psychoceramics: Quantitative Evaluation of Kookiness

[Bruce Ediger <bediger @ csn.net>]

Mitchell Porter <q--@d--.apana.org.au> writes:
> I don't think it has any bans yet... It occurs to me that although
> Religious Kooks may be the most numerous (or most obvious) at a street
> level, the most numerous online may be Physics Kooks. Anyone who wants to 
> see a zillion new theories of the universe need only read sci.physics 
> without a killfile.

Two things here:

1. I was under the impression that the USA had a much higher Religious
   Kook Quotient than other countries.  Unfortunately, I'm not well
   traveled, so I have no experience to back this up.  Can someone from
   Australia or Europe comment on the quantity and quality of Real Life
   Religious Kooks?

   For example, here in Denver, Colorado, there's a downtown street that's
   been converted to a pedestrian mall.  On any non-rainy day, it's possible
   to see and here someone standing in the middle of the mall shouting about
   some vaguely Baptist theory of salvation.  You'll probably also see a
   fake Catholic Priest, known as "Father Fakey" soliciting donations "For
   the Cause".

   If you go to Boulder, Colorado, about 35 miles away, and walk along their
   pedestrian mall, you're likely to be able to either get a Jack Chick
   pamphlet, or see a Hare Krishna Rock-n-roll band.
   

2. The influx of new usenet users has changed the kook category prevalence.
   About 2 or 3 years ago, the most numerous usenet kooks were the "ADA
   SUX" type of kook.  They tended to have some single theory that would
   cure all programming ills.  Notorious examples were C. J. Lasner, who
   seemed to think that every programming project should include assembly
   language, and could be accomplished by one person, a Japanese guy
   whose last name was "Ohta" (I think) who felt that shared libraries
   were a major source of problems, and that the unix fork/exec combo
   should be replaced by a variant of SYS$SPAWN, and Phil Hallam-Baker
   who felt that everything about Unix was seriously wrong, that Ritchie
   and Thompson were lying about everything.