HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: banks@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Sex on the Train
Date: 1 Sep 92 15:02:46 GMT
Organization: ISCA

dolf@echo.philips.nl (Dolf Grunbauer) writes:

>nichol@asc.slb.com (Bruce Nichol) writes:
>>      I read a short story in a recent international edition of
>>Newsweek about a couple in a train in England.  Apparently they were
>>having oral sex on the train and were pretty much ignored by the other
>>passengers.  However when they were finished, the lit up cigarettes.
>>This caused much dismay among the other passengers, some of whom
>>complained to the conductor.  "I say, you can't smoke here!"  They
>>were later arrested for indecent exposure or something like that.

>I think this is a joke. The version I heard was of a man masturbating
>and afterwards asking the old lady next to him if it was ok if he smoked.

This is certainly not a joke (though it is very funny).  It was widely
reported in the British press a couple of weeks ago - names were named
(and I would repeat them but I've forgotten).  The couple were actually
charged and fined - not very much, 50 pounds sterling or so as I recall.

I've long since junked my old newspapers, but someone somewhere should
still be able to dig out the relevant story.  The couple worked for the 
same company and were returning, a little tired and emotional, from some
company jolly.  I think he was married and she was not.  A UK gay paper
(Capital Gay?) pointed out how lenient the fines were when compared to
those issued to men having sex in public places (often a suspended
prison sentence).

Marcus Banks,
Oxford
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: geoff@pmafire.inel.gov (Geoff Allen)
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 19:07:17 GMT
Organization: Roller Coaster fanatic with no hope for a cure
Subject: Re: Mnemonics
Summary: 
Followup-To: 
Organization: Roller Coaster fanatic with no hope for a cure
Keywords: 

craigb@ot.austin.ibm.com writes:
>
>each of the seven stranded castaways of _Gilligan's Island_ can be 
>equated with one of the seven deadly sins. Lessee, this is from memory:
>
>Gilligan      = Sloth
>The Skipper   = Anger
>The Professor = Pride
>Mr. Howell    = Avarice
>Mrs. Howell   = Gluttony (???)
>Ginger        = Lust (surprise!)
>Mary Ann      = Envy (???)

Mary Ann is always envious of Ginger's looks/attention from the men,
etc.

That's my theory, anyway.

Don't know about Mrs. Howell....

-- 
Geoff Allen          \  Driggs, Idaho -- cultural hub of the west!
uunet!pmafire!geoff   \
geoff@pmafire.inel.gov \  (Tom Harper in rec.skiing)
From: carolo@cse.ucsc.edu (Carol Osterbrock)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: What makes an urban legend work?
Date: 26 Aug 92 20:06:04 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz (CE/CIS Boards)
NNTP-Posting-Host: arapaho.ucsc.edu

In article <1992Aug26.174142.29091@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> bwatson@nyx.cs.du.edu (bruce watson) writes:

[...]

>I took a tour of the plant years before the mouse incident. We went
>to the room where the beer is cold filtered and shown what happens
>to fresh beer when it is put into a container that is just less 
>than perfectly clean. There would have been virtually no beer
>in a can containing the slightest amount of contamination.

Well, why not?  I would assume that the machinery can't tell and puts
the beer in anyway.  After the can is sealed, where is the beer going
to go?  I ask this partly because it sounds a little um, incomplete,
and partly because I have on maybe 2 or 3 occasions bought a six-pack
in which one of the cans was empty.  The flip-top or whatever you call
that gizmo was still intact, but there was nothing inside, or if there
was it weighed exactly the same as air and didn't slosh around.  I
just thought that it had slipped by the QC, but does that actually
mean that there was some kind of contamination inside and it ate the
beer?

-carol "thirsty" o
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Carol Osterbrock       *       Such a long, long time to be gone
carolo@cse.ucsc.edu    *         And a short time to be there...
===============================================================================
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: bmb1021@ultb.isc.rit.edu (B.M. Buck )
Subject: Re: The Flat Earth Society???
Originator: bmb1021@ultb
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 21:06:32 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.193256.17843@news.cs.brandeis.edu> st890270@pip.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>
>
>There is also a Discordian Society (they even have their own "bible", or so
>my friend claims)
>
>
>Incidentally, the only reference to the Discordian Society that I know of is 
>in the card game "Illuminati". Is there any other?

