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Yucks Digest V1 #57
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To: yucks
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Subject: Yucks Digest V1 #57
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From: spaf (Gene "Chief Yuckster" Spafford)
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Date: Fri, 31 May 91 15:56:53 EST
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Reply-To: Yucks-request
Yucks Digest Fri, 31 May 91 Volume 1 : Issue 57
Today's Topics:
/ net.rumor / mmm!mrgofor / Mar 19, 1986 /
Ah, how true...
cutie
Hummmmmmmmm...
misspellings...
Possible market for lead-lined pooper-scoopers?
something weird this way comes...
the best of games, the worst of games
yucks submission
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
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Date: Thu, 30 May 1991 20:40:38 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: / net.rumor / mmm!mrgofor / Mar 19, 1986 /
To: yucks-request
This story did not happen to me, and I disremember where I heard
it, so it may not be true, but it's interesting nonetheless,
so...
There was a computer system that was experiencing intermittent
power failures that were proving impossible to track down.
Every means of recording device and electrical filter was used,
but to no avail. The power failures always seemed to happen
soon after lunch time, but for no apparent reason. After months
of agonizing work, the technician finally figured it out:
The room on the other side of the wall from the computer room
was the men's bathroom. The grounding for the computer room
circuits went to the water pipes that serviced one of the
toilets. The building was rather old, and the toilets were in
some need of repair. It seems that when one sat on the toilet
seat, the weight of the sittee would cause the whole
construction to lean forward a bit - not much, but enough to
cause the marginally attached grounding wires to separate from
the water pipes as the pipes bent along with the toilet - voila
- the computer re-boots.
I bet that was a hard one to track down!
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Date: Wed, 29 May 91 11:28:57 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Ah, how true...
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
Reprinted without permission from
San Jose Mercury News, Mon, March 25, 1991
In Leigh Weimers column:
INTERFAZED - The twain may never meet between Silicon Valley and
Santa Cruz, though. Dynatech software engineer Tom Cumming and a pal were
talking about electronic mail over coffee at Jahva House in Santa Cruz
when a bearded stranger nearby looked piercingly at Cumming and said, "Can
you read my thoughts?" Cumming, not missing a beat: "Are you on the
internet?"
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Date: Thu, 30 May 91 20:31:29 EDT
From: dscatl!lindsay@gatech.edu
Subject: cutie
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
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Date: Wed, 29 May 91 14:42:05 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Hummmmmmmmm...
To: yucks-request
Humming Schizophrenics Studied
CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP)
Schizophrenics are less likely to hear imaginary voices if they
hum softly, a study found.
"Currently, humming is seldom if ever used in treatment of
schizophrenic patients," but it may prove useful for those who aren't
helped by antipsychotic drugs, the federal Alcohol, Drug Abuse and
Mental Health Administration said in reporting on the study in its
May newsletter.
Schizophrenia is a baffling and debilitating mental illness
characterized by increasingly bizarre symptoms that usually start
appearing during adolescence or young adulthood. An estimated 4
million Americans are at risk of developing the disease, according to
the American Psychiatric Association.
Schizophrenics partly lose touch with reality. They often withdraw
socially, can't concentrate, have trouble sleeping, talk nonsense,
and suffer delusions and visual and auditory hallucinations. During
auditory hallucinations, schizophrenics hear voices that command them
to take various actions.
Psychiatrists don't know how such hallucinations occur. But
evidence indicates that patients who hear voices are activating their
speech muscles without producing audible sounds. That somehow
triggers the hallucinations, according to the theory.
The doctors who conducted the study theorized that humming would
interfere with this inaudible muscle activity and prevent the
patients from hearing voices.
The study involved 20 schizophrenic men and women who researchers
had quietly hum a single note. That produced a 59 percent reduction
in auditory hallucinations, the newsletter said.
The study was conducted by Drs. Michael Foster Green and Marcel
Kinsbourne of the University of California, Los Angeles, Research
Center. The center is located at Camarillo State Hospital, a state
mental hospital 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
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Date: Thu, 30 May 91 17:53:11 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: misspellings...
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
>From the Sun Release 4.1 SPELL(1) Manual page:
Copies of all out-
put words are accumulated in the history file, and a stop
list filters out misspellings (for example, their=thy-y+ier)
that would otherwise pass. ^^^^^
I guess someone in their publications department did not want ANY
misspelled words, even examples of ones...
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Date: Thu, 30 May 91 17:55:44 -0700
From: bostic@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Possible market for lead-lined pooper-scoopers?
To: /dev/null@okeeffe.Berkeley.EDU
>From today's Wall Street Journal, page B1. Reprinted without permission.
