HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dw@unislc.uucp (Dan Wright)
Subject: Re: Why crescent moons? (was Re: You are humble and loveable. CHOMP!)
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Organization: Unisys Corporation SLC
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 20:22:56 GMT

Geoff Miller (geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM) wrote:
: In article <1992Aug26.194759.216@sei.cmu.edu> dbidwa@sei.cmu.edu 
: (Daniel Bidwa) writes:
: 
: >Okay, why *do* outhouses have crescent moons cut into the doors?
: 
: Well, what other shape is evocative of nature while (a) looking reasonably
: decorative, (b) not creating too large a hole, and (c) being easy to cut?
: 

Naked butts are sometimes called "moons", due to their being
white, shiny, and crescent-shaped.  The outhouse is the place 
where people bare their buns.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: billn@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com (bill nelson)
Subject: Re: Buildings and Water (was College Pranks)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Corvallis, Oregon USA
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 23:09:42 GMT

lawson@acuson.com (Drew Lawson) writes:
: This is in response to all those who claim that a building structurally
: cannot support the weight of a foot or two of water in a shower room.
: 
: How in this different from a storage room willed with stacks of 3-4 5
: gallon bottles of water?  I've seen that at other than ground level
: many times.  Of course, I'm not saying that it wouldn't leak.

Putting the water around the perimeter of the room is different from
distributing it evenly over the total floor area. 

Industrial storage rooms would be built to a higher standard than the
bathroom would be.

Bill
From: lawson@acuson.com (Drew Lawson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: The Flat Earth Society???
Date: 27 Aug 92 21:59:16 GMT
Reply-To: lawson@aldia.UUCP (Drew Lawson)
Organization: ACUSON, Mountain View, CA

In article <1992Aug25.113121.14999@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>,
flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) writes:
>A friend tells me of a rumour that there exists an organization known as The
>Flat Earth Society, whose members "still" believe that the earth is actually
>flat, in the ancient tradition.

I once saw an ad/pamphlet/something for the society.  They have the
motto, "Birds Fly.  Men Drink."  And a logo depicting a soused bird in
a martini glass.

-- 
Drew Lawson                      If you're not part of the solution,
lawson@acuson.com                you're part of the precipitate
From: ahill@boi.hp.com (Andy Hill)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Just One Calorie...?
Date: 28 Aug 92 22:23:00 GMT
Reply-To: ahill@boi.hp.com
Organization: LaserJets by Bill & Dave
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

dternes@duke.cdc.com (David Ternes) writes:
> Did Tab bite it during the days when mice mainlined saccharin?
> 
As far as I know, Tab is still around (albeit in a very mutant form).
Just hasn't been the same since the FDA outlawed cyclamates.  BTW, are
cyclamates still legal in the Great White North?  There used to be a
thriving cross-border trade in "classic" Tab.

<Sheesh> Showin' my age...
From: cromar@math.rutgers.edu (Scott Cromar)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: The Posh WC
Date: 26 Aug 92 17:55:01 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


The recent spate of bathroom stories reminded me of a classic.  I
assume it's been collected in one of the usual sources, though I don't
recall seeing it.

A friend showed me a third or fourth generation photocopy of the
following story, which she was sure had to be true.

In the story, a woman was planning to move to Switzerland and was
somewhat worried that the town might not have modern toilet
facilities.  (I don't recall whether she was worried about the "deep
splashback "effect, the inspection ledge or what.)  In any case, she
wrote to her prospective landlord asking about the "state of the WC."

The landlord, not being familiar with what a "WC" was, assumed that it
stood for "Westminster Chapel."  He then wrote back a lengthy letter
describing the WC's historic importance, and a recent renovation in
which the seats were reupholstered in velvet.

The article was hilarious, and the letter was written in just the
right way for the appropriate comedic effect.  In fact, the style
reminded me of Mark Twain, but I have't found a copy of the story in
the collections I looked at.  Does anyone know a source for the story?

