[NOR SENT] "The other day I paid a visit to Dr. Randi Geller of Palo Alto, CA. I wanted to see for myself the remarkable Spinclone People Breeder that he described at the Biorythmics Conference in Tahiti last Spring. "I was quite surprised by the size of the machine. This is not a lab benchtop device: it is a full-scale industrial installation that completely fills a largish building, about the size of a small supermarket. "They call it "People Breeder" for the lack of a better term, but in design and operation it does not resemble a breeder as much as an enclosed roller coaster or joy ride. Try to imagine Disneyland's "Pirates of the Caribbean", redecorated according to the tastes of a chemical engineer. "The people to be cloned enter in a continuous stream through a door on the left side of the building, where they are helped by Dr. Geller's assistants into small single-person rail cars. Each car then zips through the building at considerable speed, following some complicated three-dimensional path, fulls of twists, turns, bumps, knots, and jerks. (More details can be found in Dr. Geller's patent and papers.) Eventually, the cars stop by the exit door, where the riders are helped out of their seats and leave the building. "The cloning of people happens somewhere along that ride. The physics of the phenomenon is still not completely understood, but Dr. Geller believes that it has something to do with the stretching of spacetime by the high speed of the cars, and possibly by the peculiar pattern of centrifugal and gravitational forces experienced by the riders. "Anyway, these theoretical questions are largely irrelevant. Dr. Geller is a practical man, and all that matters to him is the fact---confirmed by umpteen experiments and attested by many satisfied customers---that more people leave the building than go into it. "During my visit I witnessed three such experiments, two of which generated unmistakable amounts of excess people. We are not talking about 1% discrepancies, which the skeptics can always attribute to stragglers or counting errors. We are talking about 50% to 100% excess people, meaning hundreds of new people cloned per hour; and these levels can be sustained for years on end. Needless to say, excesses of this magnitude cannot be attributed to measurement errors, even with the simplest equipment. "Before we get to the data, let me give some details about the measurement techniques. The number of people entering the building is measured by a light beam and photocell across the door, connected to a standard PC. An independent count is also provided by an ordinary mechanical turnstile right behind the door. these devices were calibrated in my presence against a manual count; all three numbers agreed to within 1%. "The number of people leaving at the other end is measured by placing a temporay barrier in front of the exit door, which redirects the output flow to a fenced parking lot next to the building. After the measurement period is over, the barrier is removed and the parking lot gate is closed. The people in the enclosure are asked to stand still in rows, while Dr. Geller's assistants count them---twice, for good measure. "I can testify that the parking lot was empty before each run started. The fence around the parking lot is very tall and well guarded, so there is no question of random people from the street walking in and being included in the count. Any errors that remain are definitely towards the conservative side; for instance, while Dr. Geller usually includes in the output count the few people who are still inside the machine by the end of the measuring period, I made a point of excluding them. I also didn't count several people who got carsick halfway through the ride, and were seen leaving the building through emergency exits in the back. (I verified that those exits are blocked by turnstiles that prevent people from entering through them.) I also didn't correct our numbers to account for people who spontaneoulsy combusted or were abducted by gremlins, although I have reason to believe that about 20% of the people that enter are lost that way. Had I done so, the excess people count would have been over XXX%. "The only complication in carrying out these experiments is the narrow "operating window" of the machine. Although the breeder can produce excess people reliably for years on end, it does so only if the rates at which people enter and exit the building are kept within rather tight limits. Otherwise, no excess people are produced, and the breeder behaves just like an ordinary roller coaster. "The onset of the people-cloning regime is quite obvious, since it is always signalled by a sudden change in the quality of the noise made by the machine, and by a large and sudden drop ---20 to 50%---in the input people flow rate. "In the first experiment I witnessed (Test 1), the cloning regime was not achieved, and accordingly my numbers showed no evidence of excess people. In fact, the output count I got was only XX% of the input. This result confirms the claim that the measurement errors are conservative. "In Test 2, carred out that afternoon, the machine ran for a while in "roller coaster" mode, while Dr. Geller adjusted the input and output flows. During that "warm-up" period the flow into the building was about XX person per minute, and any people who came out at the other end were allowed to walk away uncounted. Afer about 20 minutes, the machine suddenly went into "breeder" mode: its rythmic "tumtum-tumtum-tumtum" noise changed to a loud high-pitched whirr, while the input line slowed down to a trickle---about XX persons per minute. At Dr. Geller command, the input counters were immediately reset and the exit line was diverted into the parking lot. "The measurements were prematurely ended after 19 minutes, when the machine shut down due to a power failure. At that point the input counters were stopped, the parking lot was closed, and the people in it were counted. Here are the results for those 19 minutes: Output count: XXX people Input count: XXX people (average XX people per minute). ------------------------ Excess: XXX people (everage XX people cloned per minute). "In Test 3, conducted the following day, the operating conditions of Test 2 were replicated as closely as possible, with similar results. I won't bother giving the numbers because you must all be pretty bored by now. "I must say that during my whole visit I didn't see a single pregnant woman entering the building; so there is no way that the excess people we measured was due to ordinary "biological" cloning. "I also looked carefully at the people coming out from the other end; and they definitely were real people, full-blooded and full-bodied. In fact, the average size and weight of people in both lines was about the same; so it cannot be the case, as some have suggested, that the breeder works by splitting one fat lady into two circus midgets plus a refugee from Rwanda. "These experiments convinced me that Dr. Geller's Spinclone People Breeder does generate excess people in demographically significant amounts. His very practical success fully vindicates the work of Drs. McFlons, Higgsman, Sukiyaki, Operetta, and hundreds of other honest scientists who have had to endure years of ridicule and abuse by the pet breeding establishment for daring to suggest that rabbits and white doves can be spontaneously generated inside top hats. (Credits: "Pirates of the Caribbean" must be a trademark of Walt Disney Productions of Hollywood, CA (or whatever); "Spinclone" is definitely a trademark of Industrial People Cloners, Washers and Driers of Palo Alto, CA.)