HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: snopes%club33@stlth.enet.dec.com (snopes)
Subject: Re: Faces of death
Organization: Just put everything on the floor; I can find it.
Date:  5 SEP 92 23:00:41    


In article <m9rpbczf@csv.warwick.ac.uk>, 
  csuah@warwick.ac.uk (~WISP at CU~) writes...

>Hold on a second, Bill. The response you are quoting was a mild dig at snopes
>for his perpetual "that's what *you* say" method of debunking. The subject
>thread had nothing to do with snuff (it was about eskimo words for snow by
>then), and was entirely immaterial in any case: I just couldn't resist it.
>Apart from which, it was weeks ago...

 On the contrary, the original article concerned both snuff films and eskimo
 words for snow.  I cited a well-researched article on the latter topic, while
 hsr4 merely offered his personal opinion on the subject.  Your choice of
 sides at which to "dig" is noticeably disingenuous. 

 In any case, "please provide credible evidence to support your claim" is not 
 the same a merely responding with "oh, yeah?" or "that's what you say", 
 except to those frustrated by a lack of documentation to support their 
 positions.

 - snopes

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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: bmb1021@ultb.isc.rit.edu (B.M. Buck )
Subject: Third to be bombed...
Originator: bmb1021@ultb
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 18:48:25 GMT

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 (now that the Soviets are gone, I suspect that
this legend had died, too), because of some strategic importance of the
city.  The stated first two places (when pressed) end up being the
missile sites, and Washington, DC.  After that, comes the current city.

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

  Later,
    BP (bmb1021@ultb.isc.rit.edu)


Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: jfreter@triton.unm.edu (The Myth)
Subject: Re: Renewing Nickel Cadmium batteries
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 92 03:42:02 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <BuFFKG.42n@ngc.com> harrys@ngc.com (Harry Saal) writes:
>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?


Definately false.  NiCads rely on an electro-chemical reaction between
the nickel, an acid (or was it basic) gell, and tha cadnium.  The dropping
will not do much at all except maybe rupture the cells.

About the only way to renew batteries is to do a very slow charge (mili-amp
current for a day), then discharge them completely using a resister that
is sized to closely match your computer's load. That is, if you're supposed
to get 3 hours of battery life, and your batteries are rated at 3000 
mA-hrs at 10 volts, then you should use no smaller than a 10-ohm resister
to discharge (I use a 75-ohm to deep-cycle mine).

Repeat the above several times, but pause between each long enough to let
the batteries completely cool off.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: adb@geac.com (Anthony DeBoer)
Subject: Re: Sinking libraries and floating ships
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 18:11:40 GMT
Organization: Geac Computer Corporation

In <Bu2rFp.Hqz@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) writes:
>New York Times, National Edition, 4 September 1992:
>
>  Ship Hits Construction Work on the Brooklyn Bridge
>
>  A tower on a ship struck some dangling construction scaffolding 
>  yesterday under the Brooklyn Bridge, briefly shutting down two lanes
>  of the bridge.  The Cape May, a barge and container carrier, was being 
>  towed to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  There was no structural damage to
>  the bridge.
>
>Yes, I know we're talking about a pretty old bridge.
>
>But the ship pilot can figure out, using chart data for the bridge and
>tide tables, whether his ship can fit.  Since time is money, he'll
>sometimes cut it too close.
>
>The responsibiliy for the collision mentioned in the first post rests
>with the captain, not the architect.

Just a moment.  The newspaper article says the ship struck some
construction scaffolding hanging under the bridge, NOT the bridge itself.
A correct reading of the chart data and tide tables, and knowing the
height of the ship, would indicate the bridge would clear the ship.  The
problem was the scaffolding.  Its presence, along with revised
clearances, should likely have been published in _Notices_to_Mariners_ or
its local equivalent, which would have made a harbour pilot responsible
for knowing about it.  The construction company should not have been free
to go ahead and reduce the clearance without giving proper notification.
-- 
Anthony DeBoer       adb@geac.com | uunet!geac!adb | GEM: ANTHONY.DEBOER
From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Wild Chicken Flocks
Date: 10 Sep 92 15:55:29 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Reply-To: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

>>No drugs or hormones but how about crap like lead and other automotive
>>by-products?

>Terry, Terry, Terry. . .  There hasn't been lead as a gasoline additive
>since when, 1988?  Most chickens don't live so long, except perhaps as pets.

There are parts of Oakland that are said to have quite robust lead
contamination problems to this day, and many would blame the freeways.
There's a bit of an analytical confound, since these neighborhoods,
e.g. Fruitvale, have both freeways and industry.  But, for the most
part, not the kinds of industries that would introduce lead into the
environment.  As Murphy's Law would have it, a lot of Hispanics in
their childbearing years are moving into that area -- around here,
when you can find affordable housing that isn't on the other side of
the earth from your job, you don't ask a lot of silly questions. One
can only speculate as to the long-term effects.

