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Yucks Digest V1 #51

Yucks Digest                Tue, 14 May 91       Volume 1 : Issue  51 

Today's Topics:
            Click the left mouse button for new hierarchy
         Disease and Insecticide Toxicity From Eating Insects
                             Fun in Miami
                        Help change the world!
                  Help Wanted (computer interfacing)
                          Like an airhead   
                     Micky Mouse in the Bathroom
                        more bad lapd jokes...
                            no kites here
                        rights and obligations
                 Smart alecks vs. the census computer
                           SPR response gem
                The latest from Battle Creek, Michigan
                      unclear on the concept...
                              Vodka Wars
                 Would you buy a vest from this man?

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 and subscription requests should be sent to spaf@cs.purdue.edu

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 13 May 91 11:16:18 PDT
From: Lisa.Chabot@Eng.Sun.COM
Subject: Click the left mouse button for new hierarchy
To: mnemonic@eff.org, barry@Stardent.COM, shapiro@ranger.dec.com, spaf

My boss, Marty, just used a term I've never heard before:

    re-orgy (n.): 1) profligate reorganization
		  2) daily Sun activity

------------------------------

Date: 5 May 91 23:09:54 GMT
From: ghot@ms.uky.edu (Allan Adler)
Subject: Disease and Insecticide Toxicity From Eating Insects
Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking,sci.med,sci.environment

For a long time, I have wanted to acquire a taste for insects. For a while,
what stopped me was ignorance of what one can eat and how one can prepare it.
In recent years, books have been appearing containing answers to such
questions. But I am unsure how to proceed. The reason is that I am
concerned about the fact that there are a lot of insecticides in use
and that lots of insects are infected by parasites. The same is presumably
true of the plants and other species such as fowl, fish and mammals that I 
usually eat, but at least the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug 
Administration take a slight interest in the matter in such cases. By way of 
contrast, I am not aware of any federal regulations or inspection of insects 
intended for human consumption.

Can someone address my concerns in this matter ? 

Please reply to me by email since I do not read news.

[This man desparately needs a real hobby.  --spaf]

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 11 May 91 19:01:23 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Fun in Miami
To: yucks-request

     Mugger Enters Lesley Stahl Car
   MIAMI (AP)
   When "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl came to Miami for a
news story, she learned an important safety tip: Keep your car doors
locked.
   Stahl, in town this week to report on the 1988 beating death of a
drug dealer by police, was driving with producer Barbara Dury when an
intruder flung open an unlocked back door and jumped in.
   Ms. Dury struggled with the intruder, police spokesman David
Rivero said of the Wednesday evening incident, adding, "Lesley was in
shock, and Barbara started weaving in traffic."
   Deliberately trying to cause a commotion, Ms. Dury accelerated and
crashed the car into a wall. The mugger fled, stealing Ms. Dury's
purse, about $100, a checkbook and a briefcase with newspaper
clippings.
   "Barbara was cool as ice," Stahl said.
   Less than three hours after the incident, it almost happened again
to Stahl and producer Jim Jackson. Another thug pounded on the car.
This time, they had the doors locked.
   As of Friday, police had made no arrests and had no suspects, said
spokesman Fernando Cabeca.
   In early December, a federal jury found six police officers
innocent of 17 of 24 counts and reported itself deadlocked on six
civil rights murder counts in the death of Leonardo Mercado, a
small-time drug dealer.

------------------------------

Date: 10 May 91 02:42:18 GMT
From: benkei@cs.utexas.edu (William Kent Richards)
Subject: Help change the world!
Newsgroups: alt.dreams,houston.general,tx.general,la.general,ca.general,

Orig posted in austin.general, but perhaps others could join
in the fun for more power! The dance will start is 10:30 am central
standard time, USA. Don't know the GMT. Sorry for late notice.
Just go to your favorite place to do it! Don't even need the music
if don't want/can't get, just sing! Tell friends!
----
Posted for a friend:

I have a dream. Well, actually, I had a dream back in 
mid-February. Since then, friends I've told about it 
have gotten very excited and asked me, "Well? When 
are we going to do it?"

