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Fatal current in fluorescent tubes

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road_w...@my-dejanews.com

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Aug 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM8/21/98
to
In article <6rh0gh$9oq$1...@glencoe.hw.ac.uk>,
b.h.j...@hw.ac.uk wrote:
> Mostly agreed; but you didn't mention the all-important fact that radio
> frequency AC has totally different physiological effects. Broadly
> speaking, it can harm only via heating.
>
> Back at supply frequencies, I'm told that 50 to 60 Hz is particularly
> likely to disrupt the normal rhythm of the heart. DC doesn't; it just
> paralyses muscles. And after a few seconds even that effect begins to
> wear off.
>
> The Institution of Electrical Engineers issued in 1987 a fascinating
> computer CD, in which a (really quite sane) professor tries many of
> these effects on himself, on camera. The purpose of the CD is to teach
> practising electricians what are the REAL dangers, as distingct from the
> urban myths.
>
> Anyone tried to construct Terry Pratchett's massive wheel to which a
> hundred cats are attached, rubbing against amber rods as it rotates? I
> gather it was banned on the grounds that it would be too noisy.

What??? Was this ever really done??? Is it banned somewhere???

Road Warrior

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Harry H Conover

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Aug 22, 1998, 3:00:00 AM8/22/98
to

This is not the follow-up I posted.

Evidently someone has decided to cancel real posts and replace them
with whatever they wish...indeed, a sad testimony regarding the
basic character of a few members of the Internet user community.

Evidently, this has also happened to some of Jim Carr's posts.
I really don't like locks and extreme security precautions, but
if the expanse of the Internet has now attracted the type of
psychopathic personality whose focus is on destructive activities
of this type, additional security measure are quite clearly
needed.

Harry C.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Harry H Conover (con...@tiac.net) wrote:
: In article <6rh0gh$9oq$1...@glencoe.hw.ac.uk>,


: b.h.j...@hw.ac.uk wrote:
: > Mostly agreed; but you didn't mention the all-important fact that radio
: > frequency AC has totally different physiological effects. Broadly
: > speaking, it can harm only via heating.

[Snip]

Harry H Conover

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Aug 22, 1998, 3:00:00 AM8/22/98
to
Harry H Conover (con...@tiac.net) wrote:
: In article <6rh0gh$9oq$1...@glencoe.hw.ac.uk>,
: b.h.j...@hw.ac.uk wrote:
: > Mostly agreed; but you didn't mention the all-important fact that radio
: > frequency AC has totally different physiological effects. Broadly
: > speaking, it can harm only via heating.
: >

I didn't post any of this. Caution, clueless hackers are at work,
probably aided by a commercial offering since most of these lack the
brainpower to do anything like this themselves.

Harry C.


Stephen Robert Norris

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Aug 22, 1998, 3:00:00 AM8/22/98
to Harry H Conover
[Posted and mailed]

In article <6rlb0o$3...@news-central.tiac.net>,
con...@tiac.net (Harry H Conover) intoned:

Harry,

A quick glance at the quoting above indicates that your contribution was:


"Harry H Conover (con...@tiac.net) wrote:"

The "Mostly agreed...heating." paragraph was by b.h.j...@hw.ac.uk,
which you evidently quoted in some post of your own.

Before you start blaming hackers, try understanding quoting conventions.

Stephen

Harry H Conover

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Aug 23, 1998, 3:00:00 AM8/23/98
to
Stephen Robert Norris (s...@flibble.psrg.cs.usyd.edu.au) wrote:
:
: Harry,

:
: A quick glance at the quoting above indicates that your contribution was:
: "Harry H Conover (con...@tiac.net) wrote:"
:
: The "Mostly agreed...heating." paragraph was by b.h.j...@hw.ac.uk,
: which you evidently quoted in some post of your own.
:
: Before you start blaming hackers, try understanding quoting conventions.
:

I believe I do understand the conventions. That's part of the problem.

When I find 100% of my post replaced with words I have never heard or
read before, that's a problem.

Let's not even get into the issue of why and how some of my follow-ups
managed to find their way into this thread...which at the time I was
not even reading.

Harry C.

b.h.j...@hw.ac.uk

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Aug 23, 1998, 3:00:00 AM8/23/98
to

I too have read "quotes" which claim that I said something I didn't.

I think it is very easily done by snipping at one wrong place; so I try
hard not to make that mistake myself. But I have never suspected myself
of being perfect - well, not since I stopped playing telephone jokes on
people.

It would have to be pretty clever and serious to cause me any annoyance.

============ ===== ===== BILL J. ===== ===== ============
GM8APX, qthr Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Mihi ignosce. Cum homine de cane debeo congredi

Net-Tamer V 1.12 Beta - Registered

Adam Baker

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Sep 2, 1998, 3:00:00 AM9/2/98
to
road_w...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> > Back at supply frequencies, I'm told that 50 to 60 Hz is particularly
> > likely to disrupt the normal rhythm of the heart. DC doesn't; it just
> > paralyses muscles. And after a few seconds even that effect begins to
> > wear off.

This reminded me of a funny story. (actually true, not folklore) A machinery plant in Australia was
constructed, and it happened to emit waves of 7 Hz. There also happened to be chicken farm right
next door. 7 Hz is the resonance frequency of a chicken's skull, so when they got the factory going,
all the chickens died. True story.

-Adam

--
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them.

-Alfred North Whitehead

Steve Wood

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Sep 3, 1998, 3:00:00 AM9/3/98
to

Adam Baker wrote in message <35EE045C...@azstarnet.com>...

