From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 10:00 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [Re: DG: The Conspiracy Slips Up] Greetings. >Dean Motter did an excellent comic book sequel to the Prisoner in the early >nineties for DC. Set twenty- thirty years after the last episode, it opens >with Number Six living an extremely 'Ambrose-esque' existence in a deserted >Village. I think it made it into a trade paperback collection, but aren't sure >whether or not its still available. It was so good, actually, that I lent my copy and it was never returned. 'Lost' my foot! Another unmissable source - but hard to find - is the old and venerable 'GURPS the Prisoner', by David Ladyman, published obviously by SJG. Well worth looking for. "A still tongue makes a happy life" Be seeing you. Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Steve Allison [sallison@netcomuk.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 10:52 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: OT: Virus I have just recieved a nasty email virus. It came with an attachment 'ILOVEYOU' if anyone gets it, DON'T open it, it'll screw you over if you are using windows. The only reason I post this is because it spreads by email, and at least one list member opened it (smacks self very hard and repeatedly, hey, it came from a sysadmin who is usually pretty savvy about such things...) if it appears here delete it forthwith! Steve -- Stephen Allison sallison@netcomuk.co.uk From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Eckhard Huelshoff [EHuelshoff@t-online.de] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 10:58 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Jury endures `yuck factor' Good Afternoon. After I set the mood with the sperm gun story, here's the next interesting report from the world press: __________ Published Tuesday, April 25, 2000, in the Miami Herald : Jury endures `yuck factor' Sex toy presented into trial evidence Jurors got their first glimpse of a peculiar murder weapon Monday in the Key West trial of Joseph Geibel when a surgeon took the stand with the 18-inch rubber penis that prosecutors say caused the bleeding death of tourist Sherri Lynn Jett. Members of the 12-member panel, some visibly agitated, seemed to be struggling with what one attorney involved in the trial has dubbed ``the Yuck Factor.'' Jett's body was found April 27, 1998, in a Key West Bight parking lot steps from where she spent her last day drinking, drugging, and, according to testimony, having sex with Geibel. Prosecutors are seeking a first-degree murder conviction for the former maintenance man and ``rainbow child,'' saying he raped and murdered Jett, 39, by pushing the sex toy through her colon. Geibel, 59, has maintained that the injury was accidental and that he did not know Jett was dead until long after they had sex, at which point he says he panicked. Defense attorney Richard Wunsch also displayed for jurors two other rubber sex toys belonging to Geibel, which DNA tests showed had been used on Jett. Jett's mother abruptly excused herself yesterday when testimony turned to the final moments of her daughter's life. The elegantly dressed, white-haired woman -- who has watched every minute of the trial in mandatory silence -- was fighting back tears. With the possible murder weapon -- officially State Exhibit 15 -- resting on the arm of his witness box, Dr. Michael Hellinger told wide-eyed jurors that he had extracted a similarly sized object from one of his patients. ``We actually had to open the patient's belly to extract the device,'' the surgeon told jurors. ``There was no injury whatsoever'' afterward. Hellinger also contradicted the prosecution's contention that bruises discovered between Jett's legs must have been the result of a sexual assault by Geibel. ``I have seen things that have been much more extensive around the anal area than this,'' he told jurors as they viewed a post-mortem photo of Jett's bruised behind. Hellinger told jurors that it was ``very unlikely'' because of the way that anal muscles contract that Geibel could have pushed the object into Jett without her consent. He also said that it would have been possible for Jett to have punctured and ripped her colon without feeling much pain if she were drunk, as toxicology tests showed. A female friend of Geibel's whose blood was found in his apartment from a cut she suffered two days before the murder was scheduled to testify at the prosecution's request but did not. Defense attorneys said she appeared ``intoxicated'' prior to her anticipated appearance. Jurors, told Monday to bring toothbrushes and a change of clothes to court this morning, will receive the case this afternoon after both sides make their closing arguments. Though Geibel is charged with first-degree murder, jurors will have the option of convicting him of second-degree murder or manslaughter. That outcome will probably hinge on whether they believe Geibel is guilty of a sexual battery charge they must also consider. Jurors will also be given the option of convicting Geibel on lesser assault charges. Geibel appeared annoyed as prosecutors and his defense attorneys wrangled over the details of what options the jury would be presented with. It was the day before his fate might be handed down. And Geibel -- like most in the courtroom -- did not know where that would leave him. ``I don't want nothing,'' he blurted out. ``I didn't do nothing.'' _____________ Embarassing accident or cruel murder? But there is something about his explanation that caught my eye: That he did not know Jett was dead until long after they had sex. Ehm, does that mean he kept on doing what did after the poor girl had already been killed? And he did not notice the difference? ObDG: Rituals by Believers in Shub Niggurath and Y'Golonac often feature sex. And in some rituals people are killed. Killings have to be explained. Why not use sex toys in sacrificing people? And afterwards