HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Holden Numbering
Date: 11 Sep 92 08:42:18 GMT
Reply-To: rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Software Maintenance & Development Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Sep9.211611.4008@desire.wright.edu> sbishop@desire.wright.edu writes:
>In article <2900@fedfil.UUCP>, news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
TH In article <1992Sep8.061806.3949@desire.wright.edu>, sbishop@desire.wright.edu writes:

SB Says you!  After all, any statement from the man who said that new born
SB hosrses can't run, that horses can't comfortably carry any weight over 125
SB pounds, that giraffes have enormous blood pressure in their heads
SB *(ALL totally untrue)*, is very suspect.

TH Sue Bishop is either VERY stupid, or a liar, possibly both.  I have never
TH made ANY of the above statements.

>OK, group, did or did NOT Ted say that giraffes have high blood pressure?
>And Ted, you DID say that a new born horse cannot run.  Sorry I didn't save
>it but I'm sure someone else can verify it.  And you also said a year or
>two ago that anything over 125 pounds on a horse was a 'handicap', a mis-
>information about horse racing, actually.

Re Giraffes:  You lose.  He did say they have high blood pressure.  They
do.  They do not have high blood pressure in their heads when their necks
are upright -- they do when they are lowered for drinking.

Re horses:  Don't remember the details anymore, except that Ted confused
handicaps and the riders weight.  Accuracy of detail is not Ted's forte.
-- 
Richard Harter: SMDS Inc.  Net address: rh@smds.com Phone: 508-369-7398 
US Mail: SMDS Inc., PO Box 555, Concord MA 01742.    Fax: 508-369-8272
In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
Xref: sparky talk.origins:11165 sci.lang:7106
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Ted Holden on Linguistics and Evolution
Date: 10 Sep 92 21:30:30 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Sep7.093701.29084@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
|In article <1007@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
|
|>A small nit here.  Greenberg's methods are *statistical*, and are thus
|>potential very precise - they just do not help in identifiying *specific*
|>*correspondences*.  Given that the time depth of the uncontroversial
|>major Amerindian language families seems to be on the order of 4K, some
|>higher level of connection is clearly likely.
|
|	Having read Greenberg's book, I note that he lists as
|correspondences words that seem rather similar phonetically and
|semantically. Linguists who prefer greater precision have not been
|very kind to him, not surprisingly.

Does he actually imply they are *actual* correspondences, or is he only
calling them *candidate* correspondences.  In a statistical analysis,
if the statistic chosen is sufficiently robust, the inclusion of a few
'false' correspondences is *irrelevant*, it is the job of the statistic
to filter the influence of these out.
[As soon as I find Greenberg's papr on this I will have a better idea of
how robust his analysis is - thank's again for the references].

This is why I say that most refutations of Greengerg's thesis I have seen
indicate a lack of understanding of statistical methods.  So a few candidate
correspondences are not 'real'?  What of it?  Does removing them from the
table alter the final results?

I find the linguists' insistance on concrete cognates to be rather limiting.
Statistics is very good at extracting meaningful data from noisy sources.
I think they would find it ia very powerful addition to their arsenal of
techniques.

|Mallory, J.P., 1989, _In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language,
|Archeology, and Myth_ [a comprehensive discussion of the Indo-European
|question, relating linguistics to historical and archeological
|evidence.]

I've read this one, an excellent, if rather cautious, work.

I found it interesting that just a few months after I read this book
an article appeared in Scientific American stating that the earliest
known riding bit had been found in a Sredny Stog site (Sredny Stog being
one of his candidates for the PIE speakers).
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: rickh@chtor.East.Sun.COM (Rick Holt - SunExpress IR)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Just trying to get Ted Holden's attention
Date: 15 Sep 1992 11:32:22 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Distribution: usa
Reply-To: rickh@chtor.East.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: chtor.east.sun.com

(My apologies to the net, I would have used email but I do not have Ted's email
address,  the one in his header keeps bouncing back.  I used to work with ted 5   
or 6 years ago and always enjoyed his, rather unique, perspective on various 
subjects.)
 
