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Yucks Digest V1 #65
Yucks Digest Mon, 15 Jul 91 Volume 1 : Issue 65
Today's Topics:
And you should see the size of their nuts
Crayola Mixes Fun With Profits
Driving in the Big Apple
entomocoprophagy (2 msgs)
Interactive Software Design is a branch of movie-making
Jesus Loves Me (But He Can't Stand You)
mac sys 7 (yuck!)
More Chickens
Open Systems Strategy from IBM
Robert Bulmash Leads Charge Against Telemarketers
royal dos from the murky news
The D.C. Museum Sideshow
Yucks Submission
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Back issues may be ftp'd from arthur.cs.purdue.edu from
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 15 Jul 91 08:39:13 PDT (Mon)
From: jeffw@midas.wr.tek.com
Subject: And you should see the size of their nuts
To: eniac@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Just saw this in Oregon Wildlife, a magazine put out by the state fish & game
department...
"Oregon big game regulations for 1991 bear, deer, elk, and squirrel general
seasons have just been announced..."
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 12:01:07 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Crayola Mixes Fun With Profits
To: yucks-request
EASTON, Pa. (AP)
Binney & Smith Inc.'s boardroom has all the trappings of corporate
America: a big table, plush chairs, big windows and art work.
But the 25-pound stuffed bear at the head chair, the tennis shoes
in the corner and the cartoons on the wall suggest something is up
other than sales.
"We're focused on fun and profit, and know that the two go
together," said Richard S. Gurin, the president of the company that
makes Crayola crayons. In a company like Crayola, one might suspect
fun would be automatic, what with coloring books and paints sharing
shelf space with marketing studies and sales strategies.
But Gurin says he wants his employees to depend on a simple
formula: "If we are not making a lot of money, we won't be having a
lot of fun. And if we're not having fun, we're probably just not
making enough money.
Since Gurin became president of Binney & Smith in 1984 shortly
before the company was bought by Hallmark Cards Inc. sales have
jumped 92 percent to $240 million at the end of last year from $125
million.
An expanding product line has helped.
"Up until 1983, I think we were selling what we knew how to make,"
Gurin said. "Now we make what we know how to sell."
Crayola's product line includes markers, pencils and fabric
paints. The company also added fluorescent and silver-toned crayons
and "retired" eight older colors.
In addition, a line of Crayola Kids clothing was introduced
earlier this month in Spiegel Inc.'s fall catalog. The line, which
includes vividly colored clothing, accessories, belts, shoes and
socks, also will be featured in a chain of Crayola Kids stores, the
first of which opens in Chicago next month.
Crayola has been riding a wave of publicity in the last year, ever
since it announced it would drop the eight older crayon colors in
favor of bolder, brighter ones. That boosted sales and interest in
factory tours.
The company got another boost when top crayon maker Emerson Moser
retired last December and revealed he was color-blind.
Over the years, Crayola has been the subject of some good-humor
ribbing as well as more serious criticism.
Drexler has in his office a Mad magazine takeoff of Crayola's new
colors. Instead of "forest green" and "sky blue," Mad suggests colors
including "Oil Spill Sludge Black," "Decaying Bridge and Highway
System Rust," and Drexler's favorite, "Gorbachev Birthmark Umber."
Binney & Smith had concentrated on products for the classroom from
its start in 1903, when the nickel eight-crayon box first appeared,
until just after World War II. Although the company only does 20
percent of its business with schools today, it says it keeps up with
the nation's education goals.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 91 16:42:28 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: Driving in the Big Apple
To: yucks-request
`48 Hours' Looks at New York City Traffic: Was This Trip
Necessary?
By SCOTT WILLIAMS
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - If you drive in this city, you needn't watch
``48 Hours'' on CBS tonight. You're out there every day, living it.
And, if you don't live or work or drive in New York City, you won't
believe it anyway.
So let us praise, faintly, tonight's episode, ``Driven to
Extremes'' and in praising, damn it. Tonight's ``48 Hours'' is
eminently damnable.
It's about Manhattan's traffic and the roughly 480,000 cars,
trucks, vans and motorcycles that squeeze onto Manhattan island
every day. That's about four times as many vehicles as there are
legal parking spaces.