In my dream, I suddenly understood that all the 
plagues of society--rising crime, mental depression, 
kids doing bad in school--could be solved if a bunch of 
people got together on a Saturday morning in Hyde 
Park to sing and dance to "Walk Like an Egyptian." 
This would create such an esprit de corps, I knew, that 
it would repell all the evil influences trying to infiltrate 
us and make our lives suck. In fact, at the end of my 
dream, those dark forces had taken the form of fairies. 
I stood in front of the place where I knew they were and 
waggled my finger at them. "You think you're getting 
away with this, but you're not," I said. "We've got your 
number now, and we're gonna kick your evil little fairy 
butts outta town."

So on the morning of May 11th, a group of friends and I 
will be at Shipe Park and do the ceremony as it was 
presented to me in my dream. We plan to bring our jam 
boxes tuned to Key 103.5 because hopefully they'll play 
the Bangles song, "Walk Like an Egyptian" at about 
10:30 or so.  Even if they don't accommodate us, I have 
the song on tape.  Anyway, the music will ring out 
across the park and we'll all jump up and do our earth-
changing ritual. Soon afterwards, we confidently 
expect crime and poverty and that generally blah 
feeling to end forever.

Anybody who wants to get in on this New World Order 
is welcome!  Hey, it could happen...
-------

Shipe Park is between 45th, 44th, Ave H, Ave G.

Here are the words:

All the old pain-tings on the tomb
they do the sand dance, don'cha know?
If they move too quick (O-A-O),
they're falling down like a domino.
And the bazaar man by the Nile
he got the money on a bet
For the crocodiles (O-A-O),
they snap their teeth on a cigarette.
Foreign types with their hookah pipes sing:
O-A-O-A-ooooooo-aaaaa-ooooo-aaaaa.
Walk like an Egyptian.

The blonde waitresses take their trays,
spin around and they cross the floor.
They've got the moves (O-A-O),
you drop your drink then they bring you more.
All the school kids so sick of books,
they like the punk and the metal band.
When the buzzer rings (O-A-O),
they're walking like an Egypti-an.
All the kids in the marketplace say:
O-A-O-A-ooooooo-aaaaa-ooooo-aaaaa.
Walk like an Egyptian.

Line your feet astreet, bend your back,
shift your arm, then you pull a clock.
Like Sergeant O (O-A-O),
so strike a pose on a cadillac.
If you want to find all the cops
they're hanging out in the donut shop.
They sing and dance (O-A-O),
they spin their clock & cruise on down the block.
All the Japanese with their yen,
the party boys call the Kremlin.
The Chinese know (O-A-O),
they walk along like Egypti-ans.
All the cops in the donut shops say:
O-A-O-A-ooooooo-aaaaa-ooooo-aaaaa.
Walk like an Egyptian.
Walk like an Egyptian. 

------------------------------

Date: 6 May 91 19:16:46 GMT
From: jonathan@apo.cad.ucla.edu (Jonathan E. Katz)
Subject: Help Wanted (computer interfacing)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.offered,sci.electronics,comp.sys.amiga.hardware

I am posting this for a friend of mine..  Please direct any followup to
the number listed below...
 
--PREPARED TEXT FOLLOWS:
 
ACADEMY AWARD WINNING SOUND DESIGNER -- (STAR WARS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, 
   ALTERED STATES) is building the quintessential computer controlled
   BED OF SOUND.  Said Sound Designer seeks digital design wizard to help
   interface an Amiga computer's serial port to said amazing bed.  
   The gifted candidate should be well versed in bi-directional serial 
   communications, infrared remote controls and have an immense desire 
   to be associated with a very cool and rewarding project.  
 
                BE PART OF AUDIO-VISUAL BED HISTORY!
 
If interested, please contact Stephen Katz at 818-501-3877.

