nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Project Blue Book

:This page is about the UFO study done by sane people. For frothing lunacy, see Project Blue Beam.
Project Blue Book was a United States Air Force study into unidentified flying objects, conducted from 1952 until 1970.Project Blue Book, UFOs at the US National Archives
The Air Force summary of the results is
#No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;
#There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; and
#There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.
By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. 718 were not conclusively identified, but did not defy the science or technology of the time.
Also, the whole archive of reports (minus names and similar personal information) is available through the Freedom of Information Act and, of course, online.
Faced with the overwhelming evidence, all of which they could review themselves, conspiracy theorists the world over realised they were wasting their time on this rubbish, turned over a new leaf, and did sane things instead — ah ha ha ha ha who are we kidding?!
==TV adaptation==
Jack Webb, known for producing cop shows like Dragnet and Adam-12 in the 1960s, turned to Project Bluebook as his inspiration for the 1970s TV series Project UFO.
Although the incidents portrayed in Project UFO were based on real incidents described in Project Bluebook, the series took a lot of liberties with the cases. For example, the pilot episode showed a jet fighter chasing after a UFO and having its engine "mysteriously" conk out; in the real incident, the plane was a propeller-driven fighter whose engine conked out because its pilot flew it far above its service ceiling and starved the engine of air.
In the case of The "Sighting 4020: The Island Incident", the show goes totally off the rails, as the reveal at the end is a close-up of the "scalpel" given by the aliens as the native witch doctor talks about it: "5081 A.D." One has to ask just what was real in that episode and what came out of the writer's imagination.
==See also==
*Majestic 12
*Unacknowledged
==External links==
*Blue Book Archive - all the Project Blue Book microfilm, scanned and downloadable.
==References==
Category:Ufology
Category:Documents
Project Reason

The Reason Project was a U.S. charitable 501(c)(3) foundation that was officially devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. When it closed, Sam Harris sent an e-mail out explaining that the remaining funds would go to The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, The AHA Foundation, and The Quilliam Foundation. 
The website stated:
== Advisory board ==
The project has been spearheaded by philosopher, neuroscientist, and author Sam Harris, and has so far succeeded in attracting the following to its advisory board:
*Clifford S. Asness - Managing and founding principal of AQR Capital Management
*Peter Atkins - Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford
*Jerry Coyne - Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago
*Richard Dawkins - Former Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford
*Daniel C. Dennett - Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University
*Brent Forrester - Emmy Award-winning television writer
*Rebecca Goldstein - philosopher and novelist
*Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Former member of the Dutch parliament; author of The Caged Virgin and the New York Times best selling memoir Infidel
*Christopher Hitchens - author, journalist, and literary critic; author of God Is Not Great
*Harold Kroto - Chairman of the Board of the Vega Science Trust
*Bill Maher- Comedian, actor, host of Real Time With Bill Maher
*Ian McEwan - award-winning novelist
*Steven Pinker - Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University
*Salman Rushdie - Booker Prize-winning author
*Lee M. Silver Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Molecular Biology
*Ibn Warraq - senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry specializing in Koranic criticism
*Steven Weinberg - Josey Regental Chair in Science at the University of Texas at AustinThe Reason Project :: Sam Harris; Nobel laureate in Physics 1979
== External links ==
*The Reason Project - former official site, now redirecting to frothing idiocy.
*Sam Harris - official site
==References==
*Note: this article was initiated on March 10, 2009 by wholesale copying of this version of the Wikipedia article, followed by some trimming of links, categories, and templates. Please do not remove this notice.
Category:Organizations
Category:Political action groups
Project Stargate

Stargate or Star Gate is the umbrella nameDifferent sources use different forms of the name. They also don't agree whether it was an "Operation", a "Program" or a "Project" and whether "Project" should go before or after the code name. of a series of secret projects investigating remote viewing that were run by various intelligence agencies of the US government from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. What few first-hand documents on the subject are available indicate that the projects were at absolute best no more accurate than random chance - the predictions given by remote viewers did, on some occasions, happen to vaguely resemble reality, but these instances were rare, seemingly random, and impossible to replicate.
The series of projects was instigated during the Cold War, when claims of Soviet advances in "psychic research" started circulating in the West. If the Soviets were performing similar research it appears to have been even less effective than American forays into the field.
==See also==
*The Men Who Stare at Goats
==External links==
*Remote viewing, The Skeptic's Dictionary
*Remotely Viewed? The Charlie Jordan Case, the CSI
*The Vision Thing, Time Magazine, 11 December 1995
*Operation Star Gate (WebArchive mirror; includes an archive of documents)
*Operation Stargate, The CIA and Psychic Spies, News Blaze (notable mostly for the e-mail exchange with skeptics)
==Notes==
Category:ParapsychologyCategory:Government incompetence
Project Steve

