Re: FYI:w00f: UFO hiding behind Hale-Bopp: the plot thickens... (fwd)

From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Date: Fri Mar 28 1997 - 13:47:14 MST


Steve Edwards wrote:
>
>
> I've never heard of Shramek, nor do I care about astrology. I don't even
> see how you can call it a "scientific fraud." It's just plain crap,
> undifferentiated from what you can see and hear constantly on talk TV, or
> talk radio, or dozens of pseudo-science programs. It's entertainment, or
> what passes for it, these days. Still, that doesn't make Shramek guilty of
> murder. Certainly, we must have a higher standard than that. We can't even
> convict OJ Simpson!

Schramek is an amateur astronomer, not an astrologer. Last fall, he took
a picture of Hale-Bopp through his telescope, and happened to include a
9th magnitude star in the picture. He negligently misused some
star-catalogue software to come to the conclusion that the object (the
star) was not in the catalogue, and therefore, due to the saturn-like
distortion in the photograph (caused by the optical qualities of CCD
telescope cameras), that the object had to b artificial, and that it was
as big as Hale Bopp. He reported this on the Art Bell radio show, and
from there it went haywire all over the net, AOL, and among various new
age kooks.

When Bopp came out with a web page and went on Art Bell to prove
Schramek wrong with a demonstration of the proper use of the catalogue
to show that the object was indeed a star, Schramek refused to
acknowledge his error, and Bopp got pummelled via email by all sorts of
nuts who had eaten up the story.
>

BTW, Simpson is losing his Heisman trophy now isn't he.....

-- 
TANSTAAFL!!!
			Michael Lorrey
------------------------------------------------------------
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#!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL
@k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_
]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256;
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