Date: 16 Jun 88 18:35:37 PDT (Thursday)
Subject: Life 3.9
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A FEW FROM STEVEN WRIGHT
After they make styrofoam, what do they ship it in?
You can't have everything...where would you put it?
My grandfather invented Cliff's Notes. It all started back in 1912...well,
to make a long story short...
I bought some powdered water....but I didn't know what to add.
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I was driving along stuck behind a local city bus. It lumbered uphill, emitting
great quantities of thick black diesel exhaust. Through the haze, I could just
make out the ad on the back of the bus for an area FM station. The slogan:
"Fresh Country Air".
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There was this city doctor who started a practice in the countryside. He
once had to go to a farm to attend to a sick farmer who lived there. After
a few housecalls he stopped coming to the farm. The puzzled farmer finally
phoned him to ask whats the matter, didn't he like him or somethin'. The
doctor said, "No, its your ducks at the entrance...every time I enter the
farm, they insult me!"
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America, Russia and Japan are sending up a two year shuttle mission with one
astronaut from each country. Since it's going to be two years up there, each
may take any form of entertainment weighing 150 pound or less.
The American approaches the NASA board and asks to take his 125 lb wife.
They approve.
The Japanese astronaut says, "I've always wanted to learn Greek. I want
150 lbs of books to learn Greek with." The NASA board approves.
The Russian astronaut thinks for a second and says, "It's gonna be two years
up there. I want 150 pounds of the best Cuban cigars ever made." Again,
NASA okays it.
Two years later, the shuttle lands and everyone is gathered outside the
shuttle to see what each astronaut got out of his personal entertainment.
Well, it's obvious what the American's been up to, He and his wife are each
holding and infant. The crowd cheers. The Japanese astronaut steps out and
makes a 10 minute speech in absolutely perfect Greek. The crowd doesn't
understand a word of it, but they're impressed and they cheer. The Russian
astronaut stomps out, clenches the podium until his knuckles turn white,
glares at the first row waving a chewed up cigar at them and says:
"Anybody got a match?"
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I got this from the June issue of "Discover"....
...Among science students Caltech is the capital of retaliation. A
particularly satisfying incident in the early 1970's involved a math
professor who annoyed students by his mechanical, predictable
approach to teaching - his lecture notes were straight from his
book. One student got hold of a device that changed the normal
frequency in an electrical outlet to any desired value. He plugged
the classroom clock into it and, over serveral weeks, upped the
speed -first by 10 percent, then 12.5 percent, then 15 percent.
Each day the frazzled professor raced through the tried-and-true
lecture faster and faster, until finally he was reduced to
fast-forward gibberish.
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Washington at War is like Washington at peace, only more so. Consider the
following incident (from David Brinkley's Washington Goes to War):
[A] vice president of a New York City bank heard of a Washington job opening
in the Office of Economic Warfare, applied for it and awaited an answer.
While he waited, Leo Crowley, director of OEW, dropped into the same New
York bank and asked its president to recommend somebody for the job he had
open in Washington. The bank president recommended the same vice president
who had already applied for the job. The vice president was hired on the
spot and moved to Washington. Weeks later, at work in his new office, he
got a letter from the OEW that had been sent to his old New York address
and forwarded to him in Washington. The letter said he had been rejected
because he was not considered qualified for the job. Looking again, he found
he had signed the letter himself.
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To: HUMAN-NETS at MIT-MC
I found this hanging in the hall here:
To the Editor ... (The following was a letter-to-the-editor in a
recent issue of the "National Observer.") "There are in the country
two very large monopolies. The larger of the two has the following
record: The Vietnam War, Watergate, double-digit inflation, fuel and
energy shortages, bankrupt airlines and the 8-cent postcard. The
second is responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar
cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording,
sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic
tape, magnetic "bubbles," electronic switching systems, microwave
radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the first electrical
digital computer, and the first communications satellite. Guess which
one is now going to tell the other how to run the telephone business?
I can hardly wait for the results."
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advertisement seen in weekend paper:
Vacation Time! 1972 Corsair 18' trailer, well-maintained and ready for summer
fun! Your's [sic] for just $2695. With all extras, just $7195. ABC Auto, ....
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Sighted the other day in Palo Alto...
