HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
Subject: Re: Libertarians & the environment
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 18:14:19 GMT

In article <4563@balrog.ctron.com> smith@ctron.com writes:
>If we had a Liberatarian system in place today, the entertainment business
>would buy up huge tracts of such land and charge tree-huggers for camping and
>admiring raw nature.  Or organizations funded by hunters would buy them for
>hunting preserves, or organizations funded by universities and schools would
>buy them for forestry research or nature study, or organizations of tree-
>huggers could STOP giving money to lobbyists trying to get the gov't to steal
>land and instead give it to an organization that would just BUY the damn land
>and let the treehuggers sit and contemplate it in rapture.

Do you have any evidence or data to support these remarkable claims ?

-- paul
-- 
		     Paul's housebuilding credo:
     Measure it with a micrometer, cut it with a chainsaw, fit it
			 with a sledgehammer

Xref: sparky talk.origins:8682 sci.astro:8320
From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.astro
Subject: Re: Elements for Life was Re: stars & carbon
Date: 24 Jul 92 22:28:42 GMT
Reply-To: rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Software Maintenance & Development Systems, Inc.

In article <729@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:

>|>What properties would allow other elements to form the
>|>basis for life under different circumstances. The Sci
>|>Fi writers like to chide us for our "Carbon Bias", but
>|
>|What properties, hmmm?  Most properties people usually associate with "life"
>|are truly exemplified by carbon. Carbon is the ONLY element that you can use
>|to make molecules as complicated as DNA and proteins.  Carbon has three
>|redeeming features:  a) it readily forms strong bonds to other carbon atoms, 
>|b) a wide range of other atoms (e.g., H, O, N, Cl, S) bond readily to it,  
>|and c)it generally forms four bonds to other atoms, whereas many common atoms 
>|-- H, N, O, for instance -- usually form only one to three. ...

>You forgot e) is able to form double bonds.

>That is the main thing that distinguishes it from silicon.  (Silicon is
>the next element down in the same column of the periodic table, so it has
>many of the same chemical properties as carbon, particularly b) and c)).

Actually, carbon and water have a host of unique properties that make them
uniquely suitable for chemical based life.  In one of his essay series,
which I don't have at hand, went into the suitability of different elements
and fundamental compounds in great detail.  _The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle_, which I do have at hand, also goes into considerable detail.
Some additional points:

"Carbon compounds tend, in practice, to remain stable over long periods
of time, even those which are thermodynamically unstable or metastable,
because of the difficulty of finding a path by which a reaction could
take place."

"In general, some carbon compounds are endothermic and some are exothermic,
so there are many possibilities for spontaneous formation whenever one has
a mixture of the two types.  Also, the heats of formation of carbon
compounds from their immediate precursors is rarely very great, so that
once the initial steps of carbon dioxide reductions have been completed,
a large variety of carbon compounds form spontaneously."

The silicon analogs of carbon compounds have much higher melting and boiling
points than their carbon analogs, e.g. silicon dioxide is quartz and carbon
dioxide is a gas.

What it comes down to is that the physical chemistry of the elements in the
low end of the periodic is really different in critical ways.

CHNO is it.
-- 
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.
From: robd@cray.com (Robert Derrick)
Subject: Re: A Jehovah's Witness reply to Corey
Distribution: usa
Date: 21 Jul 92 12:41:39 CDT

Karl Pfaff says:

: This aguement seems to conclude that human behavior is distinct from
: animal behavior. ... After all, to them it seemed to just come naturally.
: 

The ellipsis represents about fifty lines deleted.  What is left is
but the first and the last line.  I wanted to respond to this post, but
as I read it again, and again, I was never really sure what you were
trying to say.  You said so much, but it never seemed much to the point,
other than to say:

	Some people think animals and people are the same,
	and some people think they are different.  But the
	lowest of people think both things at whatever time
	it suits them.

Maybe the reason it was so hard to find your meaning was that there
is no good answer.  But it did remind me of something.

Chuang Tzu, a Taoist philospher, wrote

Kund Wen Hsien saw a maimed official
Whose left foot had been cut off--
A penalty in the political game!

