From: patrick@is.rice.edu (Patrick L Humphrey)
Subject: Re: Is talk.abortion an NCSU psychology class project?
Summary: Don't bet on it.
Organization: Rice University
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 14:19:12 GMT

In article <lcjqcuINNb9k@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> emarsh@hernes-sun.Eng.Sun.COM (Eric Marsh) writes:
>For some time now I've had a suspicion that several of the talk.abortion
>posters from NSCU are not really people, but made up personalities. This
>idea first occured to me when an NSCU student, Bekki, said that she had
>looked around her school for David Rasmussen, and didn't seem to be able
>find a student by that name. My suspicions about "David Rasmussen" became
>stronger when a supposed fellow student wrote the following post:
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>From exodus!newstop!sun-barr!olivea!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!lll-winken!taco!news Fri Mar 22 09:40:44 PST 1991
>>Article 26444 of talk.abortion:
>>Path: exodus!newstop!sun-barr!olivea!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!lll-winken!taco!news
>>>From: boomer@csl.ncsu.edu (Boomer)
>>Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.flame,talk.bizarre
>>Subject: Rasmussen
>>Keywords: talk to yourself, pace around, slap the keyboard, take a bath
>>Message-ID: <1991Mar21.221411.12761@ncsu.edu>
>>Date: 21 Mar 91 10:55:42 GMT
>>Sender: news@ncsu.edu (USENET News System)
>>Reply-To: boomer@csl.UUCP (Boomer)
>>Followup-To: alt.flame,talk.bizarre
>>Distribution: usa
>>Organization: Normal Fuckers Who Are Fed Up With Rasmussen and His Crap
>>Lines: 46
>>Xref: exodus talk.abortion:26444 alt.flame:14127 talk.bizarre:27601

["Boomer"'s rant about the MuffinThang deleted]

>While this "Boomer" could be for real, such a post could also be used
>to throw anyone off the scent of "David Rasmussen"'s true nature.

"Boomer" *could* be for real -- but he (or she, or it) didn't go to very
much effort to forge a believable path for that article.  If you take a look
at where that article went, you'll see it never touched a site within 500
miles of North Carolina, let alone State.

>It is also noteworthy that "David Rasmussen" spent more time posting
>on talk.abortion than one would reasonably expect a student to be able
>to afford to do.

True, but he *was* a grad student...:-)

>I've noticed a strong simularity between the postings of "Doug Holtsinger"
>and "David Rasmussen" as well. The spelling is much better, but many of
>the arguments put forth by "Holtsinger", as well as his biases are the
>same.

No arguments there...

>Finally, we have "Peter Nyikos", as supposed professor who has published
>dozens of papers. The probem is, "Peter Nyikos" doesn't seem to be able
>to debate the abortion issue any better than a first year student. I have
>not seen anywhere in the arguments of "Peter Nyikos" the logic that one
>would expect from a respected mathamatics professor.

Neither have I -- but that just goes to show that a doctorate in one field
doesn't necessarily translate into automatic expertise in any other.

>What do these three have in common? Well, they all post from NCSU.
>If they are indeed fictional charactors, then what would be the motivation
>behind them? While I can't say for sure, I can throw out a couple of ideas;
>they could be some sort of a psychology class project, or they could be
>just a group of students who enjoy baiting talk.abortion participants.

You might want to check your headers a bit more closely -- *two* of them
post(ed) from State.  Peter is posting from The USC -- and there *is* a
difference between the two schools...

>This is just a thought that has been percolating in the back of my mind
>for a while. I'd be interested in the thoughts of others on this subject.
>
>Eric

If Rasmussen is fictional, someone is impersonating him rather well, then --
since someone claiming to be him showed up here at Rice the afternoon of May
27 looking for me.  The Rice University Police Department would have to be
convinced that they were dealing with a fictional character, I'd
suspect...:-)

-- 
Newsgroups: talk.abortion