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Yucks Digest V1 #22
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To: yucks
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Subject: Yucks Digest V1 #22
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From: spaf (Gene "Chief Yuckster" Spafford)
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Date: Fri, 15 Feb 91 19:59:49 EST
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Reply-To: Yucks-request
Yucks Digest Fri, 15 Feb 91 Volume 1 : Issue 22
Today's Topics:
Administrivia
"How to Cook a Berkeley Student" by the wharf rat
[iPSC/860: SRM Replacement]
a matter of perspective
Commuting in England
Hyphenation-- Make my day!
Let's see if this surprises you.
Mad Martin joke
NASA and Bureaucrats
Spelling rules we all know and trust
The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual, the
possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous. It is issued on a
semi-regular basis, as the whim and time present themselves.
Back issues may be ftp'd from arthur.cs.purdue.edu from
the ~ftp/pub/spaf/yucks directory. Material in archives
Mail.1--Mail.4 is not in digest format.
Submissions should be sent to spaf@cs.purdue.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 15 February 1991
From: spaf
Subject: Administrivia
To: yucksters
Sometimes, when I send out the digest, copies bounce. This happens
when system administrators get bored and decide to make their lives
interesting by tweaking the mailer configuration, or sometimes when
phone-based networking encounters problems. Whatever the cause, I
usually end up with a couple of bounced messages in my mailbox.
I try to resend bounced digests about 24-48 hours after the bounce.
(That assumes I can figure out who it goes to and where!) If the
message bounces again, I delete it. If digests directed to your
mailbox bounce more than 3 times in a row, I will delete your name
from the distribution list temporarily.
What all this means is that if your mail delivery is flakey, you
should sort of keep track of the issue numbers in the digest if you
are committed to not missing any yucks. Back issues are available
for ftp as in the header of this digest. (If I can find software that
does autorespond from mail, I will set it up for those of you who
don't have access to ftp -- anybody know of listserv-like software?).
Sites that often end up bouncing yucks are:
*.ulowell.edu
uucp sites on the other side of sun.com
*.dpw.com
*.novell.com
(uucp sites on the other side of the Sun? Sounds like major
networking problems to me!)
Also, because of an error in a shell script, an undigestified message
escaped to the world at large that is included later in this digest.
Sorry about that!
------------------------------
Date: long ago on the net
From: tas@dcc1.UUCP (N. Tasova)
Subject: "How to Cook a Berkeley Student" by the wharf rat
I was going through my old files and found this jewel that was posted
about two years ago by the wharf rat.
In response to the recent spate of rodent-recipes, I offer
the following as an example of true haut' cuisine:
How to Cook a Berkeley Student
Ingredients:
One large or two small Berkeley Students.
Ketchup.
2 large cloves garlic.
Crisco or other solid vegetable shortening.(Lard may be substituted).
1 keg cheap beer.
1 lb. alfalfa sprouts.
2 lbs. assorted health foods, such as tofu or yogurt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
First, catch a Berkeley Student. Remove the tail and horns.
Carefully seperate the large ego and reserve for sauce. Remove any
pencils, calculators, slide rules, or illegal drugs and discard.
Clean the Student as you would squid, but do not seperate the tentacles from
the body. If you have an older Student, such as a Graduate Student in Math ,
you may wish to tenderize by pounding the Student on a rock with a surfboard
or other flat heavy object.
Next, pour 1/2 of the keg of beer into a bath-tub and soak the
Student in the beer for at least 12 hours. (If your Student belonged
to a fraternity you may skip this step.) When the Student is sufficiently
soaked, remove any clothes the Student may be wearing and rub it all over
with the garlic. Then cover the Student with Crisco, using a slow circular
motion, and taking care to cover every inch of the Student's body with
the shortening. If it looks like fun, you may also cover your own body
with Crisco. Be sure to remove your clothes first, if you do.
Now post a request for the green golfball joke in rec.humor. Be
sure to ask what "OBJ" and "ROT-13" mean. Post at least 3 copies
of this to ensure adequate flames for cooking your Student. When the
flames have died down to a medium inferno, place your Student on top
of your terminal until it's well tanned and the hair turns bleached blond.
Be careful not to overcook, or the Berkeley Student may become radical.
Make a sauce by combining the previously reserved ego, the alfafa sprouts,
and ketchup to taste using cat(1) (see note). Redirect the output to your
blender and puree' until smooth. Slice the Berkeley Student as you would any
turkey, and serve accompanied by the assorted health foods and the remaining
beer.
Yum!,Yum!,
the wharf rat
note: use this command to make the sauce:
cat ego sprouts ketchup >blender |puree
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 91 20:01:15 -0600
From: chk@rice.edu
Subject: [iPSC/860: SRM Replacement]
To: spaf
Remember this message the next time you're ready to yell at the
systems staff. (A word of explanation: the SRM is the front-end to an
Intel iPSC/860, one of the hotter multiprocessors these days).
Chuck
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 91 15:27:14 EST
From: iPSC/860 <root@bluecrab.icase.edu>
To: ipsc@bluecrab.icase.edu
Subject: SRM Replacement
The SRM replacement scheduled for this afternoon has been postponed until
sometime tomorrow morning. The Intel service rep was delayed by a priority
call from a bowling alley in Williamsburg. (This is NOT a joke; you get what
you pay for, I guess!)
I don't have a firm time estimate for tomorrow, but I would suspect
mid-morning, since the service rep has to drive from Petersburg. (Assuming
there aren't any pizza parlors or whatever with priority maintenance agreements
who break down overnight.)
------- End of Forwarded Message
------------------------------
Date: 14 Feb 91 13:51:58 GMT
From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
Subject: a matter of perspective
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,alt.flame,talk.rumors,alt.folklore.computers,news.admin
davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) writes:
> ``Repeat after me: "The netnews is not real life. It's just 1's and
> 0's. It isn't that big a deal." Then go take a walk outside and try to
> gain some perspective.'' - spaf@cs.purdue.edu
After years in which the greatest depth seen was six feet to the nearest
wall of a room with a terminal, I have learned the long lost secret of
the ancient agoraphopes. To experience it, one goes outside to gain some
perspective, and every direction is down, down, _infinitely_ down, and
one runs back to ones terminal, screaming with vertigo, and seeks the
comfort of a flat, pespectiveless world, composed of safe, dimensionless
ones and zeros, cardboard relationships and imaginary people living cut
and paste lives.
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
--
My usenet and welcome to it.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 91 11:44:16 -0500
From: "Gunter Ahrendt" <cmc@beach.cis.ufl.edu>
Subject: Commuting in England
To: spaf
Commuting for the beginner.
In this hurly-burly world of Inter-City travel, there are few things
that warm a worker's heart more than the prospect of commuting. It is a
safe bet to place that at some time during your working lives, you will all
have to commute (in fact, the mathematicians amongst you will have been
doing this already for some time).
Commuting in its very simplest essence is a journey from home to work,
and back again. This simple description, however, does not convey the full
joy that can be had from commuting. A typical enjoyable commuting day (and
it can take a whole day just to commute) may begin as follows:
6.30am Wake up. Actually, this is totally wrong, because at that time,
you're not capable of waking up. What a pity somebody didn't tell your
alarm clock this! All that you are physically capable of doing is hitting
the snooze button.
7.05am This is the time when you typically find that it wasn't the snooze
button that you hit, but that tiny little switch that turns the alarm
mechanism off. Well, I say this is the time that you find it, but in fact
it's just the time that your alarm clock tells you. What you find out when
you switch the radio on, is that there was a power cut for half an hour,
and the time is now
7.30am The time in the morning when the bed-clothes ricochet off one wall
of the room, and lie crumpled in a heap daring you to waste enough time to
make the bed before you go out. Also the time when you discover you don't
have enough co-ordination to open your bedroom door, nor can you remember
whether said door pushes or pulls. Immediately you work this out, it is
7.40am Having spent ten minutes trying to wrestle the door back onto its
hinges, you achieve terminal velocity trying to come to terms with stairs.
