🚀 go-pugleaf

> My questions:
> 
> 1. Is this for real?

I've seen a film of it on a TV special once and It was definite liquid.
My wife (a non practicing Catholic) and myself ( a non practicing 
Lutheran) were wondering how they managed to pull it off. Considering 
the history of the Catholic Church and its penchant for fooling 
the masses (I DON"T WANT TO START A DISCUSSION ON THIS TOPIC!)
there must have be some hokus pokus involved. Any ideas?

-- 
j                                UUCP: ...ihnp4!msudoc!eecae!lawitzke
                                 ARPA: lawitzke@eecae.ee.msu.edu  (35.8.8.151)

In article <745@iscuva.ISCS.COM>, jimk@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Jim Kendall) writes:
> The following article appeared in the sunday Sept. 20 paper:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 	DRIED BLOOD OF PATRON SAINT LIQUIFIES AS SIGN OF LOVE
> 
> 	NAPLES, ITALY - The dried blood of St. Januarius reportedly turned
> 	to liquid Saturday after Archbishop Michele Giordano implored the
> 	city's patron saint to "give us a sign of your suffering and love".
> 
> 	About 5,000 Neapolitans packing the cities cathedral prayed and 
> 	pleaded to the saint, while Giordano told them that "to re-establish
> 	the dominion of good over bad, we must suffer".
> 
(Remainder of article deleted)

> My questions:
> 
> 1. Is this for real?
> 
> 2. Where is James Randi going to be the first of next May?

And one more ...

3. How long before Michael Jackson tries to buy it for his home freak show?


Jeff

(Not employed by Sequent Computer Systems, Beaverton, OR., so don't blame them.)


"I know it's true. I saw it on T.V."

-- John Fogerty

My patience is non-existence when it comes to matters such as these.  The
issue of blood turning to liquid is not a scientific one.  It is a religious
one.  This is supposedly a scientific newsgroup.

It is rude, childish, and entirely out-of-place for persons like Jeff
Lindorff and Jim Kendall to use this topic to ridicule the (albeit
unscientific) tenets of the Catholic church.

There is nothing useful whatsoever that can be said on this topic in
"sci.misc".  You can only offend people.  So drop it immediately, or move
to "soc.religion".

					Mark Stevans
					cci632!mark

In article <2901@eecae.UUCP> lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) writes:
>there must have be some hokus pokus involved. Any ideas?

Ever heard of ice melting after being out of the freezer for awhile?
(now I suppose you couldn't figure out how to get red ice.)

But seriously folks:
What I'm curious about is what it looks like before liquifying.  Is it a
pile of powder or what?  Considering that blood is something like 95%
water, a goblet of blood would dry to a very small amount of residue on the
bottom.  And conversely, a goblet full of dried blood would probably expand
to more than a gallon if reconstituted.  You can imagine the mess!

Dave

In article <2901@eecae.UUCP>, lawitzke@eecae.UUCP (John Lawitzke) writes:
> there must have be some hokus pokus involved. Any ideas?

ok latin folks, don't kill me for misspelllllinnnggggsssss

but hokus pokus comes from the catholic mass...

it is hockus corpus mae-us (roughly translates this is my body)

in fact it is all wrapped up in the ideas of transsubstantiation..
but this is sci.misc....

the "hokus pokus" is the little "magic" said to change the bread into
the body of Christ in the Catholic mass.

In article <1869@cci632.UUCP>, mark@cci632.UUCP (Mark Stevans) writes:
> My patience is non-existence when it comes to matters such as these.  The
> issue of blood turning to liquid is not a scientific one.  It is a religious
> one.  This is supposedly a scientific newsgroup.
> 
> It is rude, childish, and entirely out-of-place for persons like Jeff
> Lindorff and Jim Kendall to use this topic to ridicule the (albeit
> unscientific) tenets of the Catholic church.
> 
> There is nothing useful whatsoever that can be said on this topic in
> "sci.misc".  You can only offend people.  So drop it immediately, or move
> to "soc.religion".
> 
> 					Mark Stevans
> 					cci632!mark

   The matter is not totally religous!!  If the phenomenon can be explained
totally by the physical properties of the enviroment, then the topic
of the descussion is science.  What I've seen are a  few people offering
political  and pyschological explanations for the event which are
not totally orthogonal to science.  Scientists have been fooled before,
so checking out the posiblity that the event is a hoax is a reasonable
search path to take in investigating the event.

  Besides, if you don't like it, you know where the 'n' key is!!