--Scott "I think it was the same copier they use for the Shergold
letter" Cromar
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: billn@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com (bill nelson)
Subject: Re: You are humble and loveable.  CHOMP!
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Corvallis, Oregon USA
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 23:53:35 GMT

me@csri.toronto.edu (Daniel R. Simon) writes:
: In article <H.FNcwov37Zhc@harvee.billerica.ma.us> scm@harvee.billerica.ma.us writes:
: >>Boy.  You are humble and loveable."  CHOMP!)
: >this is left over from the days when it was common to use coins made of gold.
: >gold is soft enough that chomping a pure gold, or mostly gold, coin, will dent
: >it.  if you can't dent it with your teeth it isn't really gold.
: 
: I find this explanation quite implausible.  Gold coins haven't been in 
: common circulation for a very long time (if they ever were), and the act of

Gold coins were in circulation during the early part of this century - here
in the US.

: biting a coin has a distinctly plebeian flavour, if I may put it that way.
: Moreover, the colloquial phrase "don't take any wooden nickels" suggests a 
: rather less exotic alternative explanation.  Back in the days when coins
: had real value, it might well have been a common practice among counterfeiters
: to coat wooden discs of the appropriate size with some metal, stamp them with
: some approximation of the image of a coin, and try to pass them off.  The
: idea is similar to that of "silvered pennies", meant to be mistaken for dimes,
: of which I have actually seen an example in my lifetime.

Nope. Good try, however. There is no way that a wooden disc could be coated
with metal and even approximate a nickel in weight or looks.

Besides, a nickel would cost more to counterfeit than it was worth - unless it
was one of the rare ones.

I believe the saying came from the "Trade nickels" that used to be issued by
merchants. These were wooden and only useable at the issuing establishment.

By the same token, no one would silver a penny to make it look like a dime.
The expense, in time alone, would make it wasted effort. What you probably
saw was a steel cent. They were made for three years, during the WW II, when 
the stocks of copper were needed for armaments. They were not meant to be
mistaken for dimes - for one thing, pennies are both too thick and to large
in  diameter.

Bill "Were trade nickels the source of a "coined' phrase?" Nelson

From: Tony.Sander@f840.n800.z3.fidonet.org (Tony Sander)
Sender: acsnet@csource.oz.au
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Help Me Identify This Mcdonaldland Character
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 08:15:16 +1000

mm>  The NAME is definitely Hamburgler, but on the commercials he was
mm>  a robber.
mm>  The post was trying to point the misuse of the word burglar.

His name is "Hamburglar", not "Hamburgler"!
                     ^                 ^

--


 * Origin: Oblivion. Masquerade Beta/Support. (08) 2871938 V.32 (3:800/840)
From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Cellular Frequencies
Date: 27 Aug 92 23:57:36 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Reply-To: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
Summary: An ode to a cathode ray tube
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

>>Huh?  If memory serves, I've never seen a television UHF dial that went
>>beyond 60 in the first place.  And I know for a fact that I've never
>>heard of a UHF station higher than 54 (the local UHF PBS affiliate).

In days of old when viewers were bold
And cellular wasn't invented,
The UHF tuners, 'fore FCC pruners,
Reached 83, as intended.

The channels were numerous and old TVs dubious
As frequency headed toward microwave,
So the really high numbers, performance-encumbered,
Were considered a technical signal-grave.

In today's crowded spectrum, if you want to protect 'em,
You have to show usage conspic'usly.
So the end up near gigahertz soon got its just deserts
When allocations were looked at metic'lously.

A handbook -- believe me -- called "World Radio TV"
Can be purchased or sought in the library.
It lists all the channels assigned by the panels
So the argument ought to be temp'rary.

More later than sooner, the click-detent tuner
Supplanted the vernier dial fuss.
That might be correlated with the fact that you stated
About the demise of 70-plus.

But I don't recall ever seeing (however fleeting)
Actual stations that went so high.
Even late-at-night preachers and sci-fi-flick features
Had plenty of channels far closer nigh.

They seemed to work better for the marginal getter
Of signals, with rabbit-ears still in use.
Before random access and cable to the maxes
Made it easy to pull in the higher juice.