you can tell the cops that this was just an unfortunate sex accident! ECKHARD From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Juergen Hubert [snjuhube@pop.rrze.uni-erlangen.de] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 10:57 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Elder Sign (Was: Re: DG: RE: Inside the Deep Ones) William Timmins wrote: > [about Deep Ones] > Of course, all of this misses the possible supernatural aspects. Given the > aversion for Elder's Signs, for example, my pet setup would define them as > 'not fully terrene'. What species ARE susceptible to the Elder Sign, anyway? And WHY - Juergen Hubert From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Eckhard Huelshoff [EHuelshoff@t-online.de] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 10:58 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: The Very best of Easter 2000 Two strange Easter stories from the international Press: _____________ >From "The Times": ies from the international Press: 999 call for actor on the Cross A CHRISTIAN charity hired an actor to play the part of Jesus on the Cross at Porth in the Rhondda Valley, but the Good Friday stunt was so realistic that onlookers called an ambulance. Gerald Tyler, 32, was smeared with fake blood and made to look as if he was nailed to a wooden cross. Officials of Focal Point, which runs a local charity shop, were accused of bad taste after people were left shocked and in tears. Nicola Fox, 32, a local businesswoman, said: "I don't agree with this sort of thing being forced on people, especially children. I saw one young lad crying. It was very realistic." But Ian Willis of the charity said: "The idea was to get people away from chocolate eggs and rabbits. We believe the image of a man covered in blood hanging from a cross has a big impact on passers-by." _____________ Hmmh. I agree that a crucified man may well have a big impact on passers-by. But I also agree that it is pretty strange that the highest Christian holiday is dominated by pagan fertility symbols like Eggs, Rabbits and [ in my home region ] huge bonfires. ObDG: Fertility Symbols? Hey, we all know who is behind that. AND: Cults might assimilate religious festivals of accepted religions. Make them fools use your symbols! Let them support your faith. And they do not even know about it! _______________ _______________ >From the "Manila Times": hem support your faith. And they do not even know No foreigners to be crucified Cutud, San Fernando, Pampanga— Foreigners are no longer welcome as participants in the Good Friday crucifixion reenactment this year in this lahar ravaged southwestern Pampanga village. But they are still most welcome as guests and onlookers. Barangay Captain Zoilo Castro told reporters that the Passion Play committee he heads decided not to accept foreigners who wished to join the play to “protect our culture.” In past separate occasions, two foreigners—a Japanese and a Belgian woman—were allowed to be nailed on a wooden cross. Castro said preparation for this year’s Lenten drama is in full swing as at least eight persons have already signified their intentions to be nailed on the cross on Good Friday: Chito Sangalang, Ruben Enage, Medardo Pabustan, Arnel Sangalang, Rolan Ocampo, Bob Velez, Victor Caparas, and faith healer Amparo Santos from Bulacan.¨ ___________ When I read the Headline first I felt relieved. But their explanation: They don't crucify foreigners anymore to "PROTECT THEIR CULTURE"!?!?!? What happened? Did Philipine worshippers who visited this "show" cry out "Argh, Fuck! Seeing Belgian women crucified really ruins my whole bloody Easter Holiday! And how am I to explain my children that there are those foreigners on the cross!?" ObDG: Do Mythos cults also re-enact [ word? ] special moments of Mythos history? ECKHARD From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 11:15 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: Elder Sign (Was: Re: DG: RE: Inside the Deep Ones) >From: Juergen Hubert >What species ARE susceptible to the Elder Sign, anyway? And WHY In most cases it's listed in the creature's description, in the CoC main book. With my Endtimes stuff, I decided that the Elder Race was probably not affected by the elder sign. Originally I thought the Elder Sign was likely to have been used/invented by the Elder Race, but there are several contradictions to this. The material invented later, concerning the Dreamlands and Elder Gods, seems to paint the Elder Sign as having been due to them. (As per the description of the Elder Goddess, in the Dreamlands book, as having invented the Elder Sign) In any case, my explanation is that the Elder Sign is a domain stabilizer. That is, it's geometry enforces the stability of our dimension and limits crossdimensional effects. Why are beings warded by it? Obviously, their inherent makeup is multidimensional and, thus, irritated or damaged by this dimensional obstruction. Anyway, that's my take on it. It is in no way canonical, but hey. -=Will ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Juergen Hubert [snjuhube@pop.rrze.uni-erlangen.de] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 11:43 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: OT: Virus Steve Allison wrote: > > I have just recieved a nasty email virus. It came with an attachment > 'ILOVEYOU' if anyone gets it, DON'T open it, it'll screw you over if you > are using windows. The only reason I post this is because it spreads by > email, and at least one list member opened it (smacks self very hard and > repeatedly, hey, it came from a sysadmin who is usually pretty savvy about > such things...) if it appears here delete it forthwith! Maybe that's what has been causing all those server problems with Florian Lang - the virus has already made headlined, and lots of mail servers are crashing these days. BTW, it will overwrite all *.js, *.css, *.jpg and *.mp3 files it can find with some Visual Basic Code. A European