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Life 2.4
X-NEWS: camins rec.humor: 1746
Path: spang.Camosun.BC.CA!news.UVic.CA!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!news.u.washington.edu!usenet.coe.montana.edui!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!ucbvax!XEROX.COM!cate3.osbu_northFo: [email protected]
Newsgroups: rec.humor
Subject: Life 2.4
Message-ID: <"27-Apr-92.20:21:29.PDT".*[email protected]>
Date: 28 Apr 92 03:21:29 GMT
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
Lines: 371
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Heard on the radio - "Quintuplets were born today to ---------. All will
be named Thursday."
Is that to be Thursday 1, Thursday, 2, etc.?
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"A diamond is a girl's best friend, but you have to be friendly to get one!"
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Please cleanup after yourself. Your mother doesn't work here.
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There is a new anti-communist organization that advocates the use of wooden
toilet seats...
It's called the Birch John Society.
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"It's not necessarily the coldest woman that gets the fur coat."
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Doublespeak awards for 1984
Heard on NPR
The government agency in charge of civilian relocation in the
event of a nuclear war described the 20 percent of the civilian
population that would panic as "20 percent of the civilian
population would spontaneously relocate"!
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Meeting The Eye
You'll probably find
that it suits your book
to be a bit cleverer
than you look.
Observe that the easiest
method by far
is to look a bit stupider
than you are.
Piet Hein
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When people think of Jersey City, they remember the good old days and people
such as Barney Doyle, who was named superintendent of weights and measures
as political payoff by the ruling Democratic machine.
"Superintendent, how many ounces in a pound?" yelled one reporter after Barney's
swearing-in ceremony.
"Give me a break, fellows." he replied. "I just got the job."
[Forbes, December 31, 1984]
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Quotation from Marvin Minsky in LIFE Magazine of November 20, 1970:
... in three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence
of an average human being ... The machine will begin to educate itself with
fantastic speed. In a few months it will be at genius level and a few months
after that its powers will be incalculable ...
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New York Times clipping from April, 1972:
COMPUTER SHOWERS A BRITON WITH GIFTS
Eveashan, England.
Joseph Begley saved 2,000 cigarette coupons and mailed them in to a British
cigarette company in order to get a watch. When the watch didn't arrive
he wrote and asked why.
Back came three watches. Mr. Begley only wanted one so he mailed back the
other two. The next day 10 parcels arrived from the cigarette company.
The following day 18 parcels arrived. The day after that 10 more parcels came.
All were trade-in gifts given by the cigarette company in exchange for coupons
Mr. Begley never had. Among the gifts were three tape recorders, a doll,
a golf bag, two electric blankets, a cot, saucepans, a pressure cooker, and
long-playing records.
Mr. Begley wrote a long, pleading letter to the company asking them to stop.
In the return mail came a reply saying: "It was a computer error."
The company gave Mr. Begley 10,000 coupons in compensation for his troubles.
With these Mr. Begley ordered some tools and a beadspread.
He received a plant stand and two stepladders.
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Science is the game you play with God to find out what His rules are.
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"There's something different about us - different from people of Europe,
Africa, Asia ... a deep and abiding belief in the Easter Bunny."
- G. Gordon Liddy
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Seen on Israeli army recruitment poster:
"Join The Army And See The Pyramids"
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From Chemical & Engineering News 3/30/83
Newscripts
A Monster in the Thames
Jack Cooperman teaches a course in nuitrition at New York Medical College
in Valhalla, NY. In a final exam, he writes, one of his students included
the following tale:
"In the mid-19th century, London was terrorized by the arrival of a tremendous
monster in the Thames. It was soon dispatched by the townspeople, but nobody
could decide what to do with the corpse. Finally, a butcher decided to make
sausage out of it. Charles Dickens, upon observing the result, commented,
"It was the beast of Thames, it was the wurst of Thames."
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FOTOMAT BURNS DOWN
NO FILM AT 11
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"To open...Open like any umbrella. To close...Close like any umbrella."
--Instructions for Sears compact manual umbrella
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What do Michael Jackson and the San Francisco Giants have in common?
They both wear gloves on one hand for no apparent reason.
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What is the definition of a Soviet string quartet?
A Soviet symphony orchestra after a tour of the USA.
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As reported by the May 28th issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology:
Ma Bell Rescue
It took a while to surface, but it appears that a long-distance credit card
may have saved a U.S. Army unit from heavy casualties during the Grenada
military rescue/invasion. Major General David Nichols, Air Force ... said
the Army unit was in a house surrounded by Cuban forces. One soldier found
a telephone and, using his credit card, called Ft. Bragg, N.C., telling Army
officiers there of the perilous situation. The officers in turn called the
Air Force, which sent in gunships to scatter the Cubans and relieve the unit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
11 Jun 84 SF Chronicle...
Social Security officals sent a letter to a Fort Lauderdale woman who died
in December, asking her to appear at the local agency office to present proof of her death.
Jon Shamres, an assistant attorney general counsel for Broward County, opened
the envelope addressed to his late mother. It contained a form letter with
a handwritten note attached that said: "We've received a report that you
may be deceased. Please come in with proof of identity."
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A foreman at a construction site looked up an saw one of his men swinging
from some electrical wires saying, "Whee, I'm a lightbulb." The foreman yelled
to the worker, "Kowalski, you could kill yourself! When I get back from lunch,
I expect you to be back to work."
The foreman came back from lunch and saw Kowalski still swinging happily
from the electrical wires, "Whee, I'm a light bulb."
The foreman had had it. He took the elevator up and told Kowalski that he
was fired. On his way down, the foreman looked over and saw the little Italian
carpenter packing his tools. He asked, "Guiseppi, where do you think you are going?"
