[1229] in Humor
HUMOR (long): Misc. Bits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Thu Nov 30 16:38:21 1995
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 16:19:33 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
From: cate3@netcom.com
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 1995 09:43:03 -0800
Date: 6 Jun 94 16:26:29 PDT (Monday)
Subject: Life D.U
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Selections from the Red Rock Eater run by: pagre@weber.ucsd.edu <Phil Agre>
And if California slides into the ocean
As the mystics and statistics say it will
I predict this motel will be standing
Until I pay my bill
-- Warren Zevon
------------------------------
As a recruit is eased out of a pre-Lenz [i.e., "Rama"] life and into the cult,
computer programming is stressed as the only realistic career. Computer
careers are desirable, Lenz and his surrogates tell new students, because
working with a computer sharpens and focuses your mind. It also isolates you
from others, which is desirable to avoid people's negative spiritual energy.
Lenz never commands them to become programmers, but he suggests that it is the
only fast track to enlightenment. In practice, all members who stay with the
group more than a few months -- including physicians, engineers, and other
professionals -- go into programming.
------------------------------
"... [W]ay back 15 years ago, a hacker could sit down and write an entire
piece of software by himself. Now, that's no longer possible. Software comes
out of factories, and hackers are, to a greater or lesser extent,
assembly-line workers. Worse yet, they may be managers who never get to write
any code themselves."
Neal Stephenson, _Snow Crash_
------------------------------
San Francisco dentist James Campbell couples Virtual Vision's television
sunglasses with earphones so that his patients can watch TV or a movie as he
works on their teeth. A "nose mask" wafts a mild sedative into the patients'
snouts, making them "more receptive to the images they're watching".
------------------------------
... all my science comes ... from the psychic dimension. Anybody who is really
honest about his or her source of inspiration will admit this. Good science is
a form of channeling, only with science, you have to go work the equations. --
Carver Mead
------------------------------
Here's an excerpt from the CPSR publication CPSR Alert 3.04, sent out by Dave
Banisar <Banisar@washofc.cpsr.org>:
The Defense Department reportedly plans to employ the Clipper technology in a
device known as a "Tessera Card." We checked the dictionary and found the
results to be kind of frightening:
Terrerea n. Lat. (pl. tessereae). Literally, "four-cornered". Used to refer to
four-legged tables, chairs, stools, etc. Also, a single piece of mosaic tile;
a single piece of a mosaic. _Pol._: An identity chit or marker. Tessereae were
forced on conquered peoples and domestic slaves by their Roman occupiers or
owners. Slaves or Gauls who refused to accept a tesserea were branded or
maimed as a form of identification.
From Starr's History of the Classical World and the Oxford
Unabridged. (thanks to Clark Matthews)
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Selections from JASBITS, run by: "James A. Squires" <jasbits@jas.com>
To join JASBITS, send a subject line of:
> "JASBITS SUBSCRIBE <Your Name> And how you knew"
NOTE: All of James' remarks appear in brackets like this: [blah blah blah]
TALES AND TERMS FROM THE JARGON FILE
FROM : JARGON FILE VERSION 3.0.0, 27 JUL 1993
In 1961, students from Caltech (California Institute of Technology, in
Pasadena) hacked the Rose Bowl football game. One student posed as a reporter
and `interviewed' the director of the University of Washington card stunts
(such stunts involve people in the stands who hold up colored cards to make
pictures). The reporter learned exactly how the stunts were operated, and also
that the director would be out to dinner later.
While the director was eating, the students (who called themselves the
`Fiendish Fourteen') picked a lock and stole a blank direction sheet for the
card stunts. They then had a printer run off 2300 copies of the blank. The
next day they picked the lock again and stole the master plans for the stunts
--- large sheets of graph paper colored in with the stunt pictures. Using
these as a guide, they made new instructions for three of the stunts on the
duplicated blanks. Finally, they broke in once more, replacing the stolen
master plans and substituting the stack of diddled instruction sheets for the
original set.
The result was that three of the pictures were totally different. Instead of
`WASHINGTON', the word ``CALTECH' was flashed. Another stunt showed the word
`HUSKIES', the Washington nickname, but spelled it backwards. And what was
supposed to have been a picture of a husky instead showed a beaver. (Both
Caltech and MIT use the beaver --- nature's engineer --- as a mascot.)
After the game, the Washington faculty athletic representative said: "Some
thought it ingenious; others were indignant." The Washington student body
president remarked: "No hard feelings, but at the time it was unbelievable. We
were amazed."
This is now considered a classic hack, particularly because revising the
direction sheets constituted a form of programming.
------------------------------
HOW TO FINGER USING ONLY EMAIL
Write <b.liddicott@ic.ac.uk> with Subject: #finger name@site.domain
Or with Subject: #help for more info.
SOURCE: blackadd@news.delphi.com (BLACKADDER@DELPHI.COM)
------------------------------
BEST PUN OF WEEK (On or off Earth):
On December 6, 1993, the seven-member crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor was
awakened at 6:02 p.m CST by flight controllers who played Jackson Browne's
"Doctor My Eyes". The crew worked very hard (and successfully) that 'day'. As
their reward, the very next 'morning', they where awakened to the sounds of
Johnny Nash singing "I Can See Clearly Now". <groan here> What a way to start
the day!
------------------------------
COMPARISON OF MAC AND PCs
WAR AND PC AND MACS
As a follow-up to Charles Wheeler's [in the TidBITS Newsletter] article in the
last issue about converting a Mac site to DOS-based software, a friend passed
this on:
"After spending nearly a quarter million dollars on DOS-based equipment to
replace the Macs in our company, our president was heard to ask, 'How can we
make them more Mac-like?'"
SOURCE: TidBITS#205/06-Dec-93 Info: <info@tidbits.com>
------------------------------
According to inside sources, ad agency Chiat Day apparently used IBM PCs as it
prepared its bid for IBM's massive personal computer advertising account.
Unruffled by such gratuitous tactics, rival agency Merkley Newman Harty used
Apple Macintoshes for its bid. IBM awarded Merkley Newman Harty the account.
SOURCE: WiReD 2.01 - January 1994
------------------------------
From Jim Reynolds
HUMOR FROM THE NET:
The '70s BBS: 110 baud, online tic-tac-toe, over 20 files!
------------------------------
JASBITS RANT: InfoOcean angst of the Cybersprawl:
As Captain Bucky (aka Mr. Appo) I\
points out : I \
I \
This is definitely I*--\
NOT I \
the InfoBahn. I \
It is : I______\
_____I__O______
THE INFORMATION OCEAN !!! \ ( ) b ^ ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^
We are all just fishermen, _____/\____/| ^
with our poles, nets, and >____,\---` \
big and small boats. He sees :
...a shore fisherman standing on the sand with a long monster pole skipping
these long giant casts way out into the info surf and watching what rolls in as
the info waves pound the beach....
...a sport fisherman on one of those sport fishing boats that go for marlin ...
strapped into that swivel chair in the back of the boat, 100 pound pole bolted
to the deck, idling along, trawling for the big one in the info ocean under
blazing virtual sunny skies...
....or something out of Captains Courageous, you know, a deep sea trawler out
of Maine fishing the Northern Info Ocean off the Grand Data Banks, months at
sea, daily dropping your mile long net into the deep, in thick fog, pulling out
tons of info fish...
...or finally Captain Ahab, "aye matey!", scouring the oceans for the great
white info whale, MOBY DICK-ROM!
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From a mailing list run by: pardo@cs.washington.edu <Jim Paradis>
From: Peter Langston <psl@acm.org>
By now, the Feynman bowling-ball demo has become such a standard conservation
demonstration that I've heard it convincingly used as part of a proof of a
rather different nature. Nat Howard <nrh@uunet.uu.net> put it to me this
way, (I'm paraphrasing from memory) "Practical telekinesis doesn't work.
