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Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 06:45:01 -0800
From: cate3@netcom.com (Henry Cate)
Message-Id: [199412011445.GAA12157@netcom15.netcom.com]
To: JWry.dl@netcom.com
Subject: Life C.G
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
Status: R
---------------
Date: 17 Feb 94 09:59:58 PST (Thursday)
Subject: Life C.G
The following selections are from the mailing list:
silent-tristero@world.std.com
----------------------------------------------------
From: "M. Strata Rose" [strata@fenchurch.mit.edu]
Apple is a land of many T-Shirts, both official and unofficial. There
was a "Jurapple Park" T done by some friends of mine around the big
layoff, I don't know if any were actually printed (though we have the Gifs,
heh heh heh).
Front: Jurassic park logo, modified to "Jurapple Park"
"The ultimate reorganization is extinction."
Back: John Sculley got 1.52 million dollars and all I got was
this lousy T-shirt.
Alternate Back: John Sculley got 1.52 million dollars and all I
got was an appointment at the CRC. [Apple's Career Resource Center]
--------------------------
From: John Robinson [jr@ksr.com]
From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader)
In the Usenet newsgroup rec.puzzles, there has been a little discussion
recently of place names with unusual characters. It was suggested
that Westward Ho!, England, was unique for containing the punctuation
mark "!", but then somebody topped this by calling attention to
Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Quebec, Canada.
At this point I decided to look these places up in atlases to see
where exactly they are. The one I found Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in
was the Rand McNally Road Atlas, 1991 edition.
In the index, the place is spelled... "St.-Louis-du-Ha90 Ha90".
Mark Brader Toronto utzoo!sq!msb msb@sq.com
(P.S.: Westward Ho! is on the north coast of Devon, more or less
straight north of Plymouth. Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! is about halfway
between Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec, and Edmundston, New Brunswick.)
--------------------------
From: HMPK43A@prodigy.com (MR JIM BODOH)
I read the Tampa newspaper religiously each day. I'm sure the problems that
we are having with minors and handguns have made the national news as well.
I was suprised to read the following advertisement for a gun show at the Tampa
convention center:
Admission: Adults $5.00
Children Free
--------------------------
Mark G. Matossian
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics &
Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research
University of Colorado at Boulder
I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do
it, and that is the important thing.
-Answer from an elementary school science exam
--------------------------
From: Paul Dourish [Dourish@europarc.xerox.com]
What can the stars tell you about your new product's fate? Madam Suzan,
world famous software astrologer, will prepare a customized star chart
based on your product's actual ship date (no vapourware dates, please).
Guaranted to be at least as accurate as any market research forecast.
Many testimonials: "Uncanny accuracy" PK, Scotts Valley. "We picked
the wrong moment to ship our first Windows version and paid a terrible
price" JM, Cambridge. "Get the date right and the rest is easy" BG, Redmond.
For *your* personalized star chart, send $50 and the date, time and location
of your initial product shipment to Madam Suzan, 60 Cranmore Rd., Braintree,
Mass.
Don't tempt fate - act now!
--------------------------
From: dan@copernicus.bbn.com (Dan Franklin)
Suzette Haden Elgin's _The Lonesome Node_ V13 #3 quotes from Newsweek's
10/4/93 issue, p. 60 ("What High Tech Can't Accomplish" by Geoffrey
Cowley):
"On New Year's Day 1976, doctors in Los Angeles County set out to air a
grievance ... Angered by the rising cost of malpractice insurance, they
staged a work slowdown, refusing for five weeks to perform any nonemergency
surgical procedure." This dropped surgeries 60%, and disaster was
predicted. But-- "Instead of dying in droves, the locals enjoyed a month
of the lowest mortality rates they'd seen in five years -- and when the
specialists returned to work, the death rate promptly rebounded." I
remember this. I was in San Diego then, and the media had tremendous fun
with this. Careful - correlation is not causation. However, the cautious
conclusion of medical science at the time - that perhaps life expectancy in
the U.S. would be increased by "greater restraint in elective surgical
operations" - bears repeating.
--------------------------
From: Leonard N.Foner [foner@media.mit.edu]
From: Jon Orwant [orwant@work.media.mit.edu]
A tidbit:
The FDA just approved "narcotic lollipops" for children entering surgery.