It does bring up some interesting questions, though.  Does lead
bioaccumulate?  I've only heard about lead poisoning in the context 
of direct exposure, such as the stereotypical bored kid gnawing on
peeled paint or a carpenter inhaling the dust of leaded paint.  If
so, would the amount anyone could get by eating this hypothetical 
freeway chicken be significant?  

Joe "Hey, it's better than raising them in a uranium mine" Chew
From: meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Third to be bombed...
Date: 14 Sep 92 18:06:46 GMT
	<1992Sep9.174235.22345@samba.oit.unc.edu> <n5sn1+k@lynx.unm.edu>
	<18tfnkINN6vt@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>
Organization: Open Software Foundation

In article <18tfnkINN6vt@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> carolo@cse.ucsc.edu (Carol
Osterbrock) writes:

| Santa Cruz, California.  Not only is it a nuclear-free zone, there is
| no airport, no seaport, nobody who knows any military secrets (well,
| except the Christic Institute, and they don't exactly try to keep them
| secret), the only commodities that Santa Cruz supplies to the rest of
| the country are broccoli, brussels sprouts, and chewing gum.  The 
| Russian equivalent of Dan Quayle would have to be in charge of bombing
| for anything to get dropped on Santa Cruz.

Unless they had support problems for SCO UNIX running on their clones
:-)

--
Michael Meissner	email: meissner@osf.org		phone: 617-621-8861
Open Software Foundation, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA, 02142

You are in a twisty little passage of standards, all conflicting.
From: dogbowl@dogbox.acme.gen.nz (dogbowl)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Colour perception (was: Death by sneezing)
Date: Sun, 06 Sep 92 03:50:34 Y
Organization: The Dawghaus BBS

moroney@ramblr.enet.dec.com writes:

> ObUL:  Red traffic lights are tinged a little on the orange side, and
> green lights tinged on the blue to help red-green colorblind folks to
> distinguish them.

I don't know about the red lights having orange in them, but the green
lights *do* have blue tints in them. At least they do in the area where
I was born, as the rate of red-green colour-blindness in males approaches
30%.

(Apparently when the traffic lights were first installed 35 years ago, they
 didn't have the tinting, and there were quite a few accidents because of it)



dogbowl at The Dawghaus BBS  ( +64 6 357-9245 )
From: wb8foz@skybridge.SCL.CWRU.Edu (David Lesher)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Counterfeiting
Date: 12 Sep 1992 22:47:03 GMT
Organization: NRK Clinic for habitual NetNews abusers - Beltway Annex
Reply-To: wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu (David Lesher)
NNTP-Posting-Host: skybridge.scl.cwru.edu

Others said
# >I'm under the understanding that nothing smaller than $20 bills gets
# >counterfeited because it simply doesn't pay.
# 
# I think I've heard of $10 bills being faked.

I recall reading about some guy that counterfeited nickels!
Even though it was about 50 years back, it sure takes a lot of
them...

--
A host is a host from coast to coast..wb8foz@skybridge.scl.cwru.edu
& no one will talk to a host that's close..........................
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl)
Subject: Re: Presidential UL's
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 18:24:47 GMT
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM Rochester

In article <naran.716531418@sfu.ca>, naran@fraser.sfu.ca (Travers Naran) writes:
|> jdahl@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Jared Dahl) writes:
|> 
|> >UL?:  JFK and Jackie smoked pot in the white house.
|> 
|> Is that all the UL you could come up with involving JFK and Jackie? :-)
|> 
|> UL? or Fact?: JFK and Marylin Monroe were more than just fans. :-)
                 
I always assumed this to be true, and I think that most people
take it as somewhat of a statement of fact.  Of course I have no
proof, but did that ever change anything in a.f.u?

I also heard that Jackie hired detectives to find the guys who
REALLY shot JFK, and that they brought here a list of the
shooters inside of a year.

 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
| Jared Dahl             | "My heart is human, my blood is boiling, | 
| Systems Programmer     |  my brain IBM"                           |
| IBM - Rochester, MN    |              -- STYX,  "Mr. Roboto"      |
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Opinions expressed are mine, not IBM's.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.great-lakes
From: pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin)
Subject: Re: Highest Channel
Reply-To: pt@geovision.gvc.com
Organization: Not officially GeoVision Systems Inc., Ottawa, Ontario
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 02:21:09 GMT

dtasman@NMSU.edu (Dan Tasman) writes:

>bill.dehaan@rose.com (bill dehaan) writes:

>(I wrote)
>: DT>ObUL ... The Buffalo suburb of North Tonawanda is continually ablaze.
> 
>: Not a UL. I see the proof daily on the news.