Let's just suppose for a moment that some small percentage of the population
could move objects from a distance simply by using their minds, especially if
several such people worked together. How many smug physics teachers doing
the bowling-ball demo for huge first-year physics classes would be undergoing
reconstructive surgery right now? I know if I had had any telekinetic
powers..."
------------------------------
From: rAT <rat@instruction.CS.ORST.EDU>
Subject: Re: more phun with physics humor
That reminds me of *my* freshman physics class. One lecture, the prof had the
bowling ball pendulum set up in Weniger 151. The ceiling is about 30 feet
tall. He gave the ball a good push and went on to calmly lecture for a while
about pendulums. He turned his back to write on the bulletin board, and the
entire class was treated to the sight of the bowling ball returning and
smashing the overhead projector off of the table it was on. It seems that the
push wasn't quite straight, and the ball had been slowly oscillating in a wide
ellipse, with the projector in the path of the eighth or ninth cycle. Needless
to say, he was quite surprised... :^)
[Hmmm... maybe I was a little hasty in ruling out telekinesis... -psl]
------------------------------
From: Peter_Graffagnino (Peter Graffagnino)
... seen recently in a .sig on the net:
Intel: Putting the backward in backward compatible.
------------------------------
From Mike Feibus' "Predictions for '94" column, 12/20/93 PC Week,page A6:
"In an effort to formalize what must be a long-standing relationship, Intel and
Microsoft will announce that they will be jointly purchasing the Federal Trade
Commission from the U.S. government."
------------------------------
Announcing *new* technology, available now: scalable hype!
;-D on ( The hype o' crit ) Pardo
------------------------------
From _The FLYER_, which showed up in a bundle of advertising:
MEN SEEKING WOMEN
Looking for the Right Woman -- I need
someone that loves me for me and not
just my money. I have a lot to offer,
big house with 2 hot tubs, speed boat,
3 cars. ...
------------------------------
From: DBABCOOK@wpmail.unmc.edu
I dreamt last night we had to give up trying to form an organization against
political correctness because we could not come up with a name everybody
liked.
------------------------------
Def. Physics: Laws which even Congress must obey.
- Greg Kuchta <Greg.Kuchta@FtCollinsCO.ncr.com>
------------------------------
From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry G. Baker)
Icons on GUI screens no longer have 'hot spots' that respond when touched by
the mouse. They're now called 'empowerment zones'.
------------------------------
From: farrell@coral.cs.jcu.edu.au (John Farrell)
Here are the meager results of my request for computer science theory jokes.
Very bad jokes and ones I couldn't understand didn't make it. [Horrible ones,
however.... -dp] More submissions welcome:
I guess you know that Henk Barendregt is a real cool dude and determined
nightclubber. (That part is true.) What you may not know is that he's come up
with a formal theory of Brazilian dancing. It's called the Lambada-Calculus.
-Jamie Andrews
A theoretical computer scientist is having lunch with his friend the
philosopher, and inevitably asks the standard question: "so what are you
working on?"
The philosopher replies, "I'm working on a very old, very difficult
philosophical problem." After a bit of prodding, the philosopher explains that
the problem is the famous question, "Which came first--the chicken or the
egg?".
The computer scientist thinks a bit, comments that it's an interesting problem,
and leaves.
A few months later, the philosopher receives a preprint in the mail from his
friend, entitled, "The Chicken or the Egg: a Theoretical Computer Science
Approach to Philosophy Problems". The abstract begins, "One of the classic
problems of philosophy is that of which came first--the chicken or the egg.
This problem appears extremely difficult, and has been open for thousands of
years. We present here a partial result, resolving the question of which came
first--the chicken or the boiled egg....."
-Moti Yung
------------------------------------------------------------
1995 Copyright by Henry Cate III All Rights Reserved
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--
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