magazine has allegedly lost its entire pictures archieve... ObDG: Well, the virus itself might not be all that advanced, but it has already caused major damage. And who knows what the future may hold? Terrorists might write viruses that are more targeted and less obvious... - Juergen Hubert From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Dillis Freeman [buzz_knox@yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 1:44 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Perhaps Nuking Deep one cities is a BAD THING. The effect would depend on the size of nuke, and the depth of detonation. A tactical nuke detonated above the city (essentially, an underwated air burst) could damage or destroy it through concussion, yet might convey significant energy to the ocean floor. Remember that even a nuke has less energy than the energy involved in geological movement. The nuke might trigger the slide but, in my opinion, if the crack areas were that unstable, they would have gone long ago. Unless they are very recent origin. Which brings up a whole new question concerning DO involvement. --- Robert Thomas wrote: Anyway back > to the Nukes, assuming that the East Coast (off > Massachussests) > city is, or was, the target, here's an interesting > possible side effect > to stop your players or to inflict on them after > they do it. Makes a > good Deep One plot as well: > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Robert Thomas [ThomasR@Cardiff.ac.uk] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 2:48 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: DGML T-SHIRT Hello All, For the next hour or so (till 9pm ish GMT) I'll be online in IRC if anyone wants to chat about the t-shirt project, I'll be using Undernet EU, Graz At but if you log into any Undernet server and enter the channel #DeltaGreen I will be there. I'm going to go online all day in work on Saturday 10am-5pm GMT come and find out more. Hell we can even discuss Off Topic stuff as well! hope to see some of you soon. Rob. J.R.E.Thomas. ThomasR@cardiff.ac.uk Our kind. Us people. All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad. Jim Thompson 'The Killer Inside Me' http://n.ethz.ch/student/hankef/DeltaGreen/tshirt.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 2:34 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Grotto's Cthulhu Pages Updated >From: Allan Goodall >Gaslight campaigns) I've added two of our big house rules. These include >our >modifications for simplified automatic weapons resolution, and our >home-grown >hit location system (which takes the damage done and finds the location >instead of the other way around). These rules have come in very handy in >Delta >Green, where gun play (especially against the Karotechia) is more prevalent >than in Call of Cthulhu. I found the damage house rule very interesting... a suggestion for using the 1-10 random bit on the damage table. Use the 'ones' digit from the actual die roll, but run 0-9. This isn't truly random, but it's close. If you want to weight the scale, slightly, have things that should be less likely be higher numbers. This was an inspiration I gleaned from reading Unknown Armies... splitting out the randomness from dice, instead of adding die rolls. -=Will ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 2:48 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: OT: Virus In a message dated 00-05-04 11:51:45 EDT, you write: << I have just recieved a nasty email virus. It came with an attachment 'ILOVEYOU' if anyone gets it, DON'T open it, it'll screw you over if you are using windows. The only reason I post this is because it spreads by email, and at least one list member opened it (smacks self very hard and repeatedly, hey, it came from a sysadmin who is usually pretty savvy about such things...) if it appears here delete it forthwith! >> You guys spewing all the HTML spoor, pay particular attention (yeah, like you'll pay attention *this* time). This is a macro virus. It does not have an executable waiting for you to be stupid enough to double-click like the good ol' days. It is a VB script that utilizes your email programs built-in "functionality" to run the freakin' thing whether you choose to or not. Let's us all pause and think good things about Microsoft for making the preview pane in Outlook default to running any attachments it finds in a message by default. Thank you Microsoft, you're a brick. Love your mealy-mouthed tap-dancing around Collaborative Data Objects, too. So, the old adage that email doesn't spread viruses unless the user is a silly person is no longer true. New products default to acting like a silly person and don't warn you of their bad decision-making. We don't have to work towards the Endtimes anymore, our macros will do the job for us, unasked. Thank you Microsoft, you are all I've come to expect, and more. ObDG: Macros. Scripts. Default settings. Make your own back door with the new improved Trojan-Horse-to-the-user-community. Someone is logged in with Supervisor access. Just make sure the the script does something benign as well so they don't look much deeper. Which suits them fine since they are already swamped. Did you know that support people have a nasty habit of turning off the anti-virus program on their own workstation to get some MIPS back? You see, they aren't stupid enough to run a program from a stranger, so they don't need that Realtime crap hogging their resources because they aren't some *user*. Consequently, they do not receive warnings about things writing to their Registry. Mark McFadden I've got 8000+ Outlook users on the Lot alone. What a lovely morning I am having. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 2:50 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: IRC? Anyone on the list frequent IRC? If so, any particular channel? -=Will ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 3:06 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Jury endures `yuck factor' In a message dated 00-05-04 12:03:00 EDT, you write: << Published Tuesday, April 25, 2000, in the Miami Herald : Jury endures `yuck factor' Sex toy presented into trial evidence >> Damn. Hemingway committed suicide on Key West. I was born there (hence the middle name). Now this. Looks like I'll have to pay a visit and kick some bruiséd asses. "I aimed a front snap kick at his ass. It struck clean and true. It was good. Later, I relaxed with my team eating buckets of large shrimp boiled in seawater with lime, washed down with the cold, light beer of the Keys. They were tart and good and the beer was pure and true. It was a good day." Mark West McFadden More Southern than most. Next stop: Cuba. Beat that ya crackers. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Nerva Vels [nerva@escape.com] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 3:23 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: IRC and virus People, according to the warning in the news, the ILOVEYOU thing also travels through IRC channels - check out http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/virus_000504.html (excerpt: "Chat-room aficionados are even more vulnerable. The virus infects the popular mIRC chat program, so the next time a user starts chatting, the virus goes out to everyone in the room." This stuff re-defines risky behaviour.... ObDG: Insidious evil borrowing into your computer rewriting things without your consent or even knowledge, while you engage in activities that otherwise would be safe.. okay, so you visited that funny site about some kind of king that wears yellow.. or some undersea dwellers. Sounded funny, so you put your e-mail in for stuff. Suddenly you get this e-mail, but it really doesn't say anything. Suddenly your computer starts doing funny things; odd things. Hey, when it starts talking to you, chanting spells and making that funny yellow symbol your background, you think, just reformat...... Nervy From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 3:45 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [Re: DG: The Conspiracy Slips Up] ----- Original Message ----- From: Nick Brownlow > >This is in defiance of the usual Dreamlands logic, but I think the > >Dreamlands are big enough to hold it. > > Dean Motter did an excellent comic book sequel to the Prisoner in the early > nineties for DC. Set twenty- thirty years after the last episode, it opens > with Number Six living an extremely 'Ambrose-esque' existence in a deserted > Village. Yeah. Tom Disch did the same sort of metafiction thing twenty years eaerlier. Last year I took the Spawn to see their degenerate inlaws in the primitive and eldrichly brutal Severn Valley. We were planning to end the holiday with a visit to the real Prisoner villiage, Portmerion, which is in North Wales. On the way down we stopped off at Cern Abbas - big chalk man on the hillside, big prick. At the B&B I get talking to the nice and very upper class lady who runs it. There's a book about Portmerion on the dresser behind her. "That's where they filmed "The Prisoner", you know" "Yes, my Great-Uncle built it" Clough Williams-Ellis. The Lady was a Williams-Ellis. Well well. ---- **** ---- I know I'm not saying anything new by telling you this, but synchronicities like that seem much more "normal" in what you might very loosely call the West country, and particularly on Salisbury Plain. The high chalklands are very densely inhabited by the past. Chalk produces flints, yeilds a soil thick enough to farm but not so thick it cannot be turned by bronze age ploughs, does not grow trees in such profusion that a bronze-age people cannot clear them, quickly dries even after intense rain, and is hard enough to retain the impress of cities and tracks thousands of years old. After you get an eye for the ruins you can see - or you think you can see - where the cities were, where the tracks were, and why they were there. The Plain was a population center - and the "motorways" leading out from it were the high dry ridges of the chalk hills, one of which runs east to the town where I live. I don't have anything to say about crop circles, The Old Straight Track, or Stonehenge. Sorry. Musing, uncharacteristically, on the return of Arthur . . . The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 3:57 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: Rains of . . . . ----- Original Message ----- From: cd skogsberg > :Peeve: The guys upstairs with a 6 Tesla magnet. > I've heard wonderful stories about those things. Someone was having a > leakage problem, so they lowered someone in there and ramped up the > magnet. His vision went green. Eddy currents in the brain, I guess. > -- Aaron Bergman > Seen this? http://www.sci.kun.nl/hfml/froglev.html The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 4:09 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Perhaps Nuking Deep one cities is a BAD THING. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dillis Freeman > The effect would depend on the size of nuke, and the > depth of detonation. A tactical nuke detonated above > the city (essentially, an underwated air burst) could > damage or destroy it through concussion, yet might > convey significant energy to the ocean floor. > Remember that even a nuke has less energy than the > energy involved in geological movement. The nuke > might trigger the slide I think this thread is making some good points, but we should remember that sllides like this happen in the course of nature: the driving forces are the buildup of sediment and continental drift distorting plate margins. It does seem doubtful that the DO would build a city right on the moist dangerous and undstable spot. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Joseph Camp [alphonse@delta-green.com] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 4:19 PM To: dgrpg Subject: DG: [Admin] News Articles For future reference, please keep news article cites down to a URL and perhaps three or four key paragraphs. This keeps email to a managable size and keeps us closer to being in line with copyright issues. be seeing you, Alphonse From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:02 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: Viruses limiting size of the NET? ----- Original Message ----- From: Nerva Vels To: Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 9:22 PM Subject: DG: IRC and virus > This stuff re-defines risky behaviour.... > The maths of it strikes me like this. Suppose next year the Net quadruples its size. That's four times as many people. That means 1) Four times as many idiots writing viruses = four times as many viruses 2) Four times as many people for *each* virus to hurt. Conclusion: the cost per year of viruses like this goes *sixteen* fold each time the net increases its size *fourfold*. Yes, the new net recruits are probably not of the same quality as the pioneers, probably won't write as many viruses. Yes there will be better anti-virus software, yada yada. The maths still points the same way. The yearly *total* cost goes up proportional to the square of the number of users on the Net. The yearly cost *per user* goes up proportional to the size of the net. I wonder if it is this that will limit the Net's growth? The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 4:13 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [Re: DG: The Conspiracy Slips Up] Greetings. The Glove Cleaner has only a pair of fingerless things to rub together and writes... >I don't have anything to say about crop circles, The Old Straight Track, or >Stonehenge. Sorry. Don't worry. Others will. Something is about to happen. Be seeing you. Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:01 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Perhaps Nuking Deep one cities is a BAD THING. Greetings. Here we fall in my old field again.... >I think this thread is making some good points, but we should remember that >sllides like this happen in the course of nature: the driving forces are the >buildup of sediment and continental drift distorting plate margins. It >does seem doubtful that the DO would build a city right on the moist >dangerous and undstable spot. LOL! I'd love to see them try and figure where and when the next one is gonna hit. The thing we are discussing - the DO Hammer of the Gods - is called a Turbidity Current (or TBD for short). I know I'll be carried away - I spent most of my University life studying them, I did an aborted thesys on the subject and I was even paid by an oil company to model them. I like turbidity currents. So, bear with me. So... Sediments build up on the continental shelf. Off the coast, in front of river deltas, the river output of sediments digs a submarine canyon, a V-shaped fissure cutting the shelf. In it, sediments accumulate, waiting. Algae and other decaying organic matter can act as a lattice of sorts, augmenting the cohesion and keeping the thing up a little more, letting the mass increase a few thousand tons more. Then, all of a sudden, something happens. It's generally an eartquake, triggering the fall of the sediments with its shocks. Or it could be some local, quieter tilting of the rock. Or a storm along the coast, causing the base level of the waves to touch the sea bottom. Or maybe - this one is really sneaky - it's just a huge storm upriver, suddenly causing a surplus of high energy water to slam in the sea and enter the canyon. Whatever the cause, the mass of sediments - already metastable - starts sliding down, running along the continental slope on low friction granted by the high water content, and on speed increased by the density differential. Imagine a few million cubic feets of water, sand and gravel running down a sloping surface. It's here that the turbidity current takes its shape, and becomes a veritable monster. The head is crescent shaped, convex at the back. At its base, gravel, dragged by the current that's not strong enough to keep it in suspension, scourges the sea floor, and the thing eats more material as it advances. Over these gravelly teeth, is a boiling mass, a kilometer-wide front with the consistency of thick soup. The freshly eaten material is incorporated and distributed through the body, all but the finer fraction, that is expelled from a 'vent' in the back of the head, causing plumes to rise like some unholy breathing. The thing grows as it runs. The body is a tapering, sluglike train of sand, a few kilometers long, sliding on a gravel/coarse sand belly that supplements the erosional activity of the head, causing the body to incorporate more rock, more water. As the body grows, mass increases, and speed goes up despite the water mass braking effect. At this point, the density of the thing is about 1.5 grams/cubic centimeter. Finally, the thing hits the oceanic floor, and spends its raging energy running forward. As energy decreases, some chunks of rock become too heavy to carry, and are dropped. First goes the gravel. Then, the coarser fraction of sand. And so on, till only the finer fraction remains, settling like a bank of fog in the darkness of the deep. Whatever was in the way of the thing has been incorporated (imagine a few hours rolling over in a washing machine full of fist-sized rock chunks) and simply dragged away. Larger rocks. Sunken ships. Barrels full of hazchem wastes. Picnicking Deep Ones. The sedimentology guys in California used car hulls (sometimes concrete-filled) to measure the amount of movement - you dropped the car in front of the river's delta before a big storm and then went looking for it with a sonar to see how far the current had carried it. But there's two things that are generally forgotten about TBD, even by sedimentologists. . First - water depth is not an issue - a TBD can start and run in a minimum amount of water. It is therefore _not_ limited to shelf-slope-abyssal plain situations. Turbiditi curents were studied in the