In my hand here is the "PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA *OR* How I Found Goddess And
What I Did To Her When I Found Her.  The Magnum Opiate Of Malaclypse The
Younger, Wherein is explained absolutely everything worth knowing about
absolutely anything.", Fourth Edition.

Discoridanism, and The Discordian Society, is devoted(?) to the Goddess
Eris, the ancient Greek Goddess of Chaos.  To a certain degree, it
started out as a parody of mainstream religion, but it caught on...

Personally, I'm a member (but that's not difficult...)

  Later,
    BP (bmb1021@ultb.isc.rit.edu)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: bill.dehaan@rose.com (bill dehaan)
Subject: Mnemonics
Organization: Rose Media Inc, Toronto, Ontario.
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 00:31:05 GMT
X-Gated-By: Usenet <==> RoseMail Gateway (v1.70)


Date Entered: 08-26-92 19:24
In message <1992Aug25.203750.11874@natinst.com>, scott@natinst.com
(Scott A. Taylor) writes:

ST>To take this in a different (but almost related) direction, as a youth I was
ST>of the belief that the name of the rock group KISS was an acronym for
ST>"Kings In Satan's Service".  Any basis in fact? Official statements by Gene
ST>Simmons, perhaps?

Simmons denied it. And the original acronym attributed to the group  was
Knights In  Satan's Service,  not Kings.  Simmon's comment  was that the
people  who  worried  about  this  sort  of  thing should picket Adidas,
because Adidas is an acronym for "All Day I Dream About Sex".

----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
Deus Ex Machina                   | Internet:   bill.dehaan@rose.com
Software Consulting and Gator Pit | Eradicate Hunger - Eat the homeless
----------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
---
   SLMR 2.1a   "I said a BUD LIGHT." - J. d'Arc
   RM 2.00 : RoseNet<=>Usenet Gateway : Rose Media 416-733-2285
From: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: The Flat Earth Society???
Date: 28 Aug 92 21:04:35 GMT

eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) writes:

>18 screaming kids can cover alot of the arguments in two hours:
>lunar eclipses, wells in Egypt, celestial positioning, various curvature
>effects, etc. but all are based on some set of assumptions and presumptions

Right!  Which is why it always annoys me when people talk about
"scientific proof" of something.  I can't prove that external
reality isn't a prank being pulled on me by Descartes' nefarious
demon, and compared to *that*, living on a flat earth is peanuts!

>The thing is that our education on matters for things like this is so bad,
>it is incredibly sorry.  I have taken to asking knowledgeable people if
>you know the latitude of the North Pole [P.S. My JHS was named after
>Robert Peary].  I have seen more than one published wrong answer by experts
>in their respective vocational and avocational fields: 0 deg. 100, deg. etc.
>Even PhDs here at NASA ("You mean it ISN'T 0 degrees?" "Ahhhhh, Suz!").

More casualties of the standard physics convention for spherical
coordinates, I see.  This caused me no end of trouble when I was
writing graphics software at NCAR.  My boss was a meteorologist,
and he didn't know about systems that *did* put zero degrees at the
pole.
-- 
Matt McIrvin, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
From: csuah@warwick.ac.uk (~WISP at CU~)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: we taste like chicken
Date: 30 Aug 92 23:41:44 GMT
Organization: Computing Services, Warwick University, UK

In article <1992Aug30.214543.8696@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> PAPAI@kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu (Jonathan Papai) writes:
>
>A short exerpt from _The Japan Times Weekly International
>Edition_, Aug. 24-30,1992, p. 21, which is translated from
>a Japanese language review in _Aera_, Aug. 18,1992.
>
>	'...
>	In the new documentary movie "Battleship-Musashi",
>	Suburo Nukui of Tokyo relates how starving
>	Japanese soldiers, who were looking for human
>	flesh to eat, were far more frightening than
>	attacks by Filipino Guerrillas.
>	.... [some deleted]
>	... Nukui spoke of a similar experience.  Sitting
>	by a river, he suddenly heard a voice exclaim,
>	"Human flesh is delicious.  It is like chicken."
>	Nukui pointed his gun at the soldier and he
>	disappeared into the jungle.	'

So we smell of pork (when cooked) and taste of chicken, eh? Now what does
*that* remind me of...

Followups to alt.tasteless, methinks...

