Date: Thu, 18 Mar 93 11:13:34 PST
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From: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (na betna bs yrsgvfg ncbpnylcgvp pnhfrf)
To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal)
Subject: [surfpunk-0064] MEDIA: SciAm Speaks! ... a cyberculture invasion?

|||||||||||||    Well, by and large, "Reproductive Strategies of Frogs,"
|||||||||||||  by William E. Duellman [Scientific American, July 1992], is
|||||||||||||  the most disgusting damned thing I have ever seen.
|||||||||||||                       -- J. A. Nunley,   Milpitas Calif

The availability of uncensored, unedited forums in the internet has
given a global voice to those once silenced by the media.  Although
people have been writing letters to editors and publishing their own
pamphlets for centuries, I do believe that the fine art of the widely-
disseminated rant was perfected on the internet.  Newsgroups like 
"net.flame", "talk.bizarre" and "alt.rant" have developed a culture
that you can begin to recognize in other media.  Perhaps someone has
more insights whether this postmodern phenomenon is cyber-specific
or whether it would have arisen without the net.

One of _Mondo_2000_'s favorite features has been publishing rants to 
the editor.  Now the respectable _Scientific_American_ has caught the virus.
The following are Letters to the Editor from the current (April 93) issue.

                                                        strick
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________


  When will you publishers top propagandizing for speculative ideas
such as the big bang and black holes?  When they are discovered not to
exist, what rationale will you use, since you plastered your magazine
full of this nonsense?  You are the publicity agents for birdbrain
professors of physics.

  I give you till the end of the year to publish the fact that the
observable universe is the last electron of plutonium.

                        Ludwig Plutonium
                        White River Junction, Vt


________________________________________________________________________


  I hope you see some merit in my process for mass-manufacturing
diamonds with subterranean nuclear explosions.  One day in the not too
distant future I may get to push a button and blow a coal mine in West
Virginia all over creation.  In the rubble will be diamonds you can
pick up with a scoop loader.

  Unless you are sure for some reason that the process cannot work, I
do not understand why _Scientific_American_ will not report on the
possibilities of this process.  I have already met the expected red
tape in Washington, but that is something persistence and being right
have always overcome.  I will continue to keep you informed of the
progress of this project.  I am very sure somebody would like to be
there when the button is pushed.

                        James W Linck
                        Lenner, La


________________________________________________________________________



  In regard to the failure of the Hubble Space Telescope:  Yet again
a very large amount of money has been lost probing the universe.
The mirror makers, who are supposedly the best on earth, have been
blamed for the poor pictures taken by the telescope.  There may,
however, be another explanation.

  Beyond the solar system there is nothing real!  There is only a set
of illusory images created by the boundless void in which the solar
system is encased and reflected, as in a virtual spherical mirror.  We
are totally alone!

  There seems to be a need to refute this theory before squandering
further terrestrial resources.

                        Shafi Ahmed
                        London

________________________________________________________________________

  In 1876 the entire membership of the American Society of Civil
Engineers voted to use metric units only.  It was internationally
agreed in Paris in 1901 that mass is quantity of matter and that
weight is force acting on mass.  Yet there are universities,
colleges, magazines and other entities that continue to use
as units of measure the unsafe pound or the unsafe kilogram.

  Net mass is required for fair trade;  "net weight" is a government
lie!  The Olympic sport is masslifting, not weightlifting.  A fat
person is overmass, not overweight, and should lose mass if he
wants to be thinner.  How long can "educators" expect to fool the
public with unsafe words and unsafe units?  You are just as fat on 
the moon, but only one sixth the weight! 

                        R C Gercke
                        Los Angeles, Calif

________________________________________________________________________


  For 30 years, I enjoyed, devoured and carefully stored _Scientific_
_American_ for reference.  Now all is bleak 'round the battlements.
Alas, "my" _Scientific_American_ is dead, replaced by a pale surrogate,
an organ of leftist apocalyptic causes.  This editorial swing leftward
was expectable, considering the inexorable dilution of your once
excellent staff by women.

                        Loring Emery
                        Hamburg Pa

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine
originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern
California matrix.  Quantum Californians appear in one of two states,
spin surf or spin punk.  Undetected, we are both, or might be neither.
________________________________________________________________________

Send postings to <surfpunk@osc.versant.com>, subscription requests 
to <surfpunk-request@osc.versant.com>.  MIME encouraged.  
Xanalogical archive access soon.  Squandering further terrestrial resources.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________


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