The Straight Dope 10/07/2005

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 10/07/2005

Dear Cecil:

How much of all Internet traffic is pornography? I'm talking
Web pages, peer-to-peer transfers, and so on--the whole kit
and caboodle. My friend claims that by far the majority of
Internet traffic is porn. I'd say that while it makes up a
large percentage, it's probably less than half. Who's right?
--Allen Gainsford, via e-mail

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Cecil replies:

Not an easy question to answer. But that's why people write
to me.

First let's dispense with the myth your buddy is flogging,
namely that most online traffic is smut. This belief stems
from a 1995 study published in the Georgetown Law Journal by
Martin Rimm, a 30-ish electrical engineering student at
Carnegie Mellon University. Rimm and his colleagues studied
X-rated images on the alt.binaries forums of Usenet.
Apparent conclusion: 83.5 percent of what was out there was
porn. Rimm, no fool, gave Time an advance peek at his
article, and the magazine splashed the story on its cover
with the war-type headline CYBERPORN.

Livid critics went to town, pointing out so many flaws in
Rimm's work that Time printed a partial retraction. No need
to rehash the arguments--they're meaningless now. Usenet?
Binaries? More important, U.S. "backbone" Internet traffic
grew from 16 terabytes a month in 1994 to 80,000-140,000
terabytes a month in 2002. Even if Rimm's claims were
spot-on in 1995 (which they weren't), today they wouldn't
mean squat. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/051007.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

I was reading an article the other day that talked about
"ancient Rosicrucian priests" who evidently use the
cathedral of Notre Dame for some obscure reason. This got me
thinking: What exactly are Rosicrucians? Their website is
extremely vague, saying only that they aren't a religious
organization. Well, if they allegedly have priests, wouldn't
this make them a religious organization? I am curious as to
what kind of cult the Rosicrucians are. -- Christine

SDSTAFF Euty replies:

Researching the occult is always tricky since you tend to
find at least three times as much (oh, let's be dainty,
shall we?) bull excrement as you might expect from any one
bull. Wiccans claim descent from old world matriarchal
religions, while some Masonic writers claiming direct
descent from God. The history of Rosicrucianism is
interesting but is too often obscured by adherents who claim
a much earlier origin than the historical record supports.

The documented history of Rosicrucianism reaches back no
further than the early 1600s. In 1614 a curious pamphlet
entitled the Fama Fraternitatis was published in Cassel,
Germany. This wasn't the first appearance of the Fama; it
had reportedly been circulating in manuscript as early as
1610. There is some evidence that the work and some
associated pieces were published in order to promote the
anti-Jesuit agenda of the publisher, Wilhelm Wessel, but
that probably wasn't the intent of the original work.

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mrosicrucian.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 11/07/1986

Dear Cecil: 

Please confirm or refute my suspicions. Does the "Close
Door" button on an elevator actually do anything, or is it
provided merely as a tension-releaser for us harried
yuppies? I await an uplifting answer. --Leonard V., Silver
Spring, Maryland  

Cecil replies:  

Spare me the pathetic puns, Lennie; this is serious 
business. The grim truth is that a significant percentage
of the close-door buttons in this world, for reasons that
we will discuss anon, don't do anything at all.   Naturally,
this is not something the elevator companies wish to have
widely known, lest there be social unrest. When I talked to
the folks at the Otis elevator company in Farmington, Connecticut, 
they were all innocence.  

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_406.html

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