CBS News' attempts to make sense of it all make for an hour of
cheap, prime time ``infotainment,'' by turns droll, amusing, scary,
chaotic and infuriatingly superficial - rather like the city
itself, eh?
Tonight's show opens with Pat, a commuter who lives 30 miles and
one river away from her job in Manhattan. On the day she's
accompanied by ``48 Hours,'' the drive takes 1 1/2 hours, or an
average speed of 20 mph.
We cut back and forth from Pat (and her digital speedometer that
says ``0'') and the city's downtown traffic control center, where
harried technicians try to keep the traffic jams under control.
It's an impossible task, and the attitude of the traffic
controllers is one of bemused fatalism. Can't be helped. Nothing to
be done. So everybody takes a long time to get to work. Sometimes,
they get to work a little late.
There's nice aerial photography, with some spectacular shots of
the 59th Street Bridge - imagine, a bridge named after a song! -
the Silvercup Studios and Long Island City, Queens, where the trees
are.
Then there's a visit to the surreal bureaucracy of the Parking
Violations Bureau and the equally surreal nighttime of the
Violations Tow Pound, where the towed cars go. And a ride with an
ambulance crew that gets stuck in traffic.
In New York City, a traffic violation tow costs $150 for the
ride and at least $35, maybe more, to pay off the violation. As
``48 Hours'' notes almost absent-mindedly, that adds up to $17
million in city revenues.
``So many cars,'' a tow truck driver sighs rapturously, ``so
many cars.''
Yeah, and isn't it funny how the Parking Violations Bureau
yielded up so many nasty scandals. Why, people were using the
bureaucracy to rip off the public! But ``48 Hours'' got there a
little late, so we don't hear about that.
We also get to meet many wonderful New Yorkers, who are at their
best when whining about the unfairness of it all.
Ah, but ``48 Hours'' also meets an out-of-towner whose car has
been towed. And - would you believe it? - the PVB dismisses his
ticket because it was improperly written! Boy, good thing those
cameras were there to record that!
And we meet a patient, bemused New Yorker whose parked van is
struck by a towed vehicle, then is towed itself - almost as if the
tow driver were trying to conceal a crime! He calmly pays off his
ticket and drives away.
Nothing to be done. Can't be helped.
There's a nice segment on cab drivers for whom English is a
minimally comprehended second language. And a nice encounter with
Tim Andre Davis, one of the city's many charming, pleasant and
companionable cab drivers.
And reporter Bill Geist covers that perverse, daily danse
macabre of city life known as ``alternate side of the street
parking.'' His droll amusement notwithstanding, Geist's voice-over
sounds so much like Andy Rooney that it's eerie. And uncomfortable.
Don't you hate it when they sound like Andy Rooney? And just what's
so damnable about tonight's ``48 Hours''?
Like the city's choked bridges, it is structurally unsound. By
definition, it is TV on the run, depending catchy video and
breathless reporting for effect. It does not linger on anything.
At no point does tonight's show examine the pestilential mess
that the automobile has made of Manhattan, or the foul slush fund
that politicians have made of the automobile bureaucracy while
slighting mass transit.
The term ``gridlock'' does not arise.
In fact, at no point does ``48 Hours'' ask WHY all those
thousands of private motorists deserve to be on city streets. ``48
Hours'' accepts the unacceptable with astonishing passivity.
Hasn't anybody at CBS looked outside lately?
Great news organizations are driven to great stories by great,
driven men. And, yes, even the most casual viewer will wonder which
CBS News honcho got his car ticketed and towed.
Attempting to explain that - in fact, attempting to explain
ANYTHING about Manhattan traffic - would take far longer than ``48
Hours.''
------------------------------
Date: 12 Jul 91 14:57:10 GMT
From: al@gtx.com (Alan Filipski)
Subject: entomocoprophagy
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.research,soc.culture.misc,soc.culture.china,soc.culture.asian.american,talk.rumors,talk.bizarre
Here's an unusual announcement from the March, 1991 issue of the "Food
Insects Newsletter". It's a long shot, but I thought maybe someone on the
net could help this guy out with his research:
Thomas Sloan (1617 Berkeley Way, Berkely, CA 94703-1237) is trying to
determine whether it's fact or fancy that there are (or were) people in
Southeast Asia who feed (or fed) guava leaves to walkingsticks (Order
Phasmotodea) and then eat (or ate) the walkingstick excrement. He
would appreciate hearing from anyone with pertinent information.