[Madonna is making another movie with special effects?   --spaf]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 May 91 23:01:06 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Like an airhead   
To: yucks-request

    By John Sinor Copley News Service   The sentence read, "Most of
the day, I had been going aery."
     That's not what I had written, but that's how it read in the
paper.
     This is an example of how some of the strangest things get
printed in a newspaper by mistake, accident or providence.
     Since editors are willing to give columnists great leeway,
co-workers reading the column cold when the first edition was printed
accepted the wording.
     The only thing was, they couldn't figure out what it meant.
     So when I walked in that morning, I found a note on my desk
asking me to consider changing "aery" to something "less obscure"
since my co- workers were "not sure what connotation you meant."
     The end of the note, from a copy editor, said, "I'm appealing to
you to choose a substitute word or phrase."
     I re-read the sentence in the paper. "Most of the day, I had
been going aery." It didn't make the slightest bit of sense to me,
either.
     The copy editor had listed the "following synonyms taken from
the dictionary" for "aery" and asked, "Any of them fit?":
     "Lighthmaded."
     "Visionary."
     "Vivacious."
     He even suggested his own definition: "Like an airhead."
     His note ended with, "Any other preference?"
     I read my sentence one more time.
     I7/8 still didn't make any sense.
     I pulled out the dictionary myself. I didn't even think "aery"
was a word. But there it was.
     It's a variation of the spelling of "airy."
     That word I knew. I've seen it in crossword puzzles. It means
all the things listed in the copy editor's note to me.
     "Aery" also was listed as a variation of "aerie." That's another
word I knew.
     It means, "The nest of an eagle or other bird of prey that
builds in a high place," or, "A house or stronghold on a high place."
     I suppose, if you allowed a little poetic license, it could also
mean, "Way up on a mountainside."
     Or "High up on a wall."
     Or possibly "Climbing a wall."
     Which comes closest to how I actually felt after reading the
sentence in the paper and the copy editor's note.
     The only thing to do was dig out the original version of my
story, about the big California lottery drawing, from my own word
processor and see what I had written.
     Well, the first sentence never mentioned the word "aery."
     It said, "Most of the day, I had been going around telling
myself what a stupid thing it was to play the lottery."
     Nothing "aery" about it   unless you delete all the letters
between the "a" in "around" and the "e" in "lottery."
     There were no other discrepancies. But that one sentence somehow
had got a computer prod in the transmission and jumped into near
babble.
     How this happened is one of those mysteries that, although not
world shaking, is just as unsolvable as some of the mysteries of
religion.
     So that's how the mistake got printed in the first edition.
     All those readers now probably think I'm some kind of an airhead.

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 10 May 91 13:32:30 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Micky Mouse in the Bathroom
To: yucks-request

     Mickey Toilet Wall Art Downed
   WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)
   Mickey and Minnie have been around the world, but the Walt Disney
company draws the line at having them go to the toilet.
   Disney has demanded that cartoons of the famous mice, along with
Pluto, Donald Duck and one of the seven dwarves, be scrubbed from the
walls of a bathroom in a children's playground in the small town of
Featherston.
   The entertainment group's managing director in Sydney, Australia,
John Cookson, said Thursday that Disney did not want to be seen as
bullying Featherston because the painting obviously was done without
intent to break copyright.
   "But it's our task to make sure the Disney characters are
well-represented and used in appropriate situations," he said.
   The Featherston Community Board decided later in the day to write
to Disney seeking approval to retain the cartoon characters for the
enjoyment of children.
   Major John Garrity said beautification of the Featherston toilets
was hardly a major transgression, and it was a case of Disney "using
a hammer to try to crush a gnat."

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 May 91 11:28:34 -0700
From: Rex Black <rutgers!devnet.la.locus.com!rex>
Subject: more bad lapd jokes...
To: spaf

Okay, okay, that Dodgers joke deserves this one...

Here about the new poker rules that the LA police are using?

Four clubs beats a King!

Ohhhhhhhhh!

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 13 May 91 16:11:51 EDT
From: meo%sware.com@mathcs.emory.edu (Miles O'Neal)
Subject: no kites here
To: spaf (Gene Spafford)

|Subject: Trendy Japanese Eat Live Fish
|
...
|   Shrimp, flounder and lobster are by no means the only energetic
|entrees on the trendy diners' menu. Other attractions include firefly
|squid, loaches, sea bream and young yellowtail.

Loaches? I thought they only talked like that in bad movies. Yuk.

I'll have to remember never to order "fries" in Japan...

|   Waiters bring the fish in wiggling, their eyes and mouths moving,
|then quickly slice open the midsection and gut it, so the fish is
|ready to eat. Like sushi or sashimi, the slices are dipped in a
|mixture of soy sauce and horseradish.

They don't just stuff it with the mixture after they gut it, and eat it
like a gyro? What a bunch of wimps. I always start with the tail end,
so those eyes stare across the table, especially if I'm doing a big
business deal.

|...eels are
|eaten whole.

I suppose that works because of those alledged long intestines the
Japanese claim to have.  The everage eel requires two or three bites
for most of us.

|   Shrimp are featured in a dish called "dance," and are expected to
|do just that.

If it's disco dancing, no problem. Slow waltzes have a special place
in my heart though, and I'd probably just sneak the poor shrimp into
the john and help them escape.

|   "People have more money to spend on food and are looking for
|better-tasting, more unusual dishes," said Tatsuo Saegusa, spokesman
|for the Japan Food Service Association...

Not only is this a boon to Roadkills-R-Us, but a subsidiary has been
formed to sell shredded, out-of-date license plates to those adventurous
Nippon epicures.

|   Live fish tend to be expensive. Lobster courses at Chunagon range
|from a basic $44 meal to the top-of-the-line $120 dinner.

Ha. Just wait for the debut of the $1,000 meal. The diner is dropped
into a tank with a live shark, wearing a formal bikini and holding a
ginsu knife & a pair of chopsticks.

|   "The expense just makes it all the more appealing," said Fujii.
|"The more it costs, the better we expect it to taste."

The cost of shredded license plates just trebled.

|   Saegusa said there are reasons besides trendiness and flavor that
|account for the popularity of live seafood. "It's a performance. It's
|like the cook is saying, `Here, I am giving you a life."'

It's like the entire US culture is saying to the Japanese, `Here, get a
life.'

|   A spokesman for the Japan Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
|Animals said the group doesn't consider the practice to be cruel.
|   "Eating live fish is part of our unique Japanese culinary
|culture," said the spokesman, who requested anonymity.

I suspect this comes from too much exposure to overgrown, radioactive
monsters.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 9 May 91 09:20:04 -0500
From: lark@greylock.tivoli.com (Lar Kaufman)
Subject: rights and obligations
To: eniac@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us

Suggested reading: _Man_and_the_Natural_World:_
_A_History_of_the_Modern_Sensibility_ by 
Keith Thomas.  

[...stuff deletd...]

It also is full of fascinating facts, such as (refering to England):
"Bestiality became a capital offence in 1534 and, with one brief
interval, remained so until 1861.  Incest, by contrast, was not a
secular crime at all until the twentieth century."

[So, what happened in 1533 and 1860?  And was it a workable defense to
claim that it wasn't an animal, it was a relative? --spaf]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 May 91 19:53:23 -0700
From: Les Earnest <les@dec-lite.stanford.edu>
Subject: Smart alecks vs. the census computer

A news report indicates that an increasing number of Americans are
thumbing their noses at the Federal government's mindless insistence
on classifying everyone into traditional ethnic categories ["Census
menu contained lots of spice," San Jose Mercury News, 5/7/91, p. 1A].
The feds are reportedly fighting back with advanced computer technology.

Several years ago I pointed out in this forum that no one had yet
devised a scheme that would reliably and unambiguously assign each
individual to a particular racial or ethnic category.  Those postings
were later developed into an article arguing that all statistical
studies of racial or ethnic categories and the governmental programs
based on them, especially Affirmative Action, rest upon unstable
foundations ["Can computers cope with human races?" CACM, Feb. 1989].
I advocated answering questions about one's ethnicity with "mongrel"
and a number of people later told me that they had used that answer
or similar ones in the 1990 Federal census.

