psychoceramics: The Cincinnati Group

[Cosma Shalizi <shalizi @ phys-next1.physics.wisc.edu>]

A bunch of flakes who claim to be able to transmute flakes of thorium into  
copper.  To quote their own material:
	The original CincyGroup consists of persons who have taken little 

	science beyond high-school level, but who are Charismatic Christians 

	who claimed to have received explicit, overt,audio-visual Divine 

	Revelations that have enabled them to make the"biggest advance in 

	scientific technology in a thousand years" in a modestly budgeted 

	discovery that is about to be put on sale in the form of a 

	do-it-yourself kit and a_total_ disclosure in the next issue of 

	_Infinite Energy_ magazine.
In a touch of true Americana, you can already buy the Low-Energy Nuclear
Transmutation Kit ($3,000, freight collect --- ``at your own University
or corporate laboratory.... qualified researchers only''), even before
the full disclosure. 

One of their number wrote to me (I can't imagine why) leaving out the
Charismatic Christian bit, quotations from Jeremiah and St. Paul, etc.,
and asked ``who should we talk to''; like a good larval member of the
Scientific Establishment I suggested the nearest competent nuclear
physicist and _Physical Review Letters_, in that order, but now it seems
that much more entertaining possibilities exist.  Who was the person
(years ago now) claiming that chickens could transmute elements?  Wasn't
McElwaine (of happy memory) very into transmutation?  Should we put the
Cincinnati Group in contact with Archimedes Plutonium (they claim that,
eventually, they'll be able to do away with all weapon-grade plutonium ---
they don't say anything about the rest of it). 

	http://web.gcis.net/cincygrp/

Cosma Shalizi
---
	http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/
``The power of the magnetic field is insignificant compared to that of the dark 

side of the Force.'' --- D. Vader, UW-Madison Physics Colloquium, 13 Dec. 1996