------------------------------
Date: 13 Jul 91 23:46:10 GMT
From: potency@violet.berkeley.edu (Tom Slone)
Subject: entomocoprophagy
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.research,soc.culture.misc,soc.culture.china,soc.culture.asian.american,talk.rumors,talk.bizarre,soc.culture.asean,soc.culture.thai
In article <1553@gtx.com> you write:
>Here's an unusual announcement from the March, 1991 issue of the "Food
>Insects Newsletter". It's a long shot, but I thought maybe someone on the
>net could help this guy out with his research:
> Thomas Sloan (1617 Berkeley Way, Berkely, CA 94703-1237) is trying to
> determine whether it's fact or fancy that there are (or were) people in
> Southeast Asia who feed (or fed) guava leaves to walkingsticks (Order
> Phasmotodea) and then eat (or ate) the walkingstick excrement. He
> would appreciate hearing from anyone with pertinent information.
Yes, it's true! I have already gotten some references:
The Chinese in Malaysia:
"The Chinese too, attach superstitious signficance to
stick-insects. Their presence in a Chinese house is a good
omen, but more than this they believe in the healing powers of
droppings of the stick-insect. For this, more than any other reason,
Chinese are known to rear them. They claim that dried excreta mixed
with herbs will cure a number of ailments, such as asthma, stomach
upsets, muscular pains. A brew is also made from the droppings and
drunk like tea. This they claim will cleanse the body." (M.
Nadchatram, "The winged stick insect, _Eurycnema versifasciata_
Serville (Phasmida, Phasmatidae), with special reference to its
life-history" _Malayan Nature Journal_ 17:33-40 [1963]).
The Chinese in Thailand: P. Jolivet, "A propos des insects 'a
boissons' et des insects 'a sauce.'" _L'Entomologiste_ 27: 3-9 (1971).
They author, who is French, reports that said tea has an excellent
flavor.
Many insects are reported in Chinese materia medica, and the excreta of
a few others are reported as well. (Bernard E. Read, _Chinese Materia
Medica. X. Insects_ In the series: Supplement of Asian Folklore &
Social Life Monographs, vol. 16. Lou Tsu-k'uang, ed., 1984[1941].
Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service).
I have investigated the current use of insects in Chinese materia
medica by visiting several Chinese herbal shops in Oakland and San
Francisco. I found several kinds of insects (no excreta though), but
its usage seems to be in decline since some customers were disgusted
when they found out what I was getting, and some herbalists who didn't
have anything to offer were annoyed that I was asking.
I would be appreciative of any further information, particularly about the
current usage insects as medicine in mainland Asia.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 91 19:29:16 CDT
From: arellano@itg.ti.com
Subject: Interactive Software Design is a branch of movie-making
To: ext-sigchi-distribution@dsg.ti.com
Tuesday, July 9
7:30 - 9:30 pm
Xerox PARC Auditorium
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
Title: The Design of Interactive Software is a Branch of Movie-Making
Speaker: Ted Nelson, Autodesk, Inc. & University of Strathclyde
Abstract:
A movie is a series of events on a screen that affect the mind and heart of
the beholder. Software is a series of events on a screen that affect the mind
and the heart of the beholder, rendered more complex by interaction. Thus
software is no less than cinema, embracing all of its techniques,
complexities, and more.
For a dozen years after movies were first projected, the cameramen were put in
charge of production, because they understood the technicalities. Then (about
1903) the motion picture industry discovered that a special new role was
required, that of the director, who unified all the parts of a movie into a
united production with coordinated effects and qualities - the multi-modal
coordination of ideas and mental effects.
Programmers, like cameramen, are technicians trained in the implementation of
components but not in the multi-modal coordination of ideas and mental
effects. And just as movies turned out to need directors, software needs
designers - people in full charge of the multi-modal coordination of ideas and
mental effects, the structure and theatrics of ideas.