-- 

					Eddie Wyatt

e-mail: edw@ius1.cs.cmu.edu

OK.  I don't know what sort of material would work, but let's
hypothesize a wax, colored red, that is a plastic solid at
95 degrees F, and a liquid at 100 degrees F.  It's hardly
impossible to make such a substance.

One might also use a solvent-solid pair that passes a phase
boundary due to temperature, or , or ...

Probably any stage magician would know. I'm not one, but
I do know enough chemestry to guess what sorts of things
would work.
-- 
TEDDY BEARS HAVE *GREEN* EYES!
"...Farewell even to our Scottish name, so ..."
(ihnp4;allegra;research)!alice!jj
Copyright JJ 1987.  All rights to mail reserved, USENET redistribution otherwise granted to those who allow free redistritution.

In article <1869@cci632.UUCP>, mark@cci632.UUCP (Mark Stevans) writes:

> It is rude, childish, and entirely out-of-place for persons like Jeff
> Lindorff and Jim Kendall to use this topic to ridicule the (albeit
> unscientific) tenets of the Catholic church.
> 


I don't know what it was that lit your blowtorch Mr. Stevans, but I, for one
am not going to be accused of anything I didn't do. 

If you had read my contribution (talk.rumors #1216) to the original posting,
you would have found NOTHING in it that would constitute 'ridicule' of the
Catholic Church. The ONLY thing ridiculed in my posting was Mr. Michael
Jackson's penchant for collecting unusual stuff at any price. You remember Mr.
Jackson, don't you? He's the same guy that tried to buy the Elephant Man's
skeleton, and (supposedly) the remains of the space shuttle astronauts.

Mr. Kendall (talk.rumors #1214) will have to defend himself, but I see no
ridicule of ANYTHING in his posting. All he did was to post a copy of a
newspaper article and pose a couple of questions, neither of which seemed to
ridicule anyone or anything.

Let's be a little bit more careful with the flames, Mr. Stevans. Ordinarily,
I wouldn't post a response to something like this,  I'd e-mail. But if you're
going to accuse in public, I'm going to respond in public in all groups where
the accusation appeared.

Apologies to other groups for the cross-postings.

End (hopefully) of discussion.

Jeff 

(Not employed by Sequent Computer Systems, Beaverton, OR., so don't blame them.)

"I know it's true. I saw it on T.V."

-- John Fogerty 

Jeff 


(Not employed by Sequent Computer Systems, Beaverton, OR., so don't blame them.)

"I know it's true. I saw it on T.V."

-- John Fogerty 

In article <1869@cci632.UUCP> mark@cci632.UUCP (Mark Stevans) writes:
>My patience is non-existence when it comes to matters such as these.  The
>issue of blood turning to liquid is not a scientific one.  It is a religious
>one.  This is supposedly a scientific newsgroup.
>
>It is rude, childish, and entirely out-of-place for persons like Jeff
>Lindorff and Jim Kendall to use this topic to ridicule the (albeit
>unscientific) tenets of the Catholic church.
>
>There is nothing useful whatsoever that can be said on this topic in
>"sci.misc".  You can only offend people.  So drop it immediately, or move
>to "soc.religion".
>

I couldn't disagree more with these comments. The questions is *not* one of
religion; it is that of information or misinformation. It is either true or
false that the 'blood' liquefied as claimed. If it really did, then this is an
earth-shaking event that has immense ramifications for the current state of
scientific knowledge. If it didn't, then we're in the realms of delusion,
mistake and trickery. I have no interest in ridiculing the tenets of the
Catholic Church, or any other religion. But I believe it is dangerous for
people to accept so-called paranormal events uncritically. One of the
reasons that this happens so much is that science and scientists don't do
enough to popularise rational thought. Flame off.

[This is a shared account. Please ignore the From: field, and reply to the
 following address. Thanks]

Toby Howard      Computer Graphics Unit, Manchester University, UK.
                 janet: thoward@uk.ac.man.cs.cgu
                 internet: thoward%cgu.cs.man.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk

In article <1045@ius1.cs.cmu.edu> edw@ius1.cs.cmu.edu (Eddie Wyatt) writes:
>In article <1869@cci632.UUCP>, mark@cci632.UUCP (Mark Stevans) writes:
>> My patience is non-existence when it comes to matters such as these.