So it was no loss -- the Late Late Show dross -- 
When that little-used bandwidth was sacrificed.
And cocooning lawbreakers can eavesdrop on neighbors
With old TV sets that are cheaply priced.

Joe "Spread spectrum -- tastes like butter but only half the calories" Chew
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.urban:22106 misc.legal:16432
From: gfowler@javelin.sim.es.com (Gary Fowler)
Subject: Re: Death by sneezing
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 22:26:09 GMT

ecc_jim@ecc.tased.edu.au writes:

>This was from my mother who is a nurse. Some people (women seem to be the main
>offenders) hold their sneezes back when they occur, that is they block the
>actual flow of air with their hands/mouth/throat.

>My mum told me of a women who did this with a quintuple-sneeze (five in a row)
>and died of a brain haemorrhage.

>Whenever someone holds back a sneeze near me, I tell them this story.

>Any thoughts?


>Jim Palfreyman

>jim@r140.tased.edu.au


In some european countries, such as France, it is considered bad manners to
sneeze or yawn in public.  Therefore they try to supress them.  I don't know
of any high rates of death due to brain hemmorages there.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: st890270@pip.cc.brandeis.edu (LUCIFER)
Subject: Re: What makes an urban legend work?
Reply-To: st890270@pip.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 19:38:31 GMT

The there was the UL that for each can of Coors you buy, the company would
purchase a bullet for the KKK.
From: jimj@cleanplate.EBay.Sun.COM (James D. Jones)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: The Posh WC
Date: 26 Aug 1992 19:14:27 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: cleanplate.ebay.sun.com

In article <Aug.26.13.55.01.1992.1156@math.rutgers.edu> cromar@math.rutgers.edu (Scott Cromar) writes:
 
>The recent spate of bathroom stories reminded me of a classic.  I
>assume it's been collected in one of the usual sources, though I don't
>recall seeing it.

(stuff deleted)

>The landlord, not being familiar with what a "WC" was, assumed that it
>stood for "Westminster Chapel."  He then wrote back a lengthy letter
>describing the WC's historic importance, and a recent renovation in
>which the seats were reupholstered in velvet.

I couldn't tell you where that one came from, but it's at least 10-15 years
old -- I know, because that's when I saw a (many-times-photocopied) copy.  
Someone passed it to me on the job (software company).

About the same time (and on the same job) I was handed a joke-human-resources
memo for Special High Intensity Training (S.H.I.T) on the job.  Full  of lines
like:  "The company has decided to give S.H.I.T to all its employees.  If
you haven't had any yet, tell your supervisor and he'll put you on his
S.H.I.T list."  Like the WC circular, I saw about a 20th-generation photocopy.
Anybody know where _this_ one came from?  It must be fairly wide-spread,
because my father (a shipyard worker) brought a copy home from work a couple
of years later. 

From: joanne@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Joanne Petersen)
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 21:06:28 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: Pencil in Priorities
Organization: Hewlett-Packard PAITC Data Center
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban

Syrup of ipecac is still dispensed today and recommended as something to
keep around when you have toddlers (who eat poisons unintentionally, of
course)..... and you should also always call the poison control center
BEFORE administering the syrup of ipecac, because some poisons (the caustic
acidic type usually) should NOT be regurgitated.

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: stirling@ozrout.uucp (Stirling Westrup)
Subject: Re: Mnemonics
Organization: Andre P. Ozrout
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 10:20:24 GMT

IQTI400@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU (macphil) writes
>In article <1992Aug30.114631.13519@ozrout.uucp>
>stirling@ozrout.uucp (Stirling Westrup) writes:
> 
>>Nevermind the seven deadly sins, you can look them up in any old book.
>>Trying to remember the seven cardinal virtues is the hard one.  Heck, it
>>took me a week of pouring through the stacks of our local library to find
>>out what they were.  (No, I don't remember what they were.  I wrote them
>>down, and have no idea where I put that particular notebook...)
> 
>Nevermind the seven cardinal virtues, you can look them up in any old book.
> 
>Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Justice, Prudence, and Temperance.
> 
>P.S.
> 
>_Five Rings, Six Crises, Seven Dwarfs, and 38 Ways to Win an Argument:
> Numerical Lists You Never Knew or Once Knew and Probably Forgot_
>by John Boswell and Dan Starer; ISBN: 0-14-013195-7
> 
>I really hope you were exagerating about spending a week in the stacks.