"What kind of man," he cried, "is this one-footed oddity?
How did he get that way?  Shall we say
Man did this, or heaven?"

"Heaven," he said, "this comes from
Heaven, not from man.
When heaven gave this man life, it willed
He should stand out from others
And sent him into politics
To get himself distinguished.
See!  One foot!  This man is different."

The little marsh pheasant
Must hop ten times to get a bite of grain.

She must run a hundred steps 
Before she takes a sip of water
Yet she does not ask
To be kept in a hen run
Though she might have all she desired
Set before her.

She would rather run
And seek her own little living
Uncaged.

[iii.3]*

He also said

Cocks crow
Dogs bark
This all people know.
Even the wisest
Cannot tell
Whence these voices come
Or explain
Why dogs bark and cocks crow
When they do.

[xxv.11]*

It is impossible to answer your questions briefly and in a few
words, but it is also impossible to answer in many words, because
by the time you have accumulated enough words to explain, the
truth has becomes lost in the explanation.

If a person wants to justify their behaviour through analogy
with the animal kingdom, they are free to do so, just as anyone
is free to go into politics.  If they are subsequently deprived
of their freedom, or body parts, or some other consequence of
their behaviour, then they will have distinguished themselves.
Whether human or animal that is not human, each faces daily the
struggle to surrive.  Each has the basic tools.  Each faces the
dangers, to live or die.

As the ancients said, "God cuts the thread."  

rob derrick

Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: Noah's ark incompatible...with Noah's ark?
Reply-To: hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: DESY ZEUS Central Data Acquisition
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 21:09:47 GMT

In article <36082@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, slinke@sdcc3.ucsd.edu (Steven Linke)
writes:

|>Four brontosauruses (brontosauri?) on the Ark would have taken up an
|>awful lot of room.  Or, when God commanded Noah to gather EVERY
|>living thing of ALL flesh, did he exclude them?

Answer they could only find two.... see later how and why....

|>Uh.....I also wonder what would happen to the gazelles and the
|>caribou and the zebra and all the other prey of the carnivorous
|>animals such as lions and tigers?  After the tigers first meal they
|>would be wiped out forever.  But that's a whole other subject. 

No, in those days tigers ate Brontasaurus Steaks, now the Bront were
able to stick it out for quite a while by sticking his head above the
water. Then after it became plain that there was no way of keeping the
family pet they bashed him on the bonce with a club - also had to bash
him on the base of the spine, Bronts had distributed parallel
processing, even in them days, oh yes.  Then they used the meat to feed
the lions and tigers.

One thing readers mqay like to note, after being eaten by the tigers the
Bront bones ended up on top of the flood residue. So any of you want to
go off and disprove this pesky evolution thingy look for a couple of
Bront bones with tiger teeth marks in them on mount Ararat.


Phill
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Is creationism science?
Date: 27 Jul 92  19:22:00 EST

-> Is creationism science?  It has been debated many times before
-> on talk.origins (and in the courts), but just so there is no
-> confusion, I think the question should be answered once again.
-> After all, it seems there is quite a batch of new creationists
-> on t.o that I do not remember from a year ago, and I would
-> personally like to hear what they have to say about it.

I am currently studying the subject of evolution since I missed the whole thing in high school and college, being an engineer.  I am just about finished with the book, "Evolution - The Great Debate" by Blackmore and Page, published by Lion Publishing (U, and it occurred to me that if there are those that believe that the historical part of the Bible (a chronology of the tribal affairs of the ancient Jews) is writing which is inspired by the thought that there is a God, and people back then had a limited ab
ility to understand the world in which they lived, that just maybe Darwin and his predecessors were also inspired by the thought of a God.  After many of them WERE clergymen and/or religious people who had set about to discover something about God's world and how it works.

Gregor Mendel is an example.  Perhaps this new work is divinely inspired to show us a truth that we are capable of understanding in this day and age.  Perhaps in centuries hence, people will be reading a new Bible based on the revelations of the Evolutionists, the warning at the end of the Book of Revelations notwithstanding.