Quite probably you would have broken your neck, if the ground hadn't broken
your fall. You lie dazed and stunned outside the shower, next to the
toilet. It is at this time that you make the first decision of your
working day - which to enter first. You know that should you enter the
shower first, you will spend most of your time knotting your legs as the
running water cascades off your body, already full of liquid from the night
before. So, you choose the loo. Again, this is a bad move, as you
discover when it's
7.45am You enter the shower, set it to the required temperature.
Immediately you turn the water on, scalding hot needles pierce the thin
fabric of your skin. Obviously you have set the shower too hot. It is now
time to play the thermodynamic equilibrium game. Can you balance the
hot/cold settings of the shower, playing against the combined enemies of
the cistern refilling, the dishwasher hot-rinsing, and the kettle being
filled? Bear in mind also that the water takes some eight to ten seconds
to register the changes you have made at the taps. It is like trying to
juggle three red hot pokers with both hands tied behind your back, and your
jaws wired together. Finally, after your refreshing shower, it's
7.55am and time for that most invigorating of activities - the early
morning shave. Firstly, don't give in to that temptation to shave your
tongue - it may feel as though it's covered in more dense fur than the
whole of David Bellamy, but just wait till you clean your teeth! (when
it'll feel as though your tongue is a cross between King Kong and a
Wrigley's chewing gum factory). Having decided that it's the external part
of the face you're going to shave, you choose your weapon. Five minutes
later, staggering from loss of blood, a female voice comes through the door
asking if it was alright to use your last razor the previous night. And
finally, the after-shave. Breathe in, grit your teeth, and throw a quarter
of the bottle in the vague direction of your chin. Done? Good, now let go
of the light fitting, and exit the bathroom.
8.10am And you finally realise that you're going to be far too late for
the train. Unless you miss breakfast. But your stomach and brain haven't
got this one sorted out yet. You try for the compromise, and it is five
minutes later that we find you sat on the bus, looking for all the world
like an advert for Kellogg's Crunchy Nuts.
8.20am Says the platform clock, although the trains seem to be
disagreeing. A voice comes over the tannoy, and the clarity amazes you -
you can hear every word the announcer says. Hear, yes - understand, no.
What it sounds like he is saying is "The train now stoning at platten fumf
is for Lun Woo. Caw at Beran, Renpa, Newman, Women, Early, Clam Jun, Vall,
and Lun Walloon.", and all spoken with clarity of a Dalek sucking a throat
pastille. This announcement would be fine and dandy if it weren't for the
computerised tannoy man immediately following this announcement. According
to him, "The train now at platform one is for London Waterloo only. We
apologise for the delay which was caused by a squirrel waving to the driver
just outside Hampton Court." Even the excuses are randomised by British
Rail's computers nowadays.
As the train pulls up to the platform, it's time for the first two
favourite commuting games!
1) Is it my train?
Tricky one this - the best way of finding out is to play logic games
with the guard, along the lines of "If I asked the other guard, would he
say this was the train I don't want to get on?" However, the only
blue-suited demons around are up the other end of the track, trying to stop
some old lady from feeding the trains with breadcrumbs. Seasoned commuters
at this point look around them to see the reaction of everyone else. If
you see someone moving that you think you recognise, but can never remember
being introduced to them, it's probably because they catch the same train
as you. Follow them.
2) Where will my carriage stop?
Well, that all depends on what type of train it is, how good the
driver's reactions are, whether he's passed his cycling proficiency test or
not, and how shocked he was by the squirrel outside Hampton Court. Suffice
it to say that what stops opposite you will be one of the following three
things:
a) the guard's van. The guard values his privacy and is unlikely to
let you on.
b) the first class compartment. Unless you own your own company (and
preferably British Rail at that), you can forget being allowed in here. It
has stricter entry requirements than Eton - you have to put your name down
for a seat before you're conceived, and you have to do that in person.
c) the smoking compartment. 'Nuff said.
So, it's that old favourite, running up the track to find the only
non-smoking compartment with a seat in it, only to find that it's covered
in some clean, bright, new chewing gum. It is at this point that fun
enters into the entire proceedings, as we play the third game.
3) Stare 'em out.
This game has its roots in primitive psychology, and is designed to
put you completely at ease, while the rest of the compartment decide that
you're some kind of dangerous lunatic.