Slight exaggeration.  It took several hours of pouring through books to
find a list of the virtues. It took a full week of research to discover how
they were traditionally depicted in painting and sculpture.  Justice was
the only one which was easy to find.  (Blindfolded lady with scales).

At the same time, within the first hour of research, I came across numerous
depictions of the seven deadly sins.  I found it rather odd that there was
so little interest in virtue...

Anyway, in case anyone is wondering why I went through all of that work, I
was designing an evil temple for a dungeon crawl, and I needed a hall of
statues depicting the things a proper evil devotee should be on guard
against.  I ended up renaming the virtues slightly (blind faith, false
hope, ... etc ) but used the traditional images.  It worked well.


-- 
||    BUNGEE SIDEWAYS!                              o   )))
||                                                 /-- ///
|P~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\_  \\\      __ -_
||    stirling@ozrout.uucp                                 ((( (_)T(_)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: etlanar@slartibartfast.ericsson.se (Alan Arthur)
Subject: Re: What makes an urban legend work?
Organization: Ericsson Cellular Division
Distribution: world,local
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 10:34:30 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.145411.26996@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> gfm@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (George Francis McBay) writes:
>In article <1992Sep2.130728.1@violet.ccit.arizona.edu> f67700241@violet.ccit.arizona.edu (Greg Franklin) writes:
>>(Quick how-to on what I'm talking about. From MS Windows, fire up a
>>Windows word processor: Write, e.g.  Select the Wingdings font. Now
>>type "NYC."  You should get the icons [StarofDavid,Skull&Bones,ThumbsUp]).
>
>	If it's true, it is pretty sick.  I doubt highly that it's some
>coincidence either.  Just goes to show how incredibly BAD MS is despite all
>their sales.. They have no-brained PC users thinking they are the end-all of 
>software programming.
>
>


GOD This bullshit makes me so MAD! Its highly likely it IS a coincidence! Think
about it for a second (if you can stretch that far) If you're going to include
the above mentioned symbols in a character set (nothing wrong with that, on 
their own, they have no dubious meaning) So if you do that, then you must be
able to combine them with some combination of three letteres no matter where
you put them in the character set. Any pillock with nothing better to do can 
then read some meaning into the three letter combination that generates the
characters! I mean, how many combinations of three letters could you arrange
to make some meaning that might suggest to some narrow minds that its jew
related? And how many other combinations of other characters _could_ be
offensive to some minority group? This kind of thing is started by paranoid
idiots with nothing better to do. I cant believe that some people actually think
there's something in it.

Ahh I feel better Ive got that off my chest! Anyway hasn't this been argued to
death before? ... (Putting flame proof underwear on now...)



--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alan Arthur                                                        DoD #1314
EMail : etlanar@deep-thought.ericsson.se                  MEMO : ETL.ETLANAR
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: qvortrup@inf.ethz.ch (Michael Qvortrup)
Subject: Re: Eating Dogs
Organization: Dept. Informatik, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 06:56:06 GMT

In article <92246.150727WCE2@psuvm.psu.edu> <WCE2@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>A couple of years ago, when I was in England, I saw an item in the
>TIMES that claimed that Orientals really did eat dogs as a delicacy,
>the dogs being first tied up and hung upside down, then slowly beaten
>to death.  The principle was that the adrenalin somehow tenderized the
>muscles and made the meat unusually tender.
>
>Despite the TIMES' general respectability, I assumed that this was "one
>of ours" and gave the cutting to another folklorist who was working on
>ethnic slurs.  Anyone else heard this (or can argue for its authenticity)?

No, but I can argue for the opposite.