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR
TUNE THY PIANO
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This week the Supreme Court settled a tax dispute between RCA Corp. and the
IRS. It was for RCA's taxes for the years 1958 and 1959. That's only 24 years!
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A quote from today's SF Chronical--
"...the automated office is still in its infancy. More IBM Selectric typewriters are
stolen in a year than word processing computers sold..."
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Quote from this month's "Intel Solutions" -
"Intel's own Board of Directors could not agree on whether to proceed with the
commercial sale of the 4004. Their resistance was underscored by the company's
marketing department which, based on the belief that microprocessors would only
be sold as minicomputer replacements, initially estimated the entire world-wide
market at only a few thousand units per year."
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LEMMINGS DON'T GROW OLDER
THEY JUST DIE
"You have a seatbelt; has it hugged you today?"
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I know of Richard Mitchell only by the following quote from
"Less than words can say."
"Should we raise a generation of literate Americans,
very little of America as we know it would survive."
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From the column, "Skeptical Eye," in DISCOVER magazine, January 1982.
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Not to mention the classic: Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if
you don't use your thumbs. -Tom Lehrer
Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal if you are all thumbs.
-Glaser and Way
Digital is to analog as steps are to ramps.
Herb Caen noted today that, in a certain building in San Francisco, every door
leading to a staircase bears the notice "These Stairs Are Alarmed"; further
reflection suggests that this tension is appropriate, since, after all, a relaxed
staircase is a slide.
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Washington, February 8, 1982
Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., made these points yesterday in Senate debate of
whether to televise Senate sessions:
"I don't want to spend three hours every morning getting prettied up."
"The longer we speak, the less we say. Only the Lord will know what will
happen in this chanmber when the red light goes on."
"We will have to get our hair fluffed, get our wives to tell us what tie
to wear - and nothing makes me madder than to have my wife tell me what tie
to wear - and we will have to shine our shoes."
"If this were televised, there would be 97 senators catching hell at home
for not being here."
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A Record Claim.
There it was, printed in the New York Times, and an obvious candidate for
scrutiny by Skeptical Eye. The story was about a Pennsylvania doctor named
Arthur Lintgen, who could look at a phonograph record with its label covered
and, from the pattern of grooves, correctly identify the recording. In some
instances, he could even name the conductor. It was obviously a case for James
Randi, DISCOVER's favorite investigator of psychics and other charlatans.
Randi was happy to oblige. "I thought the doctor's claims were quite
far-fetched," he says. "I called Lntgen and asked if he would mind taking a test
identifying some of MY records." Lintgen agreed, but explained that he
preferred fully orchestrated classical music from Beethoven's time forward, and
nothing as avant garde as electronic music. Randi agreed to Lintgen's conditions
and arranged to meet him in two hours.
Dashing off to a record store, Randi bought the following recordings:
Beethoven's Sixth; Ravel's "Bolero"; Holst's "The Planets"; Tchaikovsky's "1812
Overture"; Mozart's 40th and 41st symphonies; and two versions of Stravinsky's
"Rite of Spring." In adition, as controls for his planned scientific test, Randi
picked up a rock album by Alice Cooper and a voice (without music) recording
entitled "So You Want To Be a Magician."
Randi covered the labels and matrix numbers of all the albums with layers of
aluminum foil and paper. He then gave the disguised records to a colleague,
who covered the labels another time, so that when the test began Randi himself
did not know which album was which. In science, this is called a double-blind
test; it prevents the experimenter's bias from influencing the results. DISCOVER
does not fool around.
When Randi handed the first album to Lintgen, the doctor examined both sides.
"This is a pair of classical symphonies," he said, "but I think it's pre-Beethoven
probably a pair of Mozart symphonies. -- At the end of the test, when all of
the labels were uncovered, the record turned out to be Mozart's 40th and 41st
symphonies. --
Randi gave Lintgen another record. He examined the grooves and asked, "Is this
one complete composition? If it is, I don't know it. But I'm almost sure it's
Beethoven's Sixth." He took a closer look: "Oh I see, they've added an extra
overture . . . the "Prometheus" Overture." -- Lintgen was correct. --
Another record. "This is gibberish," Lintgen said. "It's not classical. It doesn't
seem to have much structure." -- Alice Cooper. --
Another. Lintgen laughed. "There are no instruments on this. If I had to
guess, I'd say it was solo vocal." -- So You Want To Be a Magician. --
Next. "This is Holst's Planets. I've never seen this recording before. Must be
digital. And probably a German orchestra." -- Indeed it was the Berlin
Philharmonic. --
An so the test went; the doctor never made a mistake. How does he do it? He
is a classical music buff, and expert in the dynamics of orchestral music; he
knows every passage of hundreds of symphonies, and recognizes the patterns
made in the grooves by diferent rhythms and volumes of sound. Says Randi,
"He's the real thing there's no doubt in my mind. I was flabbergasted."
