From cate3@netcom.com Tue Feb 28 10:03:33 1995
Subject: Life D.4
To: jwry.dli@netcom.com
From: Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com]
Reply-to: cate3@netcom.com
---------------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 94 11:50:42 PDT (Monday)
Subject: Life D.4
The following is a mailing list run by:
From: pauld@cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis)
To subscribe to Fishnet, send a message to:
fishnet-request@cs.washington.edu
A Weekly Compendium of Assorted Discoveries
Found in the Crannies of the Internet
----------------------------------------------------
davidm@consilium.com (David Masterson)
"Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to
experience it."
-- Max Frisch
--------------------------
dkff@cscns.com (Jay Cole)
"If you have a knife 9" in my back, and you pull it out 3", that is not
progress" --Malcolm X
--------------------------
From: schwarze@starbase1.caltech.edu (Erich Schwarz)
In article [1278.151.uupcb@tfd.coplex.com], steve.gustafson@tfd.coplex.com
(Steve Gustafson) wrote:
]
[To-and-fro: is advertising a sign of capitalism in decadence?]
] Remember Emerson: if you build a better mousetrap, the world will make a
] beaten path to your door. It follows from this that if the world is not
] beating a path to your door --- if you must instead go out and beg for
] attention to the fact that you have mousetraps for sale --- your
] mousetraps must be mediocre or overpriced.
Uh-huh. Let's see you try Emersonian marketing in 1993.
Kary Mullis, the inventor of the Nobel-Prize winning procedure
"polymerase chain reaction" (PCR), had a horrible time convincing anybody
in the mainstream molecular biology community (in 1985) that it was
worthwhile. It was only when Cetus Corporation started vigorously
advertising mass-produced, streamlined *kits* for PCR that anybody seemed
to notice that the entire field of molecular biology had been
revolutionized. Four years later, there is no worthwhile mol. biol. lab
that doesn't do PCR, and Mullis has a Nobel. Simply inventing a
"mousetrap" is *NOT* enough--people have to be convinced that it's worth
buying a funny metal thing that does the work of a cat!!
That's a very recent and egregious example. But biology (and science in
general) are full of stuff like that. It is just not true that a beautiful
invention automatically generates its own market. In fact, the stranger
and more amazing it is, the harder it can be to convince people that it's
worth having. ("Get a horse!" was considered a witty poke at
automobile-drivers not so long ago, historically speaking.)
If you want to effectively market something, don't do it
karaoke-bar-style. Hire somebody who knows what the heck they're doing.
--------------------------
From: mjcarley@maths.tcd.ie (Michael Carley)
]TERRY EAGLETON, noted marxist critic, will give a public lecture on "Postmodern
]ism and the Liberal State" Thursday evening, December 9th at 8pm at the New Sch
]ool for Social Research, 66 W.12th Street, rm 404, in New York City. He will al
]so be giving two seminars: "Problems of Post-Marxism," and "Culture and Revolut
]ionary Nationalism" on Staurday, December 11th at 10 am and 2pm at the offices
]of Monthly Review, 122 W.27th Street, 10th floor, also in New York City.
I don't like this guy all that much but he is brilliantly witty. He wrote
a play about Oscar Wilde which had only one genuine Oscar epigram in it. The
rest were indistinguishable from the real thing. The best was
"The English would rather have typhoid than a good time. And three months
later they'ld still be talking about it"
--------------------------
From: dave@blackjoke.bsd.uchicago.edu (Dave Griffith)
In article [2dvqq3$ct1@panix.com] gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
] What do you think people move to the suburbs for?
A screaming need for low-grade frozen yogurt shops? Desire to drive long
distances? Quality services from local governments? Fear of nightlife? The
possibilities are endless.
--------------------------
From: vlj@fc.hp.com (Victor L. Johnson)
"Call for a cop, call for an ambulance, and call for
a pizza. See who shows up first."
-J. Snyder - "A Nation of Cowards"
--------------------------
From: park@netcom.com (Bill Park)
Grandpaw Bill's High Technology Consulting & Live Bait, Inc.