>North Tonawanda is home to a great majority of the Buffalo area's lumberyards.   

It's nothing to do with recent events (like 'Anti Cross Border
Shopping') as Dan suggests (in a part I deleted).  10 years ago, one
constant item on the University of Waterloo Enginees Havenger Scunt
list was a picture of a fire or a fire truck in Buffalo, Cheektawaga,
N. Tonawanda, etc.  That, or an appearance on EyeWitless news with
Irv.  I got the picture a couple of times, but I never could talk my
way past the guard at the front on the Channel 7 studio.

(I think I still have my "Buffalo - Talking Loud" button.  I know I have a
'key' from the Playboy club in Buffalo, back when it was pretty hard for non
members (especially scruffy Engineering students) to get in.)

-- 
Paul Tomblin, pt@geovision.gvc.com
(This is not an official opinion/statement of GeoVision Systems Inc.)
"Ok dear, want me to call the bike shop and see if they'll sponsor your
mid-life crisis?" "Yeah.  Ask them if they'll upgrade my shifters, too"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: bill.dehaan@rose.com (bill dehaan)
Subject: Stupid Cop Tricks & t
Organization: Rose Media Inc, Toronto, Ontario.
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 04:57:36 GMT
X-Gated-By: Usenet <==> RoseMail Gateway (v1.70)


Date Entered: 09-14-92 23:52
In message <SHAFER.92Sep12114410@ra.dfrf.nasa.gov>,
shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) writes:

MS>There's an article in today's Los Angeles times about an LA County
MS>parking control officer who ticketed a car parked illegally in
MS>Willowbrook and overlooked the dead guy in the driver's seat.  The
MS>driver had been shot in the head as much as 13 hours before the ticket
MS>was written.

MS>The officer reached in the partly open window and put the ticket on
MS>the dashboard, according to the paramedics.

I really hate to  do this (I just  _know_ Snopes is gonna  stomp on this
one), but we had a similar  thing happen in Oakville when I  lived there
ten years ago.

To  make  a  long  story  short,  a  nurse  had  a  falling out with her
boyfriend. The boyfriend  showed up at  the hospital as  she was leaving
work. They apparently talked in the  car for some time, and he  shot her
(leaving  the  body  in  the  car).  The  car  was parked in the lot for
something like four  days before anybody  noticed it was  there (she had
just bought a new car, and people were used to looking for the old one).

What made this particular UL creepy was  that (a) I had met the girl  in
question (my mother was a nurse on the same floor as the murdered girl),
and (b) the truly scary part that  my mother had parked next to her  for
the three days  after she'd been  shot, and not  noticed anything. Given
that their spots were in the corner of the lot under an overhang,  there
was  construction  of  the  lot  going  on  at the time, and my mother's
tendency to, uhh, miss details, I can easily believe she didn't  notice.
But still, she had to actually  walk _around_ that car with the  body in
it at  least three  days consecutively.  And no,  it was not mega-tinted
windows or anything like that. Brrr.

----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
Deus Ex Machina                   | Internet:   bill.dehaan@rose.com
Software Consulting and Gator Pit | Eradicate Hunger - Eat the homeless
----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
---
   SLMR 2.1a   Vegetarians eat vegetables. Beware humanitarians.
   RM 2.00 : RoseNet<=>Usenet Gateway : Rose Media 416-733-2285
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: cindy@solan10.solan.unit.no (Cynthia Kandolf)
Subject: Re: A bird in the hand v. 10 birds in the FAQ
Organization: /home/ludviga/cindy/.organization
	<1992Sep8.170356.8371@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 8 Sep 92 20:35:25

Jonathan Papai writes:
>        I have heard that some "stone age tribes" have this same
>counting system.  1,2,many.  These kind of stories seem to be
>most popular about New Guinea, or the Amazon basin.  Any truth to
>these stories.

If you remove the "stone age" part, yes.  There are some languages
which only have words for numbers up to two, and then a word
meaning "many".  The people who speak these languages don't yet
feel a need for more numbers, and therefore haven't gotten around
to developing them yet.  Obviously, their societies aren't as
technologically complex as ours, but i don't know if they are "stone
age" - that is,if stone is the hardest material they use for tools
and weapons.  

Pointless tangent: Some languages also have two sets of plurals,
one meaning "two and only two", and one meaning "three or more".
English once had this system, at least in its pronouns.  

>ObFACT : In 1906, a Pygmy was sold to the Bronx Zoo to sweeten a
>deal for a chimpanzee.  They believed the Congolese man, named
>Ota Benga, to be closer on the evolutionary scale to monkeys than
>to humans.  Clergymen raised a fuss, and he was removed from
>display after ten days and placed in an orphanage for black kids

"Closer on the evolutionary scale to monkeys than humans"?  Monkeys
are not simply "less evolved" humans.  Humans and monkeys evelved
from a common ancestor... humans did not evolve from monkeys.
Sorry, but i have a hard time accepting this story, and part of
the reason is that claim.  Independent confirmation?