Ted,

It's great to 'hear' you again, I've missed discussing your theories and ideas.
Last weekend I ran across an article in a local paper I thought you might be
interested in.  It concerns a Professor Joe Holden who lived in Maine during
the last century (He died in 1900).  It appears that he was quite famous, at
least in the town where he lived, for they still celebrate his memory there.
It seems that he spent a great deal of his time 'proving' to people that the
Earth is flat.  He would travel around the country showing his 'proof' to anyone
who would listen.  According to the article (I'm doing this from memory, so I
may have some of the details wrong), he would place a bowl of water outside
overnight.  If the Earth were moving, he claimed, then the water sould spill.
Since the water did not spill, the Earth could not be moving, therefore it had
to be flat.

Anyway, that's the gist of it.  If you like I can send you the article.  In any
case, could you please send me your email address?  I'd like to keep in touch.


When I read that I couldn't help but wonder if you had any anscestors from Maine. :-)

---

Rick Holt

rick.holt@East.Sun.COM

..Insert clever .sig here...

Xref: sparky talk.origins:11091 sci.skeptic:16169
From: kmagnacca@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Shroud exposed at early date (Tim O'Neill)
Date: 9 Sep 92 20:53:03 GMT
Organization: Wesleyan University

In article <1992Sep4.171218.9734@engage.pko.dec.com>, ed_eck@milkwy.enet.dec.com writes:
> 
> Additionally, from the pictures I've seen, the shroud "blood" is red.
> 
> Dried blood is brown.
> 
   I recall a National Geographic article a few years back in which one of the
researchers confirmed that it was hemoglobin.  Have his results been
discredited?

Karl Magnacca
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: salem@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Bruce Salem)
Subject: Re: Question for Creationists
Organization: Stanford Univ. Earth Sciences
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 04:05:05 GMT

In article <1992Sep11.134308.22623@city.cs> lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) writes:
>In article <1992Sep11.012715.28286@cbnewsm.cb.att.com> mls@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (mike.siemon) writes:
>>Lionel -- this kind of thing is called _non sequitur_, and it tends to
>>make its users look like clowns (and only rarely like clever and enter-
>>taining ones.)
>
>I don't do much gardening but I did once use a pair to cut the
>grass before we had a lawnmower. Anyway I don't have any now so
>am I strictly _non sequitur_?

	Time was that ordinary folk didn't read Scripture for themselves,
the Catholic Clergy interpeted it for them as part of the Mass, and still
do. But then came the printing press and translations into local language
that participated this thing called the Reformation and now any oaf who
could read could pretend to be not only a Biblical scholar, but his own
direct line to God.

	The new freedom to read the Word for himself, along with the
flood of information available in cheap books of every description,
allowed for most of the changes we call modern. It also allowed for
people to quote Scripture with no argument, no discussion, and no logic,
and what is more, the spirit of Toleration, note caps, made this, OK.

	Now, having made such practice the mode for every little, and
some greater sects, of Christianity ever since the Reformation, these
sects have become a refuge from learning, sound argument, and just
plain liking people who think otherwise.

	The challenge to such foolishness of the older Scholastic
tradition, or anything that smacks of Theology is just lost, especially
in the provinces, but especially when truth is reduced to clash of
opinion and appeals to faith, alone. Nothing is decidable when nothing
can be agreed upon. Argument is futile when the only recourse is to
authority, your's against mine.

	And so, who speaks for Man of God? The Cleric or the Oaf?
Prehaps neither.

Bruce Salem


Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: macroevolution
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 21:59:12 GMT

In article <1992Sep4.110341.27321@cs.joensuu.fi>, asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti
Siivonen) writes:
> 	Have you read the little blue book "Life - how did it get here, by 
> 	evolution or creation ?". 

  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

  In other words: yes.

 |  __L__   *******************************
-|-  ___    * Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub   *
 |  | o |   * kv07@iastate.edu            *
 |/ `---'   * Iowa State University       *
/|   ___    * Math Department             *
 |  |___|   * 400 Carver Hall             *
 |  |___|   * Ames, IA  50011             *
 J  _____   *******************************
From: isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)
Subject: Re: Question for Creationists
Reply-To: isaak@aurora.com (Mark Isaak)
Organization: The Aurora Group
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 22:55:30 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.130157.3954@city.cs> lionel@cs.city.ac.uk (Lionel Tun) writes:
>[The purpose of mankind is] To worship God.

