* * Archive: REAL08.NEW * * Created on: Tue Aug 3 15:24:41 1999 * * Number of articles: 25 * * Welcome! This is one of the files that goes to make up the archives of * Project Galactic Guide. To find out what the heck PGG is, go look at its * main Web site at , where you'll be able to find * an FAQ. * * * The articles in this file are: * * 6R3-1 Austin, Texas, USA, Earth * 6R4-1 Macintosh PowerBooks * 6R5-1 Dentist, The * 2R156-1 Aardvarks * 2R157-1 Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction * 2R158-1 Dietary Bachelorisms * 2R159-1 alt.test * 2R160-1 Netherlands, Earth * 2R161-1 Magic: The Gathering * Clio-1 Clio, Michigan, USA, Earth * Acheron-1 Skipping Along The Trail To Acheron * 6R6-1 Cool Camping * 2R164-1 Winning Arguments * 2R165-1 InterRail And Eurail * 2R166-1 Nerd Bingo * 2R167-1 Stories, Short * 2R168-1 Enlightenment * 2R169-1 Water * 2R170-1 Vi Editor, A Less Beginner's Guide * 6R7-1 Encyclopedia Galactica * 6R8-1 Aaargh * 2R171-1 Wine Tasting * 2R172-1 What's In A Name? * 2R173-1 Bremerhaven, Bremen, Germany, Earth * 2R174-1 Bradford, England, UK, Earth (Part 2) * %t Austin, Texas, USA, Earth %n 6R3 %s Silicon Gulch, Berkeley On The Colorado, The Promised Land %a Scott Davis (dfox@fc.net) %d 19940914 %i Capital Of Texas, Chiba City II %x Earth %e This city is the capital of Texas. It is known for it's educational value with the University of Texas and other technological attributes. It is also the city where Charles Whitman killed a bunch people from the top of the observation tower at UT in the 60's. (Not to discourage you). It is, for the most part, a city of liberals. (Once again, not to discourage you). It has its share of underground book stores, virtual reality gaming facilites, and coffee houses. Some areas of town remind me of the environment described in some of William Gibson's books (i.e. Chiba City). Elicit drugs, such as LSD, are plentiful (from what I understand) and mainly used by the computer hacks in town. There are several Internet providers in town, thus never a bored moment for Unix lovers. It is important to note that people in this city would rather compute, read, write, create, telnet, ftp, and play DOOM than take a bath. Austin is the home of science fiction author Bruce Sterling, author of "The Artificial Kid", "The Hacker Crackdown", and other books. It is a fantastic city for writers, computer hobbyists, Internet dwellers, and other sloth-type people. In Austin, people can sit at home on their personal computers for hours at a time and be completely happy. There's just not much to worry about in Austin. If you can scrape enough money up to eat, and you have your personal computer handy, by Austin standards... you're OK! There are legends of people who have Ph.D's from major universities and could get a job anywhere. But they choose to drive a cab just so they can stay in Austin. It's that good. Austin is know for its clean air, farms and meadows to the east, its high, rolling hills on the west side, and technology in the middle. It is the home of some of the cleanest water in America and has been designated as one of the best places to live and work in America. It is nationally known for its support of live music and the infamous "6th Street." This is a street downtown that is chocked full of brew-pubs, tattoo shops, clubs, bars, and other forms of alternative entertainment. The other famous street in Austin is Guadelupe. If you ever come to Austin and need to ask for directions to this street, ask a local where "The Drag" is. This is the street with most of the underground book stores, coffee houses, and virtual reality holes-in-the-wall. "The Drag" is a big hangout for computer- literate folks with some free time on their hands. One of the more popular book stores on this street is called "Europa Books." It is the biggest collection of hard-to-get and non-mainstream publications in Texas. If you can't get it at Europa, it don't exist! Austin is commonly referred to as "The Silicon Gulch" due to all of the computer and technology related companies that make their home there. Some people also refer to Austin as "Berkeley On The Colorado" due to it's similarity to Berkeley, California. (And Colorado being the name of the big river near-by). All in all, Austin's computer-underground culture is special in its own way. I recently had a friend come and visit from Houston. His first words when he walked in the door were "Where's the computer?? I need the Internet!". I personally have travelled all around the United States and evaluated the status of the computer community in most major cities and I must say (and many people agree with me) that Austin is "The Promised Land." Two of the most popular electronic magazines on the net come from Austin. They are "The Journal Of American Underground Computing" and "Phrack." This city is a major pit-stop on the Information Super-Highway. New service providers for the Internet are popping up all over in Austin, the latest