Geneva Lake. They happen in relatively shallow basins like the Adriatic. . Second - topography dictates direction. The model I described above is the most general. Minimal variations in slope shape can cause huge deviations - the beast turns one side and runs parallel to the coast. It happens. So, you know where it's gonna start from, but it's close to impossible to determine _where_ it will end. Too many variables - we use stocastic modelling and it's just tentative. The speed of one of the first TBD ever measured (in 1929), thanks to the fact that the current in Grand Banks snapped a number of telephone cables, was estimated in over 100 Km/hour - and it was probably a slow, small one. As for distance travelled, again it's a function of mass, speed, topography. A few thousand kilometers is not an unheard of figure - but on the other hand, in some cases the basin topography is such that the current just slams on the opposite continental slope and spends its energy there (maybe climbing up a few hundred meters under its momentum). And as far as I know (no pun intended), the longest distance travelled by a TBD is the distance separating the northern coast of China from Liverpool, UK. The frigging monster ran the whole lenght of the northern rim of the Eurasian Continent, probably thanks to the fact that it was channeled by a series of channel-like tectonic structures. The corals and mollusca you find today in certain levels of Scotland/Northern England sandstones (sorry, can't remember the name) come from the China sea. Whew.... well, I had warned you, right? So, how the heck do the DOs protect their cities from TBDs? No use building a wall. The most stupid defence - and the most likely to work - consists in digging a series of channels between the city and the slope, so that the current can be trapped and directed by them, and forced to spare the buildings. But again, there's no guarantee nothing will come and hit you from another direction. Shit happens. Which might well be a good reasons for DOs - expecially in certain areas, either to build in cavern complexes (the sea floor styructures being expendable) or to have vast amounts of floating structures, hovering like trapped baloons over the abyssal plain. And here I stop. Sorry for the lenghty rant. Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Nerva Vels [nerva@escape.com] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:21 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Perhaps Nuking Deep one cities is a BAD THING. Those of you in this field of science, any comments on this? http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/tsunami000502.html Nervy From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:19 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Viruses limiting size of the NET? Greetings. >> This stuff re-defines risky behaviour.... >> > >The maths of it strikes me like this. [snippage] >Conclusion: the cost per year of viruses like this goes *sixteen* fold each >time the net increases its size *fourfold*. > >Yes, the new net recruits are probably not of the same quality as the >pioneers, probably won't write as many viruses. Yes there will be better >anti-virus software, yada yada. The maths still points the same way. Not only so. One of the bad things (IMHO) of some recent or not so recent OSs is, they ask the user to completely forget about what's going on - don't worry, the OS will take care of it all. Let's name names - Windows95 and subsequent releases are nurturing a generation of more careless and less prepared users. So, if the number of potential virus creators decreases (but does it really? - as Paul Kantner once sang, 'There will always be assholes'), the number of potential victims increases. People that are not likely to react as quickly and as well in front of a virus attack. >The yearly *total* cost goes up proportional to the square of the number of >users on the Net. > >The yearly cost *per user* goes up proportional to the size of the net. > >I wonder if it is this that will limit the Net's growth? I do not think so. It will probably make future attacks much harder - through natural selection. . increase in potential victims means more diffusion . better virus killer software means only the really nasty ones will spread The good thing to do would be to give a good whack on the head to all those wan.... ehm, those hacker wannabees that think causing trouble to strangers is a good way to get a self induced orgasm. And I better stop before I get too extreme. I hate the fuckers! Be seeing you! Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Michael Beck [msb216@is7.nyu.edu] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:22 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Viruses limiting size of the NET? Andy Robertson wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Nerva Vels > To: > Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 9:22 PM > Subject: DG: IRC and virus > > > This stuff re-defines risky behaviour.... > > > > The maths of it strikes me like this. > > Suppose next year the Net quadruples its size. That's four times as many > people. > > That means 1) Four times as many idiots writing viruses = four times as > many viruses > 2) Four times as many people for *each* virus to > hurt. > > Conclusion: the cost per year of viruses like this goes *sixteen* fold each > time the net increases its size *fourfold*. > > Yes, the new net recruits are probably not of the same quality as the > pioneers, probably won't write as many viruses. Yes there will be better > anti-virus software, yada yada. The maths still points the same way. > > The yearly *total* cost goes up proportional to the square of the number of > users on the Net. > > The yearly cost *per user* goes up proportional to the size of the net. > > I wonder if it is this that will limit the Net's growth? > > The Glove Cleaner I don't think so. To the overwhelming majority of people out there, myself included, viruses are things that happen to other people. Even after they do happen, people just get some new antivirus software and go back online. I know I did. The point of this is the difference between actual cost and perceived cost. The first is the amount of damage the viruses actually do, the second is the amount of damage people *perceive* as happening to *them*. As any ecologist or general can tell you, the latter is more important. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Graeme Price [graemep@immagene.mcg.edu] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:31 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Perhaps Nuking Deep one cities is a BAD THING. Davide wrote: >Which might well be a good reasons for DOs - expecially in certain areas, >either to build in cavern complexes (the sea floor styructures being >expendable) or to have vast amounts of floating structures, hovering like >trapped baloons over the abyssal plain. Again, the old timer speaks and what he says is "Godzilla" (check the Ice Cave if you don't know what I'm talking about).... DO's putting their cities in geologically unstable areas has been talked about before. It is possible that the pro's of such locations outweigh the cons. Graeme graemep@immag.mcg.edu From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Steve Allison [sallison@netcomuk.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:37 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: Re: Rains of . . . . > From: cd skogsberg > > :Peeve: The guys upstairs with a 6 Tesla magnet. > > I've heard wonderful stories about those things. Someone was having a > > leakage problem, so they lowered someone in there and ramped up the > > magnet. His vision went green. Eddy currents in the brain, I guess. Yup, I experienced that in a 4T fMRI scanner (that's 'functional MRI' btw), the swithed fileds induce currents on the retina and it's all very peculiar... which I reckon should make some kind of 'hallucinatron' device possible, perhaps OUTLOOK are looking into it. Steve (now disinfected and realising why a zip drive was worth the money). -- Stephen Allison sallison"netcomuk.co.uk From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 5:42 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Perhaps Nuking Deep one cities is a BAD THING. Greetings. Nervy writes.... >Those of you in this field of science, any comments on this? > >http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/tsunami000502.html Always happy to show off in front of ladies ;> The idea is - these phantomatic 'cracks' mentioned in the article could act as focuses of seismic movements. In other words - energy could be discharged by sudden, sharp movements along these fractures. The result of the energy discharge is a subaqueous earthquake, whose water-boprne expression is a tsunami - a huge wall of water hitting the coast. Is it likely? The American East Coast is generally considered a Passive Margin - the name pretty much sums it up. No such movements are expected. But let's make some wild speculations. The cracks are tehre. What next? The article does not specify in which direction these cracks are going. If they are _parallel_ to the coast (the likelier eventuality from the hints given in the article), chances are they are the evidence of the original tear-off movement that caused the separation of North America and Europe. They are _old_ and it's rather unlikely they'll give us trouble anymore. On the other hand, they could just wake up all teh same - which would be bad news: the longer the interval between events, the higher the energy of the event is usually the rule of thumb, and a long-sleeping geological feature could therefore wake up with a hell of a bang. Should the cracks be _perpendicular_ to the cost, they'd be probably transfer faults, or strike-slip faults connected with transfer faults (don't mind the technical terms). Such faults act as sliding planes and help the spreading Atlantic ocean to keep spreading without undue complications. Movement along transfert faults is much likelier than in the above case, and therefore an event triggering a tsunami is also likelier. The up side is, movements being more frequent, in all likelihood their intensity would be minor. Finally, one last option - whatever their direction, the cracks reported are just the effect of the rock mass adjusting its weight and position. They're just like the sort of cracks you get on the upper crust of a cake when it cools. There's little to worry about that. I hope this helps. Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Louise Hayes [Pandora@banshee-lair.freeserve.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 7:08 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [Re: DG: The Conspiracy Slips Up] -----Original Message----- From: Andy Robertson To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Date: 04 May 2000 21:51 Subject: Re: [Re: DG: The Conspiracy Slips Up] >----- Original Message ----- >From: Nick Brownlow >> >This is in defiance of the usual Dreamlands logic, but I think the >> >Dreamlands are big enough to hold it. >> >> Dean Motter did an excellent comic book sequel to the Prisoner in the >early >> nineties for DC. Set twenty- thirty years after the last episode, it opens >> with Number Six living an extremely 'Ambrose-esque' existence in a >deserted >> Village. > > > > >Yeah. Tom Disch did the same sort of metafiction thing twenty years >eaerlier. > >Last year I took the Spawn to see their degenerate inlaws in the primitive >and eldrichly brutal Severn Valley. We were planning to end the holiday >with a visit to the real Prisoner villiage, Portmerion, which is in North >Wales. On the way down we stopped off at Cern Abbas - big chalk man on the >hillside, big prick. A stunt last year was to put a pair of jeans on him... > > >I know I'm not saying anything new by telling you this, but synchronicities >like that seem much more "normal" in what