Next Week, Police Will Fan Out To Check the City's Fire Hydrants
By Chip Johnson, Staff Reporter
A radioactive cat has invaded the nuclear-free zone established by
the city of Berkeley, Calif., leaving behind a mess that will take at least
$700 to clean up.
It all began when a sensitive geiger counter at a local landfill
detected radioactivity in a trash load from Berkeley last week. A
painstaking search of 60 cubic yards of garbage identified the source as a
small pile of kitty litter. It turned out to contain trace elements of
Iodine 131, a radioactive isotope used to treat thyroid problems in humans
and cancers in cats.
This city has a horror of things nuclear, being home to some of the
most dedicated anti-nuclear protesters in the country. Its city council
declared Berkeley a nuclear-free zone in 1986. And it isn't taking
radioactive cats lightly either. It has hired Allied Ecology Services Inc.
to store the toxic waste for eight days, the estimated half-life of Iodine
131, and then dispose of it, at a total cost of $700.
Meanwhile, the city's police are backtracking along the garbage
truck's route, attempting to identify the owner and the veterinarian who
might have treated the cat. Such treatment isn't licensed in Berkeley.
All this strikes some people as another example of Berkeley
overkill. Even Allied Ecology has advised the city that the radiation is
just above background levels found naturally in the atmosphere. Thomas F.
Dias, the company's vice president, said the lighted part of a Coleman
lantern -- an item popular among many of Berkeley's backpackers -- emits
twice as much radiation as the litter.
Ralph R. Cavalieri, a professor of radiology at the University of
San Fransisco Medical School, says a person would get more exposure from a
CAT scan than from the cat litter. Dr. Cavalieri estimates that, for the
treatment of their hyperthyroid conditions, President Bush and his wife,
Barbara, would take about 10 times the amount of Iodine 131 detected at the
local landfill.
City officials seem a bit annoyed by the amount of attention stirred
up by the kitty litter debacle. Michael F. Brown, Berkeley's city manager,
says the issue has nothing to do with the city's resolution declaring itself
a nuclear-free zone.
"It's really a toxic problem," says Mr. Brown, somewhat defensively.
Philip E. Doran, a police captain, says: "This wouldn't be a news
story if it hadn't happened in Berkeley."
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Date: Wed, 29 May 91 11:08:22 PDT
From: kds@blabla.intel.com (Ken Shoemaker)
Subject: something weird this way comes...
To: rsk@hazel.circ.upenn.edu, spaf, katz@il3cad.intel.com
May 5, 1991
DOING HIS JOB MEANS NOT DOING HIS JOB
Professor George Harker, chairman of the Western Illinois University
academic department that teaches recreation (and who is an expert on the
philosophy of leisure), was formally charged in March by school officials
with taking excessive vacation time and shirking some university duties.
Said Harker, "I try to work my own personal experiences into the classroom."
Harker said his colleagues are probably jealous he is a nationally known
expert on nude beaches.
OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER
In December, a Del Valle, Texas, school bus driver was running a half-hour
late on his route because he stopped to write up reports on unruly children.
Several worried parents then began to search for the bus, but when they
found it, they were not able to retrieve their kids because the driver had
locked the doors, citing rules against discharging passengers except at
official stops. The driver drove away with angry parents banging on the bus
and hanging on the doors and with others chasing the bus in a 20-car
caravan. After driving to the bus office, the driver fled from the bus, but
at least one parent punched him.
Canadian postal authorities in December were investigating a volunteer
assigned to write nice responses to kids' Santa Claus letters. The
volunteer wrote a 4-year-old Oshawa girl (who had requested a doll and had
promised to leave milk and cookies), "Stop writing, you bitch."
Taipei police, wearing shields, were called to the parliament in December to
quell a rumble on the floor, started when the opposition party's bill to
reduce jail sentences for anti-government protesters was defeated. Tea cups
and fruit flew through the air, and furniture (including many trash baskets
and the speaker's chair) was heaved onto the floor.
In January, the speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives banned
liquor on the floor, cutting off the tradition of cans of Donald Duck
orange juice into which vodka had been poured. Also prohibited were
popcorn fights, paper wad fights, pizza parties and naps.
In November, Waverly, Texas, high school football coach Larry Spacek and his
assistant were suspended for their attempts to convince a 14-year-old boy to
improve his grades so he could make the team. Spacek had grabbed the boy
and started arranging to hang him by the neck from the ceiling of his office
when the assistant, citing a "better idea," grabbed the boy in a hammerlock
and held a pistol to his head.