Choose a person at random - preferably a very attractive member of the
opposite sex, as it makes what you're about to do so much easier. Now
stare at them. After a very short while indeed, you will find them trying
to sneak surreptitious glances at you to check whether you're still
watching them. Each time they look up at you, smile at them as though
you've just noticed that they have a traffic cone on their head, but you're
being too polite to mention it. If you ever wanted to know what a person
with accute paranoia looks like, just keep watching.
Finally, before you know it, you're making an unscheduled stop.
Sirens are blaring, and somebody somewhere is frantically thumping on a
door. This doesn't mean anyone wants to get out - these are the guys with
the stretcher who want to get in. Unfortunately, the man with the
heart-attack is in first-class, who aren't going to let the ambulance men
in until they can be taught to say please properly.
Eventually, you arrive at Lun Walloon, and you start to play the
fourth game, commonly known as
4) Running the gauntlet.
As you exit the platform, various people in different costumes walk
straight towards you. The less well equipped are simply holding their
hands out and asking for the price of a cup of meths. Those who have been
in this game for several years are wearing a 'Save the Atlantic Anteater
from the Ozone Hole and Melanoma Campaign' sweatshirt, are large enough
that the print on the sweatshirt is readable, and shake their dreaded
receptacles in your face. Reluctantly you realise that you are cornered,
and you reach for your money. Along with your handkerchief, you pull out
half the Brazilian national debt, which seems to fall straight for the open
mouth of the plastic anteater the woman is carrying, and you have lost a
large proportion of your overdraft.
Finally feeling that you have done some good for the other oppressed
animals of the world, you pass down into the bowels of the earth, ready for
the magical mystery tour of some of London's oldest sewers - the
Underground.
The new ticket barriers are wonderful devices, designed to take a
piece of card imprinted with a magnetic strip, and to shred it into a
million and one brightly coloured little pieces, while shrieking violently
and persuading you to seek assistance. You persuade the blue-suited goon
that the confetti floating down the escalators cost you two hundred pounds,
and would normally accompany the photograph that makes you out to be some
kind of alien road accident.
At last you hit the down escalator. It is at this point that the full
horror of what you drank the previous night hits you - you realise what
Maurits Escher felt when he etched those woodcuts of stairs in all feasible
directions. Your mind tells you that you're standing upright, and
travelling downwards, but the liquid still sloshing around the inside of
your head convinces you that you are lying backwards (despite gravity to
the contrary), and that the escalator is travelling at right angles to
reality. Just before you fall over, the escalator reaches the bottom, and
the grills that prevent you from rolling back round with the steps lacerate
the toe of each shoe.
Once again we play the merry little game of "Where are the doors going
to stop", only on a much smaller scale, since there are no guards, no
first-class, and no smoking. This should make the tube a more hospitable
place, but instead you have to try and find the only compartment without a
seven foot-tall psychedelic gorilla with a walkman at full volume.
Finally seated, the doors close, and another crystal clear
announcement rings through the train. "Due to industrial action by the man
that spreads the fag-ends around the station, this train will not be
stopping at your station. Repeat, this train will not be stopping at your
station. Thank you." Thank you for what, that's what I'd like to know.
The train pulls out, and as you approach your station the train begins to
slow down. This is of little surprise to you, since it is you and a select
band of people who also want to get off here that have hijacked the train.
Your ticket is inspected, the lifts don't work, and you have to climb
one hundred and seventeen dangerously narrow steps, and the one thought
that keeps you going is this:
"Only another eight hours till I have to go the other way."
------------------------------
From: npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson)
Subject: Hyphenation-- Make my day!
It's not polite to run-down the competition, but I'm
still in stitches over the latest WordPerfect brochure.
Since a newser asked about troff hyphenation, it's
fair to ask/talk about the others. In puffing about
the improvement in WordPerfect 5.1 gained via using
a dictionary, the brochure says:
Hyphenation
In the past, hyphenation in W-
ordPerfect was based on an
algorithm ...
------------------------------
From: ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab)
Subject: Let's see if this surprises you.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
I'm in the local supermarket, in the breakfast cereal aisle, minding
my own business, when I spot the latest offering from Ralston Purina
breakfast cereal division. My jaw drops. I suppose I should have expected
such a thing to happen sooner or later, but I'm still incredulous. I stare
at the title of the box (I swear I am not making this up):
"Nintendo Cereal System"
I try to picture in my mind's eye what form of life could have
thought this up. Images of a fat rich guy in a 3-piece suit come to mind.
I still can't believe this is real. So I buy a box to see what
Ralston Purina's Highly Trained Battery Of Marketing Experts has concocted
to catch the eye of cute youngsters who, upon seeing the familiar logo, will
whine and scream and shriek as only cute youngsters can do, shattering glass
jars nine aisles away, until every single person in the store who isn't
stone deaf will give the cute youngster a box just to get him to shut up.
It costs $3. Oh, all right, I lied: $2.99. "Hmmm," I think to
myself. "$3 to become a member of a targeted group of people, whose
behavior patterns have no doubt been calculated to three hundred forty seven
decimal places, making it statistically impossible for me to not buy this
stuff."
I get it home, and discover that it is, in fact, *two* boxes of
cereal. Or rather, that is to say, one box of cereal with two kinds of
cereal in it. Put more clearly, it is one box with two smaller bags in it.
One bag contains green-and-yellow Super Mario Brothers cereal. The other
contains red-yellow-and-purple Zelda cereal. Clearly, as implied by the
packaging, if one were to eat Super Mario Brothers food product, one would
hear a cute sound effect and grow to four times their normal size and be
able to jump higher, run faster, and whine and scream and shriek even louder
than before, possibly enough to force the President to order military
intervention to prevent a serious conflict with the Russians. ("Yoor noo
veapon iss eenterferink vith our launch detektors. Cease now or vee toast
yoo.") Since I've never played Zelda, I do not know would would happen if
your youngster were to eat some Zelda food product. However, I imagine the
results would be no less threatening to national security.
Looking at the side panel revealed an impressive array of
ingredients. There were two lists; one for Mario and one for Zelda. After
running 'diff' in my head, I determined that, with the exception of one
ingredient, both cereals are composed of the same substances. The
difference? Mario has "natural flavor," whereas Zelda has "artifical
flavor." My my, those highly trained folks at Ralston Purina sure know how
to come up with lucid, detailed descriptions.
The side panel also gives the impression that this stuff is Highly
Fortified With Vitamins, Iron, Herbs, Spices, and The Pain Reliever Doctors
Recommend Most, and that one could actually derive nourishment from these
crunchy multicolored bits of Advanced Food Technology if one were taken with
the unlikely desire to actually eat the stuff.
However, since I'm one of a rare breed of individuals, characterized
by a marked tendency to do unwise things (like trying to make a living
developing Amiga software), I was naturally compelled to pour myself a bowl
of Nintendo Cereal System, douse it with milk, and try it.
Strange. Memories of my childhood returned to me. Memories of me
whining and screaming and shrieking at my own mother to buy boxes of Fruity
Pebbles, Trix, and Lucky Charms. This stuff tasted exactly like those
cereals that I remember. For those of you who don't remember that part of
your childhood, and who don't have access to your mother to remember it for
you, let me describe Nintendo Cereal System in more familiar adult terms.
Sugar-Frosted Sugar-Coated Little Lumps of Sugar-Impregnated Crunchy
Plastic Sponge. The surface tension on these things is so high that the
milk beads up and rolls off. What little milk that does manage to penetrate
the pellets undergoes strange and no doubt Highly Sophisticated And Advanced
chemical reactions which would make Pons' and Fleischman's cold fusion
reaction look no more complicated than boiling water. Evidence of this
reaction can be seen with the naked eye by looking for the milk to start
changing color.
In case your children are of above average intelligence, and are
able to spot this marketing ploy for what it is, then there is a backup
ploy. The boxes have printed on them tips for playing Super Mario Brothers
and Zelda. So, while your cute youngsters are eating this wonderous new
piece of culinary engineering, they can be reading up on how to get even
farther (and therefore spend more time) in Super Mario Brothers and Zelda,
which they will want to try out immediately after finishing breakfast, and
continue to do so until you, the concerned parent, will yell and hop up and
down and throw heavy objects and insist they hurry up and get dressed or
they'll be late for school again.