It appears that Darwin tried to avoid any such controversy and was merely putting forth an hypothesis based on the enormous amount of data he had collected and after studying the works of his peers.  All the arguments against the divergence of one species into two were brought forth by the creationists.

What is the consensus these days about  whether or not a new species may be created by the natural selection of heritable traits?  Has anyone come up with solid evidence for it?

 * Origin: Aether (1:112/2020)

Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops
Date: 23 Jul 92 20:59:53 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <84150@netnews.upenn.edu> rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe) writes:
|In article <664@tdat.teradata.COM> swf@tdat.teradata.com 
|     (Stanley Friesen) writes:
|
|>top speed for a Tyrannosaurus.  The results have ranged from about 40 mph to 
|>over 60 mph (depending on assumptions about muscle bulk and leverage).
|
|While my feeling is that the speeds Stan quotes here are probably the
|most accurate, I feel the need to caution that there is at least one
|person (R.  McNeil Alexander) who has also made measurements of
|Tyrannosaur bones, and calculates that large Tyrannosaurs could only
|run about 17 mph.

Hmm, I must have missed this one.  I too find it difficult to reconcile
with my knowledge of Tyrannosaurus' anatomy, especially the digitigrade
posture.  (Really, something weighing several tons standing on it *toes*
if it didn't need to for speed is silly).

|>Even the *low* estimate is not exactly *slow*.  
|
|Unless you know of some conclusive evidence that Alexander's estimates
|are as reputable as the Inimitable One's, I'd say the *low* estimate
|*is* pretty slow.

Well, moderately slow.  I'm not sure about conclusive proof, but there may
be soon, if not already.  There are a handful of carnivorous dinosaur
trackways that show speeds above walking, I do not have my references handy,
but if the top measured speeds are above about 25 mph, this would rather
throw a wrench into Alexander's calculations.

|>|I doubt the carnivores, which appear to have been bird-like, at least 
|>|morphologically, were brighter than the sauropods, which appear to have
|>|been either mammals, or mammal-like.
|
|Stan, why did you let this pass?  Sauropods were mammals?  Or
|mammal-like?  The Inimitable One must be trying to top the stupidity
|of his remarks concerning Eric Shafto. 

That was another post.  Stupidity is right, he didn't even bother to check
the *easily* available encephalization quotients.

|>Tyrannosaurus did not hunt sauropods because there were nvery few when it
|>was alive!  It probably hunted Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, and Anatotitan.
|>(The last two were formerly called Anatosaurus).  [Really Ted, can't you
|>even get simple chronologies straight, Tyrannosaurus was a Latest
|>Cretaceous species, sauropods were most abundant in the Late Jurassic].
|
|There you go with your stupid ideas about uniformitarianism and an
|ancient earth :-)  You do know the above paragraph will have little
|meaning to a person who thinks that macaques are just a few years away
|from developing a language just like ours--something that they only
|now need because all of us animals just lost our tremendous telepathic
|abilities... don't you?

Sputter, choke!   Macaques!?  *Maybe* I could see this for chimps, but
*macaques*!?  Gag me with a spoon!



-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: slinke@sdcc3.ucsd.edu (Steven Linke)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Homosexuals anywhere are wrong
Date: 31 Jul 92 07:39:21 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

In article <1992Jul30.205452.26677@scic.intel.com> sbradley@scic.intel.com (Seth Bradley) writes:
>
>Sorry, but this is in error.  There is excellent (though somewhat 
>circumstantial) evidence that Tay Sachs confers resisitance to
>malaria in the heterozygous state.  This corresponds well to the
>population wherein Tay Sachs first seemed to reach high density,
>namely medieval ghetto dwellers.  Tuberculosis was endemic in the
>ghetto.

I think you are thinking of SICKLE CELL ANEMIA when you refer to
malaria resistance.  Tay Sachs disease is an inability to metabolize
lipids called gangliosides.  These lipids accumulate in brain cells
and lead to seizures, blindness, loss of motor control, loss of
mental functions, and finally death.  Homozygous individuals die
within a few months of birth.  I have never heard of any advantage
to being heterozygous.