--------------------------
From: isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell)
"Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis seventeen times in a row!"
--Vitas Gerulaitis, on beating Jimmy Conners
after losing to him for 16 straight matches
----------------------------------------------------
From: sig@Mcs.Com (Sigfried Gold)
Well, just because I've decided to quit reading poems written by
human beings doesn't mean that I'm willing to read poems written
by programs written by human beings. The problem as I see it is that
human beings (and their gullible computers) have ALREADY generated
infinitely more poems than human beings will ever care to read. So,
my suggestion is, that now that computers can be enlisted to help us
in the poetic industries, don't use them to write more poems, use them
to READ poems. For extremely egomaniacal, popularity-seeking poets,
computers could easily be programmed to read their poems millions
or billions of times. For profoundly intellectual poets, computers
should be programmed to read their poems closely with the utmost
care. For love poets, computers should be programmed to tremble with
feeling on reading their works. This, of course, will not be a simple
undertaking. But, PLEASE SUPPORT THIS PROJECT. Current scientific
studies show that at present rates, unread poems will blanket the surface
of the earth to a depth of 2 feet by the year 2040. Don't let your
grandchildren inherit a global junkyard of unread poems. Act now!
--------------------------
From: seawolf@yesanext.thetech.com (SeaWolf)
Or how about this? Almost all camcorders have a little infared
reciever/transmitter on the bottom, right below the lens. And when
you set it on autofocus, and leave the camera on the table the
lens is still moves back and forth. when the distance between the
image and the camera doesnt change. Why is that?
I'll tell you why, that infared reciever is a satelite link that
sends copies of your tapes to government. They say that the US has
got satelites that can read the headlines of a today's newspaper
in Yeltsin's backyard. So I'm sure that they can get all your
tapes too.
Or how about this..why is that a lap top can run all day long with
a 9v battery pack and a desktop needs a 200 watt power supply?
Its because they have an little radio to send the contents of your
hard disk to them. Thats why your radio gets all full of static when
you turn on the computer. Its reading the data on your disk and sending
all the data that changed to them.
Thats why always no user serviceable parts inside, they don't want you
to see the little radio inside. Remember its antenna inside not
intel inside(tm).
--------------------------
From: dave@blackjoke.bsd.uchicago.edu (Dave Griffith)
Dave Griffith, Information Resources, University of Chicago,
Biological Sciences Division dave@delphi.bsd.uchicago.edu
Lord, grant me the companionship of those who seek truth,
and protection from those who have found it.
--------------------------
From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
flacy@engin.umich.edu (Mark Adrian Flacy):
| Difference:
|
| TV is sequential access ONLY. Text is a lot more random access.
|
| Not to mention -I- control the text scan rate. TV is too slow.
I can see _you_ haven't been channel-surfing. Better
limber up that remote control and get with it. Until
you've ridden a wave of five movies all coming to a
dumb climax at once, while flicking on to MTV every
minute or so to keep the beat going, you just haven't
lived.
--------------------------
From: moh2@midway.uchicago.edu (Kateri/Mary Anne)
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in
filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it
run over, so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which
makes the heart run over. - James Boswell
--------------------------
From: ESPEN ANDERSEN (EANDERSEN@HBS.HBS.HARVARD.EDU)
I can't resist: In 1982 (I think) a climbing team had a fatal accident
in the Troll wall ("Trollveggen") in Norway. In the serious Oslo morning
paper the climbers were reported to have fallen 600 meters to their deaths.
In the liberal afternoon paper, the fall was 800 meters. In the sensational
afternoon paper, the figure was 1200 meters.
"Trollveggen" is approximately 1000 meters high.
--------------------------
From: werdna@ugcs.caltech.edu (Andrew C. Tong)
600,001 ones occur in the numbers from 1 to 1,000,000.
--------------------------
From: ckd@kei.com (Christopher Davis)
* Christopher Davis * (ckd@kei.com) * (was (ckd@eff.org)) * MIME * [CKD1] *
"It's 106 ms to Chicago, we've got a full disk of GIFs, half a meg of
hypertext, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." "Click it."
