Ludi writes:

  >Precisely my point. Consider:

  >Freedom from beliefs            +3
  >Beliving in a god               -3
  >Going to hell                   -1000
  >chances of hell if not believe  1 in 100

Baggins:
     The fallacy here is that, since there is no reason, whatever, to
think that there is a "hell", the numbers change to.

Going to hell                   -0
chances of hell if not believe   1 in <infinite number>.

     And as many have noted in the past, the negative result
of belief could be argued to be much greater then the -3 given...

     At the vary least,,, -10...  Tithing, I think it is called.  :-)

     If the numbers do NOT change, in this way, then there is no reason
one cannot insert ANYTHING that has zero support, into the equation,
with just as much validity.

     The same logic would demand that you drop EVERYTHING you are doing,
and spend the rest of your life searching for the Fountain of Youth.
Yet few are doing this. If this is an innate tendency of Humans, and this
type argument holds weight, then why not?

     Is there a +3 benefit to being free from such beliefs?

     I might argue that one, also,   :-)


     But it would seem that this whole thing boils down to a claim that,
because of
innate tendencies of human nature, Pascal's Wager is not seen as logical
fallacy,
but rather it is taken as valid reasoning by human folks.

For a description of said "wager".. see:

http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/pascal2.html

http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/pascal-wager/

     Maybe this is true, as one might consider the sales of
lottery tickets as undeniable proof of this tendency..  :-)

     I would rather think of the lottery as more of a tax
placed upon folks who are not good at math..  :-)




Come check out "http://home.netcom.com/~bbaggins/skeptic.htm"

: Opinions Expressed are those of   : Sacred Cows Make the Best
: Hobbits Worldwide.. If you don't  : Burgers!  :-)
: believe me, just ask them... :-)  : Baggins@...

>Science Frontiers, No. 129, May-June, 2000, pp. 2-3
>
>In the never-ending, ever-acrimonious "dialog of the deaf" between the
>Darwinists and the Creationists, we are perpetually exposed to their
>extreme, non-negotiable positions.  The Darwinists insist upon their
>one-gene/one-protein genome in which random mutations slowly accumulate
>and adapt living things to the changing environment.  The Creationists
>only accept a one-time, supernatural creation of "kinds" plus minor
>adaptations ("microevolution").

That's alright if you can invent your own straw men, as in the picture
painted of "Darwinists", but it ain't real.


Barry Williams

>  Damien Broderick
> {. . .} I was startled by a quite impressive paper by Sheldrake and a
> colleague in the latest number of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
> They closely observed a pooch for evidence that he responded to his
> owner's intention to return home from work etc some kilometres distant.

Sheldrake has recently (1999) published a book, [Dogs That Know When Their
Owners Are Coming Home and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals: An
Investigation], on these sorts of experiments.  I'd be interested in comments
if anyone has read it.

I saw Sheldrake on the PBS show [The Glorious Accident] (also transcribed as
a book, apparently) which got him, Dennett, Dyson, Gould, Oliver Sacks, and
Stephen Toulmin together in a room genteelly having tea and crumpets or
something and arguing about various things.  Sheldrake stated that the sun
could be alive.  He also said that he performed a vast array of experiments
which showed that birds could always---regardless of circumstances in which
they were placed---determine the proper direction of their home.  The others
offered seemingly every reasonable challenge: well, what if you put them in a
sealed box and move them?  No, did that; they still found their way.  What if
you put magnets on their heads?  Nope, did that.  What if you spin them around
rapidly?  Nope, tried that.  What if you put magnets on their heads and spin
them around rapidly?  No, that didn't work.  What if you put them in a box, put
magnets on their heads, and spin them around?  Nope, did that.  What if you
burn down, fall over, and then sink into the swamp?  Nope.  It got pretty
amusing.

--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
< fortean1@... >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage *
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    (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site
    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

Science Frontiers, No. 129, May-June 2000, p. 2

J. Chilcutt is a highly regarded fingerprint expert for the Conroe, Texas,
Police Department.  In his spare time, he collects fingerprints and toe
prints from other primates.  Working with zoo officials, who were naturally
skeptical at first, Chilcutt has amassed a collection of about 1,000
nonhuman primate prints.  He has discovered that print characteristics
differ markedly from one species to another.

When Chilcutt learned that J. Meldren, a professor of anatomy at Idaho
State University, had accumulated 100 or so casts of Bigfoot prints, he
had to check out their dermal whorls and arches.

Some of Meldren's casts turned out to be obvious fakes upon which human
fingerprints had been impressed.  But a few specimens surprised him.

    The print ridges on the bottoms of five castings---which were
    taken at different times and locations---flowed lengthwise along
    the foot, unlike human prints which flow from side to side.

                               .....

    "The skeptic in me had to believe that (all of the prints were
    from) the same species of animal," Chilcutt said.  "I believe
    that this is an animal in the Pacific Northwest that we have
    never documented."

(Rice, Harvey; "Is Something Afoot with Bigfoot?  Print Expert Thinks So,"
Houston "Chronicle", February 20, 2000.  Cr. D. Phelps.)

--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
< fortean1@... >
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Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage *
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  - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand
    (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site
    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

One of the best fuel crops known is hemp (Cannibis sativa & Cannibis indica).
The plant is also extremely useful for fiber which is far more durable than
cotton and more comfortable to wear than synthetic fibers, and the seeds are
highly nutritious.  The US laws against growing hemp are some of the most
outrageous laws on the books, and everyone who has an interest in technological
progress should do what he or she can to eliminate these laws.

Bonnie

--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
< fortean1@... >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
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Thailand/Laos
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    (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73)
  - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand
    (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site
    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

Science Frontiers, No. 129, May-June, 2000, pp. 2-3

In the never-ending, ever-acrimonious "dialog of the deaf" between the
Darwinists and the Creationists, we are perpetually exposed to their
extreme, non-negotiable positions.  The Darwinists insist upon their
one-gene/one-protein genome in which random mutations slowly accumulate
and adapt living things to the changing environment.  The Creationists
only accept a one-time, supernatural creation of "kinds" plus minor
adaptations ("microevolution").

J.A. Shapiro, a professor at the University of Chicago, is searching for
a "third way," a "scientific", non-Darwinian way.  Shapiro maintains that
five decades of genetic and molecular-biology research have transformed
our vision of life.  He compares the conceptual changes to those
accompanying the transition from classical physics to relativity and
quantum mechanics.  This "new" theory of evolution---his "third" way---
will emerge from the convergence of biology and information science.

Genomes, asserts Shapiro, are not really the static "beads on a string"
envisioned by the Darwinians.  Rather, they are fluid and complex.
Genes are now seen as multipurpose elements that turn on and off as
required for the survival and well-being of the organism they belong to.

In this paradigm-eroding paper (referenced below), Shapiro describes
four categories of molecular discoveries that have revised our thinking
about how evolution works: (1) Genome Organization; (2) Cellular-Repair
Capabilities; (3) Mobile Genetic Elements and Natural Genetic Engineering;
and (4) Cellular Information Processing.  He then writes:

    The point of this discussion is that our current knowledge of
    genetic change is fundamentally at variance with new-Darwinist
    postulates.  We have progressed from the Constant Genome, subject
    only to random, localized changes at a more or less constant
    mutation rate, to the Fluid Genome, subject to episodic, massive
    and non-random reorganizations capable of producing new
    functional architectures.  Inevitably, such a profound advance
    in awareness of genetic capabilities will dramatically alter
    our understanding of the evolutionary process.

Toward the end, Shapiro approaches, as he logically must, the really
crucial point in the Darwinism-Creationism debate.  Is there guiding
intelligence at work in the evolution of life?  He cannot answer this
question at this time, and neither can science in general.  He puts
his hope for a definitive answer on the fact that we are now "on the
threshold of a new way of thinking about living organisms and their
variations."  It is time, he says, for the Darwinists to abandon
their "posture of outraged orthodoxy," to become real scientists,
and to use the new insights we have gained about the workings of the
genome and try to answer this most-fundamental of all the questions
that face science.

(Shapiro, James A.; "A Third Way," Boston "Review", February/March 1997.
Cr. D. Moncrief.)

--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
< fortean1@... >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
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Thailand/Laos
  - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand
    (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73)
  - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand
    (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site
    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

< http://www.science-frontiers.com >

"The new web-site address for "Science Frontiers" and the Sourcebook Project
is shown above.  At this site, you will find the first 121 issues of SF
accompanied by a helpful search engine.  In addition, we have provided
the titles of the 1,770 sections (anomalies) cataloged in the first
18 volumes of the "Catalog of Anomalies".  Also listed are many hundreds
of '"file titles"' that will eventually be written up and published in
future catalog volumes.  With a click or two you can also find descriptions
and ordering information for all available catalogs and handbooks."

Terry

--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
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    (Jan 71 - Aug 72)
Thailand/Laos
  - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand
    (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73)
  - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand
    (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site
    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

"leedean" wrote:
>
>If a large brain is a "good asset," then why do so few species possess them?

It's evidently a good asset for our species, which was what I was talking
about. But it is a very good question.

Broadly speaking, what is good for any species is to do things that others
don't, so competition is reduced. Thus it is good to have strong muscles and
move fast but also good to forget muscles and just be a vegetable. The
result is that it is not good for every species to be brainy because, if
this were to happen, it would be even better to forget brains and do
something else.

In the specific case of our species, the hypothesis I like the most is that
the importance of meat in our ancestors diet gave rise to a pressure for
symbolic reasoning and language which created a positive feedback for brain
size.

Briefly, the hypothesis is that our ancestors could only obtain meat by the
cooperation of male groups. Meat is a valuable food, and any male that fed
meat to his offspring would greatly increase his reproductive success. The
problem is how to identify his offspring.

This was solved by pair bonding. But pair bonding and male investment in the
offspring requires that the male actively keeps other males away from the
female (such as happens in birds) and so would prevent males from
cooperating in hunting.

The solution was marriage: a form of agreement that the group will respect
the sexual exclusivity of the couple. This requires a good deal of
intelligence, and once some apes got the trick they got on their way to
becoming the plague we are today.

I like this hypothesis because it seems to fit nicely with the data.
Chimpanzees hunt in male groups, but the males don't invest in their
offspring (they don'g even know who their offpring are) and anyway meat is a
minor component of their diet.
In species where both parents invest in the offspring, they also actively
keep the individuals of the same sex away from their partner to prevent
investment on someone else's brats.

Our species is the only one (AFAIK) that does both, and it seems that big
brains are the only way to do it.


>A superstitious pigeon?  I find that very hard to believe since pigeons
>don't have a brain complex enough for superstitious belief.  Animal behavior
>is frequently misinterpreted.  Could you give me an example, please.

You probably heard about Skinner's experiments with pigeons. Place a pigeon
in a box with a button, and rig a mechanism so that some tasty food drops
into the box when the pigeon pecks the button. The pigeon will soon learn to
do this.

The pigeon will also learn it even if food only drops occasionally. The
curious thing (which in hindsight is perfectly understandable) is that if
you don't put in a button and drop the food at random times, the pigeon will
'learn' to do whatever it was doing when the food dropped. For example, if
it happened that it had its head in a corner one time that the food dropped,
it'l start putting its head in that corner of the cage over and over again
until the food drops again. This only confirms the pigeon's initial
'suspicion' that putting its head in the corner made food drop, so he soon
learns to do this to obtain food.

This behaviour in no way whatsoever affects the food supply, the pigeon has
no reason to assume it does, and yet the pigeon does it, somehow 'convinced'
that putting its head in the corner makes food appear (or ruffling its
feathers, bobbing its head or whatever happens to be the case...).

This is a superstitious behaviour. The pigeon's brain may be very limited,
but the process is very similar to the person who sees a black cat and
breaks his leg and then comes up with the extremely bright notion that black
cats bring bad luck or stuff like that.

IMO superstitions are closely related to the confusion between correlation,
coincidence, and causality.

Best,
Ludi
--------------------------------------------------------------
    Ludwig Krippahl                   CQFB/CENTRIA      FCT-UNL

       "Truth is something we can attempt to doubt,
        and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover
        that part of the doubt is unjustified."
        Niels Bohr
--------------------------------------------------------------

----- Original Message -----
From: Ludwig Krippahl <ludik@...>
Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2000 6:33 AM
Subject: Re: Xenophobia and Natural Selection


>Big teeth and strong jaws were no longer a good path to 'copydom', but big
brains >became a good asset, so jaws shrunk and brains grew...

If a large brain is a "good asset," then why do so few species possess them?

> >Bilbo:
> >Transcendent belief systems are curiously absent in other primates.
>
> A specific class of beliefs seems absent indeed, but even pigeons can be
> superstitious.

A superstitious pigeon?  I find that very hard to believe since pigeons
don't have a brain complex enough for superstitious belief.  Animal behavior
is frequently misinterpreted.  Could you give me an example, please.

Talaria

http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/20000706/hi_genghis.html

COPIED FROM: Discovery.com News - July 8, 2000

Hunt Begins for Tomb of Genghis Khan

By Rossella Lorenzi,
Discovery.com News

July 6, 2000 — A team of international scholars left the United States today
hoping to unlock one of the great secrets of all time: the location of
Genghis Khan's tomb.

Led by Chicago lawyer Maury Kravitz and backed by $1.2 million, the group
will descend on the Mongolian steppes to retrace Genghis Khan's life in a
one-month expedition that could climax with the discovery of the legendary
ruler's resting place.

"It will be the find of the finds," said Kravitz. The attorney, who spent
more than 40 years studying Genghis Khan, claims to have found in an ancient
book a vital clue that will take him to the tomb's location.

Regarded by the Mongolians as the father of their nation, Genghis Khan was
born in 1162 of a noble family. A military and political genius, he united
the tribes of Mongolia and conquered half of the known world with a cavalry
riding on grass-fed ponies. Eclipsing the realms of Alexander the Great, his
empire stretched from China to eastern Europe.

"We want to create a geographic history of the Khan's life. We hope to
identify two sites: his birthplace, and the Great Kuriltai, the place where
20,000 Mongols crowned him Genghis Khan the Khan of Khans. These discoveries
could lead the authorities to give us permission to conduct further
archaeological investigations," said John Woods, director of the Center for
Middle Eastern Studies at Chicago's University, and project director of the
expedition.

The team would need excellent public relations skills; even if they locate
Genghis's grave, the Mongolians would certainly oppose to the idea of
disturbing their national icon.

Legend has it that the Khan was buried in 1227 in a mysterious mountain
known as Burkhan Khaldun, or Buddha's Cliffs.

According to Marco Polo, who arrived in Mongolia about 60 years after the
Khan's death, the 800 soldiers who buried their leader where killed upon
returning from the funeral, so that no one living could possibly know the
location of the Khan's grave. The tomb became the Ikh Khoring, the great
taboo.

Though the legend mentions that the Khan was buried with forty horses meant
to accompany him to the afterlife, Kravitz thinks that the great emperor was
also buried with an enormous treasure. After all, he says, not a single
artifact from his vast spoils of war has ever emerged in a museum or private
collection.

But many experts doubt Kravitz's theory. Masahiro Etaya, of Tokai University
Research and Information Center, searched Mongolia for four years using
satellite data and the most advanced technologies.

"We found a lot of ancient tombs, however we couldn't verify the tomb of
Genghis Khan," he said.

To read the entire thread, go to:

< http://pub8.ezboard.com/fchemtrailschemtrails.showMessage?topicID=578.topic >

Posted by:
    djembemon
    Global user
    (4/15/00 2:06:39 am)
    "EUREKA!" (I think I've found it...in black lite?)
      _________________________________________________________________

    Well, last night after work, after a long week pondering the almost
    unfathomable efforts of the chem sprayers (and being doused heavily at
    least several times during), I think I may have had a small
    breakthrough.
    First came Grif's informed tip to "look into" Barium Titanate
    (BaTiO3). That has proven useful and seems to be on the right track,
    though the exact mechanism and "synergistic" or "activating" effects
    have yet to be determined. We at this board seem, however, to be in
    agreement that this is at least one component of that which is being
    sprayed with such abandon overhead.
    Then came my observations early last Saturday morning of bright chem
    "cloudlets" descending upon Atlanta from some point south of the city;
    they were fairly easy to spot in the night sky because of a soft
    luminescence, and also by their colorful (refractory) properties.
    And just a couple of days ago I marveled at Gary's topic/posted
    account of the "rip in the sky!" which he observed, only to discover
    that this was the leading edge of a long, fat chem cloud backlit and
    luminescing by moonlight alone! (Or would this be "lunarlescing"?)
    Anyway, he said it was really bright and unusually lit.
    Then moondog, one of our resident "perfessers", posted some specifics
    on the refractive index of Barium Titanate and found it to be highly
    refractive, even among many such refractive substances (it weighed in
    at around 2.5 - nearly double the refractive index of water or
    ethanol, and higher even than that of glass; refer to moondog's post
    in Gary's topic, "Just when you think you've seen everything in the
    night sky!" for specifics and explanation).
    So, to summarize to this point, we're looking for something which is
    pretty darned small ("powdered", for size purposes, though it is not
    "ground" in manufacture), very refractive (splits light passing
    through it into constituent wavelengths), an enhancing mechanism for
    certain wavelengths of light, and quite possibly transparent (think
    about the other items on moondog's original list - air, water,
    ethanol, glass).
    So just how DO you locate something so small in a "haystack" like
    this?
    Well, as it happened, I took a little trip (non chemically enhanced,
    thank you) back to my early days and broke the Black Light out of the
    storage closet. No, the fluorescent Hendrix poster and velvet Elvis
    stayed carefully tucked away; I was looking for another type of
    adventure, and I believe I found it.
    "UNDER BLACK LIGHT" (or near-ultraviolet) I figured, "this barium
    titanate just might show up." And if my initial observations are
    correct, then show up it did.
    And MAN did it show up. There wasn't "that much" of it on my person,
    but it was there - glowing like ABSOLUTE MAD under black light UV
    (small patches of it were fluorescing more than the charged dial of an
    old toxic-glow nuclear-waste watch face!).
    I wasn't sure what I was looking for at first. I'd spent a lot of time
    "under" black light in my youth -- for far less serious reasons -- so
    when I first saw the "patches" on my hands, I thought them to be just
    soap scum (bar soap leaves these streaks naturally - it just doesn't
    rinse off well; also, many bar soaps contain titanium, a whitish
    substance, for coloring). I basically don't use bar soap at all (home
    or work), but just to prove to myself what I was looking at, I very
    thoroughly washed my hands with liquid soap after this initial
    observation.
    When I returned, the little fluorescent blobs (actually,
    HYPER-fluorescent is a much better description) were still emitting
    light as strongly as ever and still in their original positions,
    completely unchanged by my attempt to "rid" or rinse myself of them,
    even though I knew exactly where they were by having seen them moments
    before. (Soap scum, by the way, does rinse off with warm water, as
    it's fat/lipid-based, so is soluble in any sort of grease-cutting
    environment.) I noticed one "patch" on my adam's apple and several on
    my hands - the only "exposed" areas of my body during the drizzly rain
    that particular day [it was cloud-dripping chem scum yesterday]; there
    were no other "patches" anywhere else on my person that I could find.
    As well, these "patches" -- small dots or relatively small
    agglomerations that resembled glowing paint drops -- had seemed to
    "migrate" of their own design into the normal cracks and crevices of
    my hands (though their presence was not limited as such). They were
    also somewhat difficult to "rub off" even under black light, being
    amazingly persistent.
    The other thing I noticed was the presence of several very small
    "filaments" - essentially micro-filaments, or tiny "broken threads",
    on my hands - which seemed to glow almost as much as the "patches".
    The filaments were somewhat numerous, and while not quite as visually
    "spectacular" as the patches, they were most unusual indeed. Whenever
    I turned the room light back on to see if I could find any of these
    "objects" on my person, they simply "disappeared". Turning the room
    light off and letting the black light do its stuff brought them back
    in full, lighthouse-beaming clarity.
    I did this for quite a while and was trying to comprehend what lay
    right before me, as I was still a bit uncertain.
    After many such trials (and, after 3 or 4 thorough attempts at hand
    washing, only succeeding in dimming the patches somewhat - I might add
    that most of the filaments survived hand washing as well), I decided
    to try yet another experiment.
    I went to my closet and just randomly pulled out the sweater I had
    been wearing last Sunday at Piedmont Park; remember, my original post
    on this [Atlanta gets blanketed overnight..., particular post of 4/9/0
    0] stated that while in the park, I could not detect the chem odors,
    but became unusually tired and sleepy; unknown to me, another friend
    of mine was at the park too, though he inexplicably became quite ill
    while there and had to leave because of illness; later that evening I
    detected very heavy chem odor on my blue jeans - though very little
    odor on my sweater - and at the time attributed this to the jeans
    being cotton (and therefore quite absorbent) and the sweater being an
    acrylic (not too absorbent at all). My thought for the post was that
    the chem-stuff seemed to be very persistent at ground level.
    Well, as chance would have it, the exact sweater I wore last Sunday
    was literally COVERED with these UV-glowing (otherwise infinitely
    transparent) micro-filaments.
    I didn't believe it at first. I thought that I must be seeing some
    type of fabric "dust", or something similar. Yet none of my other
    clothing appeared to have the filaments, or at least not to the degree
    as I was finding on that particular sweater (the comforter on my bed
    had a light dusting of the same, though).
    On LIGHT-COLORED CLOTHING, incidentally, the BaTiO3 is virtually
    undetectable by UV light (this includes light colored jeans); the
    contrast range is too narrow to permit one to "see" it, even though
    I'm sure it's "glowing" madly.
    The micro-filaments themselves were also difficult to physically
    handle, some of them being quite "persistent", almost embedded in the
    fabric of the sweater, while others seemed to be "on the surface" and
    could be plucked off. These were very small, yet very visible under my
    black light all the same. I was also struck by the fact that even
    though it had been several days since I had handled the sweater, the
    microfilaments I had found earlier on my hands that evening MATCHED
    EXACTLY in size, shape, reflectivity, transparency, and other
    characteristics THE MANY, MANY MICROFILAMENTS I HAD FOUND ON A SWEATER
    OF "KNOWN QUALITY" - that is, I had been wearing it outside for an
    extended period during an exposure day. [MIND YOU, I only detected the
    spray odor on my clothing later that same day - no visible signs of
    chem-trails, as we've come to know them, seemed to be present in the
    sky on that particular blue Sunday.]
    So, on my person, I had detected persistent "patches" (probably formed
    from drying raindrops on Thursday as well as persistent and residual
    "microfilaments" on a sweater worn during a "normal-looking (but
    otherwise exposure) day.
    The fluorescing characteristics of each are fascinating. They start
    glowing about their complete portion long before they are even
    directly in the light path, and will do so even if you have a
    moderate-wattage incandescent bulb lit simultaneously (just for
    inspection purposes). They also "respond" very quickly to black light
    "stimuli" - meaning they need no "charge" time, they "peak" as fast as
    you can bring the light over - and put forth an amazing glow for
    something so absolutely invisible under normal sunlight illumination
    -- or for that matter, under standard household or office lighting.
    PRE-REQS:
    - You'll need a very dark room, or a room at night with a
    standard-type light which can be switched off.
    - You'll need some type of black light source - either a fluorescent
    tube-type fixture, or an incandescent "screw-in" bulb, both of which
    are readily available through lighting and novelty stores.
    - Your skin should amply magnify the light difference of these patches
    and filaments if theyre present; for clothing, however, dark clothes
    are best; light clothes tend to reflect a lot of the light on their
    own, reducing the effective contrast and making it virtually
    impossible to see the glowing patches or microfilaments; I later
    checked two pieces of light-colored clothing Id known to have been
    exposed to chem-stuff to verify this.
    - A good mirror is essential as well, for personal inspection.
    Give yourself a few minutes to "get used" to looking at things under
    the black light - everything appears kind of "weird" - eye and skin
    color, you'll notice unusual "markings" on yourself that disappear
    under normal light, colors may change completely, etc. You may even
    notice the familiar "soap scum" left from waxy/oily residues in the
    soaps you may use. Not to worry, just give your eyes time to adjust.
    Ill be very curious to hear what we find through direct observation
    like this. For myself, things that stood out were the following:
    -- how the microfilaments had migrated about my person and living
    space, turning up in well-lived-in areas, but being almost completely
    absent in others (at one point I felt all verklempt from the sheer
    violation!).
    -- how the web-like imagery weve used to describe the airborne trails
    (as they are dropped and begin to spread out) still holds up; the
    microfilaments, when you study them quite closely, are all remarkably
    similar in size and general characteristics -- they look as if to be
    very tiny, crooked parts of a cobweb which simply broke apart and blew
    onto your clothing with the wind.
    -- how very, very fluorescing these tiny patches and filaments seem to
    be, keeping in characteristic with BaTiO3s almost unique abilities to
    virtually magnify certain wavelengths of light.
    -- how tenacious some of the filaments were, and how extraordinarily
    persistent some of the patches were, as if they had been formulated or
    mixed originally in a solvent base (!).
    Its not the most wonderful feeling, spotting persistent chem-goo on
    ones own person -- but I think wed better learn how to do it, and
    possibly even get good at it, if for no other reason than to
    understand the amount of exposure were being subjected to.
    This may also make possible certain types of homemade tests or
    "experiments" possible. (moondog - is there any other type of test we
    could conduct on these probable chem-leavings to determine or confirm
    the presence of Barium Titanate?)
    This still leaves many questions unanswered, but it may prove to be a
    good starting point... (debunkers should try this, too -- though Im
    not at all interested in your late-stage denial / convoluted theories,
    since we may now have physical evidence AND the means of both
    collecting samples and proving it...)

--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
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    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

As Dave said, if you want to see where your $100 million went:

---------------------------------

WASHINGTON (AP) - The missile interceptor the Pentagon is developing as the
key component of a national missile defense not only missed its intended
target over the Pacific Ocean early Saturday, it didn't even try to hit it.

In a new twist for the Pentagon's oft-criticized missile defense program,
the "kill vehicle" that was supposed to guide itself into the path of a
dummy warhead in space - destroying it by the force of impact - never
separated from the booster. So it never activated its sensors to hunt for
the approaching target.

The interceptor passed harmlessly by the target, and few of the critical
technologies of missile defense were put to the test.

The $100 million test was the third to attempt an intercept, and the second
to fail. The first failure, in January, was blamed on moisture inside the
"kill vehicle" that prevented it from using heat-seeking devices to "see"
its target.

"We did not intercept the warhead that we expected to have tonight. We're
disappointed with that," said Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of
the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

Kadish said he had never had a concern about the booster properly releasing
the "kill vehicle."

"It wasn't even on my list" of potential problems, he said, adding that it
had been used successfully on earlier tests. He said the kill vehicle did
not separate from the booster because it did not receive the necessary
electronic signal. It may take days for officials to understand why the
signal was not received, he said.

At an early morning news conference in the Pentagon, Kadish was asked what
he learned from the failure.

"What it tells me is we have more engineering work to do," he replied.

Anthony Cordesman, a defense strategist at the private Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said in an interview after Saturday's test that,
logically, the failure should mean a delay in the Pentagon's fast-track
timetable for building a national missile defense. The target date is
December 2005, but even the Pentagon's own advisers have acknowledged that
this may be overly ambitious.

President Clinton is expected to decide by this fall whether to approve
sticking to that timetable. The president will base his decision in part on
a recommendation from Defense Secretary William Cohen, who told National
Public Radio on Friday that he expected to make his recommendation in three
or four weeks.

It remained unclear Saturday whether the Pentagon still believed the missile
defense project was ready to move toward deployment.

"Logically, you do regroup after something like this and you don't go
forward with the existing schedule," Cordesman said, although he added that
pressure from Congress might compel the Pentagon to go ahead.

The next attempted intercept is scheduled for this fall, but that schedule
might now be put back. More than a dozen additional flight tests are
scheduled before 2005.

If Saturday's test had succeeded, it could have moved the United States a
step closer to building a national missile defense shield that Congress says
is urgently needed, but that critics decry as unworkable.

After technicians fixed a last-minute glitch that delayed the start of the
test by about two hours, a modified Minuteman intercontinental ballistic
missile with a dummy warhead atop its second-stage rocket blasted off from
Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., at 12:19 a.m. EDT.

The rocket headed toward the central Pacific.

Twenty-one minutes later, at 12:40 a.m. EDT, an interceptor missile carrying
the "kill vehicle" launched from Kwajalein Atoll.

The "kill vehicle" was supposed to separate from the second-stage rocket
booster exactly 2 minutes and 37 seconds into flight, then maneuver itself
into the path of the mock warhead. Television monitors showed no flash
indicating a collision.

Nearly a half-hour passed before officials who monitored the flight test
from a basement office in the Pentagon reported that the interceptor missile
had missed its target.

The "kill vehicle" was programmed to use target data gathered from
ground-based radars to maneuver itself into the path of the dummy warhead
140 miles above the Earth. The goal was a 16,000-mile-an-hour collision that
would disintegrate the warhead by sheer force of impact.

Bilbo Baggins wrote:
>    I'm not sure that was what I intended to convey.  Much LIKE it,
>only nowhere near that *strong*.  More a change in genes that allows for
>the shedding of the purely mechanistic drive to spew YOUR genes into
>every available female, and a females drive to go COLLECTING genes
>strictly on the basis of which male can best accomplish the above, while
>helping keep HER progeny alive.
>     Not a "self-sacrifice" gene. Rather a move toward a drastic widening
>of what is considered one's self interest. If one widens the range of
>what one considers "self interest", very far, it becomes
>indistinguishable from altruism.

I think "self interest" may be misleading when applied to genes. Genes don't
really have interests or preferences. What happens is that there is a
limited number of 'slots' (loci) for the competing gene forms (alleles) and
those forms that, because of their effects on the phenotype, can improve the
chances of replication for that form (or hinder the replication of the
others) will spread and displace the competition.

So genes cannot 'widen their interests'. Those that are better at making
copies of themselves displace those that a little worse. Altruism, at the
genetic level, would be helping the competition replicate, and would
necessarily be in the minority (e.g. deadly genetic diseases are caused by
altruistic genes -- by killing the individual carrying the gene, they free
up a 'slot' for the other, non-deadly, gene forms).

The appearence of complex societies, cultural evolution, etc... did change
the ways in which genes could help spread their copies. Big teeth and strong
jaws were no longer a good path to 'copydom', but big brains became a good
asset, so jaws shrunk and brains grew (i.e. genes for some features were
replaced by genes for other features).

But the reason some genes were displaced by other genes is because the
newcomers were better at being selfish -- that is, better at helping copies
of themselves to the detriment of the copies of others.

Me:
>>2: being hard to replace
>>and very independent of culture,

Bilbo:
>Transcendent beliefs vary wildly, and are highly dependent upon culture.
>And as noted earlier, no one's really had need to TRY to replace it with
>anything.

The beliefs themselves are dependent on culture, but the *propensity* for
unfounded beliefs is deeper. There are many features in our species that
help religion and superstition and seem to be innate. For example,
overestimating the importance of anecdotes and underestimating more reliable
data (during our evolution we had to make do with anecdotes), judging the
truth of a statement by the sincerity and status of the source and not by
the evidence (a good strategy for our ancestors who had to worry about
hunting supper and couldn't go to the library to check the references) and
the propensity for confusing correlation with cause (correlation is much
easier to observe than it is to ascertain causality, and so much cheaper
information).

So you can easily get someone wearing a red t-shirt to the math exam because
this was the t-shirt that helped uncle Bob in his exam or things of this
sort. Not because wearing a red t-shirt is innate, but because of innate
features that make fertile ground for superstitious beliefs.

Me:
>>4: being present in our closest genetic relatives, etc...

Bilbo:
>Transcendent belief systems are curiously absent in other primates.

A specific class of beliefs seems absent indeed, but even pigeons can be
superstitious.

>I'm not sure this fits well with 2, 3, 0r 4, above.
>And the idea that this is applicable to criteria 1, is what
>we are debating?

Belief in Jahve is not a good candidate for an innate feature. The
propensity to mistake correlation for causality is a very good candidate for
a innate feature. and it makes superstition very hard to avoid.

>     That is a bit shaky, as analogies go. If one looks at the above quite
>materialistically ....
>
>    Walking with no effort at avoidance of thumbtack   = +3
>    Walking CAREFULLY                                  = -3
>    Chances of stepping on said tack ....              1 in 10
>    Driving a thumbtack into the bottom of your foot= -700
>
>What is the logical choice?

Precisely my point. Consider:

Freedom from beliefs            +3
Beliving in a god               -3
Going to hell                   -1000
chances of hell if not believe  1 in 100

The logical choice is to believe in god.

The same mechanism that helped us for millions of years to avoid thumbtacks
in our bedroom ;) is also contributing to silly beliefs.

>I would mention that the "thumbtack mechanism" was and is
>totally devoted to REAL data, and not fairy tales.

But if the problem is to decide whether a piece of information (e.g. god) is
true or not, you no longer have such a clear distinction.

Imagine that someone told you about the thumbtack, but you do not know if
that person was lying or not. You'll have to decide on what the facts are in
a cost/benefit perspective too, just like when someone tells you there is a
god, and it still may lead you to act according to a very unlikely outcome
simply because of it's potential cost.

>But the above is Pascal's Wager at it's finest.... or lowest,,,, :-)

Don't know the fella...

>I am, however, skeptical that it is ingrained in folks genetic makeup,
>to be unable to see the fallacy in said argument.

Me too. Genes can only tell things like 'brain cells X will replicate untill
substance Y reaches concentration Z, after which they will grow dendrites
towards the sources of A,B,...etc'. The way people make decisions will then
depend both on this broad outline and of everything that influeced the
actual layout of the neural networks, including experience.

This means it may not be *impossible* for any normal human being to see
these fallacies. But it may mean that for many, in many circumstances, it
will be extremely hard. The implication is that in a large population there
will always be individuals with fallacious beliefs.

Best,
Ludi
--------------------------------------------------------------
    Ludwig Krippahl                   CQFB/CENTRIA      FCT-UNL

       "Truth is something we can attempt to doubt,
        and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover
        that part of the doubt is unjustified."
        Niels Bohr
--------------------------------------------------------------

< http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html >

Check out this site since it has Carl Sagan's complete (sort of) baloney
detection kit from his masterpiece (IMHO) _The Demon-Haunted World_.  Its
science, and hence should have some importance to this list.

Matt Troutman

--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
< fortean1@... >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
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------------
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Thailand/Laos
  - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand
    (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73)
  - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand
    (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site
    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

Forwarded by Barbara Ransdell

7 JULY 2000

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  (Reuters) - U.S.  prosecutors have acknowledged that
Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee may have been job hunting rather than
spying when he allegedly copied nuclear secrets, according to court papers
made available on Friday.  The filing by federal prosecutors named eight
European and Pacific Rim countries including China where Lee looked for
employment in 1993 around the time he allegedly began downloading nuclear
secrets from computers at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Lee, 60, has been jailed without bond since he was indicted in December
1999 on 59 counts of illegally copying data on nuclear weapons design.  He
pleaded not guilty and faces trial in November.

Lee is not charged with espionage, but with acting "with the intent to
injure the United States." No country that Lee may have been working for
was named in the charges.

Prosecutors suggested in pretrial arguments he was spying for China or
Taiwan.  In December they argued Lee must be kept jailed until trial
because he might be whisked away by foreign spy helicopters or give away
the location of missing computer tapes by using code phrases in Chinese.

This week's filing with U.S.  District Judge James Parker marked the first
time the government suggested a motive other than espionage.

The two-page statement signed by Norman Bay, U.S.  attorney for New
Mexico, said Lee "was interested in seeking employment abroad" at the time
he allegedly began downloading weapon designs and other classified files
onto an unsecured computer system and portable tapes.

"In 1993, at or about the time of the first offenses charged, the
defendant addressed letters seeking employment in Australia, France,
Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan," the government
said.

The filing also reiterated previous government assertions Lee "made
contact" with representatives of China's Institute of Applied Physics and
Computational Mathematics, which is involved in the design of nuclear
weapons.

It also argued "the defendant need not have decided on a particular
foreign nation at the time he committed the crimes charged."

Lee's lawyers said the filing showed prosecutors were foundering and had
"completely lost touch with reality" by naming countries without nuclear
arms programs, like Switzerland, Australia and Singapore.

"The bill of particulars shows that seven months after putting Wen Ho Lee
in prison, in solitary confinement, the government still hasn't figured
out a theory on which to prosecute him," defense attorney John Kline said.

The government statement was filed in response to an order from Parker
that prosecutors name the countries they suspected Lee may have been
working for.

The judge issued his order on June 26, ruling for Lee's lawyers who said
they needed to know which countries the government was targeting in order
to prepare their defense strategy.

However, in this latest filing prosecutors asked the court's permission to
add other countries to the list at a later date.

Forwarded from the Down Syndrome list:

From: Melissa Ames
On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 07:57:49 -0500, Jackie Holcombe wrote:

>On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 06:47:27 -0500, I wrote:
>
>>There's an organization called the Society for Neuroscience, with 25,000
>>members.  It appears to be the professional organization for MDs and PhDs
>>interested in brain research and associated therapies.  I didn't see Doman
>>or NACD listed.

What about Kay Ness?  Is she listed?  She and some others departed from Bob
last year to form their own thing, "The Christian Neurodevelopmentalists" or
something.  I was going to travel to Atlanta after Cristen's mishap with
Sound Therapy.  My husband cautioned me though and asked me to ask Kay about
her qualifications and her methods of evaluation.  Kay not only wrote us
a long tirade on what a jerk Bob was (detailed info. on his personal
life screw ups) but also she told me she had an (are you ready) ENGINEERING
degree!  I asked who trained her to do evaluations.  She said she was
originally trained at the Institute of Human Potential and then moved on to
do evaluations for Bob Doman at NACD.  Last year, she defected with others
and now is doing evaluations privately through her own company.  She
classifies herself as a neurodevelopmentalist.  Further, she has quite a bit
of self appointed "expertise" in the area of child development and child
behavior management.

I find it very difficult to handle the idea that people who claim to help
children don't have any handle on child development at all, in my opinion.
This lady, Kay Ness has no schooling, other than the course work she did
with the Doman clan (and her Engineering degree).  She recommends a book,
TRAIN UP A CHILD, to parents.  This book equates child
rearing with animal training and goes so far as to suggest spanking babies
who cry with a switch (7 mos. olds).  It is really a book on how to abuse
and control your children so they are too afraid to disobey.  Put together
with Bob Doman's dominance theory, which Kay perpetuates in her practice, we
have a scary mix.  Kay has also allowed her 16 year old son to conduct at
least one evaluation with a difficult client!  She speculates that it is
God's will. There is tons more I could say, but I don't have time right now.