Why, then, are you a creationist?  Do you believe that God can only
be found in the Bible, and not in ice cores, DNA sequences, and
fossilized trilobites?  How are you worshipping God when you refuse
to take these and other aspects of Him at face value, and decide
instead that your own interpretation of them must be correct?  How
are you worshipping God when you have closed yourself to the beauty
and elegance of plate tectonics, genetic recombination, and population
dynamics, or do you think that they also are not a part of God?
If you think God's presence is heaven, why are you denying yourself so
much of that presence?  I'm sure you must believe in God, but
believing in God is a far cry from worshipping Him.
-- 
Mark Isaak           "Every generation thinks it has the answers, and every
isaak@aurora.com      generation is humbled by nature." - Philip Lubin
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: zuber_rg@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Robert G Zuber)
Subject: Re: dawkins/_the selfish
Organization: HAC - Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
Distribution: talk
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 21:40:21 GMT

In article <1992Sep4.929.17252@dosgate> "herb sutter" <herb.sutter@canrem.com> writes:
>Here again I
>mean not just a new species (which has been observed), but something of a
>different `kind'.

	What is a kind? What is your definition?
	Name two animals that you claim could not have shared a common
ancestor in the past.

>Herb

Rob Zuber
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: zuber_rg@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Robert G Zuber)
Subject: Re: macroevolution
Organization: HAC - Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 18:03:36 GMT

In article <1992Sep7.162127.4115@cs.joensuu.fi> asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi (Antti Siivonen) writes:
>	It's a brief, comprehensive introduction to the evolutionary 
>	questions in an easy-to-read-form. As such it doesn't go too far to
>	individual cases, and thus successfully maintains the view to evolution
>	in entirety. 

	Didn't Correy (sp?) Carrol (sp?) e-mail you a list of objections to
that book? Care to comment about them?

>		Andreas - Siperian Sirri   Siberian Stint

Rob Zuber
From: klein@frith.egr.msu.edu (Jeffrey Klein)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Antti's word
Date: 11 Sep 92 20:10:17 GMT
Organization: Michigan State University College of Stunt Piloting

In article <ksand-100992171416@wintermute.apple.com> ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik) writes:
>In article <1992Sep9.155714.13297@cs.joensuu.fi>, asiivo@cs.joensuu.fi
>(Antti Siivonen) wrote:
>> 
>> 	bimbo, jughead
>
>Speaking about 'bimbo', doesn't it show that language itself
>evolves, and with the advent of Hollywood stars lacking certain
>intelligence compensated other ways our language got a new
>word. In other words, evolution. Thanks Antti for pointing this out.

>Please, I'm not advocating the use of the word bimbo, in my
>humble opinion why didn't we create a similar ugly word 
>about dumb men with blonde hair?
>
Some time ago, MTV viewers voted Dan Quayle as 'Bimbo of the Decade'.

(As I recall, Bimbo was the name of a [male] dog who starred in 
 Fleischer Bros. cartoons of the early 30's, before they came up 
 with Betty Boop.  I don't know how it got its present meaning - 
 have to go check a slang dictionary, I guess.)

-- 
Jeff Klein             | "Happily, Ral doffs his outer clothing for a
Browsing Boy of the LNH|  refreshing dip in one of the dangerous 
klein@kira.egr.msu.edu |  chemical vats." - Ty Templeton 
Xref: sparky talk.origins:11149 alt.atheism:16952 alt.fan.dan-quayle:3544 sci.skeptic:16235
From: kmagnacca@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Newsgroups: talk.origins,alt.atheism,alt.fan.dan-quayle,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: worthless comic strips
Date: 10 Sep 92 19:11:43 GMT
Organization: Wesleyan University

In article <ysVVqB1w165w@mintir.new-orleans.la.us>, elendil@mintir.new-orleans.la.us (Edward J. Branley) writes:
> kachun@astro.as.arizona.edu (Ka Chun Yu) writes:
> 
>> If they want a semi-balanced view, newspapers should rerun old "Bloom County"
>> strips (like they've been rerunning old "Doonesbury"'s lately).  At least
>> the humor will be subtler and funnier than "B.C."
>>
> 
> I think they weren't running the old Doonesburys by choice.  Based on last
> week's Sunday strip, it looks like Trudeau put together a ton of Perot stuff
> that had to be scratch when The Great Quitter decided to quit.