Today's news story says that the Census Bureau received many answers
such as "a little bit Norwegian," "a little bit of everything,"
"California boy,"  "Heinz 57," "a fine blend," and "steak sauce."
They somehow decided that most of these responses came from people of
Hispanic descent, according to Roderick Harrison, chief of the Race
Statistics Branch of the Census Bureau.  Other answers included "child
of God," "none of your business," "NOYB," and "NOYFB."

The article goes on to say:
  "This year, for the first time, spiffy new technology enabled the
  census to decipher each and every write-in answer to the race
  question.  (In 1980, only a small sample was read.)  The census
  computer was able to sort and assign about 85 percent of those
  `unique responses' to a racial group."
This is truly a remarkable claim: apparently the computer has
somehow figured out not only how to classify individuals into ethnic
classes, but how to do it even when they give ambiguous or misleading
answers.  If this claim holds up under scrutiny, I will nominate it
as the first example of true artifical intelligence.

The article goes on to mention that there are limits to its classification
abilities:
  "But the computer could not match about 200,000 quirky, smart-aleck
  and just plain weird answers such as `golden child,'
  `extraterrestial,' `alien,' `exotic hybrid,' `exchange student,'
  `half and half,' `fat pig,' `father adopted, race unknown,' `all of
  the above,' `handicapped,' and `exquisite.'"

Despite these limitations, it appears that the Census Bureau is well ahead
of the rest of the world in computer science.  ;-)

------------------------------

Date: 2 May 91 13:05:06 GMT
From: maj@cl.cam.ac.uk (Martyn Johnson)
Subject: SPR response gem
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix

I thought I would share with you all a gem of an SPR response I
received today.  The SPR was submitted on 16 Nov 1989, and read
as follows:

    The /etc/dump program has been modified in recent versions
    of Ultrix so that it prints out "Must be superuser to run
    dump". This is pointless, unnecessary, and annoying.
    
    It is pointless because dump is not a privileged program (i.e.
    not setuid) and hence cannot do anything that a programmer
    cannot do for himself anyway. Anybody could take a copy of
    /etc/dump and patch out the superuser test, and run the copy.
    
    It is unnecessary because the ability to dump a disc requires
    access to the device special file. /etc/dump might reasonably
    check its access to the deivce and give a helpful message if
    access is denied.
    
    It is annoying because it is sometimes useful to allow a
    non-superuser to dump a partition. In particular, one might
    wish to give an operator group the appropriate access tp
    allow operations staff to dump without giving them full
    privilege.

The reply reads as follows:

    Thank you for your suggestion.
    
    The restriction of superuser access to the dump(8) command was
    established due to customer requests in the area of system
    security.  It was felt by these customers that only the superuser
    should have access to the raw disk via the dump command so that
    unscrupulous users could not gain access to data which would not
    normally be available to them.

Now, wasn't that worth waiting for?

[If you don't understand Unix, consider an analogy: someone complains to 
city council about people driving too fast through your neighborhood.
So the council closes off the street to all traffic to fix the situation.
DEC Ultrix folks are known for "logic" like this.   --spaf]

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 13 May 91 08:57:43 PDT
From: rutgers!tc.fluke.com!moriarty (Jeff Meyer)
Subject: The latest from Battle Creek, Michigan
To: Yucks-request

Heard on local radio station KISW last week:

    "Portions of today's Twisted Radio are sponsored by `Nut 'N Raisin
     Honey', the breakfast cereal for impotent men."

                           "Asking a writer 'where do you get your ideas' is
                            like asking a butcher 'exactly what DO you put in
                            this sausage'? "
                                           -- Roy Blount Jr.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 13 May 91 16:11:03 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: unclear on the concept...
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU

The Met Office is now using fax machines to give local authorities early
warning of severe weather. The Hampshire emergency planning office said:
"Rather than having to rely on telephones, for instance, where lines are
at risk in bad weather, we are encouraging the wider use of fax machines."