Lintgen, dedicated to medicine, regards his unusual talent as nothing more than
a hobby. Unlike others challenged by Skeptical Eye, he claims no paranormal
powers, and, in a controlled test, demonstrated that his ability was authentic.
DISCOVER's staff, jaded by spurious claims of the paranormal, welcomes
Lintgen's most refreshing rebuff.
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From "Sailing", by Henry Beard & Roy McKie ...
sailing: the fine art of getting wet and becoming ill while slowly going
nowhere at great expense.
alcohol stove: compact stove used in small-boat galleys to bring liquids
to body temperature and solid foods to cabin temperature, usually within one hour.
aneroid barometer: meteorological instrument which sailors often use to
confirm the onset of bad weather. Its readings, together with heavy rain,
severe rolling, high winds, dark skies, and a deep cloud cover, indicate
the presence of a storm.
battery: electrochemical storage device capable of lighting an incandescent
lamp of a wattage about equal to that of a refrigerator bulb for a period
of 15 minutes after having been charged for 2 hours.
berth: any horizontal surface whose total area does not exceed one half
of the surface area of an average person at rest, onto which at least one
liter of some liquid seeps during any 12-hour period, and above which there
are not less than 10 kilograms of improperly secured objects.
boom: laterally mounted pole to which a sail is fastened. Often used during
jibing to shift crew members to a fixed, horizontal position.
brightwork: mental effort through which the more intelligent individuals
on board ship evade their share of boring and unpleasant tasks, such as polishing brass hardware.
chronometer: precision intrument which registers sharp impacts by displaying
a telltale spiderweb pattern on its glass face, by the absence of a normal
ticking sound when held to the ear, or by the presence of small, loose pieces
moving around within its case when shaken. It also indicates excess humidity
by forming tiny droplets on the inside of its face, and when stopped, it
displays the correct time twice each day.
flashlight: tubular metal container used on shipboard for storing dead batteries
prior to their disposal.
porthole: a glass-covered opening in the hull designed in such a way that
when closed (while at sea) it admits light and water, and when open (while
at anchor) it admits light, air, and insects (except in Canadian waters,
where most species are too large to gain entry in this manner).
radar: extremely realistic kind of electronic game often found on larger sailboats.
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MEDINA, Wash. (AP) - Puli is a well-behaved Hungarian sheep dog who spends
most of his time lying in front of a fireplace, never jumps on the furniture
and never makes any noise. Puli has been dead four years.
But his owners, Suzanne and Rob Fleming, continue to enjoy their freeze-dried dog.
"It's sort of like Puli is still alive because of all the laughs he gets,"
Suzanne Fleming said.
The Flemings once left the fluffy white dog in the back seat of their car
while they went sailing. Upon returning, they asked a friend to let the dog out.
"Larry kept whistling, 'Come here, boy,' took a closer look and said, 'Uh,
Rob, I think you might have left your dog in the car too long. He's not
moving.' We were in tears we were laughing so hard," Suzanne Fleming said.
The dog was diagnosed as having spinal cancer in 1984, and the Flemings had
him put to death.
For $650 a taxidermist in Portland, Ore., posed the dog lying on its side
with head up and looking alert, then freeze-dried him. The dog weighs about
10 pounds and needs only occasional cleaning.
The Flemings' teen-age daughter was not as enthusiastic as her parents about
their decision to have the family pet preserved instead of buried.
Suzanne Fleming understood her daughter's anger. "I mean, how do you tell
your friends that your parents are having (the family) dog freeze-dried?" she asked.
--
Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com]
The Life collection maintainer, selections of humor from the internet
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in
overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
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