HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Subject: Re: AIDS and the CIA (was Question)
Reply-To: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 15:07:30 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.013618.10207@vax.oxford.ac.uk>, mcbean@vax.oxford.ac.uk
writes:
>In article <97979@netnews.upenn.edu>, weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P
Wiener) writes:
>> In article <1992Nov17.021106.10158@vax.oxford.ac.uk>, mcbean@vax writes:
>>>Am I missing sonething here?
>> 
> > Yes.  A few neurons.  Maybe some spare glia.
> 
> Thanks for the mature response...

   But he was right.  You're showing every sign of either not
having or not using many of your neurons.  We refer to the 
neurons used to read the rest of this thread.


>>>			       They didn't create syphillis but they
>>>sure as hell experimented with it, so why couldn't AIDS experiments
>>>have been conducted (irrespective of whether they did or not).
>> 
>> With what?  On what?  Where was there the faintest clue that there
>> was this very slow acting immune compromising sexually transmitted
>> virus out there?  WHERE?
> 
>Could it be possible that they were just f**king around not 
>sure what they were dealing with?

   They had no way of knowing it was there at all; how could they have
"injected" it?  I assume you are aware what a pain it was to locate 
the HIV virus(es) once we _knew_ something was there (because of AIDS)?

 
>>>It would seem logical that it wasn't genetically engineered but that
>>>don't stop them from injecting it...

   "it"?  Define "it"?  Just what was being injected?  Thousands of random
blood samples?  You seem to have this confused notion that one could go
to the corner store and say:

"Hi, I'd like 50 grams of an unknown virus, please.  Oh, and make sure it's
indetectable by modern science, as long as it doesn't cost too much extra. 
That'll really fool'em, yup!"

>> Tell us how they found it first.
> 
> I was actually trying to get some information on what may or may not have
> occurred, not engage in some nitpicking, childish diatribe.  I do believe
> somebody posted a reference that retroviruses were first identified in 1910
on
> scaa.  No need to get all worked up my friend, like I said I was merely
trying
> to have a discussion, and you still haven't really answered any of the 
> original questions.

   No, they asserted it and a request for confirmation is currently unanswered.
 
> I don't have any strong background in biological sciences, so if I am missing
> something rather obvious maybe you would be kind enough to do what my missing
> neurons and ganglia would have done..
> 
> David McBean (david%wsi@engineering.oxford.ac.uk)

Dan
Danwell@IASTATE.EDU
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: sheaffer@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)
Subject: Re: What did Judas betray?
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 19:26:07 GMT

In article <721862719.AA09766@csource.oz.au> Joe.Slater@f351.n632.z3.fidonet.org (Joe Slater) writes:
>Monday November 09 1992, Robert Sheaffer writes to All:
>
>RS> Actually, several Talmudic passages, as well as other sources in the
>RS> Rabbinical literature, state that Jesus WAS stoned to death, then
>RS> hanged on a tree (as prescribed in Deut. 21:22-23).
>
>If you check the passages they either refer to someone with a totally different
>name, or are not contemporary, or have wholly differing circumstances. 

Not so fast. There's a whole "schtick" about whether or not the two are
the same. Is "Yeshua ben Stada" the same as "Yeshua ben Panthera"? In the
Middle ages, when Jews were prosecuted by the Church for maintaining
"blasphemous" things, they (not surprisingly) argued, "Oh, those are
two different guys, no problem". But how many different "Yeshuas" do
you suppose were executed on the eve of Passover, and hanged on a tree?
Hint: the Jewish Encyclopedia maintains that *all* of these "Yeshua"
passages refer to Jesus of Nazareth. Why would one Yeshua have at least
two different names? "ben Panthera" ("the son of Panthera") would be Jesus'
legal name, the name of his real father, by tradition a Roman soldier.
(And in the 20th century, a first-century memorial tablet has been found
for one Tiberius Julius Panthera, a Roman archer.) "ben Stada" is not
actually a name, but an epithet, roughly equivalent to the contemporary
colloquilaism "S.O.B," insulting both Jesus and his mother. Details
of all this are in my book.