   They didn't.  Trudeau went on vacation (or as our paper put it, "hiatus")

Karl
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Holden Numbering
Date: 10 Sep 92 20:18:42 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Sep5.230112.21158@smds.com> rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:
|In article <1010@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
|>In article <2890@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
|
|>|Nonetheless, for a creature such as a supersaur or ultrasaur to have held 
|>|its head out horizontally would have required musculature it didn't begin
|>|to have.  Were such a creature to have 30,000 lbs of mass from the shoulders
|>|outwards, and this seems conservative since it weighed 360,000 lbs, and a
|>|center of gravity 15' out from the shoulders for this 30,000 neck, which
|>|also seems conservative, then it was looking at 450,000 ft. lbs. of torque.
|
|>A 15 ton neck on a 60 ton dinosaur!?!  Get real!
|>If a diplodocid's thin neck weighed *half* of that I would be surprised.
|
|Er, your numbers don't match.  Ted is claiming a 15 ton neck on a 180 ton
|dinosaur.  If I recall correctly supersaur and ultrasaur are brachiosaurids;

Well, Ted is still trying to claim they were brachiosaurids, but most
paleontologists have now concluded they were actually diplodocids.
[Now, to add some nomenclatural confusion, an oriental (?Japanese)
paleontologist *formally* named a recently discovered oriental sauropod
'Ultrasaurus", thus precluding the use of that name for the American
beast - rule of priority don't you know, and the oriental one is apparently
only distantly to the american one].

|>In addition, much of the support would come from the bones, not the muscles.
|>Sauropod neck vertebrae (and back vertebrae) were *strongly* interlocking,
|>so that the weight could be transmitted through the body to the feet without
|>muscular intervention.
|
|Permit me to be somewhat skeptical here.  I grant that the vertebrae were
|strongly interlocked, and that forces can be redistributed.  None the less
|the horizontal neck implies large shear forces that bone does not handle
|well.  Think tendons.  Tendons are good for handling tension loading --
|much more so than either bones or muscle.

Oops, you are right.  I forgot that.  And sauropods *do* have rather a
hefty batch of tendons running along the tops of the vertebrae.

I have seen them compared to cranes(the machines) on that basis.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: kring@efes.physik.uni-kl.de (Thomas Kettenring)
Subject: Re: Fred Hoyle followup (ignore if redundant)REGISTER
Organization: FB Physik, Universitaet Kaiserslautern, Germany
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 18:51:57 GMT

In article <1992Sep11.093212.202747@uctvax.uct.ac.za>, watkins@uctvax.uct.ac.za writes:
>In article <987@tdat.teradata.COM>, swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>>In article <BtpE2B.1no.2@cs.cmu.edu>lindsay+@cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) writes:
>>|
>>|>A theory which postulates an unknown physical process is supposed to be
>>|>taken seriously??
>>|
>>|Well, that's not fair. He postulated a process which explained the
>>|known data, just as Maxwell and Rutherford did, 'back when. His
>>|wasn't the only suggestion which fit the data, and when better data
>>|came in, the Hoyle C-field no longer fit, and was dropped. That's the
>>|way science goes. In his day, he was a good astronomer.
>>
>>Yep, in his day.  But when he clung to his steady state universe long
>>after the evidence refuted it soundly he stopped being one.
>>
>>The guy seems to be about as unable to drop a cherished theory as
>>a Creationist.
>>Stanley.Friesen
>Or as an Evolutionist? :-)

This would have been a modestly witty remark if there were no evidence for
evolution, or evidence against it.  As it is, it is an utterly ignorant and
silly remark.  Or do you perhaps have any evidence against evolution nobody else
knows of?  In that case I'll not only take my above statement back as soon as
you post said evidence but also tell everybody who wants to know that you should
be on the next list of Nobel Prize winners.