    {News courtesy of the Reading Evening Post}

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 9 May 91 18:04:39 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Vodka Wars
To: yucks-request

     1st `Shots' Fired In Vodka War
   MOSCOW (AP)
   It's enough to drive an American distiller to drink. Vodka czar
Pyotr Smirnov's descendants plan to return the family name to the
Soviet national drink  using a recipe they say is better than the
Western copycat.
   Soviet businessman Boris Smirnov and his family, who recently
created the firm "P.A. Smirnov and Descendants in Moscow," insist
that the original recipe for Smirnoff vodka is theirs.
   But officials of the American distributor, Heublein Inc., which
obtained its formula as well as worldwide marketing rights from a
Russian emigre in 1939, say the recipe belongs to them.
   It's Smirnov vs. Smirnoff. It's a vodka battle, and it's not neat.
   Smirnoff is the best-selling vodka in the United States, selling
almost 6 million cases a year.
   "We are going to win the market by producing a high-quality
product, rather than suing. Don't forget that we have the old recipes
of our great-grandfather," Smirnov was quoted as saying in the Soviet
newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
   "We have prepared documents contesting the right of the American
firm Heublein ... to use the name of Pyotr Smirnov" on its label,
said Smirnov.
   Heublein disagrees.
   "We are the world trademark owner for Smirnoff, and we own the
original formula," said the company's spokesman, Jack Shea, in a
telephone interview from Farmington, Conn. "We don't believe that
they have the right to produce Smirnoff vodka."
   Shea said he even doubted the Smirnovs were related to the
Smirnoff who provided Heublein with its vodka recipe.
   "We have no record whatsoever that any line of the Smirnoff family
has continued in the vodka-producing business," Shea said. "If forced
to do so, we would act to protect our trademark through whatever
legal means necessary."
   The names of the old and new vodka families are the same in
Russian. But older transliterations spelled it "Smirnoff" in English.
Modern versions spell it "Smirnov."
   According to Heublein, the Smirnoff vodka recipe originally came
from a Russian vodka producer named Pyotr Smirnov, who lost all his
assets after the Russian Revolution of 1917.
   But one of Smirnov's relatives, Vladimir Smirnov, managed to flee
to Paris, where he set up a small vodka distillery and eventually
sold the family's vodka recipe to another Soviet emigre, Rudolph
Kunett. Kunett sold it to Heublein in 1939, and Pyotr Smirnov became
known to American vodka drinkers as Pierre Smirnoff.
   For years afterward, Heublein's relationship with the Soviets was
marred by acrimony, and the company refused to even talk to Soviet
officials, according to Steve L. Barsby, an American economic
consultant specializing in the alcoholic beverage industry.
   "The Soviets were angry at Heublein for using the Smirnoff name,"
Barsby said.
   Now, after years of ill-will, Heublein and the Soviets have begun
talking to each other, and Smirnoff, long unavailable in the Soviet
Union, can be bought there  but only for hard currency in duty-free
shops.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 9 May 91 18:58:01 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Would you buy a vest from this man?
To: yucks-request

     North Sells Bulletproof Vests
   GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (AP)
   Oliver North is traveling the country selling bulletproof vests.
   North, who is chairman of Guardian Technologies International, was
mobbed by admirers when he arrived in this Tennessee town Wednesday
to pitch his company's product to police officers from Virginia,
Kentucky and Tennessee.
   North said he helped found Guardian Technologies three years ago
after leaving the Marine Corps.
   The retired lieutenant colonel was convicted in 1989 of aiding and
abetting obstruction of Congress, destroying National Security
Council documents and accepting an illegal gratuity in connectionn
with the Iran-Contra scandal.
   One of the convictions was reversed, and the others were set aside
for further proceedings.

------------------------------

End of Yucks Digest
------------------------------