaps not at all.  Therefore, any scientific results		:)
that are published should not be believed. "What", you say?		:)
"These cheaters not "real" scientists"?  What is a scientist?		:)
After we get about two or three definitions: Well obviously, it is	:)
impossible to define a scientist since we can't make up our minds.	:)
Therefore a scientist is anything you define it to be. 			:)

Does this sound familiar?

>--
>Grant Edwards                                 |Yow!  Oh my GOD -- the SUN

-- 
John G. Ata - Technical Consultant | Internet:  ata@hfsi.com
HFS, Inc.		  VA20     |     UUCP:  uunet!hfsi!ata
7900 Westpark Drive	 MS:601	   |    Voice:	(703) 827-6810
McLean, VA  22102	           |      FAX:	(703) 827-3729
Xref: sparky sci.skeptic:22112 alt.messianic:3898 alt.atheism:25243
From: zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (dave budd)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.messianic,alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Why does Eire get so much press?
Date: 7 Jan 93 09:41:39 GMT
Organization: Manchester Computing Centre

NB in '92, the Unionists (broadly Protestant, want Northern Ireland to 
remain part of UK) killed more people than the other lot.

The people in the south would like Ireland to be one country, but on the 
whole they're not into violent means of achieving this.  Go there for your 
next vacation, it's a very friendly place with lots of beautiful countryside 
and some damn good beer.  Even with an English accent and a noticeable lack 
of attendance at Catholic church services, nobody will be nasty to you.

  No Trespassing: 4/17ths of a haiku.     D.Budd@mcc.ac.uk   fax 6040
  Dave Budd, MCC, Oxford Rd, Manchester, England    (44|0)61-275-6033
From: minsky@media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Velikovsky Criticisms Wanted
Date: 6 Jan 93 01:52:43 GMT
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory
Cc: minsky

In article <schumach.726281442@convex.convex.com> schumach@convex.com (Richard A. Schumacher) writes:
>
>>It really shocked my that Sagan spent the amount of time he did in order
>>to rebuke Velikovsky.  As a matter of fact, I can't understand why
>>anybody would want to invest time and effort in dealing with such obvious
>>nonsense.
>
>Because, unfortunately, there are many people with little or no familiarity
>with science for whom V.'s ideas are not obviously nonsense. To these
>people, silence on the part of scientists looks like embarrassed silence.
>Asimov makes this point again and again. These people cannot be ignored
>as long as they vote, sit on school boards, etc.

And we (scientists, that is) should be grateful to Sagan for his
efforts to explain science to the public.  He has plenty of other
things to do, new theories to pursue, etc.,but because he is afflicted
with the ability to explain -- as was Asimov, too -- he has made this
substantial sacrifice of time and energy. We are all indebted to him.
If only there a dozen more such spokesmen.

.
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.atheism
From: kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley)
Subject: Re: Will the -REAL- Christians please stand up? Was: What did Judas be
Organization: University of North Carolina at Asheville
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 14:46:08 GMT

In article <16B51CE7B.I3150101@dbstu1.rz.tu-bs.de> I3150101@dbstu1.rz.tu-bs.de (Benedikt Rosenau) writes:
> 
>And the majority of Christinas I know say that Christianity about redemption
>to be gained through sticking to the right morals.
> 
>But since you appear to know more, would you care to enlighten us?
>   Benedikt

That's just impossible for me to believe.  You better check with those
"Christinas" again.  No amount of right morals will save you if the 
Christians are right.
Redemption is from the cross.
From: shag@aero.org (Robert M. Unverzagt)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Dvorak faster than QWERTY?
Date: 8 Jan 1993 15:31:04 GMT
Organization: Organization?  You must be kidding.
NNTP-Posting-Host: aerospace.aero.org

Have any of y'all been looking in the general newsgroup
lately?  The current thread is about the DVORAK keyboard.

Why it's in general I have no idea.

Shag

-- 
       Rob Unverzagt        |   Last call for alcohol.
  shag@aerospace.aero.org   |   Last call for freedom of speech.
unverzagt@courier2.aero.org |                            - Jello Biafra

Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Subject: Re: interminable ad hominem argument
Reply-To: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Organization: Iowa State University
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 17:51:14 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.232424.20345@cs.unca.edu>, kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu
(Brad Kepley) writes:

Grant Edwards>>>

 The church demands that it's pronouncements be believed without doubt
or evidence.  Science doesn't make that demand.

Dan Ashlock>>
   Speaking as an atheist and secular humanist I must take some issue with this
statement.  Theologians in many churches argue til they're blue in the face,
doubt things all over the place, and pile up mountians of historical and
cultural evidence.  Likewise bible study groups often have ferocious arguments
in which doubt runs rampant and evidence of all sorts is presented.

Brad Kepley>
 
   Yes, Malcomb Muggeridge said that only Atheists had no doubts.

Dan Ashlock:

   Was that a stupid cheap shot or merely stupid?  You said so little I can't
tell...

   ...in any case Malcomb was wrong.  My point was that religious people do
doubt (religious scientists do it as well as scientists for some reason :})
just like the rest of us.  What on earth was you point?

Dan
Danwell@IASTATE.EDU
From: Rick.Moen@f1008.n916.z8.rbbs-net.ORG (Rick Moen)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Will the -real- christ
Date: 8 Jan 93 08:29:46 GMT

In article <92365.163655U19807@uicvm.uic.edu>, U19807@uicvm.uic.edu
wrote as follows:
>
>> This century has tried several experiments in explicitly
>> anti-religious statecraft - and the body count has been stupendous.
>
> It depends,of course,on what you call "anti-religious statecraft".
> Since Kemal Ataturk was responsible for overturning the remnants of
> the Muslim Ottoman Empire when he founded the Republic of Turkey in
> the 1920's,he outlawed many Muslim religious restrictions on everyday
> life (such as women wearing veils,etc.) and imported many European
> legal traditions (such as the codification of law _a_la_ France,etc.)
> which went against the traditional Islam-based Ottoman system. Like
> it or not,he effectively dragged Turkey into the 20th Century. Care
> to tell us how this-or any other-form of "anti-religious statecraft"
> was so horrible?

Provided you weren't Armenian, not bad at all.

Cheers,
Rick M.
moen@blyth.com

 * Origin: The Skeptic's Board in San Mateo - Bay Area Skeptics (8:916/1008)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: grant@psych.toronto.edu (Stuart Grant)
Subject: Velikovsky Criticisms Wanted
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 18:26:05 GMT

I'm looking for some criticisms of Velikovsky's _Ages in Chaos_ and
_Earth and Upheaval_. 

I found _Scientists Confront Velikovsky_ quite good in dealing with
_Worlds in Collision_, particularly Sagan's chapter. Can anyone 
suggest a book that deals with Velikovsky's later stuff?
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.atheism
From: b645zaw@utarlg.uta.edu (Stephen Tice)
Subject: Re: Will the -REAL- Christians please stand up? 
Summary:  Not that we haven't met before.
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: The University of Texas at Arlington
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 05:23:00 GMT

In article <1il19uINN22m@fido.asd.sgi.com>, 
livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes...

>In article <1993Jan8.174857.29599@cs.unca.edu>, 
>kepley@photon.phys.unca.edu (Brad Kepley) writes:
>|> 
>|> Well, that is your point anyway.  I don't think you'll find many 
>|> Christians who think that Christianity is mainly about morals.  
>|> You don't understand Christianity.
> 
>Well, if it isn't about morals, and if we don't think much of your
>supernaturalism, what's left for you to post to alt.atheism about?
> 
>jon.

Not speaking for Brad of course, but I just dropped in to see 
if there are really any atheist over here? And if so, who they
really are?? 

I reckon being christian has a lot more to do with faith than morals,
but more importantly with loving GOD personally. That's what Jesus said
I believe. Seems like that's all that's needed, and everything else flows
from there. "Supernatural," most certainly, GOD considered, but very
natural on my part of the relationship. 

I guess it's a lot like wondering what motivates an atheist, wondering
what makes a christian tick, that is?

So are you an atheist? Are there special kinds of atheists apart
from agnostics? (I'm not curious about "atheism," any more than 
I am about "theism" ... only about atheist.)

Come to think of it, perhaps the most essential thing about being 
christian is recognizing that GOD loves me personally, just like
each other person who has ever lived. (Which is a different thread 
than responding to the discussion you were having about the churches 
supporting nazism, but in loving GOD why bother with nazism, or
even churches.)

   |
-- J --
   |
   |  Stephen 
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.messianic,alt.atheism