Project Steve is a "tongue-in-cheek parody" created by the United States National Center for Science Education, intended to place the "scientific debate" over evolution into proportion.
It is in response to various lists, put out by the likes of the Discovery Institute, of scientists who supposedly reject evolution. Usually such lists number anywhere between a dozen and a hundred.
Creationists love to claim that famous scientists like Isaac Newton "didn't believe" in evolution — and more importantly, he was a Christian! Of course, it's incorrect to say that Newton didn't "believe" in evolution; he probably had no knowledge about it, as he died 82 years before Charles Darwin was even born.
Project Steve, on the other hand, is an attempt to show that these creation scientists are outnumbered by pro-evolution scientists — named Stephen and alive. 
==Naming and purpose==
Stephen was chosen in honour of Stephen Jay Gould, who died about a year before the list began.
Some slight variations of that name are also included, such as Steven, Steve, Stefan, or Stephanie, or the same name in languages other than English, including three Etiennes, three Estebans, one Istvan, and one Tapani, which is the Finnish equivalent. 
The list was invented entirely for the lulz and was not intended to be an argumentum ad populum, or any other argumentum — as evolutionary theory is already proven scientifically, the only remaining use for lists like these is really trolling creationists.
==Signatories==
As of 18 September 2023, the Steve-o-meter numbers 1,491 scientists on its list."List of Steves", NCSE The NCSE notes that "'Steves' are only about 1% of scientists", making the point that "tens of thousands of scientists support evolution".
It has been noted that the Steve list has proportionately more biologists (about two thirds are qualified biologists) than the creationists' list. So there.
The Discovery Institute's A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism had, by comparison, 12 signatories whose names would have qualified them for the Steve list per 2012.
The twelve constitute a motley crew that contains at least some non-scientists (Meyer, Cheesman), certified crackpots (Gift), and one single biologist, C. Steven Murphree, who — to add insult to injury — later repudiated his involvement with the creationist movement and signed Project Steve instead."Another Steve leaves the Dark Side", Stones and Bones
==See also==
*CMI list of scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation — the sort of thing this responds to
==External links==
*The NCSE's Project Steve page - featuring the Steve-o-meter!
*The Steve Song
==References==
Category:Evolution
Category:Discovery Institute
Project for the New American Century

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a massive neoconservative think tank, created in 1997 and closed in 2006. Its goal was "to promote American global leadership" because "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world." It ended up achieving very different goals.
It was highly influential with regard to the development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War, within the previous administration of George W. Bush.
Some of our favorite people were involved in this, including:
*Jeb Bush
*Dick Cheney
*William Kristol
*Donald Rumsfeld
*Dan Quayle
*Paul Wolfowitz
*Scooter Libby
And a whole host of other right-wing nutjobs, most of them with convenient connections with the Bush administration.
PNAC has become significant (and entered the public consciousness) due to their presence in truther conspiracy theories, mostly centering around a comment in Section V of their policy report, Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force":
The fact that this is simply being realistic ("change will be slow unless something weird happens") rather than calling for actual action is one of the many things that escapes Truthers.
Rebuilding America's Defenses was released in September of 2000, a year before 9/11 happened. The wackos maintain that, considering the date of this document and the quote highlighted above, the Bush Administration had some level of involvement with the events of 9/11, whether it be letting the terrorists go through with their plan that day or to putting nukes in the basement of the trade center; it really depends on who you ask.
==External links==
*Their website has been shut down, but it can still be viewed via The Wayback Machine: newamericancentury.org
==References==
Category:Think tanks
Category:United States politics
Category:Conspiracy theories
Category:Neoconservatism
Prokaryote