When slaughtering pigs in a slaughterhouse care is taken that the animals
don't get too scared (which I assume that a dog being beaten to dead would
be). The reason for this is that the quality of the meat degrades by quite
a bit if the animals aren't as calm as they can possible. This is connected
with the adrenaline. There even is a special word for the meat quality, but
I can't remember what it is. Something with pale.

For this reason I doubt that the adrenaline will tenderize the dogmeat.

Greetings,
--Mike

-- 
#include <std-disclm.h>--"... and there is a small flaw in my character."---
Real Life: Michael Christian Heide Qvortrup      A Dane         ETH, Zuerich
e-mail   : qvortrup@inf.ethz.ch                  abroad         Switzerland
Institut fuer wissenschaftliches Rechnen  /  Inst. of Scientific Computation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin)
Subject: Re: Sinking libraries
Reply-To: pt@geovision.gvc.com
Organization: Not officially GeoVision Systems Inc., Ottawa, Ontario
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 12:29:04 GMT

rboudrie@chpc.org (Rob Boudrie) writes:

>This must be a very common problem.  Refer to an exceprt from the RPI
>unofficial student handbook (ftp site: mts.rpi.edu file: acm5/not.handbook)

>0          The Folsom Library
>0               There  were  two  blunders  made when the Folsom Library was
>           built. First, the  building  was  originally  designed  with  the
>           floors  bowed  upwards,  with  the  intent that the weight of the
>           books would bow the floors back to level, and slightly stress the
>           walls.  The idea was that this would make the building as a whole
>           more durable. Of course the construction crew  didn't  understand
>           this concept, and the building was built with level floors, which
>           are now bowed slightly downward with the weight of the books.
Baloney.  The only way you bow a floor upwards is to build it with
prestressed members.  (Not cast in place.)  If they were prestressed, then
they could either be installed the right way up, or upside-down.  Not flat.
If they were installed upside-down, and the installation crew didn't notice
it, and the inspectors didn't notice it, and the engineer didn't notice it,
then I suppose the first people to load the floor (with books) would notice
it when the floor collapsed catastrophically.

Concrete is _very_ weak in tension.  If you load the beam the opposite way
from the way it was designed, you are putting tension on the unreinforced,
or lightly reinforced, part of the beam.  That part will then crack, and
eventually fail.

>0               Next,  another  architect  calculated the necessary capacity
>           for the foundation without realizing  that  the  building  was  a
>           library. Because of this, no allowance was made for the weight of
Yeah right.  Buildings don't sink, they crack.  After they've cracked
enough, they fail.

I graduated as a Civil Engineer, with a major in Structural Engineering.  I
haven't practised, and I don't have my P.Eng, but I do know a few things
about structures.

Paul "I'm wearing my Iron Ring" Tomblin

-- 
Paul Tomblin, pt@geovision.gvc.com or {uunet,revcan}!geovision!pt
(This is not an official opinion of GeoVision Systems Inc.)
"If you can read this, you're not looking through the Hubble Space Telescope"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: tjz20735@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Tom Zych)
Subject: Re: Russian dog-mines in WWII
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 18:42:32 GMT

mort@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Jeff Mortensen) writes:

>In alt.folklore.urban, thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank) writes:

>> 
>> Sounds suspiciously like the bat-explosives the United States tried
>> during World War II.
>	
>	Did anybody see the special on the bat attack on Japan a few
>	months ago.  The army really did have a plan set up which would
>	drop thousands of bats which had flammable explosives strapped
>	to them.  They tried it out on an army base in the desert, and 
>	the plan backfired.  It worked too good.  The bats went for all
>	the major structures on the base, and it burnt down over 80% of
>	the base.  If the atomic bomb had not worked, this plan would 
>	have been used, and Japan most probably would have been burned
>	to the ground.  A different ending, but the result would have
>	been the same.  

>Morty 
>            

I think that the B29 incendiary raids did a pretty good job of burning large
parts of Japan to the ground, without flying mammilian help.  BTW, Dave Barry
wrote a column about the bats once, don't remember exactly when...

Tom Zych   tjz20735@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu