HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Citecheck Hell)
Subject: Re: Speeding in Iowa
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 00:50:00 GMT

In article <1992Sep14.145550.27105@unislc.uucp> dw@unislc.uucp (Dan Wright) writes:
>I don't get it, even with the grandmother bit thrown in.

My vote for new a.f.u. motto.

Ted "what happens when a car thief finds her?" Frank
-- 
           .........................................................
          ted frank | thf2@midway.uchicago.edu | standard disclaimers
         the university of chicago law school, chicago, illinois 60637
         here i sit looking for a warming smile in a house of cold wit
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: andrew@venus.resntl.bhp.com.au
Subject: Re: British Paper Money
Organization: BHP Research, Newcastle Laboratories
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 05:11:58 GMT

In article <Sep.13.20.08.56.1992.21845@cadenza.rutgers.edu>, masticol@cadenza.rutgers.edu (Steve Masticola) writes:
> avyfdvg@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (David Gatenby) writes:
> 
>>Detectives from Dorset Fraud Squad told my father (who then was in the
>>Regimental Police) that the ink on genuine British banknotes never dries. Is
>>this true?
> 
> I don't know about British money, but if you take an American
> $whatever.00 bill and rub it vigorously on a white sheet of paper,
> some of the ink will rub off. I heard that this is a test for
> counterfeiting; it won't happen with counterfeit inks. (A Middlesex
> County transit guide with a green cover verifies this.)
> 
When the new, plastic Australian five dollar note was introduced, amongst
considerable protest about the replacement of Carolyn Chisholm's portrait
with that of the Queen's, it did not take those disgruntled by the change
long to find out that a little concerted rubbing would remove the Queen's
face altogether. (The "discovery" was widely reported in the media - the 
Reserve Bank took the particular note reported to see if it was "defective"
and that is the last I, at least, heard of it.)
 
> ObUL: The Germans, during World War II, produced a perfect set of
> counterfeit plates for British #5 notes, to try to destabilize the
> currency. It could have happened, so it must be true.
> 
In a recent broadcast of an American program about counterfeiting here,
there was footage of divers recovering those plates along with (insert large
amount) of fivers from a lake somewhere in the Alps.

Andrew "I saw it on TV, SIMBT" Lewis
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: swaim@owlnet.rice.edu (Michael Parks Swaim)
Subject: Re: Colour perception (was: Death by sneezing)
Organization: Rice University
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 20:26:35 GMT

In article <fq5pbb4@csv.warwick.ac.uk> csuah@warwick.ac.uk (~WISP at CU~) writes:
>In article <Z3umqB1w165w@dogbox.acme.gen.nz> dogbowl@dogbox.acme.gen.nz (dogbowl) writes:
>>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 very much doubt this. (All of it) If you can't read a traffic light, you
>have to be vertically-blind, as well as color-blind. The position of the light
>in the stack, and the fact that you can tell which light is on or off, is all
>you need to use traffic lights.

  What if the lights are horizontal, like some here in Houston? (I've seen
them horizontal in other U.S. cities as well.) I think that the left one's
red, but I'm not sure. Then there are the ones with four or five lights
on them, also...


-- 
Mike Swaim            | I can see clearly now my brain is gone.
swaim@owlnet.rice.edu | I can see all the bicycles in my way.
Rupp doesn't even know who I am,
 much less care what I think
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: lmh@world.std.com (Larry M Headlund)
Subject: Re: Marching Band ULs needed
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 23:15:02 GMT

In article <1992Sep11.180704.28218@panix.com> eck@panix.com (Mark Eckenwiler) writes:
	(deleted)
>
>In one Charles Ives composition -- I think it's "Three Places in New
>England" -- there's a passage in which two sections of the orchestra
>play different marches in different tempos at the same time.  (Typical
>Ives weirdness, you might say, and you'd be right.)  The lore I've
>heard is that as a child, Ives witnessed 2 Fourth-of-July bands
>(playing different marches, etc.) inadvertently converging at an
>intersection, which experience so thrilled (scarred?) Young Chuck that
>he incorporated it into his musical compositions.
>
	I have heard a similar story about the late composer Glass.

Larry "I observed 4:50 of silence when I learned of his demise" Headlund

-- 
Larry Headlund  lmh@world.std.com    Eikonal Systems (617) 482-3345
From: DSTEPHEN@cmsa.gmr.com
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: One, Two, Many revisited.
Date: 15 Sep 92 19:00:26 GMT
Organization: GM Research Labs

In article <CINDY.92Sep12173204@solan10.solan.unit.no>
cindy@solan10.solan.unit.no (Cynthia Kandolf) writes:
>words for numerals:  Australian aboriginal languages, for example, are
>often restricted to a few general words (such as 'all', 'many', few'),
>'one', and 'two'.  In such cases, it is sometimes said that the people

I heard the "one, two, many" bit was true for eskimo languages, the theory
being that eskimos seldom see more than two of anything.  While I am willing
to believe that this is untrue, I did find the following passage in a Jack
London story ("An Odyssey of the North"):

"I had thought it an easy task to find him I sought, once I got among his own
people; and when we raised land one day, and passed between a gateway of the
sea to a port, I looked for perhaps as many schooners as there were fingers
to my hands..."

The speaker is a character names Naass, from the Aleutian island of Akatan.
The choice of words suggests that he didn't have a direct concept of numbers
like five or ten.  I don't know if London is accurately recording the speech
of a real person, but why would he make up a trivial thing like that?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: harris@drvax3.msfc.nasa.gov (Mitch Harris)
Subject: Re: eating minority racial groups (was Re: Eating Dogs)
Organization: NASA/MSFC
Date:  7 Sep 92 00:43:16 GMT

flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) writes:

>jlysagh@hubcap.clemson.edu (james joseph lysaght) writes:
>>This was a poor neighborhood but the families were all given seriously
>>expensinve cars and fancy homes and all sorts of luxuries to replace and
>>compensate their losses.        


It happened in Philly, sorta. When the row houses were completed, a
couple of local news shows filmed the insides of the houses. Very
nice...wall-to-wall carpeting, nice interioirs (the exteriors were
pretty nice, too). I didn't hear anything about cars, or toher luxuries,
tho I know they got some compensation for damages to the houses. They
successfully sued the city, too, but I don't know how much each family
ended up getting.
 >Give me a break.  When has an American government ever done something like this?
--
Mitch Harris                           |  New Technology Inc.
(205)-544-2846                         |  700 Boulevard South, #401
drvax3!harris@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov    |  Huntsville, AL  35802
From: stirling@ozrout.uucp (Stirling Westrup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: See No Evil
Summary: Whats the story behind these monkeys?
Date: 13 Sep 92 03:53:02 GMT
Organization: Andre P. Ozrout


I occured to me recently that I don't know the story behind the three
monkeys who sit, the first covering his eyes, the second his ears, and the
third his mouth.  I assume these characters are from some story or other,
but which one?  I even heard a song about them years ago that has the
refrain:

"See no evil.  Hear no evil.  Speak no evil." is all they say.

So whats the scoop on these guys?
-- 
||    BUNGEE SIDEWAYS!                              o   )))
||                                                 /-- ///
|P~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\_  \\\      __ -_
||    stirling@ozrout.uucp                                 ((( (_)T(_)
From: 01sybok@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Third to be bombed...
Date: 9 Sep 92 20:35:27 GMT
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <79336@ut-emx.uucp>, llama@pooh.cc.utexas.edu (sine nomine) writes:
> B.M. Buck (bmb1021@ultb.isc.rit.edu) wrote:
> 
> 
> from reading the responses, it seems you could come up with a reason
> for almost any city...
> 

Yeah, I guess so. I heard Halifax, Nova Scotia was third on the list, 
because we have the deepest port in North America, and are therefore a strategic
shipping line.
Later!
Mike "Maybe the Soviets couldn't make up their minds..."
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: hal@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Hal Wadleigh)
Subject: Re: Third to be bombed...
Summary: Really from "third-level target"
Reply-To: hal@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Hal Wadleigh)
Organization: Interleaf, Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 92 16:16:53 GMT

I strongly suspect that the vast number of "third on the list" sites were all
on "the third list" or third-level targets.

First-level targets: ICBM sites, LRSB bases, and major C3 centers.
Second-level targets: Other military & government bases and C3 centers.
Third-level targets: Any targets of strategic importance.

By the time you get to the third level, you've covered just about everything
big enough to have a name.

Most of Colorado, BTW, gets first-target status thanks to NORAD.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: PAPAI@kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu (Jonathan Papai)
Subject: Re: Third to be bombed...
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 15:55:57 GMT

in Message-ID: <1992Sep4.184825.18056@ultb.isc.rit.edu>
bmb1021@ultb.isc.rit.edu (B.M. Buck ) writes:

>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)

	Add Columbus Oh. (I'm not making this up) to the list.
This even was popular with the local media.  We have Compuserve,
Battelle Institute, Chemical abstracts, and the University here,
the center of the information universe I guess. It's just a
desperate attempt to seem important, IMHO.

	Why do you suppose it's always third, never second or
fourth.

J.P. "tertiary metropolitan destruction" Papai
Papai@kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu
From: csuah@warwick.ac.uk (~WISP at CU~)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: What makes an urban legend work?
Date: 8 Sep 92 09:20:42 GMT
Organization: Computing Services, Warwick University, UK

In article <26150@dog.ee.lbl.gov> TWChan@lbl.gov (Terry Chan) writes:
>obrien@netcom.com (Robert O'Brien) writes:
>
>  +I doubt you were serious, Russ, but you've made me realize I didn't pay
>  +a lot of attention to the 'muzzle' of the gun.  I think it was about nine
>  +inches inside diameter.  I was led to believe the chickens were chosen
>  +such that they would approximate about a certain percentile of the seagull
>  +population, smaller than 'average' but I don't know by how much.  I
>  +would guess 25-30th pctl.
>
>Is this pre- or post- Alka-Seltzer?
>

Pre Alka-Seltzer, surely. It would be a brave man whoi'd stand in front of an
F-16 to cram some down an oncoming bird's throat...

Seriously for a mo: aren't chickens at least as heavy as the average seagull?
I know their dimensions are smaller, but given that they are bred for food
rather than function, and so consist almost entirely of succulent cutlets, I
would have thought their mass would be at least the same as an average
seagull, if not more.

[no, snopes, no references, nor knowledge of the subject, just a question
based on observation from afar/from an oven...]

The Wisp.
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
     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: lawson@acuson.com (Drew Lawson)
Subject: Re: Third to Be Bombed
Reply-To: lawson@aldia.UUCP (Drew Lawson)
Organization: ACUSON, Mountain View, CA
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 16:59:57 GMT

In article <BuBowG.25u@hatch.socal.com> richg@hatch.socal.com (Rich Greenberg) writes:
>I am really amused by everybody who thinks they will be third.
>Growing up in the shadow of the Big Apple (==New York City),
>we all expected to be second, right after Washington DC.
>
>Anybody who lives/lived in DC care to comment?


I spent my high school years about 15 miles (straight line) from the
Pentagon.  On the few occasions that I thought about it, I took comfort
in knowing that I wouldn't have to worry about the struggles of the
aftermath.  In fact, I figured I wouldn't even have time to realize
what was going on.

-- 
Drew Lawson                      If you're not part of the solution,
lawson@acuson.com                you're part of the precipitate
From: rxh6@po.CWRU.Edu (Randall Holt)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: A Possible Russian UL
Date: 14 Sep 1992 22:00:43 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc12.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, mayojr@cs.rose-hulman.edu (John R. Mayo), writes
 
>This summer, I went to Russia. While I was in St. Petersburg, I heard
>that in Moscow, some enterprising beer distributors were diluting the
>beer and replacing half of it with water and soap (the soap makes it
>foam). Anyone else been there and heard this?
 
>(FYI: Russian beer is yeast beer, and goes bad after 5 days. The date
>of manufacture is stamped on the label, or on the cap, and after 5
>days, a nice layer of fur begins growing on the bottom of the .5-liter
>bottle (INSIDE the bottle, of course).)
 
