[4014] in Central_America
New quotes for Tue Jan 21
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
Tue Jan 21 01:27:09 1992
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 92 01:26:48 EST
From: root@charon.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
To: ca-mtg@bloom-beacon.mit.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
aplondon (Adam P London):
{From system: This user's .plan file is not world readable}
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
cst (Catherine S Trotter):
New address:
Easgate 10E
60 Wadsworth Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
cyrus (Cyrus Shaoul):
What's the MATTER Sid?.. Is your BEVERAGE unsatisfactory?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
glassw (William B. Glass):
From: byron@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
To: gli@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Cc: tmc@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Coyote Physics.......................................
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 89 01:09:50 EDT
**************************************************************************
Coyote Physics
==============
(by Trevor Paquette & Justin Baldwin)
Cartoon Law I.
--------------
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made
aware of it situation.
(Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland.
He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to
look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per
second per second takes over.)
Cartoon Law II.
---------------
Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until matter
intervenes suddenly.
(Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
"Stooge's surcease.")
Cartoon Law III.
----------------
Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.
(Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
specialit of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the
wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout- perfect hole. The threat of
skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.)
Cartoon Law IV.
---------------
The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is
greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off
the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it
unbroken.
(Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to
capture it inevitably unsuccessful.)
Cartoon Law V.
--------------
All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
(Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to
propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or
an adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to
the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole.
The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding
auto need never touch the ground, especially in flight.)
Cartoon Law VI.
---------------
As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
(This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which
a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of
altercation at several places simulataneously. This effect is also
common among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A 'wacky'
character has the option of self-replication only at manic high speeds
and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.)
Cartoon Law VII.
----------------
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to
resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.
(This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but
at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's
surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this
theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he
attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of
art, not of science.)
Cartoon Law VIII.
-----------------
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
(Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional
nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced,
splayed, accordian-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot
be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they
reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.)
Cartoon Law IX.
---------------
For every vengeance there in an equal and opposite revengeance.
(This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also
applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the
relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.)
Cartoon Law X.
--------------
Any object will fall faster than any other object which
inflicts more pain upon impact.
(This quirk in the law of gravity can be seen in an endless
series of experiments involving anvils and boulders. A coyote, after
securing an anvil with an industrial-sized rubber band to two cacti,
will launch the anvil in such a trajectory that it will loosen any
number of odd-sized boulders from their resting places, causing them
to roll or fall from any given cliff directly onto the coyote-- in the
order in which the pain of impact gradually increases. The anvil will
always return to the coyote.)
These immutable principles of Cartoon Physics are funny, no?
That's all the physics many people know, no? Funny? No.
SCIENCE SMARTS: The Scandal of Scientific Illiteracy
Monday, October 16, at 4 PM in Kresge Auditorium
**********************************************************************
Enjoy.
-Halloween Jack.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
jcbourne (Julie Bourne):
I talk to you but it's not the same as touchin' you
And every time you whisper my name, I wanna run to you
We'll be together, it won't be long, it won't be long
But it feels like forever, and it's hard to be strong
("Missing You Now", Michael Bolton)
---
Babe I'm leaving / I'll say it once again / And somehow try to smile
I know the feeling we're trying to forget / If only for a while
'Cause I'll be lonely without you / And I'll need your love to see me through
But please believe me / My heart is in your hands / 'Cause I'll be missing you
("Babe", Styx)
---
Companionship, partnership, mutual reassurance, someone to laugh with
and grieve with, loyalty that accepts foibles, someone to touch, someone
to hold your hand -- these things are "marriage," and sex is but the
icing on the cake. (Lazarus Long)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
jtkohl (John T Kohl):
Some excerpts from the January 1992 _Smithsonian_ magazine cover article
on Chile peppers [you should go read the whole thing, especially if you
like food prepared with these hot peppers]:
``Small and innocuous looking, the habanero is uncontested as the hottest
pepper in the world, the mother of all peppers. As one habanero lover
puts it, "When you chop, it smells good, and entices you to eat." But
when you do, "It feels like your lips are going to fall off." Afterward,
you feel good. One food writer calls it "culinary skydiving."''
``Chiles are part of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family, which includes
tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes. Slippery when it comes to
classification, chiles horticulturally are fruits, though botanists call
them berries. The produce industry calls them vegetables, but when
dried they are a spice.
The quintessence of the chile pepper, its personality, comes from the
stuff that makes it hot, chiefly an alkaloid called capsaicin
(cap-SAY-a-sin), an unusually powerful compound found in no other plant.
Plop just a single drop of tasteless and odorless capsaicin into 100,000
drops of water and drink, and the heat is still very noticeable. In
fact, capsaicin can be detected by humans at one part per million.''
``In 1912 a pharmacologist named Wilbur Scoville came up with a standard
for measuring the power of capsaicin. Called the Scoville Organoleptic
Test, it was needed to calculate the temperature of peppers used in
Heet, a muscle salve. Scoville measured ground chile into a mixture of
sugar water and alcohol. Then, a panel of five tasters sipped the
mixture and gave it a grad; it took a majority of three to assign a
value.