Nintendo Cereal System. Look for it in a supermarket near you. It
shouldn't be too hard to find. You'll know you're getting close when you
hear the sound of whining, screaming, shrieking, shattering jars, and
military maneuvers.
------------------------------
Date: 1984
From: spaf
Subject: Mad Martin joke
[This reappeared on the net recently. I posted it back in 1984 when my
advisor, the esteemed Martin McKendry, was threatening me with all
sorts of horrible stuff unless I worked more on my thesis and posted
less. I graduated 2 years later. --spaf ]
Once upon a time, this guy named Fred decided that he was rough and
tough enough to seek his fortune in the Wild West. (This was in the
days when the Wild West meant Texas and Arizona, with indians, outlaws,
tornados and droughts -- not the current situation, where the Wild West
means California and you have to brave hottubs, mellowspeak, fires and
earthquakes. That is, it was a simpler time.)
So, Fred found his way to a frontier town and became the bartender at
the wildest saloon in the territory. He soon proved how rough and
tough he was, and the owner of the bar was pleased with how he broke up
fights and didn't skim too much off the receipts. He told Fred that he
(Fred) was doing a fine job, but he should remember one thing: "If you
ever hear even a *rumor* that Mad Martin is coming to town, just save
what you can, put a bottle of Red Eye on the counter, and head out of
town as fast as you can."
Fred was pretty perplexed at this, and sought explanation. He was
told that Mad Martin was an old mountain man who lived up in the hills
and only came to town once or twice a year. However, Martin was the
most dangerous guy they'd ever heard of and few had ever encountered
him and lived to tell the tale. Fred listened carefully and then
promptly forgot all about it.
Until, one day a few months later, a cowboy came riding through town at
full speed, yelling "Martin's coming! Head for the hills!" The result
was incredible. Everybody in town immediately jumped on their horses
and took off for the hills. Except Fred. He wanted to see this guy
because he didn't believe he could be all that tough. So, Fred just
put the bottle of Red Eye on the bar, hid behind the counter, and
waited.
He didn't wait long. Soon there was a noise in the street. As Fred
looked out a hole in the wall, he saw this huge, mean-looking guy ride
down the center of the street on the biggest bull buffalo that Fred had
ever seen. The guy stopped the buffalo in front of the bar, jumped off
the beast, punched it in the head (dropping the critter to its knees)
and bellowed "Wait here til I get back!" The fellow turned and walked
up the steps. Fred saw that the guy had a pair of huge mountain lions
on leashes. He tied them both to a post and kicked them soundly,
hollering "You pussycats stay here til I'm done!" The cats fearfully
sat down.
Into the bar stormed the fellow, ripping the doors off the wall as he
passed. With two strides he approached the bar, picked up the bottle
of Red Eye, bit off the neck, and downed it all in one gulp. Poor
Fred, thoroughly frightened by now, let out a little whimper. The guy
looked down over the bar and roared "What the hell do you think you're
looking at!?"
Fred managed to say "N..n..n..nothing, mister. Do you want another
bottle of Red Eye?"
To which the fellow replied, "Hell no! I don't have time! I gotta get
out of here -- Mad Martin's coming!"
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 1991 21:26:05 PST
From: cate3.osbu_north@xerox.com
Subject: NASA and Bureaucrats
The following is quoted from an interview with Freeman Dyson
in the Spring 1988 TECHNE Journal of Technological Studies from the
VTS department at Stanford.
There are lots of idiots, of course, in NASA, but my view of NASA
is rather like the Royal Air Force used to be in the old days
when I worked for the Royal Air Force during the war. If you had an
officer who was a dud, you put him in the command headquarters because
he would do less damage there than he would out in the squadrons.
So all the duds accumulated at the headquarters -- this is what has
happened at NASA for the last thirty years or so. Acutally, there are
lots of very fine things, but they're all out in the stations. If
you look at JPL out here in California, or you look at Goddard which is
in Maryland, they're doing very well. I think JPL is running the Voyager
missions, which of course have been beautifully done. The Voyager went
to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and will go to Neptune next year.