you might very loosely call the >West country, and particularly on Salisbury Plain. The high chalklands >are very densely inhabited by the past. Chalk produces flints, yeilds a >soil thick enough to farm but not so thick it cannot be turned by bronze age >ploughs, does not grow trees in such profusion that a bronze-age people >cannot clear them, quickly dries even after intense rain, and is hard enough >to retain the impress of cities and tracks thousands of years old. After >you get an eye for the ruins you can see - or you think you can see - where >the cities were, where the tracks were, and why they were there. The >Plain was a population center - and the "motorways" leading out from it were >the high dry ridges of the chalk hills, one of which runs east to the town >where I live. > >I don't have anything to say about crop circles, The Old Straight Track, or >Stonehenge. Sorry. > Interesting thoughts on my place of birth... Well, a bit North of it... -- Pookie (Pookie@banshee-lair.freeserve.co.uk) "Don't take your pineal gland for granted. Pamper it! Essential Oils! Rubdowns! It could save your ass someday." - Tlg'manh, Unspeakable Oath 14/15 See http://www.chorazin.org.uk/pookie/ for GURPS: Jorune, Luther Arkwright, 2300AD, Rally Cry!, Strikeforce Morituri, Xenozoic Tales & Black Kiss NOTE: Posted via my girlfriend's e-mail service. She's Pandora. I'm the above. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 7:20 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Viruses limiting size of the NET? In a message dated 00-05-04 18:25:51 EDT, you write: << The good thing to do would be to give a good whack on the head to all those wan.... ehm, those hacker wannabees that think causing trouble to strangers is a good way to get a self induced orgasm. And I better stop before I get too extreme. I hate the fuckers! >> Just a proposal. I intend to take the semantic and memetic high ground and return 'hacker' to it's original meaning. Hacker shall be a term referring to the harmless trespassers who believe the truth is out there and intend to get a look at it. No damage, and only a bogus back door (maybe) left behind. Ethical curiosity embodied. You know, from when the term was borrowed from engineering, "An elegant hack. Reduced the line count by 25%." Those that make viruses and other pathetic attempts at notoriety shall henceforth be referred to as 'whackers', since it sounds close to wanker but targets them specifically. No praise for punks and posers and dipshits with too much time on their hands and not enough imagination to do something else about it. C'mon, the viruses these days, particularly the macro viruses are about as much a virus as a DOS batch file. Oooooh, he can put together a VB script. Ooooooooooooo. I am so frickin' impressed that you were able to compile it without accidentally running it on your own system, you knob. Do NOT let them co-opt a noble title. What the media does about it is their own lookout, I'm going grassroots here. ObDG: Believe it or not this thread is chockful of DG goodness, you just have to collate a little. Mark McFadden I also propose that terrorists be referred to as 'spoilsports' or something else bereft of menace, and we, as a species, refuse to broadcast anything they have to say because it is not of any interest to healthy people. Let the interested look it up on the Web, no need to give them primetime access an campaigning politician would envy. We need to address this issue as history proves again and again that if they wait long enough, terrorism has always worked. And now it works faster than ever with CNN's help. Of course, now that the big governments have learned to ignore hunger strikers until they die, the Gandhi dancers will have to find another way as well. Go, lemmings, go!! From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 7:45 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Outlook and the LA music scene I was reading some more of 'Waiting for The Sun", a history of the Los Angeles music scene. Ahem. 1970 -71. mergers and acquisitions. It's hot hot hot and raining soup, the boys from NY follow the scent. Enter Elliott Roberts and David Geffen. Artists are tired of being screwed, blued and tattooed by record execs and these fellas come along with a shoulder to cry on and a Plan. Geffen, incidentally came from the juggernaut William Morris agency, and had recently been the head of the TV-packaging department. Geffen makes a lot of contacts and earned favors by representing and negotiating for some strategically-placed artists without taking a piece. He doesn't restrict himself to music and does much the same favors for actors and directors and so on. So Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, both as a group and individually sign up with him, as does Joni Mitchell. This took 5 months, tops. Elliott Roberts has an agency named Lookout Management. He says it was named for Lookout Mountain Road in Laurel Canyon. Uh huh. I believe you, too. So Outlo... Lookout Management gets merged with Geffen and becomes Geffen-Roberts. Geffen looks after the deals, Roberts looks out for the artists. Soon, it was the most powerful management agency on the West Coast, which pretty much means the world. So Roberts dealt with the artists, eh? Later, I suppose as a tribute to their backers, Geffen formed a new record company. Asylum. Mark McFadden Just loves this stuff. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Philip A Posehn [paposehn@juno.com] Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2000 7:45 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Suspect Held in Semen Squirt-Gun Attacks Two quick observations; Considering the average volume of the average emission, we're talking about a serious investment in time, effort, and precious bodily fluids here. If you want to freak people out, bring a squirt gun full of Jergen's lotion to a porn theater. Phil ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.