The structure of a prokaryote is very much simpler than that of a eukaryote. There are no endomembranes, endosymbionts, nucleus or cytoskeleton. The DNA is carried on the genophore, a circular chromosome, in an ill defined area of the cytosol called the nucleoid. The chromosome is attached to the cell membrane during cell division (fission), frequently at a point called the mesosome. The name comes from πρό-καρυον (pro-karyon) - before kernel (which refers to the nucleus).
==Prokaryotic characteristics==
#No nucleus - free circular genophore. 
#'Simple' rotating motor-type flagellum. 
#Cell division by fission, genophore attached to plasmalemma by mesosome. 
#Few membrane-bound organelles, no double-membrane bound organelles. 
#They are 'small' because diffusion limits the rate of transport across the cell - 1 μm. 
The cytosol contains oil droplets, food reserves and the 70S ribosomes, and is surrounded by a plasmalemma. In Gram negative bacteria, a further outer membrane surrounds the plasmalemma, with a thin cell wall and periplasmic space trapped between them. In Gram positive bacteria, there is no outer membrane, and the cell wall is thicker. The cell wall is composed of peptidoglycan and various organic acids in Eubacteria. Bacteria have flagella, but they are simple proteinaceous strands attached to a rotary motor, completely dissimilar to the complex eukaryotic undulipodium. Membranes may be present in the cell, as in the thylakoids of the Cyanobacteria. The cytosol may also contain various episomes (small circular chromosomes), some called plasmids, and others called (bacterio)phages, which are bacterial viruses.
Prokaryotic DNA lacks histones (packaging proteins), although other packaging proteins are present, and molecules have easier access to DNA compared with eukaryotes. They generally have efficient genomes, with little sequence other than coding sequence or regulatory sequence. Transcription is by just one class of RNA polymerase. Transcription leads to translation with no intermediate processing, which allows several genes to be encoded in a single transcriptional unit (a polycistron). They have small (70S) ribosomes.
==Prokaryotic diversity==
Prokaryotes are extraordinarily diverse and account for a very large proportion of the biomass on earth. Some important groups are:
*Proteobacteria - Gram-negative, two cell membranes, hugely diverse, Escherichia coli.
*Firmicutes and Actinobacteria - Gram-positive, thick peptidoglycan cell wall. 
*Spirochaetes - helical bacteria. 
Category:Molecular biology
Category:Organisms
Category:Articles needing RWification
Proll

:Not to be confused with Proles.
Proll is a neologism coined by blogger Steven Baxter that refers to a "professional troll,"http://enemiesofreason.co.uk/2009/12/29/the-prolls-creak-into-life/ or a person who makes money from creating controversies, usually by saying outlandish or offensive things, perhaps in the most "politically incorrect" way possible. They are typically considered politically extreme and like to pander to a fringe audience, are usually (but not always) wingnuts (or in some rare cases, moonbats), and may be quite obscure and unheard of by most people. The ultimate goal of the proll is to land on the news by saying something just outlandish enough at the right time so it can't be ignored. This usually means the proll will say something offensive every other week just in the hopes that something will create a large enough controversy for them to become a household name. Fortunately, they usually fail and just end up getting mocked by bloggers.
If the proll is smart, they will usually say something offensive in an ambiguous way or leave an "escape hatch" for themselves so that when a controversy does start, they can weasel out of it, while pretending they're being "persecuted."
Coincidentally, in German, Prolls (shortened from "Prolet" or the plural "Proleten") are lower-class people who behave and dress in boorish ways, and usually display sexist and racist tendencies, somewhat analogous to chavs in the United Kingdom or bogans in Australia.
Russia has created a business model out of this.
==Examples==
*Ann Coulter
*Milo Yiannopoulos
*Alex Jones
*Candace Owens
*Michael Knowles
*Matt Walsh
*Steven Crowder
*Paul Joseph Watson
*Michelle Malkin
*Gavin McInnes
*Mike Cernovich
*Rush Limbaugh
*Fraser Anning
*Ben Shapiro
*Katie Hopkins
*Vani Hari
*Ingrid Newkirk
*Germaine Greer
*
*Everyone at Fox News
==See also==
*Edgelord, the amateur internet version.
*Very Serious People, the opposite of this.
==References==
Category:Neologisms
Category:Shysters
Prometheus Books

Prometheus Books is an American book publisher which has mostly published books on topics related to freethought, skepticism, atheism, and juicy exposés of the netherworld of televangelism, as well as libertarian books. The founder Paul Kurtz also founded the Council for Secular Humanism and co-founded the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
They have more recently branched out into a science fiction imprint (Pyr), scholarly texts under the Humanities Press International which they acquired, and a series of seminal writings on philosophy, science, and economics (everything from Marx to Nietzsche to Darwin).
== Recommended reading ==
Some examples of the books they have published include:
* The New Atheism, Taking a stand on science and reason, Victor Stenger
* Unintelligent Design, Mark Perakh
* The Sky is Not the Limit, Neil DeGrasse Tyson 
* Science and Religion, Paul Kurtz
* Science Under Siege, Kendrick Frazier, Editor 
* Hot Issues, Cool Choices, a teen's guide to bullying
* Urantia: The Great Cult Mystery, Martin Gardner
* Salvation for Sale, Gerard Thomas Straub - former insider's exposé of Pat Robertson
* Don't Call Me Brother, Austin Miles - former insider's exposé of Jim Bakker
* The Faith Healers, James Randi
* Mostly on the Edge - Karl Hess' autobiography
* The Human Cougar, Lloyd Morain - not about what you think
== External links ==
* Prometheus Books official website
==References==
Category:Publishers
Prophecy