She further recommends a new book by Cathy Steere whose son is autistic.
I knew Cathy Steere from NACD members.  She practiced the Ezzo form of
parenting.  You can get her book by visiting the Ezzo website www.gfi.org.
For those of you who aren't familiar with this, it is an extremely
controlling, bordering on abusive, parenting style.  Parents are
to put their children on rigid feeding schedules.  Training and obedience
are the main priorities.  However, Ezzo looks like Mr. Santa Claus, when
compared to Michael Pearl, who wrote, TO TRAIN UP A CHILD. I know an awful
lot of children with autism whose parents used Ezzo.  Whose to say that
withholding food and lack of affection, as well as frequent spankings (I'm
not talking about an occasional swat on the behind), did not contribute to
the onset of autism.  Just speculating, and perhaps reaching too far, but
whose to say that the proper neurological pathways were not developed
properly in these children.  I have corresponded with a mother whose son is
autistic who agrees with this notion.  Someone ought to do a study.  In the
meantime, do you want YOUR child evaluated by
someone who has completed no study on child development at all, who
recommends books by abherrant Christian authors?


>I need to clarify something.  Bob Doman does not call himself a
>neurodevelopmentalist.  He claims the phrase "Internationally Recognized
>Educator and Lecturer" as his professional title.  So he's not calling
>himself something he's not.  He trains lay people over a period of about a
>week or two and calls THEM neurodevelopmentalists.

You know, when Cristen was having trouble with Sound Therapy, I posted about
it several times over on NACD MEMbers.  Kay Ness claimed that hundreds of
others were injured.  She told me that last year, months after she knew
there was a problem in the way NACD was administering it to their clients.
She never said anything to me until I called her desperately for answers!
If she had spoken up when she first knew, Cristen would have been spared the
stuttering problem because it was the last CD, KT103, that caused the
problem.  Prior to that, we were actually getting some positive results from
the Sound Therapy.  Cristen's stutter was
only slight.  She claims that she only cares about helping children.  So why
didn't she speak up?
>
>And there's still that business of looks like a duck, walks like a duck....

Quack Quack

Melissa ;)

--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
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  - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand
    (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site
    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

< http://www.nanomedicine.com/ >

Actually, the credit should go to both R. Freitas and Landes.
Robert for insisting on this (perhaps influenced by Eric's
perspective re: open-crit type arguments for knowledge) and
Landes for being willing to accept Robert's requirements
and contribute the on-line editing work required.

Both author and publisher can contribute to the needed changes
in the publishing paradigm.

An "interesting" tidbit that I've picked up in conversations about
this is that technical volumes like Nanosystems and Nanomedicine
are considered "huge" successes if they sell 10,000 copies.
Something to think about when you ask why people don't understand
our perspective...

Robert

On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Jeff Davis wrote:

> The full text is available at
>
> http://www.nanomedicine.com/
>
> Congratulation to Landes Biosciences for their visionary courage.  Hope
> this comes back to them in profits somehow.
>
>                       Best, Jeff Davis
>
>          "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
>                                       Ray Charles


--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA)
< fortean1@... >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
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------------
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                   and Vietnam veterans welcome]
Southeast Asia (SEA) service:
Vietnam - Theater Telecommunications Center/HHC, 1st Aviation Brigade
    (Jan 71 - Aug 72)
Thailand/Laos
  - Telecommunications Center/U.S. Army Support Thailand
    (USARSUPTHAI), Camp Samae San (Jan 73 - Aug 73)
  - Special Security/Strategic Communications - Thailand
    (STRATCOM - Thailand), Phu Mu (Pig Mountain) Signal Site
    (Aug 73 - Jan 74)

>Ludi writes:
>I interpreted this as meaning that from this point onwards those genes that
>benefit the group to the detriment of the individual have a reproductive
>advantage over the genes that benefit the individual to the detriment of the
>group. It was this specific effect that I say is very small.

Baggins:
     I'm not sure that was what I intended to convey.  Much LIKE it,
only nowhere near that *strong*.  More a change in genes that allows for
the shedding of the purely mechanistic drive to spew YOUR genes into
every available female, and a females drive to go COLLECTING genes
strictly on the basis of which male can best accomplish the above, while
helping keep HER progeny alive.
      Not a "self-sacrifice" gene. Rather a move toward a drastic widening
of what is considered one's self interest. If one widens the range of
what one considers "self interest", very far, it becomes
indistinguishable from altruism.


>No. Merely being a universal behaviour does not make it automatically a good
>candidate for innateness.

Agreed.  Certainly transcendent belief systems seems to be fairly universal.

>1: It should share other features like being
>something that could be coded in our genes (thus ruling out very specific
>things like the knowledge of coca-cola ad jingles),

Or the knowledge of the boogie man or angels raining fire.

>2: being hard to replace
>and very independent of culture,

Transcendent beliefs vary wildly, and are highly dependent upon culture.
And as noted earlier, no one's really had need to TRY to replace it with
anything.


>3: having an evolutionary advantage,

Maybe.  That's certainly fodder for a different debate.

>4: being present in our closest genetic relatives, etc...

Transcendent belief systems are curiously absent in other primates.

>When something fills these criteria, it's a very good candidate.

And if something does not fit? Then it is not a candidate?
I'm....   skeptical... :-)

>  And the tendency to prefer a pleasing belief over a
>  realistic one seems to fit the bill nicely.

I'm not sure this fits well with 2, 3, 0r 4, above.
And the idea that this is applicable to criteria 1, is what
we are debating?


>We don't make our decisions strictly on the basis of what is
>more likely. If you are walking barefoot in the dark and you know there is a
>thumbtack on the floor somewhere you will probably walk carefully, not
>because it is likely that you will step on the thumbtack but because it is
>undesireable

      That is a bit shaky, as analogies go. If one looks at the above quite
materialistically ....

     Walking with no effort at avoidance of thumbtack   = +3
     Walking CAREFULLY                                  = -3
     Chances of stepping on said tack ....              1 in 10
     Driving a thumbtack into the bottom of your foot= -700

What is the logical choice?
A large negative result can make a small effort at avoidance
perfectly logical, even under odds that seem in your favor.
And example of the same logic is wearing one's seat belt in a car.
And no need to believe in boogie-men, to get to a suitable result.

     Do folks make decisions based upon wishful thinking?
Sometimes.  But almost never decisions that matter.  Not REAL decisions.
     A better analogy.. Of the survival value of belief via preference.

     A person pulls up to a stop sign in their car.  They are in a hurry.
Now there is a garbage truck coming toward them on the side-street.
They would far RATHER that the truck was not there, so they would
not have to wait upon it.  Hey! If one's reality is made to conform to
one's preferences! Then the Garbage truck, in THAT persons reality, is
not really there at all! Everyone has the right to
believe what they want, after all....

Crunch.....

One less wishful thinker to spew genes.... :-)


>I don't think it is a coincidence that most religious beliefs have strong
>penalties for the disbeliever and big rewards for the TB. Even if the whole
>thing seems unlikely, the 'thumbtack mechanism' will tend to bias the
>individual's decision to believe or disbelieve.


I would mention that the "thumbtack mechanism" was and is
totally devoted to REAL data, and not fairy tales.

But the above is Pascal's Wager at it's finest.... or lowest,,,, :-)
I am, however, skeptical that it is ingrained in folks genetic makeup,
to be unable to see the fallacy in said argument.





Come check out "http://home.netcom.com/~bbaggins/skeptic.htm"

: Opinions Expressed are those of   : Sacred Cows Make the Best
: Hobbits Worldwide.. If you don't  : Burgers!  :-)
: believe me, just ask them... :-)  : Baggins@...

Would you please give the URL for the following story?

Thanks,

Ray
----- Original Message -----
From: snopes <snopes@...>
To: <skeptic@...>
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 6:19 PM
Subject: Brain damage can explain ghosts - Swiss scientist

Those of you in southern California might want to watch your tax dollars
going up in smoke this evening. Sometimes, these twilight launches are
visible from as far away as New Mexico and Colorado.