The lollies contain fentanyl, which is 2-3 times more potent than morphine.
--------------------------
From: Tom Calderwood [tcalderw@bbn.com]
From _Waves and Beaches_, by Willard Bascom, on the
subject of seismically generated waves:
"The general public has long referred to these waves
as tidal waves, much to the annoyance of American
oceanographers who are acutely aware that there is
no connection with the tides. In an effort to
straighten out the matter they adopted the Japanese
word tsunami, which is now in general use. Later
they discovered that tsunami merely means tidal wave
in Japanese, but at least the annoyance has been
shifted overseas."
--------------------------
From: shivers@sleepy.lcs.mit.edu (Olin Shivers)
In the January 17 issue of Newsweek this article entitled "Nice
Scientists Finish Last" by Robbin Sparkman appeared. The title
summarized psychologist Gregory Feist's Ph.D. dissertation conclusion.
Feist evaluated 99 full professors of science at California research
universities. His study consisted of devising a working definition of
success and identifying common personality traits of his subject by
using research assistants to evaluate audiotaped interviews and rate
the tapes for hostility, loquaciousness and serenity. While the
eminent professors published more and their work cited more than less
renowned colleagues, they were more unfriendly, exploitative of others
and arrogant. Feist hopes that research into the psychology of
scientists may help educators pinpoint basic personality traits that
can be nurtured in aspiring researchers. It is unfortunate that
antisocial behavior and sour personalities are put together with
successful scientist.
--------------------------
From: rnewman@media.mit.edu
After I complained about a blatantly anti-Semitic posting
on the Usenet newsgroup "soc.culture.jewish", I got a
message back from the offending site's system administrator,
explaining that a user had left his terminal logged in and
unattended.
The message ended with:
-----
That article does violate University standards of appropriate behavior.
But on the face of it, the owner of the account was a victim of a
drive-by posting.
--------------------------
If debugging is the art of removing bugs, then programming is the
practice of putting them in.
Jon - spbcajk@ucl.ac.uk
- dave mankins (dm@world.std.com, dm@hri.com)
--------------------------
From: rsalz@osf.org
]``We have tamed lightning and used it to teach sand to think.''
It's first words were "ouch, that hurt."
--------------------------
From: John Robinson [jr@ksr.com]
- So Many Windmills, So Little Time! -
--------------------------
From: dave mankins dm@world.std.com, dm@hri.com
=-=-=-=-oOOo-(_)-oOOo-=-=-=-=- In a world in which we are all
=- Wendy Faulkner =- slaves to the laws of gravity, I'm
=- faulkner@math.fsu.edu =- proud to be counted as one of the
=- Math Dept. F.S.U. =- freedom fighters.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- SKYDIVE!
--------------------------
From: Harold Hubschman [haroldh@ksgbbs.harvard.edu]
Occasionally, a supermarket tabloid conjurs up a headline that is
truly inspired. From the cover of today's Weekly World News:
LA Quake Opens Gates of Hell
Demons Escape from Crack in California Freeway
President Puts National Guard on Red Alert
--------------------------
From: Sean Colbath [sean@think.com]
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|University of Cambridge Computing Service - Unix-Support |
|Tim Auckland [tda10@ucs.cam.ac.uk] |
|At the third stroke ... it will be eighty .. columns .. exactly .. | .. | .. |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
--------------------------
From: dave mankins dm@world.std.com, dm@hri.com
From: oneel@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov (Bruce O'Neel):
...the ability to define your own operator functions means that a simple
statement such as x=a+b; in an inner loop might involve the sending of e-mail
to Afghanistan (Guy L. Steele Jr, Embedded Systems Programming, July 1993)
--------------------------
From: dave mankins dm@world.std.com, dm@hri.com
From: kwhyte@dent.uchicago.edu (Kevin Whyte)
We are faced with the very real possibility that "digital" and
"manual" will be used as antonyms.
--------------------------
From: John Robinson [jr@ksr.com]
From: malcolm@ksr.com (Malcolm "Out of Africa!" Phillips)
One monk asked his superior if he could smoke while he prayed. He was
told not to. Another monk, overhearing this, asked his superior if he
could pray while he smoked. He was told that he could.