> There is
>a book on Jesus (Toldos Yeshu) that I've not read, but it's certainly not
>contemporary and I am given to understand that it's a work of polemic.

Yes, the work was written in its present form sometime around the fourth
or fifth century, according to scholars. And it certainly is polemical.
However, Celsus, the Roman critic of Christianity, who writes around
the year 170, argues as if he had the Toldoth in front of him. Hence,
the material it contains goes back at least to the second century, and
if Celsus is to be believed, the arguments he [and the Toldoth] make  
were generally known among the Jews at that time.

-- 
  
        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com
  
 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

       "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
        Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has
        broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or
        where it will end."
                               - Emerson: Essay, "Circles"
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Subject: Re: HIV Dracula
Reply-To: danwell@IASTATE.EDU (Daniel A Ashlock)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 15:01:32 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.011608.11899@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>, pciszek@nyx.cs.du.edu
(Paul Ciszek) writes:
> schnitzi@cs.ucf.edu (Mark Schnitzius) writes:
> 
>>>3.  Could HIV be transmitted by vampires?
> 
>>Well, theoretically, but it wouldn't be fatal anymore.
> 
> Don't forget that vampires are, in fact, dead.  Unless you mean that
> anyone bit by a vampire would die of the bite before contracting AIDS. 
> Vampires, being dead, cannot serve as hosts for the HIV virus.  But then
> the same could be said of a dirty needle.

   Has Lancet done a piece on the biophysiology of retroviral parasites
in the nosferatu?  Are vampires a seperate spiecies of "life" (well, hell
they still twitch) and hence another source of samples for transpecific 
viruses?  Don't the viruses get confused when the vampire turns into a 
giant bat?  What on earth hapens to the viral genetic material when the
Vampire turns into mist?

Dan
Danwell@IASTATE.EDU
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: mccoy@pecan.cns.udel.edu (Don McCoy)
Subject: Re: Innumeracy, humorous ... maybe.
Organization: Applied Physics: University of Delaware, Newark
Distribution: world 
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 04:54:07 GMT

In article <BxoJK2.KzI@ccu.umanitoba.ca> 
   vnelson@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gerald Vernon Nelson) writes:
>
>Speaking of inummeracy...
>
>There was an article in our local paper about a year back on the
>subject.  The author went to lengths to point out how little people
>understand numbers.  In his example he used the 6/49 lottery.
>You know, pick 6 different numbers from 49.  He stated that people
>just didn't understand that the odds of winning that lottery were
>about 10 billion to 1 (49 * 48 * 47 *46 * 45 * 44).
>
>He was of course, inumerate himself, as the odds of winning are 
>actually about 14 million to 1.
>
Uh, I could be wrong here, but I believe 10 billion to 1 is right.
How did you arrive at the 14 million to 1 figure???

..don...
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: parson_r@cubldr.colorado.edu (Robert Parson)
Subject: Re: When will K2 grow up?
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 01:18:37 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.011352.18582@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>, mancus@zaphod.JSC.NASA.GOV (Keith Mancus/MDSSC) writes:
> In article <1992Nov12.205129.21075@lsil.com>, gascan@dcst16.dc (Bill Gascoyne) writes:
> 
>   What is the highest mountain on Earth measured base-to-peak, with underwater
> height excluded?  It may or may not be Everest, since Everest sits on the
> Tibetan Plateau at around 12000 feet or so.  I'd expect it to be a large
> mountain near sea level.
> 
 I'm sure people will start to argue about where the "base" is. 
 McKinley would seem to be one candidate: the north face rises 17,000 feet
 from relatively low tundra/marshes. Awesome!
 I believe Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas is another candidate - I have no
 numbers at hand.
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.messianic
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic

In article ... Rick.Moen@f207.n914.z8.rbbs-net.ORG (Rick Moen) writes:

   I've never heard either formulation before, and they sound illiterate
   to me.  "Anyone" and "one" are clearly singular.  "They", "themselves",
   "them", and "their" are clearly plural.