The Wisp. [RSTSF: Rather Sad, Totally Sick F...]
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Chris Williams <csuah@uk.ac.warwick.csv> aka <csuah@csv.warwick.ac.uk>
"Tony Greig in the slips, legs apart, waiting for a tickle"
                                      Brian Johnson (thanks to A. Simha 8^>)
From: lm8637@tnessd.sbc.com (Lou Montgomery (214+464-1049))
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Thomas Crapper and Spread Spectrum
Date: 1 Sep 92 20:37:41 GMT
Organization: Southwestern Bell


 rocher@husc8.harvard.edu (Jean-Marc Rocher) writes:
>  +
>  +>I believe this started with the book "Flushed with Pride: The Life of Thomas
>  +> Crapper", by the same person who wrote "Bust Up: The Life of Otto Titzling"
>  +>(The supposed inventor of the bra). I also believe that Cecil Adams wrote 
>  +>that these two books were full of it. 
>  

        Speaking of books, have any of you folks (tm) heard of the
      newly released book on reverse psychology?  I understand it's
      rather shocking, but don't bother looking for it.  You wouldn't
      like it.
                        B-) for the butt-dumb


                                Lou (reelin' with the feelin') Monty

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: schroede@bnlux1.bnl.gov (gary l. schroeder)
Subject: Re: You are humble and loveable.  CHOMP!
Organization: Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 13:54:09 GMT

In article <ww-n6g-@lynx.unm.edu> jfreter@triton.unm.edu (The Myth) writes:
>In article <1992Aug23.060245.2606@rigel.econ.uga.edu> jordan@castor.cs.uga.edu (Chuck Jordan) writes:
>>Why is this?  What is this supposed to prove?  Is a fake coin supposed to
>>be harder/softer/hurt your dental work/what?  Is it to make sure it's not
>>one of those chocolate pirate pennies?

>The best test for the purity of the gold would be to drill a very small hole
>into the center and drip some 2 Molar HCl.  The gold won't dissolve, but
>any zinc, tin, silver, lead, or other metals ('cept platinum) will dissolve.
>Just don't mix the HCl with HNO3 under heat, or you'll lose the gold, too.


Hey, waitaminnit!  I always heard it was _3_ Molar HCl!



-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Schroeder	                |  Warning: prolonged exposure to this
schroede@bnlux1.bnl.gov         |  .sig may cause retinal damage and 
Brookhaven National Laboratory  |  blistering skin rashes.
From: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Thomas Crapper and Spread Spectrum
Date: 30 Aug 92 00:29:07 GMT

rocher@husc8.harvard.edu (Jean-Marc Rocher) writes:

> I believe this started with the book "Flushed with Pride: The Life of Thomas
> Crapper", by the same person who wrote "Bust Up: The Life of Otto Titzling"
>(The supposed inventor of the bra). I also believe that Cecil Adams wrote that
>these two books were full of it. 

It's more complicated than that, apparently; I believe that some hint of
the story is in the FAQ.  "Flushed with Pride" was a hoax, but Crapper was
a real person who did manufacture toilets.

-- 
Matt McIrvin, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Thomas Crapper and Spread Spectrum
Date: 1 Sep 92 17:09:32 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   

>I thought that Hedy (not Hedly!) Lamarr was famous for spreading her own
>personal spectrum in some European movie in the '30's before coming to
>Hollywood.

Fifties rather than Thirties, I think.  Something scratching around 
in the catbox that used to be my mind says it was called "Ecstasy" and 
contained a rather disappointingly photographed appearance in the 
altogether -- frolicking beneath a waterfall or somesuch.  I haven't 
seen it.  The story may have been told by Watson in "The Double Helix,"
which is what made me think it was filmed (or revived?) in the 50s.

Frankly, I am predisposed to inability to see what the scandal is all
about in such matters. The movies are usually pretty tame compared to 
what folks do in real life.

Joe "But does she demonstrate torpedo guidance?" Chew
From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Counterfeiting
Date: 29 Aug 92 00:34:13 GMT
Reply-To: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4

>> I'm under the understanding that nothing smaller than $20 bills gets
>> counterfeited because it simply doesn't pay.