>   The matter is not totally religous!!  If the phenomenon can be explained
>totally by the physical properties of the enviroment, then the topic
>of the descussion is science.  What I've seen are a  few people offering
>political  and pyschological explanations for the event which are
>not totally orthogonal to science.  Scientists have been fooled before,
>so checking out the posiblity that the event is a hoax is a reasonable
>search path to take in investigating the event.
>
>  Besides, if you don't like it, you know where the 'n' key is!!
>
>-- 
>
>					Eddie Wyatt

Thankyou Eddie!! I was going to send Mister Stevans a hot spout of flame
for his retort, but then I figured the guy wasn't worth the effort if he
can't take an objective view peoples curiosity. I wasn't trying to slam
anybody....I was looking for a rational explaination of the posted article.

Speaking of rational explanations - I've gotten several email replies on
this subject that seem to be pretty plausible.. but none that can totally
explain why people see the blood as a liquid. I'm sure that there were 
witnesses that were close enough to the event that they could differentiate
between a mobile liquid and a mobile powder that APPEARS liquid. A liquid
would coat the ampule whereas a powder would not (or would it?).


-- 
Jim Kendall                      jimk@iscuva.ISCS.COM
ISC Systems Corp.
E. 22425 Appleway
Liberty Lake, WA   99019

In article <1290@mucs.UX.CS.MAN.AC.UK> thoward%cgu.cs.man.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk writes:

>I couldn't disagree more with these comments. The questions is *not* one of
>religion; it is that of information or misinformation. It is either true or
>false that the 'blood' liquefied as claimed. If it really did, then this is an
>earth-shaking event that has immense ramifications for the current state of
>scientific knowledge.


  Need we go so far as this? Until it is analyzed, we don't know
what the solid/liquid substance is. It might be something which
tends to liquefy when brought out in sunlight and waved around,
for instance. It may spontaneously liquefy when the air pressure
or temperature changes, but usually unobserved. The only way to
find out would be to examine it carefully, and study its behavior
if necessary.

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/Brahmsgangster/Berkeley CA 94720
                 "Your notation sucks!"  Serge Lang  

The Catholic Church, some years ago, has allowed scientific research of the
container-plus-blood, under the usual restrictions (non-damaging, like in
the case of the Torino death-sheet [what's the English name?]). This
implied that the container had to remain closed, but things like spectral
analysis (absorbtion spectrum), reflection, heating/cooling (within
reasonable limits), some shaking, etc. were allowed.

I clearly remember having read about this more than once at the time
the research was to begin, but I never have heard about results.

Also, remember that the church hasn't affirmed in any way the miraculous
nature of the event, only allowed the people to believe or disbelieve in it,
as long as they are prepared to accept the decision of the church if ever
it will make one.

BTW, I am not a Roman Catholic.
-- 
						Biep.  (biep@cs.vu.nl via mcvax)
			But who said I was right??

In article <7324@alice.UUCP> jj@alice.UUCP writes:
>Probably any stage magician would know. I'm not one, but
>I do know enough chemestry to guess what sorts of things
>would work.

I'm not a stage magician either, but I do know enough about it to know that
non-prestidigitators are usually too fast to pin magic tricks on exotic
substances when the real magic is the time-tested switcheroo.  Most weird
substances are not all that useful for tricks, being unpredictable and toxic
and requiring special education to go messing about with.

Considered as a magic trick, the blood liquification is trivial, a simple
switch.  Two vials, one appearance.
-- 
Tim Maroney, {ihnp4,sun,well,ptsfa,lll-crg}!hoptoad!tim (uucp)
hoptoad!tim@lll-crg (arpa)

Never mind the tenets of any religion.  The blood should be tested to 
ascertain it's origin by scientific means.  This mean of course typing
and examination by a qualified hematologist.  I would suggest conducting
test for various viruses and antibodies, these same tests should be 
conducted of those who live in the immediate locale.  I suggest that the
results would be very interesting.  My theory is that the substance that
is claimed has a rather earthly origin.  It would also be intesting to see
if no antibodies existed or if antibodies existed of another era or if
antibodies that match some of the locals existed.

The policy of the Catholic Church is to ignore such phenomena, considering
the amount of fraud associated with such claims in the past.  This has 
however never prevented hoards of worshipers from heading towards theses
self proclaimed shrines in effort to make closer contact with their God,
regardless of whether the phenomena was legitimate or not.  In other words,
before anymore is said, lets test this thing make sure that it is for real.
-- 

			 	Taras Pryjma 
				uucp: taras@gpu.utcs
				bitnet: tpryjma@utoronto
				Bell: +1 (416) 536-2821

Fear is never boring.    hmmm.  hmmmm.
					YEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Damn those trap doors!  Yup.  Fear is never boring.