[150] in Humor
HUMOR: Recent short stuff
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Wed Mar 23 15:36:53 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 94 15:31:43 EST
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 13:05:41 PST
From: ckleinja@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
From: "Marc Kenig" <marc_kenig@blyth.com>
This is a follow-up to the MilSpecs item from a couple of weeks ago:
Reply to: RE>HUMOR: How MilSpecs live fo
Reminds me of my other favorite:
Why are computer terminals 80 characters high by 24 characters wide?
(Or 132 characters wide sometimes).
Well you might ask:
Computer screens are 80 characters wide because standard punched cards
(old IBM form 5081) accepted 80 punched columns across. Why you might
ask? Because thats how big 19th century tabulating machine cards were.
Andthat's how many holes Herman Holerith could punch in the card before
it fell apart. For the 1890 census, yes.
But why didn't Herman use a bigger card? Because tabulating machine
cards were the same size as a dollar bill of the late 19th century.
Why you may ask? Because they needed to stack the computer cards
someplace before they were processed. Bingo! Banks had lots of wooden
boxes for stacking bills, and IBM used them.
Why were bills that size in the late 19th century......And on and on.
The 24 rows is trickier. It has to do with how expensive computer
memory was in the 1970's. You see, 24 times 80 is 1920. That means
that a 2K memory (a big deal less than 20 years ago) was needed to
remember what characters were where on the screen. Now, you might
point out that 25 times 80 is less than 2K. You're right, but in order
for the terminal to scroll, you have to be able to store one extra,
unviewed line of text.
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<fowards pulverized>
Cockroach Slain, Husband Badly Hurt
Reuters
Tel Aviv
An Israeli housewife's fight with a stubborn cockroach put her
husband in the hospital with burns, a broken pelvis and broken ribs, the
Jerusalem Post newspaper reported yesterday.
The wife, frightened by the insect when she found it in their living
room, stepped on it, threw it in a toilet and sprayed a full can of
insecticide on it when it refused to die.
Her husband came home from work, went to the toilet and lit a
cigarette. When he threw the cigarette butt into the bowl, the insecticide
fumes ignited, "seriously burning his sensitive parts," the Post wrote.
When paramedics were called to the home in Tel Aviv, they laughed so
hard when they learned what had happened that they dropped the
stretcher down the stairs, breaking the unidentified man's pelvis and ribs.
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From: "Mark D Baushke" <mdb@cisco.com>
(This is an original joke by Sean O'Connell, sean@hacks.arizona.edu;
it was originally posted in alt.tv.babylon-5. I'm submitting it on his
behalf and with his permission.)
J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of the TV series BABYLON 5, was
discussing computer generated graphics. He's just seen images of a
computer generated *character* (an alien) that will appear in an
episode.
Joe mentioned an attempt to replace the words "actor" and "actress"
with the word "actron"; this didn't catch on, but perhaps it could be
used for computer generated act-nonpersons?
Sean suggested they should instead be called "bit-players".
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From: rocky@cadence.com (Rochelle Grober)
"The Internet is already an information superhighway, except that
you have to be a full-fledged computer nerd to navigate it. I have
been there. It's like driving a car through a blizzard without
windshield wipers or lights, and all of the road signs are written
upside down and backwards. And if you stop and ask someone for help,
they stutter in Albanian."
- Columnist Mike Royko
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From: abennett@MIT.EDU
From: rmerz@redwood.hac.com (Rulane Merz)
Subject: "I don't have a cougar!"
I heard the following on Paul Harvey:
A cougar wandered into the residential section of a Montana town.
The residents kept their children indoors and nervously called the
police and Fish and Game officials, who came on the double. They
shot the cougar with a tranquilizer gun. But the cat, though woozy,
still had the presence of mind to stagger into an open garage.
The officers, in order not to unpleasantly surprise the inhabitants
of the house, knocked on the door to tell them why they wanted to
go inside the garage. A woman came to the door.
"Ma'am," they told her, "there's a cougar in your garage."
She said -- and I am not making this up, the Great Falls newspaper
swears this really happened -- said, "Oh, but that's impossible. I
have a Buick, not a Cougar!"
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From: anajam@MIT.EDU (Adil Najam)
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Subject: HUMOR: Instructions for Incredibly Dumb Drivers
Culled from an article on car manuals in Britain's "Country Life"
magazine. Appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review:
Renault 19: "Doors--Opening From the Outside: Place your hand under
the handle and pull towards you."
Volvo: "To stop the vehicle, release the accelerator pedal and apply
the brakes."
Jaguar XJ-S: "The fuel level gauge indicates the quantity of fuel in
the fuel tank."
Honda CRX: "If you crash, you can be injured."
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From: abennett@MIT.EDU
From "James K. Huggins" <huggins@eecs.umich.edu>
Received from a (reliable) friend who found it on a BBS, so take with
a grain of salt ...
Klingons Infiltrate Congress
On the lighter side, "Roll Call" reports that late last month, someone snuck
into the House Science, Space & Technology Committee's hearing room, removed
a (now obsolete) model of Space Station Freedom from its display case, and
replaced it with a model of a Klingon battlecruiser. At least one Committee
briefing was held with the Klingon ship on display before Freedom was
restored to its rightful place.
- -----> FOLLOWUP:
From: wanttaja@halcyon.com
This story is true; I got the word from a friend who's a scumsucking
lobbyist :-). However, there was one point left out:
The person in charge of the display said that one of his co-workers was
able to identify the ship, right down to type and specifications.
"A prime suspect, then," said the reporter.
The manager sighed. "I've got fifty people who can do that...."
Ron Wanttaja
wanttaja@halcyon.com
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Heard this on a call-in radio show:
HOST: How old are you?
WOMAN CALLER: Late flirties!
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