-- 
thomas kettenring, 2 dan, kaiserslautern, germany
Science is like democracy - it's not perfect, but it's the best thing available.
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Homosexuality & Evolution
Followup-To: talk.origins
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<tyre.716061838@sfu.ca> <95644@bu.edu>
Date: 13 Sep 92 01:05:15

Here's another theory of the evolution of homosexuality.

1. Humans or some human ancestor evolved a harem form of sexuality.
A dominant male ruled the females.  The surplus males went off
into the bush.  Harem societies are common in animals in which
the male is substantially larger than the female.

2. As intelligence advanced, or maybe just arms capable of carrying
food to a camp, it became possible for females to stay in one place
while males foraged.  This permitted larger families than those in
which the female has to carry the young till they can keep up.

3. This made the labor of the excess males useful, and what evolved
was their feminization and sexual domination by the dominant male.
If this is correct, the primary form of homsexuality is the
domination of adolescents by adult males.

4. Tribes of this kind would be defeated by tribes in which every
male was a warrior.  Homosexuality was then biologically suppressed
but only incompletely.

Could this theory be tested?  Perhaps if there were enough
catastrophes killing whole families and fossils could be obtained,
the age and sex distribution would tell the tale.

--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
From: aaron@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: "Shaving down" in swimming -- no origins involved
Date: 10 Sep 92 09:54:16 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

James G. Acker (jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov) wrote:
: 	Having minimal body hair and being a competitive swimmer, it would
: seem that shaving it off would have limited benefits for me.  Au contraire!
: "Shaving down" is the culmination of tapering for a big event, which
: also includes more rest, better nutrition, more anaerobic "sprint" 
: workouts, etc.  "Shaving" is the last step.

	Having a perfectly smooth surface would likely have a deleterious
	effect on swimming performance as roughness help sets up a boundary
	layer that improves the hydro- (or aero-) dynamics of a body. eg.
	the dimples in a golf ball. I remember reading somewhere recently
	that new fabrics for swimming wear have been developed with the
	appropriate characteristics. Shaving presumably simply has a 
	psychological effect (There was a article in New Scientist of about
	two years ago outlining the results of a study that seemed to suggest

		Aaron Turner		aaron@minster.york.ac.uk	
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Holden Numbering
Date: 4 Sep 92 20:05:29 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <2890@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
|In article <KAI.92Aug31094228@kai.nada.kth.se>, kai@kai.nada.kth.se (Kai-Mikael J-Aro) writes:
|
|They carry their necks almost straight up;  it's the only way they can deal
|with the weight.  One minor problem:  the blood pressure it takes to get blood
|to their heads is immense.  It would blow our vascular systems apart.

But more important, they have *valves* in the neck that prevent back-flow.

|McGowan and other experts are now claiming that sauropods had to have held
|their necks our horizontally, that had they held them as high as the bones
|might appear to allow for, there would have been no getting blood to their
|brains.  The heart needed would not have fit inside their bodies.

*Some* sauropods held thier necks horizontally, others vertically.
The diplodicids had horizontal necks, the brachiosaurids, vertical.

A four-chambered heart, combined with giraffe style valves, and perhaps
secondary pumping stations, in the neck would solve these problems quite
adequately.  [Arteries assist the heart anyway, even in humans, so the
switch to secondary arterial pumps in the neck is a minor one].

|Nonetheless, for a creature such as a supersaur or ultrasaur to have held 
|its head out horizontally would have required musculature it didn't begin
|to have.  Were such a creature to have 30,000 lbs of mass from the shoulders
|outwards, and this seems conservative since it weighed 360,000 lbs, and a
|center of gravity 15' out from the shoulders for this 30,000 neck, which
|also seems conservative, then it was looking at 450,000 ft. lbs. of torque.

A 15 ton neck on a 60 ton dinosaur!?!  Get real!
If a diplodocid's thin neck weighed *half* of that I would be surprised.

In addition, much of the support would come from the bones, not the muscles.
Sauropod neck vertebrae (and back vertebrae) were *strongly* interlocking,
so that the weight could be transmitted through the body to the feet without
muscular intervention.

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com