Like a movie, software is about virtuality - not reality, but "seeming," which
is composed of conceptual structure and feel. It is the structure and
theatrics of ideas with which software design is concerned. And like a movie,
the balancing of its details cannot be delegated.
Biography:
Son of theatrical parents, raised in Greenwich Village by grandparents; played
hookey to go to foreign movies and hang out in bookstores; 7th-grade dropout,
but forced to go back eventually; college legend for his publications, plays,
musicals, pranks, and film; B.A. in philosophy from Swarthmore College; M.A.
in sociology from Harvard; work in dolphin research (for John Lilly), in
publishing (under Wild Bill Jovanovich), on anti-ballistic missile system;
sometime professional photographer, writer, film-maker, software designer,
folk singer, cab driver, editor of a national magazine, and academic.
Computer pioneer since 1960, particularly of the cinematic approach to
interactive systems and the literary approach to the storage of information.
Best known for the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia," which he introduced in
1965. Founding designer of Project Xanadu(TM), creating a new linked method
for storing all information (as well as working with it, organizing it and
publishing it). Xanadu has evolved into a product, a division of Autodesk,
and the Xanadu World Publishing Repository, which Nelson will head.
Author of "Computer Lib," "The Home Computer Revolution," "Literary Machines,"
and many articles. Now Distinguished Fellow, Autodesk, Inc. and Visiting
Professor at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland).
[another interesting bio...I guess I lead a dull life. --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 14:48:43 CDT
From: Larry Smith <lsmith@CLI.COM>
Subject: Jesus Loves Me (But He Can't Stand You)
To: spaf
These are the lyrics from the Austin Lounge Lizards song "Jesus Loves Me"
from their latest CD "Lizard Vision" (Flying Fish).
(C)(P) 1991 The Austin Lounge Lizards, reprinted without permission.
(But I'll bet they wouldn't turn down the publicity!)
-----------
Jesus Loves Me
(But He Can't Stand You)
I know you smoke, I know you drink that brew
I just can't abide a sinner like you, you know
God can't either, that's why I know it to be true that
Jesus loves me, but he can't stand you
I'm going to heaven, boys, when I die
'Cause I've crossed every "t" and dotted every "i"
My preacher tells me that I'm God's kind of guy; that's why
Jesus loves me - but you're gonna fry
God loves all his children, by gum
That don't mean he won't incinerate some
Can't you feel those hot flames licking you
Woo woo woo
I'm raising my kids in a righteous way
So don't be sending your kids over to my house to play
Yours'll grow up stoned, left-leaning, and gay; I know
Jesus told me on the phone today
Jesus loves me, this I know
And he told me where you're gonna go
There's lots of room for your kind down below
Whoa whoa whoa
Jesus loves me but he can't stand you...
(He called me on up on the phone today and told me
He speaks English pretty well, considering it's a second language for him
You can talk to him too, he's got a 900 number in Tulsa
I talk to him every day)
Jesus loves me but he can't stand you...
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 11:39:59 PDT
From: osc!strick (Henry Strickland)
Subject: mac sys 7 (yuck!)
To: spaf
>From the June 17, 1991 issue of Infoworld on Mac System 7,
"To avoid slow performance, Apple suggests that the amount of virtual
memory you select be less than the system RAM."
------------------------------
Date: 12 Jul 91 23:30:05 GMT
From: robby@msri.org (Robby Robson)
Subject: More Chickens
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
(Answers to the question of why the chicken crossed the road.)
M.L. King: It had a dream.
Pauli: There already was a chicken on the other side of the road.
Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it
was moving very fast.
Ronald Reagan: I forget.
Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to
cross the road.
Bob Dylan: How many roads must one chicken cross?
Alfred E. Neumann: What? Me worry?
Molly Yard: It was a *hen*.
Henny Youngman: Take this chicken - please.
Erdos: It was forced to do so by the chicken-hole principle.
Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the
transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself
of the opportunity.
Riemann: The answer appears in Dirichlet's lectures.
Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
(Contributors: gilbert@msri.org, robby@msri.org, madden@marais.math.lsu.edu)
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jul 91 10:56:40 GMT
From: cudep@warwick.ac.uk (Ian Dickinson)
Subject: Open Systems Strategy from IBM
Newsgroups: rec.humor,comp.unix.misc,uk.misc
My boss just told the quote-of-the-day(TM) after talking to our
friendly IBM salesguy who said:
"You've got be careful about getting locked into open systems"
Heh! Why don't I trust these people? :-)
------------------------------
Date: 1 Jul 91 22:14:33 GMT
From: wdc@apple.com (wayne d. correia)
Subject: Robert Bulmash Leads Charge Against Telemarketers
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
WARRENVILLE, Ill. -- Robert Bulmash is the telemarketing industry's
worst nightmare. He and a small army of followers, fed up with the
modern epidemic of junk calls, are fighting back. Their motto is
"Leave Us Alone or Pay the Price!" Their strategy is mischievous,
ruthless and surprisingly effective.
Bulmash instructs the 550 members of his group, Private Citizen
Inc., to answer junk calls cordially and tease out all the information
they can about the identity and location of the "junker." Then twice a
year, he sends a notice to more than 800 telemarketing companies, with
a list of his members and a warning on their behalf:
"I am unwilling to allow your free use of my time and telephone ...
I will accept junk calls for a $100 fee, due within 30 days of suchuse
... Your junk call will constitute your agreement to the reasonableness
of my fee."
Private Citizen members, who pay $20 a year for the service, say
their junk calls drop 75% or more. As for the "invoice," it has left
Sears, Roebuck & Co., ChemLawn, and a handful of other telemarketers
so bemused they've actually coughed up the $100. Others, though not
all, have had it dragged out of them in court.
The leader of this rebellion is an intense 45-year-old paralegal
with the flair of an angry stand-up comic. His little war, run out of
his home in his spare time, has stirred up the giant telemarketing
industry, where mention of the name Bulmash draws shudders of disgust.
"Everyone in the industry knows Bob Bulmash," sighs Kenneth Griffin,
an American Telephone & Telegraph Co. official and past head of the
American Telemarketing Association. He worries that the Bulmash
crusade will "regulate us and put us out of business," and adds: "I'm
sorry, but we're going to defend ourselves." (In fact, AT&T right now
is defending itself against a $100 claim from Bulmash.)
At the other end of the telemarketing line, Bulmash is a hero.
"Thanks for taking on the greatest annoyance to man since the
invention of the housefly!" wrote a grateful Oregon woman who read
about him in a local newspaper.
In a 1990 national survey of telemarketing targets, 70% said they
consider such calls an "invasion of privacy." Walker Research Inc. of
Indianapolis conducted the survey via, of all things, random calls to
U.S. telephone numbers. The survey also found that 44% of the targets
considered their last telemarketing call "pleasant," and 41% think
telemarketing serves a "useful purpose."
All these calls are coming from an exploding industry with an
awesome arsenal of new technology. American companies will spend an
estimated $60 billion on telemarketing this year, up from $1 billion
in 1981, says the industry association.
One especially popular purchase, all too familiar to households, is
the "adramp," short for automatic dialing recorded message player. It
courses like a virus through the phone system, blaring its come-on to
one number after another in sequence.
Another hot new weapon is the "predictive dialer," which speed-dials
one number after another, sending to live agents only the calls that
answer. With one of these, a telemarketing shop can double the number
of prospects its agents talk to in a day.
Lawmakers are starting to worry about this calling frenzy. A
proposed federal law would create a national list of people who don't
want junk calls, and make it illegal to telemarket them. States have
also introduced some 300 bills this year curbing unsolicited sales
calls.
Bulmash's group, Private Citizen, is reachable at Box 233,
Naperville, Ill. 60566.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 91 09:31:52 PDT
From: Lisa.Chabot@Eng.Sun.COM
Subject: royal dos from the murky news
To: ronni@isvax.decnet.lockheed.com, jeanne@chryse.Eng.Sun.COM, spaf
[There was a very nice photo of Prince William and
Princess Diana at Wimbledon, plus the following
two sections on the Prince of Wales. Quoted
without permission from the Sunday S.J. Mercury News]
Prince Charles is playing polo again. His team,
Windsor Park, won his comeback match 14-10 at
Smith's Lawn in where else but Windsor Park, with
the prince scoring a goal. Between chukkers, he lay
on the field and performed rocking exercises to
stretch the muscles of his back.