The subjective measure of tasters has since been replaced with high
technology, a computerized method called high-performance liquid
chromatography. The pepper scale ranges from zero Scoville units for
standard-issue bell peppers to 5,000 or so for jalape~nos and a whopping
2000,000-300,000 for habaneros. Pure capsaicin is 15 million.''
``I love hot food, but I have never eaten habaneros. I take a small
bite. The flavor of the peppers comes through first, and then, a few
milliseconds later, the capsaicin roars to my brain with an unmitigated
ferocity. They are savage, thermonuclear chiles that threaten to tear
the top of my head off. My tongue, the inside of my mouth, the back of
my throat and my lips are engulfed in a conflagration. I pant in and
out rapidly. NO help. I recall---and now understand---a Woody Allen
line upon tasting a hot curry. "Too hot," he said, "My teeth are
melting." Sweat beads on my forehead and under my eyes. (This
phenomenon was actually the subject in 1954 of a scientific paper
entitled "Physiological Gustatory Sweating in a Warm Climate." Eating
chiles is a form of natural air-conditioning because it causes people to
sweat, and evaporation of the moisture cools the skin markedly.) I
grope for my glass of water but remember that water won't douse the
four-alarm fire. It only spreads it around. Beer doesn't work either.
I grab for a pile of napkins to mop up the perspiration. A few other
diners turn to look at me, the _gringo en quema_, the burning gringo,
with the moist, red face and the pile of used napkins on the table.
Time for the antidote. Sugar, dairy products, salt or tortillas.
Trying to be nonchalant, I beckon to the waiter who smirks ever so
slightly again. "_Helado, por favor_," I croak, my eyes watering. His
return with the ice cream is mercifully quick. I shovel it in. I let
it wallow on my tongue and linger against the roof and sides of my mouth
and the back of my throat. The fire finally goes out. My brain again
operational, I step out of the restaurant to bask in the breeze of a
Yucatan spring evening. Funny how it's a lot cooler out now than when I
walked in.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
lnixon (Lucia A Nixon):
{From system: This user's .plan file is not world readable}
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
lsc (Lecture Series Committee):
LSC Movies for the week of Jan 22 to Jan 26
Wed. Jan 22 Real Genius 26-100 7 & 10
Val Kilmer and Gabe Jarrett are students at "Pacific Tech" who find out
that their laser research has been stolen by their professor, William
Atherton (Ghostbusters), to create a new super weapon for the military.
Using their technical ability, they set out to gain their revenge.
Fri. Jan 25 When Harry met Sally... 26-100 7 & 10
Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan star as two friends whose relationship
evolves over many years. A hilarious comedy about how men and women
{\it really} see each other. With Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher;
directed by Rob Reiner.]
Sat. Jan 26 Science Fiction Marathon 14 26-100 6
For the fourteenth consecutive year, LSC is proud to present its annual
Science Fiction Marathon. Enjoy over 16 hours of the best (and the
worst) in science fiction film-making. Admission to this event is $3.00
(or two LSC Superticket punches). SFM 14 includes:
Aliens
Enemy Mine
Silent Running
Dark Star
THX-1138
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
...and much more!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information, call the LSC MovieLine, 258-8881,
or the LSC office, 253-3791.
MIT or Wellesley ID required, one guest allowed per ID.
Admission to movies is $1.50 and a 20-Admission
Superticket is available for $28.
Classic Movie shows end before the start of the second
show of the corresponding Friday series movie.
Problems and changes to the mailing list should be addressed to
info-lsc-request@zurich.ai.mit.edu
This service is neither maintained nor supported by the
MIT Lecture Series Committee.
To see this information again, finger -l lsc@zurich.ai.mit.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
pevzner (Boris Pevzner):
{From system: This user's .plan file is not world readable}
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
shmuel (Samuel R. Peretz):
To design the ultimate Neural Network.
\ /
-------
| 0 0 |
| V |
| === |
-------
Address:
Office:
NE43-770 (Tech Square 7AI)
(25)3-4088
Home:
30 Adrian Street
Somerville, MA 02143
(617) 776-3837
Schedule:
MON TUES WED THUR FRI
9-10
10-11 U U RRRRR OOO PPPPP !!!
11-12 U U R R O O P P !!!!!
12-1 U U R R O O P P !!!!!
1-2 U U R R O O P P !!!!!
2-3 U U R R O O P P !!!!!
3-4 U U RRRRR O O PPPPP !!!!!
4-5 U U R R O O P !!!!!
5-6 U U R R O O P !!!
6-7 U U R R O O P !
7-8 U U R R O O P
8-12 UUU R R OOO P !
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
--R.F.K.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
starflt (Derrick Kong):
NO ONE GETS INTO HEAVEN UNTIL I GET A RAISE!
In Super Squadron (Adventure Simulations), a super hero who gets the
occupation "God" then rolls for "Average Pay."
from Murphy's Rules
--- End of Central America ---