Sickle cell anemia is a mutation in the hemoglobin protein.  They
cause abnormal red blood cell structure (sickle cells).  These cells
have a much lower capacity to carry oxygen.  Homozygous individuals
go through pain and fever and must undergo blood transfusions in
severe cases.  It may lead to death.  Heterozygous individuals on
the other hand, are relatively healthy.  They are also resistant to
malaria.  Malaria is an intracellular parasite that infects red
blood cells, so presumably the presence of abnormally shaped RBC's
in heterozygotes imparts the resistance.  About 1 in 500 blacks are
homozygous and about 1 in 10 are carriers in the U.S.  I believe
these ratios are much higher in Africa where malaria is prevalent.

As for the Tay Sachs thing, I think you are confused.  Correct me if
I'm wrong.


-- 
Steve Linke
Salk Institute (Gene Expression Lab)
La Jolla, CA
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: akbloom@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Keith Bloom)
Subject: Re: just what is the Holden Felt Effect of Gravity?
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 05:59:45 GMT

swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen) writes:

>|But the above makes it clear, I think.  We are NOT talking about tides,
>|but about gravitation from a body that the earth is NOT in traditional
>|orbit around.  Earth is suspended away from any traditional orbit by
>|"electromagnetic forces". 

>Jehosephat!  An *entire* *planet* suspended by a giagantic *magnet*!

>Anybody care to guess at the magnetic flux necessary to achieve this
>incredible feat!  I think little more really needs to be said.

Just a little more.  Every magnet I've ever seen has both a North and
South pole.  So do planetary magnetic fields.  If you take a couple of
bar magnets and place one on a table with the North pole pointing up,
and let it repel the other one so that the magnetic repulsion 
balances the Earth's gravitational attraction, you will find that it's
very difficult to keep the upper magnet from flipping over so that
its opposite pole points down, attracting the other magnet rather 
than repelling it.

Now, what happens if you have two planets with the North poles facing
each other, held apart by a magnetic force which precisely balances
the gravitational attraction?  The slightest perturbation will cause
the North pole of one to start spinning away from the other, and the
two will crash together with the combined force of gravity and
magnetic attraction.

Rather disconcerting for anyone living on one of the planets, no?
Xref: sparky talk.origins:8720 sci.astro:8341
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.astro
Subject: Re: stars & carbon
Date: 26 Jul 92 18:32:59 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <18556@drutx.ATT.COM> cwh@druhi.ATT.COM (HoffmeyerCW) writes:
|> it is also interesting to note that stars are thought to form as a group;
|> i.e. more than one star is born in the collapsing dust/gas cloud. which
|> leads to wonder where ol' sol's brothers & sisters are...
|
|Isn't Sol thought to be an outlying member of the Ursa Major Group?
|- Carl Hoffmeyer

Not as far as origins are concerned.  It may now lie within those bounds,
but it did not start there.

In general, the early, birth clusters, are believed to break up over time,
due to differential orbits and external perterbations (other stars).  Thus
Sol is probably nowhere near any of its siblings.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Xref: sparky talk.origins:8574 sci.astro:8249
From: cwh@druhi.ATT.COM (HoffmeyerCW)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.astro
Subject: Re: stars & carbon
Date: 22 Jul 92 18:46:25 GMT

> it is also interesting to note that stars are thought to form as a group;
> i.e. more than one star is born in the collapsing dust/gas cloud. which
> leads to wonder where ol' sol's brothers & sisters are...

Isn't Sol thought to be an outlying member of the Ursa Major Group?
- Carl Hoffmeyer
Xref: sparky talk.origins:8713 sci.astro:8331
From: rh@smds.com (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.astro
Subject: Re: Elements for Life was Re: stars & carbon
Date: 26 Jul 92 07:38:33 GMT
Reply-To: rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Software Maintenance & Development Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Jul25.215350.22081@samba.oit.unc.edu> ajpierce@med.unc.edu (Andrew Pierce) writes:
>In article <1992Jul24.222842.11808@smds.com> rh@ishmael.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:
>>CHNO is it.

>   You forgot P.