--------------------------
From: "jeremy j. b. nguyen" [jeremy@apple.com]
From: Jeffrey Osier [jeffrey@cygnus.com]
From: Simon Elphick [simon@cygnus.com]
From: sabo@netcom.com (Joe Sabolefski)
From: adw3345@ultb.isc.rit.edu (Derrick Williams)
So to make up for my tremendously exciting and thrilling job at my
company, I'm taking engineering courses at my local community college
at night for the fun of it. This is at a community college, not an
engineering college, so I am able to use the qualifier, "for fun".
What they pretty much do is have you go to a few lectures a week, then
give you a set of keys to the lab and you work on projects that reflect
principles you learned in the classes. For your final project, you get to
do something you want to do, so as long as the instructor approves of it.
My final project is a cat tracker. In a closed environment, such as my
studio apartment, there are sensors that track an emitter worn by the
cat. All this stuff is hooked up to my computer, which displays a map
of my apartment, and a little cat icon that shows the X,Y, and Z
co-ordinates of the cat. When Boris the wonder cat goes into the kitchen
for munchies, the little kitty icon traces Boris' path through the
house. When Boris chases his tail, the icon goes around in tiny circles.
When Boris drinks from the toilet, the icon disappears because the bowl
blocks out all the signals.
I was proudly explaining my cat tracker to a classmate, and she
shattered it all by saying, "But if you're in the house and can watch
the cat, what good is it?"
You know, she had a point. I could use it to prevent Boris from going
to certain places in the house. If Boris was not allowed in the study,
the computer could sound an alarm when Boris went there. But being
liberal and easygoing cat owner, I don't care where Boris goes. Boris
eats his cat food on the kitchen table because I step on it when it's on
the floor. We share diseases all the time.
So, it would only be useful to track the cat when I'm not there. So
henceforth, Boris may become the first cat connected to the Internet.
Finger a machine, and you get a diagram of the house with a reference of
where the cat is. Connect to a machine with a X terminal and watch
Boris wander around, real time.
However, I need to be connected to an internet site. I can get ISDN.
Any takers?
--------------------------
From: treese@crl.dec.com
Some additions and updated numbers. Please send me any relevant information.
- Win
The Internet Index
[format stolen from "Harper's Index"]
Compiled by Win Treese (treese@crl.dec.com), 7/8/93
Revised: 12/16/93
Annual rate of growth for Gopher traffic: 997%
Annual rate of growth for World-Wide Web traffic: 341,634%
Average time between new networks connecting to the Internet: 10 minutes
Number of newspaper and magazine articles about the Internet during the
first nine months of 1993: over 2300
Number of on-line coffeehouses in San Francisco: 18
Cost for four minutes of Internet time at those coffeehouses: $0.25
Date of first known Internet mail message sent by a head of state: 2 March 1993
(Sent by Bill Clinton, President of the United States)
Date on which first Stephen King short story published via the Internet before
print publication: 19 Sept 1993
Number of mail messages carried by IBM's Internet gateways
in January, 1993: about 340,000
Number of mail messages carried by Digital's Internet gateways
in June, 1993: over 700,000
Advertised network numbers in July, 1993: 13,293
Advertised network numbers in July, 1992: 5,739
Date after which more than half the registered networks were
commercial: August, 1991
Number of Internet hosts in Norway, per 1000 population: 5
Number of Internet hosts in United States, per 1000 population: 4
Number of Internet hosts in July, 1993: 1,776,000
Round-trip time from Digital CRL to mcmvax.mcmurdo.gov in McMurdo, Antartica:
640 milliseconds
Number of hops: 18
Number of USENET articles posted on a typical day in February, 1993: 35,000
Number of megabytes posted: 44
Number of users posting: 80,000
Number of sites represented: 25,000
Number of Silicon Valley real estate agencies advertising with
Internet mail addresses: 1
Terabytes carried by the NSFnet backbone in February, 1993: 5
Number of countries reachable by electronic mail: 137 (approx.)
Number of countries not reachable by electronic mail: 99 (approx.)
Number of countries on the Internet: 60
Amount of time it takes for Supreme Court decisions to become
available on the Internet: less than one day.
Date of first National Public Radio program broadcast simultaneously
on the Internet: 21 May 1993
Percent of Boardwatch Top 100 BBS systems with Internet Connectivity: 21
Number of people on the Internet who know you're a dog: 0
--------------------------
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