--------------------------
From: zik@zikzak.apana.org.au
+-----------------------------------+-------------------------+
| | "By `recursion' I mean: |
| zik@zikzak.apana.org.au | `defined by recursion' |
| Zik Saleeba | - Sachs |
+-----------------------------------+-------------------------+
--------------------------
From: jordans3@yvax.byu.edu
Here are few quotes gleaned from local papers (Mostly the Salt Lake Tribune)
in the last few months:
"We've become territories managed by a ruler as remote as the King of
England. We are witnessing a modern American tradgedy." -Bill Howell, Price
Utah, Director of Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments
"We need to send another shot heard round the world." -Rob Bishop, Speaker,
Utah House of Reps.
"The culture of the West is being systematically destroyed by nature lovers and
suitcase saviors. It comes down to Wise use versus no use. Let's not forget
that the most valuable resource on our lands is the human resource."
-Louise Liston, Garfield County Utah Commissioner
"We pride ourselves in Arizona in doing everything we can to annoy the federal
government. The war has begun, now let's just make sure we can win it." -David
Schweikert, Arizona House Majority Whip
--------------------------
From: mattweed@edith.Princeton.EDU (Matthew Weed)
"It may not be true, as Lincoln Supposed, that you can't fool all of the
people all of the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large
country." Will and Ariel Durant: _The Lessons of History_ 1969.
mattweed@edith.princeton.edu MPA candidate/WWS:95, (609)258-8236
--------------------------
From: ee1026@mail.bris.ac.uk (Lord High Avocado)
|X| I speak for no-one but myself, and no-one speaks for me.
The problem with engineers is that they cheat in order to get results.
The problem with mathematicians is that they work on toy problems in order
to get results.
The problem with program verifiers is that they cheat on toy problems in
order to get results.
--------------------------
From:
I am trying to find persons interested in old farm tractors from the early
1950's and older. Any information would be welcome. I have not found
any news groups or listservs that cover this topic. I personally have
two Farmall H tractors but any tracor enthusiast would be welcome
to reply. If you have no information on tractors but have information on
how to start a newsgroup I would like to hear from you also.
[ Fishnet sez: seek, and yee shall find ... ]
From: tillman@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Fred Tillman)
Ben, your request for old tractor info was not off topic. Send Email
to antique-tractor@ledger.mis.co.forsyth.nc.us and state "help" for
info on access to a server full of old tractor enthusiasts. Most of
us read this group as well.
--------------------------
From: ldonahue@chicagokent.Kentlaw.EDU (Larry Donahue)
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg
--------------------------
From: jackson@soldev.tti.com (Dick Jackson)
A couple approach old Joe in the hardware store of this little town.
"We've just moved here, what are people like in this town?"
Old Joe replies, "How did you find the people where you come from?"
They say "Oh they were wonderful - friendly, generous, great people!"
Old Joe says "Yup, you'll find them pretty much the same in this town."
A week later another couple ask the same question of old Joe. He asks
*them* what the people were like at their old town.
They say "Sort of cold, unfriendly, a bit selfish - not neighbourly at all."
Joe replies, "Yes, you'll find the people in this town are like that."
--------------------------
From: zdxc0d@amoco.com (David Crowson)
David Crowson =%^) |"For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.
Oracle DBA(Ver.4,5,6,7)| I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to
Amoco Exploration | move, to get down off this featherbed of civilisation
Ealing, London, UK. | and to find the globe granite underneath and strewn
"My views not Amoex's" | with cutting flints" : Robert Louis Stevenson
--------------------------
From: clawson@mailer.fsu.edu (Charles E Lawson)
((( * )))
|
/_\
|/| Charles Lawson (clawson@mailer.fsu.edu)
|\| Public Radio Center
|/| Tallahassee, FL
|\| My opinions are not those of my employer...blah, blah, blah...
|/| "Most people would die sooner than think;
|\| in fact, they do." --Bertrand Russell
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