That's a fantastically good mission, which is run at JPL, and then there is
the IUE, run at Goddard. So there are these very good, what NASA calls,
the centers, these places where the technical work is done. And there
is this terrible bunch of idiots in Washington at the headquarters which
messes everything up. So I think if you just abolish the Washington
office, NASA would be in very good shape.
We actually tried that out during World War II. There was a very
analogus problem we had in 1943. The German armaments industry was
doing very well, they were producing a tremendous lot of armaments and
we wanted to put a stop to that. We found out thtat all the head
offices of these armament firms were in Dusseldorf and that was where
all the paperwork was done. So we decided we would really destroy
Dusseldorf and disorganize the whole system. We went in there one
night and it was a very succesful operation and Dusseldorf really burned
down to the ground. And then, in the next few weeks, the armament
production went up like a rocket.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 91 12:50:55 -0500
From: John M. Danskin <jmd@cs.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: Spelling rules we all know and trust
atomic[!]> grep cei /usr/dict/words | wc
13 13 124
atomic[!]> grep cie /usr/dict/words | wc
25 25 247
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Date: Wed, 13 Feb 91 14:49 EST
From: rutgers!pdn.paradyne.com!reggie (George Leach)
To: spaf
I have never been to Atlanta before. I almost made it there in
January of 1987. At the time I was working at Bellcore and was to travel
there to speak at a meeting of some of the people from the Bell South
Information Systems Organization on the topic of software reuse on our
project. Unfortunately, we had not designed the system for reuse, nor
did we explicitly make any use of reuse techniques! I had to be very
creative in coming up with a talk on the subject :-)
Anyway, to make a long story short......snow hit the entire
east coast on the morning (1/22/87) I flew out of Newark International.
About ten minutes into the flight they announced that Atlanta was snowed in
and diverted my flight to Cincinnati! Well by the time we figured
out that Atlanta would not be opening their airport in time for me to
make the meeting, all the New York area airports were snowed in!
I called my wife, who was at home in our apartment in the Bronx.
The news indicated that the snow may not let up until sometime over the
weekend. So we decided that I might end up stranded in Cincinnati
for quite some time if I waited for an available flight to New York.
So we decided to try Amtrack.
Having spent my entire life in the New York/New Jersey area, I
had no idea that train travel in other parts of the country were so primitive.
Trains are almost a way of life for so many people in the area. Anyway,
the Amtrack Station was located in a rather questionable part of town under
an elevated highway. It was just a shack. The train only came through
Cincinnati once a day, at 2AM (or thereabouts). Incredible. Anyway, I
grabbed a Taxi from the airport, which is actually in Kentucky, and got to
the Amtrack Station around Midnight, way ahead of time. It didn't matter,
a train accident up the line in (of all places) Indiana, caused the line to
be blocked. Needless to say, I didn't get on that train for many hours after
that.
Whenever some special event like this occurs, people tend to band
together and establish temporary friendships. Well, of course, I had to
pick the strangest person to talk to. It seems that my new found friend
wa an expert on.....UFOs! At first it was amusing. But try listening to
someone who is convinced that he has encountered beings from another planet
for an 18 hour trip through the winding hills of West Virginia. Thank God
he was getting off in Washington. He was going to visit the government,
whom he claimed had also made contact, but was covering it all up :-) :-)
Once I hit DC, it was as if civilization had been encountered again.
Ah, the Northeast Corridor. The speed picked up and we moved....Baltimore,
Philly, Newark, and finally at 1AM on Saturday morning....Penn Stations in
the middle of Manhattan. :-) :-) :-( Oh no.....I forgot what it is like
at that hour.
I emerged from the escalator from the platform area onto the main
level of Penn Station. In a scene that reminded me of "The Night
of the Living Dead", all sorts of zombie like creatures headed towards me
in that abandoned station. I made a beeline for the nearest exit and flagged
a cab. Screw taking the subway home at that hour. I had had enough adventure
for that weekend. I paid the $21.00 fair up to the Bronx and safety.
[No wonder he plays tennis with roaches.... --spaf]
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End of Yucks Digest
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