                    ASTRONOMY/SPACE ALERT FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

                                 Brian Webb, KD6NRP
                             Ventura County, California
                         E-mail: 102670.1206@...
         Web Page: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rawhide_home_page

                                               2000 July 05 (Wednesday)
20:50 PDT
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

                         Missile Defense Test This Friday

A missile launch from Vandenberg AFB scheduled to occur between 19:01 and
23:01
PDT on July 7th might be visible across the southwestern U.S.

The U.S. Air Force will launch an MSLS missile (a modified Minuteman II) on a
steep ballistic arc towards the west-southwest. The refurbished ICBM will
reach
a maximum altitude of about 900 miles and send an unarmed warhead and balloon
decoy towards the central Pacific. The objects will be used as targets to test
the proposed National Missile Defense system.

As the warhead and decoy close in, a second missile carrying a Kill Vehicle
(KV)
will be launched from the Marshall Islands. The KV will attempt to detect,
track, and collide with the warhead.

Although the launch is listed as being at 19:01 PDT, which is well before
sunset, there's a good chance that the actual launch time will be at
Vandenberg's sunset or during evening twilight.

If the missile is launched between 20:00 and 21:30 PDT, the sun will have set
and the missile's smoke trail and exhaust plume will be backlit by the sun.
This will create an impressive sight that could be visible as far away as
southern Oregon and Idaho, southwestern Colorado, and western New Mexico.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

                                   Launch Status

For the status of Friday's launch, consult the following sources:

     Joint Pacific Area Scheduling Office
     http://mocc.vafb.af.mil/launchsched.asp

     This is the official Vandenberg AFB launch schedule and is usually only
     updated during normal working hours Monday through Friday.

     Vandenberg Launch Update Line
     30th Space Wing Public Affairs Office
     805-606-1857

     A tape recorded message regarding the status of the next scheduled launch.
     It is NOT updated during the countdown or in the event of a hold.

     Vandenberg Launch Net (VHF)
     WB6OBB Repeater
     147.000 MHz, +600 KHz Offset, 131.8 Hz PL

     Countdown updates for ham radio operators and scanner listeners by way of
     the WB6OBB ham radio repeater west of Santa Barbara. This repeater's
signal
     reaches from Thousand Oaks to San Luis Obispo. This net will be
convened at
     18:30 PDT on launch day.

     Vandenberg Launch Net (HF)
     3,815.5 KHz LSB

     For the benefit of hams in outlying areas, a second launch net will be
     conducted on HF (shortwave) in the 80-meter ham band. Hams who are within
     range of the Santa Barbara repeater and can operate on 80-meters will pass
     information from the local VHF net over to this net. This net will also
     start at 18:30 PDT.


______________________________________________________

To subscribe to launch-alert , send the following e-mail:

To: majordomo@...

Message Text: subscribe launch-alert

To unsubscribe to launch-alert , send the following e-mail:

To: majordomo@...

Message Text: unsubscribe launch-alert




*************** Regards, Dave Palmer  <dpalmer@...> **************
As much as the author would like to spend precious minutes of the rapidly-
dwindling time remaining in his life responding to your kind and thoughtful
letter about how he is going to spend eternity in a lake of fire being eaten
by rats, he regrets that he is unable to do so, due to the volume of such
mail received.
************************* http://www.magicdave.com *************************

James Redekop <tzoq@...>
> And freeze-thaw, near the poles (else the polar caps would
>never change size).

Yup, but that's only at the poles, AND it's CO2, not water. Nonetheless, we
would expect to see slightly quicker erosion at the poles.

The thing that really torques me about the original post is the
conspiracy-think implied in it: "I don't understand this...therefore it
MUST be a vast, sinister international conspiracy to keep The Truth from
The People."

*************** Regards, Dave Palmer  <dpalmer@...> **************
As much as the author would like to spend precious minutes of the rapidly-
dwindling time remaining in his life responding to your kind and thoughtful
letter about how he is going to spend eternity in a lake of fire being eaten
by rats, he regrets that he is unable to do so, due to the volume of such
mail received.
************************* http://www.magicdave.com *************************

At 02:54 PM 07/07/2000 -0400, James H.G. Redekop wrote:
>Dave Palmer wrote:
> >
> > Erosion on Earth is the result of many factors: flowing water, blowing
> > water, blowing sand and dust, freeze-thaw cycles, and various geological
> > activity.
> >
> > On Mars, ALL you have is blowing sand and dust, and because of the much
> > lower atmospheric pressure, that's not as big an eroder.
>
>  And freeze-thaw, near the poles (else the polar caps would
>never change size).

Freeze-sublime would be more accurate. The temperature and pressure on Mars
rarely goes above the triple point of water. And it never does at the poles.

Ron Ebert
ron.ebert@...

     "I swear to you, then," said MacIan. . . "I swear it by
the god you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed;
I swear it by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the
Holy Island where my fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by
the secret of my people, and by the chalice of the Blood of God."
       The Atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word."

_The Ball and the Cross_, G.K. Chesterton

<<After 32 years, a mathematical problem with
265,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible answers has been
solved - thanks to the internet.>>

I wish *my* math profs had given us multiple choice exams.

  - snopes

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|    Urban Legends Reference Pages --> http://www.snopes.com          |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

Dave Palmer wrote:
>
> Erosion on Earth is the result of many factors: flowing water, blowing
> water, blowing sand and dust, freeze-thaw cycles, and various geological
> activity.
>
> On Mars, ALL you have is blowing sand and dust, and because of the much
> lower atmospheric pressure, that's not as big an eroder.

  And freeze-thaw, near the poles (else the polar caps would
never change size).

--
James H.G. Redekop  http://www.residents.com/       The Residents
                     http://www.residents.com/Goons  The Goon Show
Blood is thick but God is thicker/I am sick but He is sicker
He said DIE so I must kill him/Why does God want to kill children?

Forwarded by Andrys Basten

July 6, 2000
By Andrew Quinn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - It looks like a soft carpet of vibrant green,
rippling in the ocean's currents. But biologists call it an alien invader,
a killer that strangles native sea plants, plays havoc with fish
populations and causes ecological devastation in coastal communities.

Having defeated the control efforts of France, Spain, Monaco and Italy to
spread throughout the north Mediterranean, the Caulerpa taxifolia alga has
been spotted for the first time in California waters -- prompting a red
alert among environmentalists and oceanographers watching for new threats
to the region's delicate ecology.

"In terms of potential damage, this species is a very, very serious
problem," Robert Hoffman of the National Marine Fisheries Service said
Thursday. "It moves in and displaces anything that is normally found along
the ocean bottom and becomes the one single species that dominates the
habitat."

Marine biologists identified the first North American sample of the
species several weeks ago in eelgrass beds in a coastal lagoon about 20
miles north of San Diego.

Scientists say the lagoon infestation is an isolated case and stress there
is no indication so far that the algae have spread into open ocean along
the coast.

But many marine biologists fear it is only a matter of time before the
hardy water plants -- originally engineered to look pretty in home
aquariums -- take hold in coastal waters, where they could imperil the
eelgrass and kelp beds that form the basis of the region's marine
ecosystem.

"Once it gets out of control, it is really out of control,"  Hoffman said.
"That's why we are moving as fast as we can."

A DEADLY CLONE ESCAPES IN MONACO

For an object lesson in what can happen when the algae get a head start,
scientists point to the northern Mediterranean.

Caulerpa taxifolia originally gained notice as a fast-growing plant used
to decorate saltwater aquariums. A hardier, cloned version of the species
was developed for display at the Stuttgart Aquarium in Germany in the
early 1980s and was provided to aquariums in France and Monaco to brighten
up their displays.

Around 1984, however, a sample apparently escaped from the Oceanographic
Museum of Monaco into the open Mediterranean.  From an initial patch of
about 1.2 square yards, the algae spread to cover about 2.5 acres of ocean
by 1989.