ALL beer is yeast beer (except NA beer). Large scale manufacturing
removes the yeast. As any who have dabbled in home-brewery know, the
final step after fermentation is to bottle the beer. Within 5 days the 
remaining yeast will become dormant and settle to the bottom. This sediment
is not harmful, when you open the beer, ya just don't pour it all out. Even
if you think it is fur - it can't be. Mold needs O2 to grow. It could grow
on TOP of the beer, if the bottle was left open, but the yeast will use all
of the O2 in the beer within the first few hours of fermentation.
As for the soap/water recipe for beer, I've never tried it, I like lagers.
I do know that even a trace of soap will kill the yeast, which means that the
dilution would have to occur just prior to bottling. But, then the beer would
be flat, as the carbonation occurs during those 5 days of settling. But I 
remember the stories of Italian wines and Ethylene Glycol, so I guess I 
wouldn't put it past any one to try selling 'sudsy suds'.

try rec.crafts.homebrew sometime.
-- 
Randall W. Holt - rxh6@cwru.po.edu     |   Sturgeon's First Law   
Dept. Radiology MetroHealth Hosp.      |   '90% of everything is crap'
Dept. Biomedical Engineering, CWRU     |   
(216) 778-8296                         |
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: neath@brazil.psych.purdue.edu (Ian Neath)
Subject: Re: Colour perception (was: Death by sneezing)
Organization: n: the act or process of organizing or of being organized
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 16:46:53 GMT

Lots of people wrote about traffic lights, and one of them wrote:

> I very much doubt this. (All of it) If you can't read a traffic light,
> you have to be vertically-blind, as well as color-blind.

There are several lights here in Beautiful Lafayette, Indiana, that
resemble the following.  Try to guess the colors:

        -----
        |   |
        |   |
        -----
    -----    -----
    |   |    |   |
    |   |    |   |
    -----    -----
    -----    -----
    |   |    |   |
    |   |    |   |
    -----    -----
    -----    -----
    |   |    |   |
    |   |    |   |
    -----    -----


(Hint:  top one is red).

Obul:  There are no yellow lights in Britain, only amber.


--
    Ian Neath, PhD     | There are four kinds of people in this world:
neath@psych.purdue.edu | cretins, fools, morons and lunatics - U. Eco
From: masticol@cadenza.rutgers.edu (Steve Masticola)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: British Paper Money
Date: 14 Sep 92 00:08:57 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

avyfdvg@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (David Gatenby) writes:

>Detectives from Dorset Fraud Squad told my father (who then was in the
>Regimental Police) that the ink on genuine British banknotes never dries. Is
>this true?

I don't know about British money, but if you take an American
$whatever.00 bill and rub it vigorously on a white sheet of paper,
some of the ink will rub off. I heard that this is a test for
counterfeiting; it won't happen with counterfeit inks. (A Middlesex
County transit guide with a green cover verifies this.)

NotUL: U.S. currency is some of the easiest in the world to
counterfeit, because the design is so obsolete.

ObUL: The Germans, during World War II, produced a perfect set of
counterfeit plates for British #5 notes, to try to destabilize the
currency. It could have happened, so it must be true.

Steve "Send me YOUR cash for verification" masticol@cs.rutgers.edu.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: dooley@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Kevin Dooley)
Subject: Re: stupid cop tricks & t
Organization: University of Toronto Physics/Astronomy/CITA
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 19:42:40 GMT

All of this reminds me of an incident which I actually saw occur because
it happened right across the street from where I used to live.  This was
in Knoxville, TN.  I will put in lots of gratuitous details so that you  
will know that this isn't merely an urban legend.  It actually happened.

Our neighbor's aging green Carmen Ghia was parked across the street in
a legal parking zone on the street.  She went away for a few days, leaving 
it parked there.  While she was gone, city crews came along and put up
signs which said "No Parking".  As if that weren't bad enough, they came
along the next day, while she was still away, and put in parking meters.
They painted the stalls on the pavement.  Naturally, she wasn't parked 
in a legitimate parking stall because they didn't exist when she had 
parked several days earlier, so they actually got paint all over her tires.
Then they gave her a ticket for being illegally parked.  When she still
had not moved the car by the next day, they gave it another ticket and
eventually towed it away and charged her the towing charge.  I didn't 
hear whether she did or not, but all of us who lived nearby urged her 
to refuse to pay and argue it in court.   There is no way she should have 
had to pay that.