"What, you think ima crazy, work with no light?"
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Supposedly a true story...
Scene: A court room in Oklahoma where a person is on trial for murder.
There is strong evidence indicating guilt; however, there is no corpse.
In the defense's closing statement the lawyer, knowing that his client
is guilty and that it looks like he'll probably be convicted, resorts to
a clever trick.
'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have a surprise for you all,' the
lawyer says as he looks at his watch. 'Within 1 minute, the person presummed
dead in this case will walk into this court room,' he says and he looks toward
the courtroom door. The jury, somewhat stunned, all look on eagerly. A
minute passes. Nothing happens.
Finally the lawyer says: 'Actually, I made up the previous statement.
But you all looked on with anticipation. I, therefore, put it to you that
there is reasonable doubt in this case as to whether anyone was killed and
insist that you return a verdict of not guilty.'
The jury, clearly confused, retires to deliberate.
A very few minutes later, the jury returns and a representative pronounces
a verdict of guilty.
'But how?' inquires the lawyer. 'You must have had some doubt; I saw
all of you stare at the door.'
Answers the representative: 'Oh, we did look. But your client didn't.'
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The reasons that each of these countries has had to renege on
its financial committments were all somewhat different: Argentina
because of a war, Poland because of its vast misguided overinvestment
in heavy industry, Honduras because the coffeee price went sour,
Zaire because nobody in the government there has a clue as to how
to run a country.
Paul Erdman's Money Book
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THE LIMITS OF TELEGRAPHY
from "The Jolly Joker," NY, circa 1880
When it was first reported that Professor Morse had succeeded in conveying
intelligence between Baltimore and Washington, through the wires of the magnetic
telegraph, one old savant, who had been a schoolmaster and a member of the
Legislature, gave it as his opinion that the report was "a humbug." In fact,
from his knowledge of "astronomy," he said he knew the thing could not be done.
Shortly after, linemen were seen setting up telegraph poles directly by the
old man's dwelling. Upon being asked what he thought of the matter then,
he hesitated a moment -- assuming an air of importance -- and then replied,
"Well, gentlemen, while in the Legislature I gave the subject considerable
attention, and after much investigation and reflection, I have come to the
conclusion that it may answer very well for small packages, but it will never
do for large bundles -- never!"
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Taken from the Rochester paper:
ROCKFORD, ILL. --When temperatures plunged to minus 26, the
Rockford Register asked its readers to finsh the sentence, "It
was so cold that----". Here are some of the responses:
O Our snowman beged us not to leave him out another night.
O Even my soft water was hard
O Even the world leaders couldn't get into a heated arguement
O When I went out, my shadow froze to the sidewalk
O You could freeze and egg on the sidewalk
O I saw a fish jump in the river and the splash froze
O I had to go up and break the smoke off the chimney
O The altar boys had to jump-start the candles
O My false teeth chattered-- and they weren't even in my mouth
O I looked out the window and saw a cottontail pushing a
jackrabbit to get him started
O When the police saw a robbery suspect they said 'freeze'--
and he did
O The snow is turning blue
O I put the meat in the freezer to defrost
O I saw a 32nd degree Mason, and he was down to 15.
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The future:
AT&T will announce its new "Intergalactic Direct Distance Dialing"
system (IGDDD). Although no foreign galaxies will yet have been
hooked into the system, it will be recommended that users begin
placing calls immediately since the time lag to get a ring at the
called party's phone may range up to hundreds of millions of years
or more. When asked about charging for the new service, the
official reply will be, "if you have to ask, you can't afford it -
but you won't have to worry about getting a bill any time soon.
In a dramatic event, a team of hard-core teenage computer
"crackers" will be found to have spent over 10,000 man-hours
attempting to break into what they thought was a high-security
computer system. It will be revealed, however, that the
youngsters were actually attempting to log in to a modem that
was not attached to a computer at all.
The local district attorney's office will announce that charges of
malicious mischief will be filed against the crackers as soon as
they have been deemd safe to be released from their rubber rooms,
where they continue to babble, "Man, this is one tough system
to crack..."
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For the definitive observation abt Silicon Valley...
"..John Joss nominates these words from public relations whizard Marty Winston:
'The computer industry is journalists in their 20s standing in awe of entrepreneurs
in their 30s who are hiring salesmen in their 40s and 50s and paying them
in the 60s and 70s to bring their marketing into the 80s.' "
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Employer to applicant: "In this job we need someone who is responsible."
Applicant: "I'm the one you want. On my last job every time anything went
wrong, they said I was responsible."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thursday, 21 March 1985 19:44-EST
From: Joe Pistritto <jcp at BRL-TGR.ARPA>
To: Soft-Eng at MIT-MC
Re: Disastrous bugs
Well, there was this cement factory that a company [who shall
remain nameless], I used to work for built an 8080 based distributed
control system for (at the time this was state-of-the-art in process
control).
The plant crushed boulders into sand before mixing with other
things to make cement. The conveyors to the rock crusher (and the
crusher itself) were controlled by the 8080s. A batch of defective MOSTEK
ram chips used in the processor had a habit of dropping bits (no parity
or ECC), causing at one point the 2nd of a series of 3 conveyors to
switch off. This caused a large pile of boulders (about 6-8 feet in
diameter) to pile up on top of the conveyor (about 80 feet up), eventually
falling off and crushing several cars on the parking lot, and damaging
a building. We noticed the problem when we couldn't explain the dull
thuds we were hearing in the control room and looked out the window...
You had to be there...
-JCP-
PS: I became a convert to error correcting memories (which were quite
expensive at the time, this was 1975), immediately.
PPS: Everyone I know in industrial process control has a dozen of these
type stories (all true) to tell. Its just amazing what happens when you
let computers control BIG things.
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