Today, caulerpa algae have spread throughout the northern Mediterranean,
harming tourism, destroying recreational diving, overgrowing native sea
plants, influencing fish populations and tangling net fishing operations.

The original caulerpa may have seemed a fragile and decorative plant, but
the European clone has proved a resourceful foe -- growing to nearly 10
feet in length, thriving in deeper and colder water, and able to survive
for up to 10 days out of water.

While harmless to humans, the algae contain a toxin that can interfere
with the eggs of some marine mammals and kill off many microscopic
organisms.

"CARPET OF ASTROTURF"

Scientists have compared the introduction of the algae to "unrolling a
carpet of Astroturf" across the sea bottom, where it soaks up all
available nutrients and bulldozes other species out of existence.

Hoffman of the National Marine Fisheries Service said the California
infestation probably occurred when somebody dumped a fish tank into a
storm drain. Steps are under way to kill off the invader, covering the
algal turf with tarpaulins and then dosing it with herbicides, he said.

Andrew Cohen, a marine biologist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute
who pioneered a successful drive to get the United States to ban the
import of caulerpa as a "noxious weed" in 1999, said the San Diego
discovery did not necessarily mean the end of California's native coastal
ecosystem.

"We are in as good a shape as we could be to eradicate this initial
introduction," Cohen said. But he said the menace illustrated the
vulnerability of the world's interconnected ecosystems, where a common
fish tank could hold the key to the destruction of huge expanses of open
ocean.

"We need more education on these kind of threats," he said.  "The chances
are pretty good there is more of this clone out there in aquariums or
supply stores around the country."

Forwarded by Barbara Ransdell

       PRESS ASSOCIATION, UK
       6 JULY 2000

After 32 years, a mathematical problem with
265,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible answers has been
solved - thanks to the internet.

To reduce their workload, a team from the Argonne National Laboratory in
Chicago programmed their computers to test only the 12 billion most
promising solutions to the NUG30 problem set by three mathematicians in
1968.

It would have taken one fast workstation seven years to work out the best
answer, so the team divided the work and sent it over the internet to
2,500 computers at eight research institutions in the US and Italy.

The computers then worked on the problem when they were not being used for
anything else, The Chicago Sun-Times (www.suntimes.com) reports.

It took seven days for the computers to come up with the answer after
which there was much rejoicing, the team said on its web site,
www.mcs.anl.gov/metaneos/nug30.

Jorge Nocedal of Northwestern University said: "This is a major advance in
computing. The internet is not just a repository of information but a huge
computational resource."

Peter Hahn of the University of Pennsylvania, who has been trying to crack
the problem for 30 years, was considered to be closest to solving it until
a few years ago.

He said: "But what can I say. They're a good team and they came up with
something better."

Another quote:

But ultimately, Bush's religious views may have their biggest impact when it
comes to the Supreme Court justices he could pick. With Justices William
Rehnquist, 75; Sandra Day O'Connor, 70; and John Paul Stevens, 79; all
likely to retire, he could stack the court with religious conservatives like
the two he calls his favorites: Antonin Scalia, a devout Roman Catholic, and
Clarence Thomas, a Catholic who attends the conservative, charismatic Truro
Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va. (Indeed, whether they come to him or he to
them, Bush often finds himself working with religious Christians. As a
partner of the Texas Rangers, he pushed for scouts to sign evangelical
Christian athletes. And a dozen or so women on his campaign staff, including
press aides Mindy Tucker, Megan Moran and Lee Boddy, regularly hold Bible
study.)

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Santa Fe Independent School
District vs. Doe, where a Mormon family and a Roman Catholic family
challenged a public high school district in suburban Houston that allowed
students to conduct Christian prayer at football games from the stadium's
public-address system, Bush filed a brief on behalf of the high school
district that allowed school prayer.

"I happen to believe it is constitutional for voluntary school-led prayer in
after-school activities like football," Bush said.



Gene

Terry Colvin forwarded:

> When I first saw the image from Mariner and Vikings, and saw the dry
> riverbed.  I knew that was indicitive of recent liquid water on the surface
> of Mars.  I am not talking about recent in geological timespans, I am
> talking recent in human timespans.  I am familiar with the scab lands and
> wadis here on Earth.  But the general rule seems to be when a river dies its
> old bed is covered over and is all but lost.  I realize erosion is more
> active on Eath than on Mars and many of the forces of erosion are not
> present on the Mars of today.  However, I am referring to the erosion of
> blowing sand, on Mars there are global sandstorms which when the sand
> settles out of the atmosphere the riverbeds should in time be covered over
> and no longer visible to a camera recording visible light.
>
> Look at the deserts in Norh Africa and the middle east.  They have covered
> over many rivers that were still active only a few thousand years ago.
> While the forces of erosion are not as active on Mars should not all the
> riverbed and delta have been eroded and covered over since the time that
> water ran freely on Mars?  Which we are told has not happened for about a
> couple of billion years?  So when we see these ancient formations like dry
> river deltas on Mars, does that not indicate that water was running freely
> on Mars quite recently.

The main agent of erosion in Earth deserts is water, *not*, as seems
to be popularly thought, wind.  Lack of free water on Mars drastically
reduces erosional activity on the surface.  Add to this the fact that
it's not a tectonically active planet.  On top of this, if I remember
my numbers right, the air pressure on the Martian surface is about 1%
compared to Earth.  So even the relatively small effects of wind
erosion on Earth wll be vastly reduced on Mars.  The "sandstorms"
there lift only fine dust, in low (though spectacularly visible)
quantities; they are not huge sandblasting machines.

Granted, I'm an ordinary physicist rather than a planetary scientist;
I'm not lecturing based on any deep expertise.  Nevertheless, from
what I know, it does not seem at all surprising to me that erosional
time scales on Mars should be much longer than human lives.

	 Taner Edis

     Dolores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat
     stone forever skipping across smooth water, rippling reality
     sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she
     finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of
     fluoride as a child which caused her to lie forever on the
     floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a
     five-hundred-pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center.
	   -- Linda Vernon
	     (Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winner, 1990)

"Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1@...>
>I realize erosion is more
>active on Eath than on Mars and many of the forces of erosion are not
>present on the Mars of today.

"Many?" Try "all but one, and that one at a much reduced intensity."

Erosion on Earth is the result of many factors: flowing water, blowing
water, blowing sand and dust, freeze-thaw cycles, and various geological
activity.

On Mars, ALL you have is blowing sand and dust, and because of the much
lower atmospheric pressure, that's not as big an eroder.

>However, I am referring to the erosion of
>blowing sand, on Mars there are global sandstorms which when the sand
>settles out of the atmosphere the riverbeds should in time be covered over
>and no longer visible to a camera recording visible light.

That is, until the NEXT sandstorm, when the lightly-covered riverbed is
just as likely to be exposed again. One of the ways riverbeds get
permanently covered over on Earth is when dust and sand fill them up, and
then something happens to bond the loose particulate matter in place. It's
usually water that does that.

All of that is lacking on Mars.



*************** Regards, Dave Palmer  <dpalmer@...> **************
As much as the author would like to spend precious minutes of the rapidly-
dwindling time remaining in his life responding to your kind and thoughtful
letter about how he is going to spend eternity in a lake of fire being eaten
by rats, he regrets that he is unable to do so, due to the volume of such
mail received.
************************* http://www.magicdave.com *************************

There is an article in Salon today about the "religious beliefs" of Bush and
Gore at:

http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/07/07/born_again/index.html

It is generally dismaying, but one quote from the article is:

When asked, during the December Democratic debate broadcast on ABC's
"Nightline," how much information about religion politicians should share,
Gore said, "I affirm my faith when I'm asked about it. But I always try to
do so in a way that communicates absolute respect, not only for people who
worship in a different way, but just as much respect for those who do not
believe in God and who are atheists."

"Atheists," Gore said, "have just as much of a right to the public discourse
as any ... people of any religious faith in this country."

Gene