Article 171888 of rec.humor:
Newsgroups: rec.humor
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From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
Subject: Life 9.D
Message-ID: [cate3D52zDz.BqA@netcom.com]
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 17:32:22 GMT
Lines: 383
Sender: cate3@netcom11.netcom.com
Date: 22 Feb 93 12:29:29 PST (Monday)
Subject: Life 9.D
----------------------------------------------------
The following is a selection from a mailing list called "Desperado"
From: "John R. Covert 14-Sep-1990 1213" [covert@covert.enet.dec.com]
--------------------------
From: 11SRUS::GEYER "Deer flies will please replace divots"
"What could I do, boss? I was looking down the barrel of a turtle."
When I lived in Arizona, somebody once tried to hold up a 7-11 down the
street near my apartment with a snake. I think it was some type of king
snake; in any case, the girl at the counter knew her snakes and was
unimpressed. Another victory for feminism.
Craig
--------------------------
From: CIMNET::LUNGER "Dave Lunger, 291-7797 MET-1/K2"
To: CLOSET::T_PARMENTER
Subj: for your amazement, and possible inclusion in DESPERADO
seen on the USENET in rec.aviation:
Probably the most bizarre Grumman American (a manufacturer of
single engine 2 and 4 seat airplanes) accident was when a
pilot who was well beyond his fatigue limit, landed at a
remote airport and fell asleep in his seat immediately after
he shut the engine down.
He woke up later and while still groggy and disoriented,
thought he had fallen asleep while flying and the engine had
quit. He went through the in-flight start procedure, rammed in
full throttle, and taxied through a couple of parked planes.
--------------------------
From: GURU::dibble "Ben Dibble"
To: davison@31.736.enet, closet::t_parmenter, metsky, skye::brown, woodward
Subj: For all you skiers out there...!
Simulated Skiing - Fake It Till U Make It
Tore up your knee playing hoops this fall? Are your buddies
already razzing you about missing the season? No problem.
One needn't actually *ski* to experience the gestalt of skiing;
just simulate the pyschic and physical sensations. Here are 13
ways to duplicate those ski thrills and really pin the fun meter
in the red zone:
- Drive slowly for five hours - anywhere - as long as it's in a
snowstorm and you're tailing an 18-wheeler. Stop at any gas station
that serves food. When the waitress asks what you'd like order
an upset stomach because that's probably what you'll get anyway.
- Visit your local butcher and pay $30 to sit in his walk-in freezer
for half an hour. Afterward, burn two $50 bills to warm up. It's
not real skiing but it's close.
- Fill a blender with ice, hit the pulse button and let the spray
sandblast your face. You'll almost believe you're skiing in front
of a snowmaking gun.
- Sit under a sun lamp wearing goggles to get that chic racoon look.
- Where apres-ski boots everywhere - even in the shower. For the
best effect, get the boots that look like two dead Afghan hounds
strapped to your calves.
- At the nearest hockey rink, walk across the ice 20 times in your
ski boots carrying two pairs of skis, loaded accessory bag and poles.
Make believe you're looking for your car.
- For ski-boot simulation at home, put a pebble in your street shoes
and tighten a C-clamp around your toes.
- Buy a pair of gloves and immediately throw one away. This will
save you from losing it later.
- Go to a McDonald's and insist on paying $3.50 for a hamburger.
Be sure to wait in the longest line.
- Speaking of lines, stand in any movie line on the coldest day
of the year. Inch ahead with the crowd but don't go in. Do this
12 or 18 times.
- To simulate losing a ski in deep powder, spend a lot of money
to fly to a Caribbean resort. When you arrive toss a Krugerrand
onto the beach. Then try to find it.
- To simulate glade skiing take a jog through the woods - with your
eyes closed.
- Clip a lift ticket to the zipper of your jacket and ride a motorcycle
fast enough to make the ticket lacerate your face.
None of these activities is skiing, but all of them sure feel like it.
--------------------------
From: DECWRL::"jo@odi.com"
Restaurant sign on Rt. 13 in Maryland:
CHICKEN AND DUMPINGS
--------------------------
From: TERSE::AUGUSTINE "Liz"
I was at a natural foods warehouse a few days ago and saw the
following bumpersticker on someone's office:
I eat tofu and I vote.
--------------------------
From: MAST::REISERT "Jim"
From the L.A. Times
Solomon Waters of Altadena, a 6-year-old first-grader, came
home from his first day of school and excitedly told his
mother how he had written on "a machine that looks like a
computer -- but without the TV screen." She asked him if
it could have been a "typewriter." "Yeah! Yeah!" he said.
"That's what it was called."
