This a traditional letter column.
You are encouraged to write a letter of comment on anything that you
find worthy of comment. It will (may) be published in this column along
with my reply. As editor I reserve the right to delete material;
however I will not alter the undeleted material. E-mail to me that solely
references the contents of this site will be assumed to be publishable
mail. All other e-mail is assumed to be private. And, of course, anything
marked not for publication is not for publication. Oh yes, letters of
appreciation for the scholarly resources provided by this site will be
handled very discreetly. This page contains the correspondence for
December 2002.
NOTE: Between my trip, changing my site address, having my hard drive
crash, and other goodnesses, the October letter column never
happened. November was nominated as catchup month. December will have
to do. Patience
children, normality will happen any millennium now.
From: Charles Hitchcock
apparently is still played; a search on “newcomb” and “volleyball” on
Lycos pulls up 3 different summer camps in the first 10 hits, and more
as you continue. (Some sites explain it as a “pre-volleyball”
throwing/catching game, some seem to assume that parents of small fry
will know or guess what it is.) And of course no etymology (“waddayou,
some kinda brain?”), and some confusion about whether it should be
capitalized (cf Rugby/rugby, or Teresa Nielsen Hayden on the
difference between Deringer and derringer).
From: Phil Morton
where does that come from and is it online.
A google search on “Real Programmers Don’t Use Pascal” turns
up a lot of copies. The one at
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/joke/quiche.htm
has the provenance. The relevant paragraphs are:
It has been observed that the TECO command sequence more closely resembles
transmission line noise than readable text [4]. One of the more entertaining
games to play with TECO is to type your name in as a command line and try to
guess what it does. Just about any possible typing error while talking with
TECO will probably destroy your program, or even worse–introduce subtle and
mysterious bugs into a once working subroutine.
From: Ginger Larsen
I’ve been looking for a 5 year diary for my mother. She’s been keeping
one since I can remember and I’m 45!! I’ve been looking in bookstores and
online but can’t seem to find a 5 year one. Lots of one year, but she
wants 5 year. Any suggestions? Your help is much appreciated. I live in
Yankton, SD. Thanks!!!!
http://www.melejewelrybox.com/leathersmith/specialinterest.htm
From: ShininStar139
what is the moral of the story cold equations?
My take is that the moral is that nice people can find
themselves doing really vile things if they don’t question
the dictates of bureaucracy.
From: MrDave
Can you please send to me a copy of these fine
jokes that lay before me. I would very like to share them with my family
and friends.
Thank you for your
time. Laughing out loud!
Index of contributors
Other Correspondence Pages
Date: 11/14/2002
Subj: New come
In some of the recreational games I’ve seen it is not clear whether
they are playing volleyball or newcomb/Newcomb. Anyway, thanks for
the info.
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Date: 11/12/2002
Subj: real programmers use teco
It comes from the infamous “Real Programmers Don’t Use
Pascal” paper. The original source
was a letter by one Ed Post to Datamation, volume 29 number 7,
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Some of the concepts in these Xerox editors have been incorporated into the
editors running on more reasonably named operating systems–EMACS and VI
being two. The problem with these editors is that Real Programmers consider
“What you see is what you get” to be just as bad a concept in text editors
as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a “you asked for it, you
got it” text editor–complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous.
TECO, to be precise.
Date: 12/15/2002
Subj: diaries
I suspect that the larger stationary stores and office supply stores
might have them. In any case here are some online places that have
them.
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http://www.save2much.com/buy/search/Weather%20Wizard%20Five%20Year%20Diary
http://www.hutchingsandpatrick.com/catalogue2002%20and%202003/page22.htm
http://www.hutchingsandpatrick.com/catalogue2002%20and%202003/page20.htm
http://www.gotlucy.com/pages/catalog/accessories.htm
http://www.officepointfivestar.com/acatalog/OFFICE_SUPPLIES_Collins_129.html
http://www.britishring.org.uk/html/body_stock_23.html
Date: 12/12/2002
Subj: question
That’s a good question. The conventional wisdom
is that it is much as follows: Your actions determine
the consequences you suffer; it matters not whether you
are wise or foolish, innocent or guilty. Humans judge
you by what you are; the universe judges you by what
you do.
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Date: 12/6/2002
Subj: Humor
I’m glad that you like the jokes. Unfortunately I don’t have a separate
file containing them all. I would have to cut and paste them, something
you could do as easily as I.
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This page was last updated December 16, 2002.
It was reformatted and moved November 29, 2005