And Na and Cl and .... Granted P is essential (ATP and DNA for starters).
However most atoms in life are CHNO; the specific chemistry of CHNO is
what makes life "work".
-- 
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.
From: fllant01@uctvax.uct.ac.za
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Calling Young-earth Creationists
Date: 23 Jul 92 09:56:06 GMT
Organization: University of Cape Town

As a born-again Christian, I subscribe to the theory of a young earth
 (6000 to 10000 years old).

Does anyone have scientific evidence to support this?
(Stuff on dating methods, dynamic vs. atomic time, etc.)
Please e-mail or post.

Thanks in advance,
Anthony Faull.
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: 7'th Category of evidence / Greco-Roman myth and tradition
Date: 28 Jul 92 01:41:05 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <2833@fedfil.UUCP> news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:
|
|In our present system, the only three possible candidates for celestial
|deity are the sun, the moon, and Venus.
|
|Two of the least large, least impressive, least assuming, inconspicuous,
|non-candidates for deity in the entire universe today are the
|far-off planets Jupiter and Saturn.  An overwhelming majority of people
|in the world couldn't even find them or point them out.

Hmm, could it be that *maybe* the planets were names *later, to honor
gods that were already worshipped?

Naw, too simple :-)

Really, Jupiter is short for a phrase meaning 'Father of the Heavens'.
He was a principle *sky* god, not a planet god.  The greek form, Zeus,
is just another variant of the same phrase - the worship of the Sky Father
is a fundamental Indo-European religion, so you must treat all occurances
of him in IE cultures as the *same* occurance.

The association of the Roman Saturn with the Greek Chronos is tentative,
at best (even if it is traditional).  And Chronos appears to be mainly
a memory of the pre-Greek religion of the Aegean.  So we don't get much
out of this when we look at it more closely.

No matter how we look at it, neither was *originally* the name of a planet.
That all came later, probably *much* later (probably all the way up
into classical Roman times).

|Hesiod and Ovid both speak of a golden age, when Kronos (Saturn) was
|"king in heaven".  For those of you who haven't ever been able to fathom
|that phrase, it means when Saturn was our sun.  That's what "king of
|heaven" IS.

Is it?  That's news to me.  Are you saying Yahweh is also the Sun?
He's called King of Heaven too.

If the Sun is king, then why isn't Sol the chief god later on?

The phrases clearly simply mean that Chronos preceded Zeus as chief god.
Little more need be read into these passages.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: m23364@mwunix (James Meritt)
Subject: Re: Scientific Method
Organization: Mitre Corporation, McLean VA
Distribution: world,local
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 18:49:27 GMT

In article <27JUL199210461861@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu> lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) writes:
}In article <1992Jul27.124651.27652@linus.mitre.org>, jmeritt@rod.mitre.org (Jim Meritt) writes...
}>IAW Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (didn't want to get esoteric!):
}> 
}>scientific method - principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of
}>knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the
}>collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation
}>and testing of hypothesis.
}> 
}>        If no, never mind because I don't think so.
}> 
}>        If yes:
}>                What data has been collected in support of creationism.
}
}All the "young earth evidences," Barry Setterfield's collection of
}measurements of the speed of light.

You've got to be kidding.  You have, of course, read the report on that.


Xref: sparky talk.origins:8751 sci.astro:8366
From: jp@moscom.UUCP (Jim Palmeri)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,sci.astro
Subject: Re: Elements for Life was Re: stars & carbon
Date: 27 Jul 92 17:26:03 GMT
Reply-To: jp@moscom.com (Jim Palmeri)
Organization: Moscom Corp., Pittsford, NY


>Even with Earth as our only example of life, we can rule out
>silicon based life forms.  The Earth has more Silicon than 
>carbon in it, yet silicon life never devoloped.  What
>prevented it?  All the silicon got bound to oxygen, and was 
>used up making Quartz.
>
>That makes silicon life extreamly unlikely.
>



Or....that makes silicon life dependent upon carbon life evolving
first, which then becomes the key factor in the evolution of silicon
based life.  Has that part of the process already started?



.


-- 
Jim P.   (jp@moscom.com)
Newsgroups: talk.origins