(a) I'm sure there are variations of English -- existing, natural variations --
where ``they'' is not so clearly plural. I say this purely because sentences
such as

    Someone threw their hat into the air.
    The fifth magus threw off their mask.

sound entirely natural to me, even taking into account nit-picking about
context (that is, I am not intending the reader to construct hypothetical
scenarios in which some anonymous group owns the hat or the mask). However,
this point is weakened by:

(b) Regular use of ``they'' as singular makes such use seem entirely natural,
and listeners/readers exposed to such use seem to come to accept it as
numerically ambiguous (in the same way as they were alleged to take ``he'' as
genderly (!) ambiguous).

   If the change _is_ enacted, (1) people who urged it will congratulate
   themselves on how progressive they are, (2) there will be widespread
   confusion between singular and plural in English-language references,
   since the meaning of they/them/their will then be rendered unclear, and

Yes, I've noted the dreadful confusion of the English ``you''. I hesitate to
say this, but the plural form of ``they'' should perhaps be ``theys'', and we
could have ``you'' and ``yous'', too.

   (3) sexism will not, in unvarnished reality, have been impeded one
   whit, any more than it is by the gender-neutral pronoun in Turkish.

Now this may well be true. But surely it is the act of debating, and deciding
upon, such non-sexist language, that affects the population, not just the fact
of *having* non-sexist language?
--

Regards,  | To me C++ seems to be a language that has sacrificed  | Meilir
Kers.     | orthogonality and elegance for random expediency.     | Page-Jones
From: Rick.Moen@f207.n914.z8.rbbs-net.ORG (Rick Moen)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Insults
Date: 22 Nov 92 23:21:10 GMT

> From: kraus@.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Dave Kraus)
> Message-ID: <1992Nov18.171513.4431@donner.SanDiego.NCR.COM>

>>I think the best solution is the only one that will absolutely,
>>positively keep the bulk of this blithering out of newsgroups:
>>universal insensitivity -- a truly liberating idea whose time has
>>come.
>
> Are you talking about robots, or are you talking about human beings?
> It would be nice to be able to discuss ideas without emotion, but
> it is human nature to become personally involved with ideas one
> believes in. This is true for insulters and insultees alike. Ideally
> it would be great if we could detach our emotions from our beliefs,
> but I have known few who can do so.

This is a straw-man objection, in that Bronx-cheering people out of
theatrical hypersensitivity of the attention-getting variety in no
way presupposes an absence of emotion.  Indeed, annoyance and mild
disgust are obviously among the applicable emotions, here.

Further, your statement begs the question of whether people's becoming
emotionally involved with their ideas must inevitably lead them to
making a big, attention-getting show of being "insulted" in public.
I would like to believe that, for everyone other than the more
unbalanced adolescents, this is not the case.

>>As long as proclaiming one's self "insulted" is an effective way to
>>get attention, people who see themselves as power-deprived will
>>continue to seek the eradication of "insults" as an alternative to
>>substantive improvement of their condition.  Hypersensitive
>>noisemaking, however emotionally satisfying to some, is a poor
>>substitute for progress.

> I would agree with you, except to add that the insult is often used
> as a tool by the insulter to intimidate, or change the subject from
> a discussion of ideas to a discussion of personalities.

Then, it would seem to be in the interest of the "insulted" party to be
not so easily _manipulated_, wouldn't it?  Absent sufficient
intelligence and self-control for that, maybe it would help to ignore
him, rather than encouraging his long shtick about how "insulted" he is.
'Might aid such people in growing up.

Cheers,
Rick M.
moen@blyth.com

 * Origin: The Skeptic's Board in San Mateo - Bay Area Skeptics (8:914/207)
Xref: sparky sci.skeptic:19895 soc.culture.african.american:11300
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: A more likely AIDS conspiracy theory
Date: 19 Nov 92 18:55:38 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Followup-To: sci.skeptic
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman)

In article <1992Nov19.032930.11368@oracle.us.oracle.com>, mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>Oh, certainly not.  It is quite possible that mad Dr. Snipandslice was
>gallivanting arround Africa in the early fifties injecting Africans
>with blood from evey animal he could get his hands on, including a few
>monkeys with the precursors of the AIDS virus.  It is also possible
>that some drunk villagers were getting their kicks by raping monkeys.
>Which do you think is more likely?

Neither.  What does have a good chance is monkey hunting.  It can get
very bloody.  And African green monkey females are very promiscuous for
extended periods of time, so the virus is probably well-spread.

The grand pointlessness of the conspiracy theories is they always invoke
the CIA.  Once you catch on to the complete impossibility of anyone having
designed HIV thirty years ago, you're left with nothing but random and
seemingly completely pointless low tech monkey experiments as the only
venue.  So the culprit would have been someone with lots of monkeys around
and no high tech to distract them.  That wasn't the CIA.

Who could it have been?  The Tutsi seem like a good possiblilty.  They
are there, smack in the middle of the AIDS belt.  They have the endless
monkey supply right there and not much technology.  They have centuries
of cruel and suppressive rule over the majority Hutu, which has certainly
gotten brutal at times (100,000 massacred in 1972, Burundi).  It's very
hard to make South Africa look good, but that's Burundi for you.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: billg@bony1.bony.com (Bill Gripp)
Subject: Re: Biblical Inerrancy?
Organization: LA&W RR
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 06:52:34 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.021504.13692@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU> dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:
>In article <28064@castle.ed.ac.uk> gtclark@festival.ed.ac.uk (G T Clark) writes:
>>
>>       The bible is patently not inerrant.Read Leviticus,chapter 18(or
>>thereabouts) where it fairly clearly states that insects walk "upon all
>>fours... fourfootedly upon the ground".That's quite clearly a mistake,
>>no matter what stage it crept in at.
>
>It also says that pi=3.

It is to One Significant figure.
From: dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin) 
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Space Craft Without P
Date: 16 Nov 92 14:14:00 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Advanced Computer Concepts BBS, New Rochelle, NY 914-654-1981
Reply-To: dick.zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com (Dick Zeitlin) 

JKP> .Barangus!  Mondo bazoomo!  Wox wox wox oggle grebbly nad bork bork bock
   > .fnord egrep roff gnogin fsck zowie, ecky-THUMP!

Do I detect some cynicism on your part??  <~>

        D/

 * OLX 2.2 * Bring back A-N airways!!    Dick.Zeitlin%acc1bbs@ssr.com
From: jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (J. Giles)
Subject: Waves or particles, irreconcilable? (was: Reconciling OT with NT)
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 19:46:54 GMT

In article <1efhvcINNcin@horus.ap.mchp.sni.de>, frank@D012S658.uucp (Frank O'Dwyer) writes:
|> In article <1992Nov17.173850.14175@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
|> [...]
|> >>Did you all have the same problem with wave-particle duality?
|> >>Lemme see.  Light is particle and light is wave.  I cannot reconcile these
|> >>ideas without throwing out all preconceived notions.  You say wave and
|> >>I say particle, let's call the whole thing off.
|> >
|> >Sigh.  More quantum pseudoscience.
|> 
|> >Light acts like a particle sometimes and like a wave sometimes.  
|> 
|> You accuse _me_ of pseuodscience, and then you say this?

Quanta are *neither* particle *nor* waves.  No part of the present
theoretical model requires them to be.  They are quanta.  In the
aggregate, they uniformly obey a set of statistical equations 
with amazing accuracy and there has never yet (that I know of)
been any irreconcilable behavior shown by these things.

The problem you're *both* having is that you're trying to apply
conventional macroscopic terms like "particle" and "wave" to 
objects for which there is no reason be believe such terms 
might apply.  The only thing your apparent inconsistancies
show is that the terminology you're attempting to apply is
inappropriate.

(To be sure, there are *interpretations* of the present physical
model which loosely use the terms "particle" and/or "wave" for
QM objects.  This is a result of the historical development of
the field as well as the inertia of certain people against new
ideas.)