Prophecy is speaking for God or for the gods (pro- meaning for), sometimes involving predicting the future (pro- meaning before in time), often using "impending doom" and "fires of destruction" and "destruction of the world" as the culminating theme. Prophecies are usually reserved for important figures like kings and leaders and of course generally predict the downfall of bad rulers and the eventual return of "all that is Good and True" if and only if the "people" follow the right "path".
Prophecy is often a result of the prophet's dreams, altered states, or high levels of in their life. Incidentally, none of these conditions are conducive to logical thinking.
==In fiction==
Fantastical fiction (including some forms of sci-fi) often features ancient prophecies, frequently involving a "chosen one" who will triumph over evil in some way or restore a balance that was lost a long time ago. Such messianic prophecies are readily believed without question by the people in these stories, and invariably turn out to be correct.
==In the real world==
In the real world, prophecies tend to be open to interpretation and skepticism. They are also a lot more vague so they can be shoehorned to fit whatever actually happens. Examples include:
*The ambiguous Delphic oracle, popular during the last millennium BCE. A drugged priestess mumbled and male priests interpreted what she said in ways that could fit a wide range of events.Oracle of DelphiDelphic Oracle
*The cryptic ramblings of Nostradamus, whose 'predictions' of future events can only be figured out properly after such events have already happened.
==Famous prophecies==
* Daniel and the Wall
* Nostradamus
* Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Book of Mormon
* Book of Revelation
* David Wilkerson, a Christian evangelist who successfully prophesied that the end of the world would be in 1973 1999 2009 (despite the world apparently continuing, we at RationalWiki maintain that this prophecy was, in fact, correct).
* Merlin seeing the eventual fall of King Arthur
* Saint Malachy's predictions about future popes
* Some guy foreseeing that the Witch-king of Angmar would not be slain by a man. He could have phrased it less obtusely.
* Wovoka's vision of (for?) the Ghost DanceThe Ghost Dance - A Promise of Fulfillment
* Ed Dames — on 9 April 2005, on Coast to Coast AM, Dames warned that we've reached the "beginning of the end," and can expect "a very serious series of events that will kill a lot of people" shortly after the Space Shuttle was forced down by a meteor shower. He said the window for the coming catastrophe falls within the next five years, and advised people to live in places with plentiful fresh water and underground protection.
* Mother Shipton
==See also==
*Failed biblical prophecies
*Last Judgement
*Precognition
*List of predictions of the end of the world
*Revelation
*Hallucination
*Prophets
==External links==
*Bush Launched War Based on Biblical Prophecy
*Timeline of Unfulfilled Christian Prophecy
*Bible FAQ, Prophecies
*Prophecy
==References==
Category:Religious terms
Category:Psychic powers
Protestant vs. Catholic atheism

In Northern Ireland, ethnic animosities have been cloaked in religious terms, with Ulster-Scots taking the Protestant mantle and Irish taking the Catholic one. This means that atheists are necessarily in a bit of a tricky position.For example, when the Official IRA began to be dominated by a pack of communists, this caused some malcontent and the Provisional IRA was formed, thus kicking off the modern-day "Troubles" in Northern Ireland.
There is an Irish joke regarding this situation, a variant of which was notably repeated by Richard Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion:
==In Protestant atheism==
Some "Catholic atheists" have used this humorous distinction to highlight a perceived admixture of class snobbery or Protestant anti-Catholic canards with atheist rhetoric.
For example, the self-described "Catholic atheist" Michael Fitzpatrick takes Richard Dawkins to task for using his atheism to cloak disdain for the masses who are doped up on their chosen opiate, religion.http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/2503/ Padraig Reidy, commenting on the state visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the U.K., pointed out some parallels between the rhetoric of some of the groups opposing his visit and the ramblings of Ian Paisley, and also stated that the Church hierarchy could be much more easily rattled by people who knew the religion.http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/22/pope-visit-catholic-prejudice
==In Catholic atheism==
"Protestant atheists" have been comparatively silent on this topic, but Dr. Fitzpatrick cited a respect for the cultural "living tradition" embodied by Catholic institutions as part of the Catholic atheist mindset. This is, understandably, something a Protestant would show less respect for, perhaps dismissing it as "incense and chanting."
==As a general phenomenon==
This is just one instance of the broader idea that there is no clear-cut distinction between religion and culture; indeed, the words "culture" and "cult" both have their roots in the Latin cultus. Hence, an atheist within some theistic cultural zeitgeist (with the possible exception of those who adopt a completely new world-view, such as communism) will continue in most of the cultural practices of their nation, which outsiders might attribute to the nation's religion.
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Atheism
Category:Christianity