MISTAKES WERE MADE
Because of a clerical error, the U.S. Supreme Court in March attached Ohio
inmate Martin Crago's unsuccessful appeal to the rejection of petitions from
several prisoners on death row. Thus, the high court formally announced
that it was constitutionally OK to execute Crago, despite the fact that he
had only been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
The superintendent of the Floyd County, N.C., school system apologized in
February for the mistake of one of his teachers. In the lesson on Martin
Luther King Jr., the teacher had instructed the class that Rosa Parks (who
actually set off the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955) was the person
who assassinated King in 1968.
Patrick Pinnock, 30, was arrested for burglary in Hartford, Conn., in
January when he broke into an apartment to get money for drugs. It was the
apartment of two police officers who were awakened by the noise and made a
quick arrest.
Gailen Byland, 35, accidentally shot himself in the buttocks while warming
up his car in Anchorage, Alaska, in November. He was wearing a gun and
holster and bumped the steering wheel, causing the gun to cock. When he
tried to take it out of the holster to uncock it, it went off.
On a Saturday morning last June, two men, searching for a place to purchase
travelers checks, walked through the front door of a West Hollywood bank,
even though the bank does not do business on Saturday. Apparently the
janitorial crew forgot to lock up.
May 12, 1991
THE GUEST OF HONOR WAS A BIT STIFF
Johnny Harrington, 29, was arrested in Thida, Ark., in April and charged with
abusing a corpse (his mother's). Police said he and eight friends had a
late-night party at which the mother's body was on display in the casket
with a beer in one hand and cigarette in the other (as he said she would
have wanted it). Harrington had taken the body home after embalming earlier
in the day. Police said one partyer might have taken the body out of the
casket to dance. Said a neighbor, "They were a real hardworking farming
family."
THE HORMONE REPORT
Last year, scientists for the Ethyl Corp. (known for producing gasoline
additives that increase octane) in Baton Rouge, La., developed "Zeolite A,"
a substance that makes roosters more sexually aggressive. They tested it by
counting the number of times the roosters jumped on graduate student
volunteers from Louisiana State University.
A 13-year-old Salt Lake City boy was referred to juvenile court in October
after he was seen speaking to his genitals during an eight-grade class. His
teacher had just passed out tests when she noticed him rubbing himself and
saying, "Wake up down there."
In January, fundamentalist pastor Roy Alan Yanke, 37, confessed to robbing
14 banks of $50,000 in order to raise money for prostitutes to satisfy his
"tremendous appetite for sex." A female parishioner called Yanke "a
wonderful man" and said, "The devil's busy; I'm sure that what's behind it."
Peter K.L. Chan, a former Bank of America executive in Hong Kong, was
sentenced to 27 months in jail in December for embezzling more than $2
million to the account of adult film star Amy Yip ("the Asian Jane
Russell"), with whom he had become obsessed. Chan had sold his home and
moved his mother into low-income housing to have money to support Yip in
style.
In the course of arresting retired grocer Donald James Brown, 59, on various
charges in January, Colorado Springs, Colo., police found pornographic
photos in his home "workshop." They later accused Brown of having harassed
as many as 200 victims (ages 10 to 78), whose pictures had been in the
newspaper, by making obscene phone calls to them and then mailing them
pornographic photos of models but with their own faces pasted over the
models'.
THE MODERN WORLD
An Alaska Airline flight from Phoenix to Seattle in February was delayed so
a male passenger could get off and take a later plane because he found out,
as the plane was taxiing, that the pilot was a woman.
In West Valley City, Utah, a 43-year-old husband was charged in December
with assaulting a 28-year-old man. The husband had come home prepared to
take the family out, but the wife asked him to entertain the kids for a few
minutes while she got ready. The husband wondered aloud to his kids why
their mother was acting that way, and one kid said it was because her
boyfriend was hiding in the closet. The husband went back, dragged the man
out of the closet, and beat him.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last year that it took two state
employees and a $9400 machine to change a light bulb in the capitol complex
in Harrisburg, Penn. Light fixtures in a 2-year-old building had been
placed too far from the walls to use a latter, requiring a device to lift an
employee to the ceiling to change the bulb.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs jail at Fort Totten, N.D., so understaffed
(i.e., one person) that the prisoners had been performing essential
functions, including supervising themselves, was closed in September as
"unfit for human habitation."
Some students at the Governors State University near Chicago took exams last
fall via a telephone message system, Telequiz. Students with push-button
phones could call in their answers to a psychology quiz.
In March, federal inmantes at an Eden, Texas, detention center took over a
wing of the building, briefly holding authorities off with kitchen utensils,
to dramatize their formal complaint that they don't get enough green
vegetables in their food.
