Today's Topics:
Subgenius Digest V2 #43
This man's shed holds the key to anti-gravity...
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Date: Mon, 26 Nov 90 07:42:08 PST
From: Rick Herrick <metaware!rickh@ucscc.ucsc.edu>
Subject: Subgenius Digest V2 #43
To: mc.lcs.mit.edu!Subgenius@ucscc.ucsc.edu
>From: Gumby Vinayak Wallace <cygint!gumby@labrea.stanford.edu>
>Subject: Subgenius at Metaware
>
> Date: Wed, 21 Nov 90 10:41:28 PST
> From: Rick Herrick <rickh@metaware.com>
>
>I have seen ads from Metaware where they claim to be "a Christian
>Company." I recently spoke to a headhunter who confirmed this.
>
>So how is it that a SubGenius is working in a nest of Xtians? Do they
>shun you?
>
>Does the fact that Metaware produces compilers for C and C++,
>well-known brain-damaged and restrictive languages prove that they are
>tools of the Con? Have you been swindled, or have you sold out?
Great. Thanx a lot, Jack. You blew my cover. How can you ever expect
this operation to be successful with Benedict Arnolds like you running
around blabbing every security secret we have? You KNOW they monitor
this. They've suspected penetration for a while now, and YOU've just
tipped them as to who it is. Now I'm going to try to get out of here
before Pat Robertson shows up. Oh no, here he is now! Help me! Help
me! Please don't . . . no, not that! No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOO!
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Date: Mon, 26 Nov 90 19:00:46 GMT
From: mathew <mantis!mathew@relay.eu.net>
Subject: This man's shed holds the key to anti-gravity...
To: subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
The following article was sent to me by my slackful mum (thanks mum!) Sorry
for the delay in getting it to the net, but it sat in my "weird stuff" pile
for a couple of months whilst I visited Boston, moved house, changed Email
address, and so on.
It's another "Daily Mail" article, like the "radio waves turned my child
into Satan" one. It's rather sad to see the Mail printing this garbage;
it was always a grotty right-wing tabloid, but at least it wasn't a grotty
right-wing kook tabloid. Still, these days even the Guardian prints
horoscopes.
I've refrained from making any sarcastic little comments about this one ---
I think it speaks for itself. Besides, this guy might just be the genius
we've been waiting for who'll turn Newtonian dynamics into a modern-day
phlogiston theory.
===
(Daily Mail, 1990-08-02. Reproduced without permission.)
DOES THIS SHED HOLD THE SECRET OF GRAVITY?
by Anne Barrowclough.
On a freezing winter night in 1984 Sandy Kidd stood in his garden shed,
staring in awe at the tiny machine in front of him. There it floated, three
inches above his work-top, as if of its own volition.
It was the culmination of three years of almost inhuman toil. Sandy Kidd had
just invented an anti-gravity machine, breaking all the laws of physics
known to Man. At least, that's what he thought.
Of course, from that incredible moment on, he had to convince a highly
sceptical world that he was brilliant inventor, not a madman.
Today, six years and forty prototypes later, there lies in the tiny, six
foot by five foot garden shed a device that he believes will send aircraft
around the world in minutes, and airships through the solar system in hours
--- on just a teaspoonful of fuel. It may have taken a decade and hundreds
of thousands of pounds to perfect --- but if Sandy Kidd is right, he can
expect to go down in history as the man who pushed back the frontiers of
space.
I have not seen it work, even less understood how it is supposed to. But
British Aerospace is impressed enough to invest in Sandy. Tomorrow, at a
modest press conference, it plans to announce trials at Edinburgh
University. "It's far too important a possibility to ignore," said Dr. Ron
Evans of the defence aircraft division. There will be no displays, no
details, for fear of someone stealing what may be one of the most
significant discoveries this century.
It will be an important day for Sandy. Most men keep their dreams for their
midnight hours --- never to be shared. Few follow them relentlessly, against
all odds.
The little machine he has invented looks childishly simple --- two
gyroscopes, like children's spinning tops, one at each end of a flexible
cross-arm. At its most basic, it works by using a model aircraft engine to
rotate both the device and the gyros at the same time, creating a mixture of
forces to provide lift-off.
A conversation with Sandy invevitably sounds like an episode from a sci-fi
comic. He talks blithely about the day when a flight to Mars will take 34
hours, while one to Australia wsill be twenty minutes maximum.
Sandy was an RAF radar technician when one day he removed a gyroscope, still
spinning in its box, from a Vulcan bomber and carried it backwards down a
ladder. On reaching the ground he suddenly felt a sledgehammer blow, and
found himself flat on his back.
He realised that the blow came from the gyroscope reacting to the sudden
change in direction.
A leading authority on gyroscopes, Professor Eric Laithwaite, later
demonstrated a machine that he claimed produced vertical lift without any
external reaction --- defying Newton's Laws of Motion which state that every
action needs an equal and opposite reaction. It was all the encouragement
Sandy needed.
Family life was lost in space. His wife Janet became used to a solitary
existence and started taking all of the responsibility for the home.
Holidays were abandoned as Sandy put his machine together, using spare parts
from his lawnmower, from a car aerial found on a rubbish tip, from any piece
of spare metal he could find. At the same time he was working on a book (*)
charting every move.
The moment of truth, the day he saw his machine go through the earth's
gravity barrier for the first time, came on his 47th birthday.
Sandy felt profound relief, but more importantly, anxiety. He believed he
had shown it was possible to defy gravity --- but didn't know how he had
done it.
"You don't know what you've done when you create a monster. It has taken
over my life. In many ways I regret that first success, because of the
hassle it has caused me and those around me."
For years he struggled, his work as an engineer taking a back seat. His
colleagues laughed, neighbours whispered, academics scowled. He wasn't the
sort they took to easily. Sandy is arrogant and stubborn, a maverick in a
world ruled by the strictures of scientific law. His demonstrations were
greeted with contemptuous disbelief.
"They saw me as a charlatan --- a Paul Daniels who appeared to be doing
magic, but who they believed was just conning them."
It was not until 1987, when BWN, an Australian hi-tech company, offered to
fund Sandy throughout his research, that he saw light at the end of the
tunnel.
His battles with British industry and academia left him scarred and
embittered. But they also made Sandy determined to prove he was right.
"There were days when Janey would pack her bags and tell me she'd had
enough, and nights when I was locked in my freezing shed with the rest of
the world asleep, wondering what the hell I was doing there."
"But I knew that if I dropped it, people would say I had failed, and I would
always be regarded as nothing but a crank."
He may still be, of course. The scientists of British Aerospace will give us
the next instalment of this Sci-Fi obsession. History will decide in the
end.
(*) "Beyond 2001: The Laws of Physics Revolutionised" by Sandy Kidd and Ron
Thomas (Sidgewick and Jackson, 14.95).
==
Anyone at Edinburgh University know anything about the top-secret trials?
Seen any saucers floating mysteriously above your office? (Apart from the
X-ists, that is.)
Hamburgers for WOTAN, Inc.
mathew@mantis.uucp
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End of Subgenius Digest
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