-Cindy Kandolf
 cindy@solan.unit.no
 Trondheim, Norway
From: neil@ulysses.robots (& Townsend)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Pool too small?
Date: 11 Sep 92 14:47:25 GMT
Organization: None evident here.
In-reply-to: styri@hal.nta.no's message of 11 Sep 92 08:17:02 GMT


Being the patient and educated lot you are you will have ignored my
previous blank post, for which I apologise.

Following on from the thread about swimming pools in buildings, the
following story went round about a swimming pool near me in Belgium,
where I grew up.

As part of some local improvement / encouraging sport plan, one of the
communes in Brussels decided to build a sports complex including a
swimming pool which would be capable of hosting international level
competitions. However, so the tale goes, in their eagerness to build a
pool exactly 50.000000m long, they made the measurement before the
pool was tiled. The pool was therefore too short by a good few
millimetres once it had been completed. At the time, this seemed a
relatively normal thing to happen in Belgium, and I took it to be
true. However, a friend has since told me exactly the same story about
a pool near where he grew up, in England.

Is this a common story about pools, does it perhaps get made up in
local bars to explain why the much vaunted new pool has so far failed
to host the olympics?

NewT
`And now the 100m freestyle. Contestents will swim two lengths before
turning round and swimming a further two centimetres.'
--
From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Kittypoopium-131
Date: 10 Sep 92 16:19:16 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Reply-To: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

Those who doubt this entry in the mighty FAQ should drop in on
sci.physics, where they are currently discussing the proposed
radioisotope therapy of somebody's cat.

The Subject line is Radioactive Cat: How Dangerous is She? <LONGISH>

Joe "As long as they don't take his garbage to the Altamont dump..." Chew
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Subject: Re: Safety Margins (was: Sinking libraries)
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 02:15:49 GMT

> The Brooklyn Bridge is known to have been overcompensated with lotsa cables,
> but the usual reason given is that sometime during the course of construction
> it was found out that the cable supplier(s?) were involved in selling
> substandard materials, although I never heard anything to confirm/deny
> whether the actual cable stock used on the Brooklyn Bridge was known to
> be inferior to spec.

It wasn't possible to reasonably tell.  The big "ropes" are made up of many
cables woven together, and adding extra cables to the rope was cheaper than
unraveling it and either throwing out or examining all the individual strands.

> The story goes further to explain that 3 times as many as necessary
> were then used to make sure it would function correctly anyway.

In that case it would have been cheaper to start over.  I think the ropes
were originally specified with a safety factor of 5, and after the bad
cables were discovered, 20% more were added, resulting in a factor of 6
not allowing for the bad materials.

The Roeblings' family firm, which had built several other major suspension
bridges, had expected to supply the cables themselves; it was then put
about that this was an obvious conflict-of-interest and not permissible.
It turned out that the people who had promoted this idea were connected
with the company that won the contract and supplied the bad cables.

All this is from memory of reading "The Great Bridge" by McCullough,
sometime last year, and I could have some details wrong myself.
-- 
Mark Brader              | "...not one accident in a hundred deserves the name.
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto   |  [This occurrence] was simply the legitimate result
utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com |  of carelessness."           -- Washington Roebling

This article is in the public domain.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: rph@sq.sq.com (Pontus Hedman (VE3RPH))
Subject: Re: Highest Channel
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 92 03:09:05 GMT

dtasman@dante.nmsu.edu (Dan Tasman) writes:
>When I went on a ride to Toronto, all the rooftop antennas were pointed toward
>Buffalo, which gave me some sort of indication about what Canadians thought of
>CBC and CTV.

Did you happen to notice a certain structure called "the CN tower" when you
were here? You don't *need* a rooftop antenna to receive CBC and CTV.

Pointing the rooftop beam south nets you all the US stuff as well
as the local stuff. That's why they all point that way.

Incidentally, I've always just used rabbit ears, which should give you some
sort of indication about what I think of US TV.
-- 
Pontus Hedman			rph@sq.com		{uunet|utzoo}!sq!rph
AX25:VE3RPH @ VE3OGS.#SCON.ON.CAN.NOAM			(416) 239-4801
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: AJacobsen@mitre.org (Alan Jacobsen)
Subject: Re: Fuel misers
Organization: The MITRE Corporation
Distribution: alt
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 20:13:46 GMT

Ya, and the guy from Utah use to generate the H from solar power at one 
time, so the fuel was         
free!!!  Seems that his system was tested by the US Post Office for 
powering those little cars used for delivery.  If it was so good.....what 
ever happened to him?  BBOCs?


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