-- 
J. Giles
From: kanga.caltech.edu!magney (Michael Agney)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Fundamentalist Nightmare
Date: 20 Nov 1992 21:07:16 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: milhouse.caltech.edu
Originator: magney@milhouse

In article <13269@optilink.COM> walsh@optilink.COM (Mark Walsh) writes:
> From article <1992Nov18.045408.11657@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, by  
gsh7w@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy):
> Last time I checked, the Hilton Hotels were privately
> owned, and not an agency of the U.S. government.  By the
> way, I and many other good people would not support a
> business with such practices, which is a superior
> motivation for them to not discriminate.

Not so long ago (assuming history isn't bunk), there were plenty of
people around who would support a business that discriminated against
blacks.

(WARNING: Questionable deductions ahead)
For all the years betwen Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka, discrimination against blacks thrived and
prospered in the South; now, thirty years after anti-discrimination
laws were passed and enforced, racists in the South have gone from a
substantial majority to a minority (though a significant one).  There
might be a correlation.

(WARNING: Really questionable conclusion ahead)
And unless there is a real reason to discriminate against homosexuals,
the same tactics might work again.
-- 
| Michael Agney          | Yd - gender neutral pronoun    |
|                        |      (well, not quite)         |
|                        | Source:  Stories by Alison     |
| magney@cco.caltech.edu | Tellure, back issues of Analog |
From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Audis (was Re: Repressed Memories, Ruined Lives)
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 18:13:14 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
 .com><GERRY.92Nov9123747@onion.cmu.edu><1992Nov15.025813.14801@midway.uchic
 ago.edu> <92322.113806U48073@uicvm.uic.edu>

I once had a pedal misapplication event in a Fiat which almost caused
an accident.  I went for the brake pedal, but landed on the clutch.
I really pushed that pedal hard, but I didn't have time to check which
pedal I was actually pressing because I was steering to avoid objects.
When I managed to stop the car, I was assuming that the brakes had
failed, but after checking them out very carefully, I concluded that
I had hit the clutch pedal.

A person less thoughtful than me and less willing to admit an error
probably would blame the car.

I should also point out that many European car pedal clusters are
delibrately designed to have the brake and accelerator very close
together, so you can do heel-and-toe driving (i.e. use one foot
to operate both pedals).  This is the way race cars are driven, so
that you can accelerate and decelerate more quickly.
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: AIDS and the CIA (was Question)
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 12:21:23 GMT

In article <98061@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>
>Visna is in fact close enough that it was immediately connected to HIV.
>Part of the confusion is that visna is much closer to HIV than HTLV-I
>and HTLV-II, the other human T-cell retroviruses, and much was made of
>this in the early 80s.  (Recall that one of the early names for HIV was
>HTLV-III.)
>
Isn't HTLV I or II (forget which) related to something called CJD, and also
the animal disease "scabies" and something to do with misdiagnosed Alzheimer's
disease?

cjl
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
From: aicklen@utdallas.edu (Greg Aicklen)
Subject: Re: By the Numbers
Organization: Univ. of Texas at Dallas
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 01:37:01 GMT

In article <n0ef4t@ofa123.fidonet.org>, David.Rice@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
|> Who: ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
|> ID: lga8juINN2jd@news.bbn.com
|>  
|> NC> "The 'Information Please Almanac' has a section on record-
|> NC> breaking weather. It used to be _filled_ with errors of
|> NC> the form:
|> NC> 
|> NC>   Greatest two minute temperature rise: +23deg F (-5deg C)
|>  
|> Ah, that's PROOF that reality is based on how you measure it
|> (BIG SMILE!). If temperature is measured in F, it increased,
|> but if in C, it decreased. And that -IS- record-breaking!
|> 
|> --- Maximus 2.00

If I remember correctly, the original scale set up by Celsius went from
100 (freezing) to 0 (boiling) ... quite the reverse of today's standard.
Perhaps the "Information Please Almanac" employs some REALLY OLD records
keepers.

Greg