As we pulled up to a toll booth one day, I fished out a random dollar
bill from my wallet.  My wife, trained at a funny-money seminar put 
on by Livermore security, recognized it immediately as counterfeit
just by feel.  Further tests, such as tearing an edge and looking for
little colored threads, confirmed this.  (No, we didn't do this while
a line of cars grew and grew behind us at the toll booth.  :)  

(Backing-and-filling for foreigners:  U.S. currency is printed on a
truly deluxe paper of a special variety whose manufacture and
distribution are controlled.  Obtaining paper that looks and feels
plausible is said to be the hardest part of counterfeiting.)

It was pretty good stuff to the untrained eye and hand, as evidenced
by its worn appearance -- it looked as though it had been in 
circulation awhile.  The kid took it to show-and-tell.  Don't know
where it is now.  Probably one of us forgot about it and spent it;
it was that good.

The proliferation of change and vending machines that accept paper 
money might make traditional counterfeiting obsolete.  Those machines
quite probably don't examine more than a small subset of a bill's
characteristics (though there might be multiple configurations set
at random), and certainly they wouldn't be as discerning about
appearance and feel as a human.  Sooner or later -- if it hasn't 
happened already -- some technically adept junior entrepreneur will 
figure out how to hack them.

>Nobody on the train could believe that somebody would be smart enough
>to be able to produce a reasonable conterfeit bill, but would be dumb
>enough to make one's.

Understandable.  Making queer $1 bills outranks even sticking up a 7-11
in the annals of chump-change felonies.  (Yep... a felony regardless of
the amount of pseudomoney involved.  An automatic Federal case, in fact, 
and plenty of idle hours in the penitentiary to refine your next caper.) 
But nobody on AFU needs a reminder of the staggering breadth and depth
of human stupidity...

Joe "Don't take any wooden nickels" Chew
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: csuah@warwick.ac.uk (~WISP at CU~)
Subject: Re: The Flat Earth Society???
Organization: Computing Services, Warwick University, UK
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 14:20:32 GMT

In article <mcirvin.715035875@husc8> mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin) writes:
>eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) writes:
>
>>18 screaming kids can cover alot of the arguments in two hours:
>>lunar eclipses, wells in Egypt, celestial positioning, various curvature
>>effects, etc. but all are based on some set of assumptions and presumptions
>
>Right!  Which is why it always annoys me when people talk about
>"scientific proof" of something.  I can't prove that external
>reality isn't a prank being pulled on me by Descartes' nefarious
>demon, and compared to *that*, living on a flat earth is peanuts!
>
>>The thing is that our education on matters for things like this is so bad,
>>it is incredibly sorry.  I have taken to asking knowledgeable people if
>>you know the latitude of the North Pole [P.S. My JHS was named after
>>Robert Peary].  I have seen more than one published wrong answer by experts
>>in their respective vocational and avocational fields: 0 deg. 100, deg. etc.
>>Even PhDs here at NASA ("You mean it ISN'T 0 degrees?" "Ahhhhh, Suz!").
>
>More casualties of the standard physics convention for spherical
>coordinates, I see.  This caused me no end of trouble when I was
>writing graphics software at NCAR.  My boss was a meteorologist,
>and he didn't know about systems that *did* put zero degrees at the
>pole.

I'm sure there are hundreds of people reading this group, wanting to ask
the question, but afraid to look a fool. I've *always* been a fool, so:

        What *is* the latitude at the North Pole? I was always taught +90
degrees (+ by convention, N is up on maps and so on), the angle that a radius
of the imaginary sphere cutting the surface at the particular point
makes with another radius at the same longitude cutting the equator...

Later,

The Wisp. [there's one born every minute...]
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Chris Williams <csuah@uk.ac.warwick.csv> aka <csuah@csv.warwick.ac.uk>
"Tony Greig in the slips, legs apart, waiting for a tickle"
                                      Brian Johnson (thanks to A. Simha 8^>)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: david@infopro.com (Dragon [David Fiedler])
Subject: Re: Screaming Peaches and Terrified Eggs
Organization: InfoPro Systems: Writers, Consultants, and Dragons
Distribution: alt
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 02:17:42 GMT

geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller) writes:

+When I was a kid, my mom told me about an experiment performed at 
+Columbia University in which the agonized "scream" of a peach was 
+detected somehow with sensitive instruments as someody bit into it.
+Even as a kid, I thought the very idea was absurd to the point of being 
+hilarious, but my mother insisted that she'd either heard or read about 
+it somewhere.  Looking back on it, it's rather interesting that a
+specific location for the research (Columbia) was specified.