--------------------------
From: LANDO::ARNOLD "I knew I should have saved all those bell bottoms..."
The following note was found attached to one of the card catalog terminals at
Boston University's Mugar Library after the recent holiday break:
"You don't take LSD to expand your consciousness.
You take it to turn your toaster into a home
entertainment center."
--------------------------
From: rando@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov (Randy Brumbaugh)
:o) :-) :=) :o) :-) :=) :o) :-) :=) :o) :-) :=) :o) :-)
NOTE: This is a joke. This is only a joke. Had this
been real information, it would not be posted in rec.audio.
:o) :-) :=) :o) :-) :=) :o) :-) :=) :o) :-) :=) :o) :-)
I've always felt that there are 3 ways to deal with the
wackos who post bizarre and incorrect audio information,
especially about digital audio:
1- Ignore them and chuckle
2- Try to patiently explain things
3- Set up a company and make money - lots of money
I have been jumping between 1 and 2, but now have decided
that number 3 is for me.
I am proposing formation of a company. Anyone out there
is welcome to join me. I am pretty sure there are plenty
of potential customers. I suggest the name-
Sonically Corrected Audio Machinery (SCAM).
Some offerings from our first catalog:
*** The environment chamber
As the CD spins, the audio information is read by
a low powered laser beam and then sent to the electronics
of the CD player. This means that the sound from the disc
is actually TRAVELLING THROUGH THIS AIR GAP! The
properties of sound propagation in air are understood by
scientists, but are ignored by CD player designers.
The result is sound that is colored by the composition,
temperature and humidity of the air in the room. On
humid days, the player will have a "stuffy" sound, while
on a dry winter day the highs will be more "crisp". Dust
and humidity can muddy the sound. Furthermore, the air
is not optimal for transmission of laser light. Under
some conditions, the air may become "resonant" at the laser
frequency and cause errors. Our solution is the CD
environment chamber- a chamber which surrounds the CD
player with an environment of dry, temperature controlled
compressed nitrogen. The user may vary the temperature
to make the sound warmer. Several other knobs are provided
which the user may adjust.
*** The data magnet
Many CD player sound problems are traced to problems in
"the bits coming off the disc". Our research has found
that in many cases, the bits actually do not leave the
CD, but remain attached to it. To correct this, we have
developed the "data magnet". This electromagnet is placed
so that it "pulls" each bit toward the laser, so that it
may be easily "picked up". This results in less drain
on the laser power supply, since it is obviously doing
less work to gather the data. The magnet is excited
by an analog power supply, which imparts the subtle
burblishness to the sound that analog is known for.
*** The green lamp
Recent articles in the audio press have explained the
benefits of using a green marker to treat the edges of
CDs. The scientific basis for this breakthrough has
been discovered by our researchers. It is not the edging,
but the green light hitting the disc which improves the
sound. Many researchers have failed to duplicate the
effect in thier labs because they colored the disc then
immediately put it into a player, without letting it expose
in the ambient light. Our discovery is that the bits on
a CD are "developed" by exposure to certain wavelengths
of light. The raw CD has a "negative" quality to it,
until developed. The principle is similar to glow-in-the-
dark toys that must be held under light to glow. Of
course, only a little light exposure is provided by green
edges (but even this small amount has been reported to
help). You can't color the face of the CD green. So
we have developed the special "green lamp" which bathes
the CD in an intense beam of green light. Each CD
should be "charged" in this light before playing, so that
the music will project a warm, developed glow.
NOTE: for use on ordinary CDs only-- gold CDs require a
different color of light, available soon.
--------------------------
What to do with a NeXT Computer
Organization: SERC, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
From: Gene Spafford [spaf@cs.purdue.edu]
]From the April 1 Issue of U-M Computing, the newsletter of the
University of Michigan Information Technology Division
The NeXT Computer: A Tool to Study Artificial Intelligence
- ----------------------------------------------------------
As more and more NeXT computers are introduced to campus, it has
become possible for artificially intelligent scientists at U-M to
extend the milestone research reported by Bennett at Yale University.
[1] Bennett's study used a computer simulation to test the notion that
if enough monkeys were allowed to pound at typewriters long enough,
all the great works of literature would result. This early research
suffered from two limitations. The first was a reliance upon random
number generation to choose characters on the typewriter. The second
was the ability to compare the output only with statistical properties
of the English language.