But Maj. Ron Ferguson, his polo manager and
Fergie's dad, assured attending newshawks that
the prince was not in pain.
"Most polo players are basically lunatics," the
major explained.
Almost as if pursuing Ferguson's theme, Charles
later stood up before a conference of psychiatrists
and told them:
"I believe that the most urgent need for Western
man is to rediscover that divine element in his being,
without which there can never be any possible
hope or meaning to our existence in this earthly realm.
"We are not machines, whatever modern science
may claim is the case on the evidence of what is
purely visible and tangible."
No response so far from the shrinks.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 91 11:09:39 PDT
From: one of our correspondants
Subject: The D.C. Museum Sideshow
To: yucks-request
Medical Museum No Horror Show
WASHINGTON (AP)
One of Washington's most distinguished but obscure museums home
of oddities such as a Union general's amputated leg and parts of dead
presidents is shedding its image as a medical freak show of pickled
deformities.
Even if they knew about it, tourists would have a hard time
finding the National Museum of Health and Medicine. It occupies the
bland concrete annex of a 1950s bomb shelter at Walter Reed Army
Medical Center, far from the historic monuments of downtown
Washington.
Once inside, visitors are greeted by a jumble of exhibits that
reflect the old and newly emerging missions of the nation's
pre-eminent medical repository, which was founded during the Civil
War as the Army Medical Museum.
A few steps away from a modern AIDS exhibit is one of the museum's
oldest displays, a glass case containing the bones of the amputated
right leg of Union Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, who was struck on
horseback by a 12-pound cannon ball at the Battle of Gettysburg in
July 1863.
After his shattered leg was sawed off, the eccentric Sickles sent
the leg and cannon ball to the museum in a coffin-shaped box with a
card inscribed "With Compliments of Major General D.E.S." For many
years, Sickles visited the museum on every Gettysburg anniversary to
view his "remains."
Also on display in a "cabinet of curiosities" are mummified
Siamese twins, a dissected human ear, a gangrenous human foot and a
well-chewed pair of cotton shorts and a turtle bone found in a
shark's stomach.
The museum's 350,000 historical objects, 20,000 specimens and 2.2
million documents and photographs also include one of the world's
finest collections of early microscopes, primitive hearing aids and
dental instruments, a Peruvian mummy, wax models of battlefield
wounds and two live leeches used for medicinal bloodletting.
For 80 years, the museum was housed in a large, red-brick building
on the National Mall next to the Smithsonian Institution. A million
visitors trekked through its doors every year to gawk at its shelves
of pickling jars containing mutilated or deformed organs and fetuses.
The museum's "horror show" reputation, officials say, detracted
from a 129-year history of breakthroughs in medical research led by
doctors on the staff of the parent Armed Forces Institute of
Pathology.
It was here that Walter Reed conquered yellow fever, allowing
construction of the Panama Canal, and here that the world's first
vaccine against typhoid fever was produced to protect American
soldiers in World War I. In 1896, it took one of the first full-body
X-ray films.
Earlier this year, the museum made headlines when it disclosed it
was studying a proposal to conduct genetic tests on the museum's
Lincoln specimens to determine whether the former president inherited
a potentially fatal disorder called Marfan Syndrome.
[...potentially fatal? You mean he isn't dead *yet*? --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 91 21:19:18 EDT
From: reid@ctc.contel.com (Tom Reid x4505)
Subject: Yucks Submission
To: spaf
>From the Sunday, July 6, 1991 WashingtonDC Post:
"Anthony S. Galante, a 31-year-old computer analyst, has been accused of making
30,000 obscene telephone calls to women in Connecticut and New York. He
succeeded about once in 100 calls in getting women to stand naked outside their
homes by telling them he was holding family members hostage and would kill them
if the women would not comply, police said."
[I should have submitted this to Risks Digest also. There is a real chance
his volume of phone calls could have caused the Washington, DC and Pittsburgh
recent telephone outages. But then, aren't all "computer analysts" a little
strange?]
------------------------------
End of Yucks Digest
------------------------------