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Robert E. McElwaine   autumn 1991 - April 1993              most newsgroups
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     Along with Serdar Argic, Robert E. McElwaine became one of the most
famous Net.Legends during his tenure on Usenet, generating enough fame and
interest to rate a FAQ and his own newsgroup, alt.fan.robert.mcelwaine.
Originally appearing on the science groups such as sci.physics and
sci.astro, and eventually posting to almost every newsgroup in existance,
McElwaine would post long messages about a number of subjects on a regular
monthly or semi-monthly schedule.  These posts were almost always the same,
with no changes made from the previous editions, and he *never* cross-
posted, making it impossible for most newsreader programs to realize that
the message had already been read.  Among McElwaine's theories were:

  o Plants are psychic and transmutating elements (from "The Secret Life
    Of Plants")
  o AIDS, cancer, and various other ailments can be prevented and cured
    by regular baths in a concoction of herbal things.
  o Unlimited energy is available from an invention that utilizes spinning
    wheels to unlock KINEMASSIC energy.
  o Russians are controlling the USA's weather.
  o The good Christians in Moscow have regularly defeated the BOLSHEVIKS in
    Washington D.C. (and their Israeli-piloted submarine planes) by using
    JUMBO COSMOSPHERES equipped with PSYCHO-KINETIC RANGE FINDING.

[The last two items were parrotted from the works of the late Dr. Peter
Beter (no, I Am Not Making This Up) who published a series of "audio
letters" from 1977 - 1983, and whom McElwaine obviously felt was onto
all sorts of hidden secrets behind the world's political events.]  Robert's
messages were famous for RANDOM capitalization, and were ended by the
sentence:

             "UN-ALTERED reproduction and DISSEMINATION of
               this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED".

He finally wore-out his welcome at Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) in April of
1993 and lost his newsfeed.  Robert has either found other means of
proseletyzing or is unaware of alternate methods of net access, since he
has not been heard from since.
   For those of you interested in researching JUMBO COSMOSPHERES and other
interesting neglected historical information, a complete collection of Dr.
Beter's audio letters is available from etext.archive.umich.edu in the
pub/Politics/Conspiracy/Beter.Audio.Letters directory.
   If you would like to see some original McElwaine posts, use anonymous
FTP to access ftp.std.com and look in the pub/alt.religion.kibology/
net-wackiness/mcelwaine directory.

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