> This reminded me of a funny story. (actually true, not folklore) A
machinery plant in Australia was
>constructed, and it happened to emit waves of 7 Hz. There also happened to
be chicken farm right
>next door. 7 Hz is the resonance frequency of a chicken's skull, so when
they got the factory going,
>all the chickens died. True story.
>
> -Adam


Funny to everyone but the chickens, eh? :-)

This would be sound waves, I'm assuming? I don't think EM radiation would
get a chicken skull quivering to the point of lethal damage in any
reasonable amount of time.

There's data around on the natural acoustic resonance frequencies of a lot
of human tissue, organs, skeletal components, etc. It's there so that when
engineers design machinery, they can avoid shaking the operator's internal
organs apart. (The Operator probably appreciates this).

Anyway, it seems to me that 7 Hz (audio) was in a table of such frequencies.
I think it was Human Eyeballs or something (can anyone corroborate?). If
I'm right about that, I think the factory would run into problems more
serious than a pile of dead chickens in the neighborhood. :-)

Keep them coming!
Steve Wood


Carl Fink

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Sep 3, 1998, 3:00:00 AM9/3/98
to
On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 19:52:12 -0700, Adam Baker <ad...@azstarnet.com> wrote:

>This reminded me of a funny story. (actually true, not folklore)
>A machinery plant in Australia was constructed, and it happened
>to emit waves of 7 Hz. There also happened to be chicken farm right
>next door. 7 Hz is the resonance frequency of a chicken's skull,
>so when they got the factory going, all the chickens died. True story.

Please watch your line lengths, I had to reformat the above text.
Generally 70 characters wide is a reasonable length.

I don't believe the above story. Unless you can provide a reference,
I'm going to assume it's folklore.
--
Carl Fink ca...@dm.net
"Your brain is actually a fabulously complex computer, which means that
on Jan. 1, 2000, it will stop working and your body will flop around
like a recently caught perch." (Dave Barry, slightly paraphrased.)

Robert Allison

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Sep 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM9/4/98
to
In article <35EE045C...@azstarnet.com>, ad...@atyourside.com wrote
on alt folklore science:

>road_w...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>> > Back at supply frequencies, I'm told that 50 to 60 Hz is particularly
>> > likely to disrupt the normal rhythm of the heart. DC doesn't; it just
>> > paralyses muscles. And after a few seconds even that effect begins to
>> > wear off.
>
> This reminded me of a funny story. (actually true, not folklore) A
> machinery plant in Australia was constructed, and it happened to emit
> waves of 7 Hz. There also happened to be chicken farm right next door.
> 7 Hz is the resonance frequency of a chicken's skull, so when they
> got the factory going, all the chickens died. True story.

That's very interesting, Adam. There has been some discussion on AFU
(note follow-ups; you might also want to check Deja News) on this topic,
and I'm pretty sure a whole bunch of people would just love to hear some
more details. Like, when, where in Australia, what company, and so on.

If you can come up with some good cites, you could become famous (at
least on AFU).

Robert "who has a -much- higher frequency, Kenneth" Allison


--
Robert Allison
r...@bofh.org.uk

Lyle Francis

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Sep 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM9/4/98
to

>>This reminded me of a funny story. (actually true, not folklore)
>>A machinery plant in Australia was constructed, and it happened
>>to emit waves of 7 Hz. There also happened to be chicken farm right
>>next door. 7 Hz is the resonance frequency of a chicken's skull,
>>so when they got the factory going, all the chickens died.

>I don't believe the above story. Unless you can provide a reference,
>I'm going to assume it's folklore.
>--
>Carl Fink ca...@dm.net


No reason to doubt the possibility of the story, though it is much more
plausible if you figure that the "waves" in question emanating from the
factory were most likely sonic. That is a very low (below human hearing)
repetitive compression front, which happened to synch with the poor fowls'
skulls.

"That's why the bottle didn't split, my mind and spirit are going north
and south. " Wang Big Trouble in Little China

Lyle Francis

Jim Esler

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Sep 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM9/4/98
to
Carl Fink wrote:
>
> On Wed, 02 Sep 1998 19:52:12 -0700, Adam Baker <ad...@azstarnet.com> wrote:
>
> >This reminded me of a funny story. (actually true, not folklore)
> >A machinery plant in Australia was constructed, and it happened
> >to emit waves of 7 Hz. There also happened to be chicken farm right
> >next door. 7 Hz is the resonance frequency of a chicken's skull,
> >so when they got the factory going, all the chickens died. True story.
>
> Please watch your line lengths, I had to reformat the above text.
> Generally 70 characters wide is a reasonable length.
>
> I don't believe the above story. Unless you can provide a reference,
> I'm going to assume it's folklore.

This one is listed in the urban folklore FAQ (part 4 of 5). The FAQ
states that it is false.
--
Jim "no chickens were harmed in the making of this post" Esler

Alan R. Betz

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Sep 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM9/4/98
to
Jim Esler wrote:
>
(snip)

> --
> Jim "no chickens were harmed in the making of this post" Esler

Your tag reminds me of the following TRUE story. My first job after
graduating high school in 1957 was at an analytical chemistry lab in
downtown San Francisco, raising 600 chickens. The chickens (9 days old
to start) were in six stacked cages with arch-shaped apertures to stick
out their heads to get food and water. My job was to change the cage
papers daily and provide water. I was not allowed to feed them, as this
was a food value experiment, and that aspect was taken care of by the
regular lab chemists. Every time I entered the room all of the chickens
would panic and run around for several minutes. I could recognize one
chicken as distict from the others, because she had a crooked beak. One
day I entered the room and waited for them to calm down. When the chick
with the crooked beak stuck her head out to get water, I placed my
fingers behind her head so she couldn't pull back, and scratched her
head with my other hand. For several days I repeated this process,
after which, when I entered the room all the chickens would panic except
for my friend, who would stick her head out to be scratched.

Alan (no chickens were harmed in MY experiment) Betz.

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