Current research at U-M attempts the ultimate experiment to test
Bennett's notion. Since November 1988, groups of primates have spent
their evenings and weekends in the various computer laboratories
across campus that house NeXT computers. A total of 24 monkeys are
currently serving as subjects in this research. The procedure is
straightforward. During each laboratory session, the monkeys are
anchored by seat belts in front of the NeXT keyboards. To encourage
typing, the keys are laced with honey to attract the monkeys'
attention. Each keystroke made is stored in sequence in the monkey's
personal text file. After every thirteenth keystroke, the monkey is
rewarded with a grape. After every two hundred keystrokes, the
positive reinforcement is increased to a banana, suggested by the work
of Feldman and Sprout.[2]
The U-M experiment improves upon the previous research in two ways.
First, the typed productions are not a gamble, a la Monte Carlo.
Instead, they are produced by actual, living monkeys. Second, and more
importantly, the typed productions are compared directly with the
actual works of Shakespeare, which are readily available for searching
in the NeXT computers' optical discs. The monkeys' text is divided
into packets of 13 characters, ignoring case, spaces, and punctuation.
The content of these packets provides the input for a search of the
Shakespeare file. All matches are then transferred to a new NeXT text
file for the monkey, which includes date, time, and Shakespearean
citation.
The original research on the monkey problem, relying on probabilistic
expectation, would readily pick up string matches such as "he is," but
the NeXT capacity allows for matching patterns of the rarity of
"putter; your pelly is all putter," which, with its alliterative
property, has a high probability for primate production.
The research to date has proved more fruitful than the 1977 simulation
study. For example, a twice-observed match from two different monkeys
was "what dole of honour flies where you bid it," an obvious reference
to bananas, both by brand and attribution. As was recently pointed out
in an electronic conference on MTS, "time flies like an arrow; fruit
flies like a banana."
The self-referential quality of many of the primate productions in
this research is a serendipitous finding of far great- er importance
than the mere production of Shakespearean passages. For example, "like
a geminy of baboons" was one of the matches. "When next we meet" was
also produced. Another monkey behavior, "itch from head to foot," was
observed, both in practice and in the typed text. Perhaps indicative
of the difficulty of the experimental task, one poor primate produced
"written troubles of the brain," while another gave forth "they speak
no English." These results show that the research problem is much more
complex than the mere ability of the monkeys to reproduce Shakespeare
by rote. Innate knowledge and literature appreciation must also be
studied.
There is no doubt that without the NeXT computer, research of this
caliber would be impossible. The results to date of the study are
indeed among "April's first-born flowers, and all things rare."
Although the current research has shown many instances (N=978, p=.07)
of ability to produce portions of the works of Shakespeare, it will
take many more years of intensive study to determine how much time is
enough time to reproduce all of Shakespeare. The research will
continue as long as funds for the care and feeding of the research
subjects are available.
I Bennett, William R. "How artificial is intelligence?" American
Scientist, 65:694-702, 1977.
2 Feldman, Jerome and Sprout, Robert. "Decision theory and
artificial intelligence: 11. The hungry monkey." Cognitive Science,
1:158-192, 1977.
- --by Elaine Hockman
--------------------------
From: SEARCH::BREEDING "ANDY BREEDING"
To: CLOSET::T_PARMENTER
Subj: Desperado contribution
Attached is a letter to the editor taken from PC WEEK, which I stumbled
across while searching the Computer Library CD-ROM database. It seemed like
a good candidate for Desperado. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Andy Breeding
[I think GUI means generic user interface.]
Dear Editor:
GUIs are billed by their advocates as being intuitive and culture-free;
however, they are neither. The design of windowing systems depends very
heavily on the user reading from top to bottom and left to right, which can
be very misleading to people not used to reading in this manner.
The late Henry Dreyfus, an industrial designer who spent the last years of
his life working with graphics for labeling machinery controls and other
industrial uses, collected stories about misreading signs across cultures.
My favorite was a broken wine glass as the symbol for fragile cargo, which
you still see today. This was consistently read as "damaged cargo" in South
America, and the cartons were thrown out as salvage by the dock workers. The
current preferred symbol is an unbroken wine glass.
Several of my coworkers came back from a Sybase users meting with a new
vocabulary of oddball icons for the Sun workstation. They included a stencil
outline of an airplane taking off for "system coming up" and one landing with
wheels down for "system coming down." I suggested the gruesome but obvious
stencil of pieces of an airplane bouncing off the runway for a system crash,
perhaps with little bodies flying out of the plane to show how many tasks
were active at the time of the crash.
Technology is not talent. Flash and dazzle are not function and design. It
was thoughtful of Tonkin to remind us.
Joe Celko Los Angeles, Calif.
--
Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com]
The Life collection maintainer, selections of humor from the internet
"The Greatest Management Principle in the World" by Michael LeBoeuf:
The things that get rewarded, get done.
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