Re: psychoceramics: Quantitative Evaluation of Kookiness

[acb @ cs.monash.edu.au (Andrew C. Bulhak)]

[Bruce Ediger]
> 
> 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.

Here in Melbourne there was an old guy with a shopping trolley covered 
with signs reading something like "REPENT AND FOLLOW JESUS OR YOU WILL 
BURN IN HELL", along with Bible citations at the bottom (Revelation, I 
think, but I'm not sure).  I once got some pamphlets and a tape from
him, but I lost them.  Haven't seen anything quite like the Honolulu
Kookmobile or Emil Called "Racovita" here though.

> 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.

Ahh, yes, those were the days.  
Not to mention Gary Stollman.

Of course, as the Net becomes mainstream, so do the kooks.

-- 
http://www.zikzak.net/~acb/          Better living through regular expressions.