Yes, I'd say around 1967 my mother told me she heard a radio show where
someone said about the same thing regarding carrots. I always used to
tease her that this proved that just because you hear something on the
radio doesn't mean it's true.
-- 
David Fiedler    UUCP:{netcomsv,utoday}!infopro!david               AIR: N3717R
"The future is tekon."   Internet: david@infopro.com or david@utoday.com 
USMail:InfoPro Systems, PO Box 220 Rescue CA 95672 Phone:916/677-5870 FAX:-5873
From: twcaps@tennyson.lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Mnemonics
Date: 31 Aug 1992 06:00:24 GMT
Organization: Department of Redundancy Department
Reply-To: TWChan@lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.12.117

eck@panix.com (Mark Eckenwiler) writes:
  
  +Look, we're gonna have to organize this thing better.  When Ted
  +flushes the newbies out, *one* of you has got to fire the
  +frozen-chicken cannon at them or they'll get away.

Say, didn't this have something to do with the Air Force and a
defense contractor?

  +Did I mention the new flavor of Alka Seltzer that tastes just like
  +seagull? 

I thought the new flavor was dead fish.


Terry "The only good seagull is a, um, FAT one..." Chan
--
Internet:  TWChan@lbl.gov                  This is illegal, but I know jujitsu
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory                         so I don't care.
Berkeley, California  USA  94720                      
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: ag445@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Scott Medlong)
Subject: IS TOLEDO GOING TO THE DOGS?
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 06:04:38 GMT


my favorite UL:
Two sisters from Toledo Ohio were staying at home while mom and dad were
out of town for the weekend. The older sister (18) was alway picking on 
the younger for carelessness. The elder came up to the bedroom and yelled
at her sister for not locking the door when she let the 2 yr old german
shepherd in. The sister insisted that she had locked the door. The older
sister turned off the lights and told her sib to go to sleep and stop 
playing with the dog. She could hear them bouncing around, still playing
so she snapped her fingers for the dog. The dog came over, licked her hand
and went out of the room.
 
In the morning, the younger sister was strangled to death, as was the dog.
On the mirror was a note:
 
NOT ONLY DOGS CAN LICK HANDS.
 
 
 
-- 
peace......scm
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: warren@nysernet.org (Warren Burstein)
Subject: Re: The Flat Earth Society???
Reply-To: warren@nysernet.org
Organization: Mail to News Gateway at Wang Labs
Date: 31 Aug 92 09:42:58 GMT

In <chan.715238738@s1.elec.uq.oz.au> chan@elec.uq.oz.au (Chuen Wen Chan) writes:

    Just wondering, why hasn't anyone formed a flat moon society.  After
    all, we only see one side of it, why can't it be a flat disc?

    Sure, satelites have gone around it, but in the dark, with the
    sun shining brightly on the other side, the pictures could be wrong,
    couldn't they?

But the satellites use a flash camera, of course.

Warren "I was going to suggest that the moon actually has three sides,
but I'm getting tired of that one, no doubt to the relief of
alt.folklore.serious readers" Burstein
-- 
/|/-\/-\       In real life, the Vice President chastises Murphey Brown
 |__/__/_/     for her morals.  Bill Clinton plays the sax on "Arsenio
 |warren@      Hall."  Though "Batman Returns" is fiction, it's not too
/ nysernet.org much stranger than truth - Caryn James, The New York Times
From: twcaps@tennyson.lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Counterfeiting
Date: 4 Sep 1992 20:34:55 GMT
Organization: Department of Redundancy Department
Reply-To: TWChan@lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.12.117

meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) writes:

  +>Last week, on the commuter rail train I go on (Boston - Fitchburg
  +>line), the conductor had been given a phony $1 (it didn't have the
  +>small serial numbers and some other marks), and he passed it around.
  +>Nobody on the train could believe that somebody would be smart enough
  +>to be able to produce a reasonable conterfeit bill, but would be dumb
  +>enough to make one's.

Shouldn't this story end where when the conductor gets the bill back,
it's a counterfeit bill of some other denomination?

Terry "Oops!  Wrong colored thread." Chan
--
Internet:  TWChan@lbl.gov                  This is illegal, but I know jujitsu
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory                         so I don't care.
Berkeley, California  USA  94720                      
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,atl.locksmithing