A short time later, another neighbor, who shall remain nameless, dismantled
the parking meters and threw them into a nearby public toilet.  It didn't
take very long before they were back in place, of course.

I used to wonder why the local city officials and police down there were 
so unbelievably corrupt until I found out that their typical salaries 
were on the order of $20K/year.  Paying your cops that poorly sounds to
me like an encouragement to ... (how shall we put this) ... tipping.

Kevin
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: "ted trost" <ted.trost@canrem.com>
Subject: stupid cop tricks & t
Reply-To: "ted trost" <ted.trost@canrem.com>
Organization: Canada Remote Systems
Distribution: alt
Date: 13 Sep 92 16:03:06 EST


JD>Larry Headlund (lmh@world.std.com) writes:
>In article <Sep.7.12.48.51.1992.9215#math.rutgers.edu> cromar@math.rutgers.edu
>(Scott Cromar) writes:
>>
>  I was David Brinkley on ABC's _This Week with David Brinkley_,
>Sunday, September 6, 1992.
>  Where he got it from I don't know.

JD>Wow, *you* were David Brinkley?  Can you be George Will next Sunday?

JD>The story actually has pretty high credibility.  The Washington Post
JD>reported the other day that all the traffic ticket appeals people (not
JD>a real court) are being fired and replaced by Mayor Kelly, most likely
JD>because they are dismissing too many tickets on appeal, and the

Isn't that going to be a lot of work for Mayor Kelly?  I'm sure that
being mayor is a lot of work, and now responsibility for traffic
ticket appeals too?

Glass houses and all that...

Ted VE3TTD  ted.trost@canrem.com
---
  DeLuxe 1.21 #10288  What do you think, sirs?
--
Canada Remote Systems  - Toronto, Ontario, Canadas
World's Largest PCBOARD System - 416-629-7000/629-7044
From: arielle@NeoSoft.com (Stephanie da Silva)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Mail Blocks
Date: 16 Sep 92 02:27:42 GMT
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900

In article <1959b5INN8c9@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> rxh6@po.CWRU.Edu (Randall Holt) writes:
> 
> My favorite was the Alaskan who wanted to build a house in the deep northern
> forest, but couldn't afford the quarter of a million to ship the building
> materials. Instead, he individually wrapped, addressed, stamped and mailed
> 50,000 cinder blocks. 

That's very similar to the one I heard (actually, I recall reading it 
somewhere but don't remember where). 

Some family was moving *from* Alaska to the mainland somewhere and instead of
hiring a moving van, they mailed all their belongings through the USPS.
Postage cost them like half of what the moving company would have charged
and only suffered a broken lamp or two.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From:  (Michael Snider)
Subject: Re: there's a WHAT in my head?
Followup-To: alt.folklore.urban
Organization: BNR
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 23:48:52 GMT

In article <88223@netnews.upenn.edu>, crawford@ben.dev.upenn.edu (Lauren L.
Crawford) wrote:
> 
> In article <bakc.128.715957551@giraffe.ru.ac.za> bakc@giraffe.ru.ac.za (MR KR COMAN) writes:
> >>
> [lots of extremely gross-out stuff deleted]
 
> >remember reading of an Indian soldier in WW2 in Burma who had got one of 
> >these in him.  At the hospital its little head (or whatever) had popped out 
> >thu his skin.  This extremity was then carefully wrapped around a stick, and 
> >day by day another couple of inches would emerge to be teased out and "
> >sticked" -- the idea was not to pull it out in one full go 'cos then it 
> >would die and cause immediate infection.    Quite an idea for a pet, I'm 
> >sure animal rights activists would've given their blessing! 
> 
> 
nasty stuff about sand-fleas deleted--
 
> If you don't dig it out, you end up with fleas hatching out of your
> toes, and that is *not* pleasant, particularly if you're trying to
> impress a date.  
> 
> If your story about the Indian soldier is true, there's another whole
> realm of yuckiness going on there.  Can't imagine what critter that is.
> 
>   

Picked this up on alt.tasteless not long ago__
[copied article]