May 19, 1991
DOGGED APPROACH TO WHAT'S IMPORTANT
In a two-day period in New York City recently, a homeless man, a train
maintenance worker, and a dog were killed on the subway tracks. Ninety
people telephoned the Transit Authority to express concern about the dog,
but only three called about the worker and no one about the homeless man.
GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
As a result of seizing assets of failed banks, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp. assumed ownership last year of, among other things, the negative to a
never-released 1985 film starring unknowns Charlie Sheen and Laura Dern, the
largest cemetery of former slaves in the United States and 800 units of bull
semen.
Because of a monthlong hiring freeze in Maryland last September and a heart
attack suffered by a staff embalmer, the state's Anatomy Board was down to
one person, Ronald S. Wade. Cadavers started piling up, creating a public
health hazard, before the state provided emergency relief.
On page 31 of the Defense Department's annual report to the president and
Congress last year, Michigan's Sawyer Air Force Base is shown in Wisconsin,
and the upper peninsula of Michigan is shown as belonging to Canada.
The New York Times reported in November that the federal government kept an
extensive file on Pablo Picasso for 27 years as a possible subversive and
that the file is still active, even though Picasso has been dead for 17
years.
Anthony Senecal, mayor of Martinsburg, W.Va., proposed in November that the
city's panhandlers apply for a license to beg (and to pay a $25 fee),
maintaining that most of his city's panhandlers are people who have misspent
their ample government checks.
A Department of Agriculture investigation found in December that food stamps
had fraudulently been used to purchase, among other things, a funeral, 32
ounces of the drug PCP, prostitution services and, in a New Mexico
transaction, two surface-to-air missiles.
SMOOTH REACTIONS
In August, police in Redlands recommended criminal charges against F.
Douglas McDaniel, 69, a state appeals court judge. Two months earlier,
while watching "Pretty Woman" in a theater, he became incensed that two kids
were gigling and allegedly hit one and started to strangle the other.
When petitioner Steven Barker, 31, of Woodbridge, Va., asked for an arrest
warrant against a man who had threatened him, magistrate J.B. Polson refused
to issue it, declaring that he knew the target of the warrant. When Barker
then asked Polson for an alternative magistrate, Polson allegedly punched
Barker in the face and ordered him out of the room. A few seconds later,
Polson allegedly went outside and punched Barker again. Barker finally
got a federal judge to hear his complaint against Polson; the Virginia
Attorney General's Office had maintained that Polson could not be prosecuted
for the punches.
Benita McCrae, 30, was sentenced to six months in jail in North Hollywood in
December. She had come to visit her daughter's kindergarten class and
become upset that the teacher had raised her voice to the kids. She grabbed
the teacher, aged 64 and half McCrae's size, by the throat, and threw her to
the ground.
Daniel Serna, 19, was charged with murdering Robert Vinci in Pueblo, Colo.,
in August. Serna and a friend were standing in front of a 7-Eleven when
Vinci rode up on his bike and passed wind in front of the two. Vinci smiled
and said, "I've been ripping them all day," and Serna said, "Well, don't be
ripping them by me." A fight ensued, and Serna allegedly pulled a gun and
shot Vinci.
College sprinters Kevin Braunskill of North Carolina State and James Trapp
of Clemson were suspended from competition in February. The two were on the
award stand after Braunskill won the 200-meter race when Trapp took a swing
at Braunskill, who retaliated by hitting Trapp over the head with his
first-place plaque.
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Date: Fri, 31 May 91 1:04:51 EDT
From: meo@Dixie.Com (Miles ONeal)
Subject: the best of games, the worst of games
To: spaf (Gene Spafford)
The best/worst football score, was of course
Georgia Tech: 222
Cumberland Gap: 0
GT played everybody they had - anyone in uniform, and maybe the
waterboys and cheerleaders (I forget). CG immediately and permanently
disbanded its football team.
Personally I have always suspected that the Falcons were comprised
primarily of old CG men.
[A whole book has been written on this game, and it is quite amusing.
I don't remember the title, but I remember seeing the book. --spaf]
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Date: Wed, 29 May 91 09:36:10 PDT
From: Pete.Stpierre@Eng.Sun.COM (Bob "Pete" St.Pierre)
Subject: yucks submission
To: mryan@bu-pub.bu.edu, spaf
Source: rog@ingres.com (Roger Taranto)
The hearing aid has helped considerably with respect to
birth control. Before hearing aids, husbands used to say
to their wives, "So, you want to go to sleep, or what?"
And the wife would reply, "What?"
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End of Yucks Digest
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