From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: baseballs, priests, and newsgroups
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 20:41:39 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

----- Original Message -----
From: <ronkean at juno.com>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 8:21 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: baseballs, priests, and newsgroups

>
> On Sun, 5 Jan 2003 00:46:50 -0500 (EST) "Keith F. Lynch"
> <kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:
>
> > Sure enough, I found one page discussing it, at
> > http://www.baseball1.com/carney/index.php?storyid=73
> >
>
> ... The article also mentions that these falling baseballs were
> > going *slower* than thrown baseballs.
>
> Perhaps.  A vigorously thrown baseball might initially be moving as fast
> as about 70 miles per hour.  Found via google, the fastest pitch on
> record, 98.6 miles per hour (144 ft/sec) was thrown by Bob Feller of the
> Cleveland Indians in 1947.  100 feet per second is reported to be about
> the optimum speed for throwing a curveball, and 100 feet per second is
> said to be well within the ability of most professional pitchers.  But it
> is not immediately obvious that terminal velocity is slower than 100 feet
> per second.
>
> Official baseball specifications (for a so-called hardball) are: 5 to 5
> 1/4 ounces in weight and 9 to 9 1/4 inches in circumference.  Going
> metric, let's say a baseball is 7.38 cm in diameter, or 43 cm^2 in cross
> section, and 145 grams in mass, weighing 1.42 newtons.  Let's say that
> air density is 1.2 kg/m^3.  Can anyone calculate terminal velocity?  I
> suppose the question is: how fast a wind would it take to exert 1.42
> newtons of force on a 43 cm^2 cross section?
>
> These data imply that the density of a hardball is 0.69, which means that
> it would float in water (at least before it gets completely saturated).
> That seems a bit surprising.  I would have thought a baseball (hardball)
> would sink in water.
>
> I guess there's nothing
> > limiting a thrown ball to terminal velocity.
> >
>
> A thrown baseball, if thrown faster than terminal velocity, will slow
> down until it reaches terminal velocity, at which time it would be
> falling straight down, unless, of course, it hits the ground or hits
> something else first.  But it approaches terminal velocity
> asymptotically, so, strictly speaking, in a Newtonian world, it would
> never reach terminal velocity exactly.
>
> > In another conversation last night, Bob MacIntosh wondered what Joe
> > Mayhew would have thought about the current molestation scandals in
> > the Catholic Church.  I thought the scandals went back many years,
> > rather than being recent.
> >
>
> Apparently, molestation within the Catholic Church has been going on for
> many years, but it has only been in the past year or so that the
> resulting scandal has come to the forefront of public attention.  So it
> might appear, to someone who had paid little attention to such things,
> that molestation has all of a sudden become a problem in the Church.  The
> reality is probably quite the opposite.  Most of the scandals arise from
> acts which took place many years ago, and the embarrassment to the Church
> is compounded by the past failure of the Church hierarchy to deal
> justly with the problem.  But the situation is now greatly changed
> as a result of all the public scrutiny and outrage, and so the prevalence
> of
> molestation in the Church at this time is probably much lower than it has
> been for many years.  One thing which has come to light is that have long
> been Church facilities in operation to treat pedophilia, and the mere
> existence of such facilities suggests that pedophilia has long been a
> problem in the Church.
>
> But to put things in perspective, what little statistical evidence has
> appeared in the press suggests that only about one half of one percent of
> all priests have actually molested children.  The problem is 'big' mainly
> because some pedophile priests have molested many children over a long
> period of time, and because molestation by priests and coverups by
> bishops are regarded as egregious violations of trust, much more so than
> molestation by some random individual who has not been placed in a
> position of trust.  It appears that some have jumped to the conclusion
> that there is something peculiarly wrong with the Catholic Church.
> Before drawing that conclusion, one would have to ask what percentage of
> adults (well, adult men) who are not priests have molested children.  I
> have no statistics on that, but I think that some womens' rights groups
> have claimed that a large percentage of women were molested as children.

It depends entirely on what you mean by "molestation."  If you use that
word to describe any form of sexual contact, a large percentage of children
of both sexes have been molested -- mostly by each other.   But if you
restrict "molestation" to adults having sexual contact with children, the
percentages go down significantly.   An additional problem is the
definition of "child."  Although both are regarded as children, an 8 year
old and a 16 year old are vastly different and so are those adults who
would target them.  I suspect the majority of women who were molested as
children were the victims of fathers, uncles or older brothers -- members
of their own families -- and that the molestation probably began on or near
puberty.

Nor are Catholic priests the only clergy to molest children -- it's just
that the Catholic Church has a better institutionalized Old Boy network
with which to cover it up and perpetuate it.   That creates the illusion
that this sort of behavior is more widespread in the Catholic Church.   In
fact, you'll find a lot of it in Baptist churches of both the black and
white persuasions.    (And others too, of course.)  And if you check out
the "rogue" Mormon sects run by aging patriarchs with a half-dozen wives,
you'll find the youngest "wives" are in their early teens....

--Ted White