being Freeside Communications. (Thoughts of William Gibson running through my head.) People come from all over just to jack-in to the net from my apartment. Austin is chocked full of smart people. Most people here either have degrees from the University of Texas, or they are working on it. It is my guess that if the government decided to do something like conduct a "stupid-people-genocide," where all people with IQ's below 110 were to be killed, Austin would escape for the most part untouched. But who am I to speculate what the government might or might not do? I just work here. In the last few years, many people have moved to "The Promised Land," thus some overcrowding is unavoidable. The freeways have only two lanes. It was never the intention of the city's developers to have Austin multiply as it has. So don't move there. Just visit. But visit often. Reporting live from the Silicon Gulch, this has been Scott Davis, Editor of The Journal Of American Underground Computing. E-Mail subscription requests to: sub@fennec.com %e *EOA* %t Macintosh PowerBooks %n 6R4 %s Nice Little Computers, If I Say So Myself %a Jeff Kramer (lthumper@bga.com) %d 19940905 %e Macintosh PowerBooks are a interesting breed of computer. They are easily distinguished by the small colorful Apple logo on the case. Battery lives range from 1 hour and 15 minutes, to 3 hours. The PowerBook line is divided into 3 sections. The PowerBook 100 series. These were the first PowerBooks, a venture put forth by Apple in a valiant attempt to save face in the notebook market after the Macintosh Portable, a weighty, slow, and innefficient computer which no one will admit to have liked. The 100 series is currently occupied by the 100, 140, 145a, 145b, 150, 160, 165, 165c, 170, 180, 180c. They are the oldest of the line, and some would say the best. They have a small trackball on the palmwrest. Something that Apple created and now several other computer makers have copied. The original PowerBook, and one that has achieved almost a cult following is the 100. It's a nice little 5.5 lb puppy, with a detachable floppy drive, up to 8 meg ram, up to 500 meg harddrive (from third party vendors), stereo out sound port, scsi port, modem slot, printer port, ADB port for keyboards and mice, and the power plug. The battery is removable and replacable. The 100 can also be mounted on a seperate Mac as a hard disk. The screen is supertwist LCD, black and white. Its processor is a 16MHz 68000, no speed demon, but it does the job. The other PowerBooks have all those ports and a few others, most have sound in ports, and some have modem ports. All of the new models, and the 160, 165, 165c, 180, 180c have ports for exteral monitors. The computers with a "c" after them are color, although the color on the low end machines is hardly worth it. The 150 is a student model with hardly any ports and a 33MHz processor. The Duo Line. The Macintosh Duo was Apples forte into the sub-notebook market. The Duos are small, powerful, and expensive. At least new ones are. The Duo line has one long port on the back, a phone jack, and a power jack. All the ports come on adapters to the main port. The ultimate gadget freaks computer. The Duos currently released are: 210, 230, 250, 270, 270c, 280, and 280c. The higher end color Duos have really nice screens, although they are a bit on the small side. The trackballs on the Duos are more like trackmarbles too. The "BlackBirds." This line was introduced just recently and includes the 520, 520c, 540, and 540c. The new PowerBooks don't use trackballs, but have small touch sensitive pads that you sweep your finger over. I have been told they are quite wonderful. The screen on the 520c is a Dual Scan color screen, decent but not breathtaking. The 540c, on the other hand is a real beauty. It's an active matrix color screen, a real show off. This is the PowerBook people would buy if they could afford it. The BlackBirds also have a PCMIA adapter available so you can use PCMIA cards in your Mac. You can get RAM cards, modems, and network adapters on PCMIA cards. The BlackBirds are also upgradeable to PowerMac. They also have PDS slots, similar to expansion cards. There is some word of a new line of PowerBooks, the M2 line. These will be PowerMacs, with too much power for their own good. If you have any more questions, call 1-800-sos-appl, Apples support line. I'm sure they would be more than happy to help. %e *EOA* %t Dentist, The %n 6R5 %s Going To The Dentist Is Fun! %a Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) * From the Ideabank(tm) * based on an idea by Ryan Tucker (rtucker@netins.net) %d 19940831 %i Fun At The Dentist's %e Of course you're all expecting to hear all kinds of gruesome stories about torture in dental offices. No way! A visit to the dentist is fun! At least, if you're not too much a whimp not to ask for local anaesthesia. A lot of people aren't very lucky; their treatment is limited to a nasty picking with a mini pick-axe, and if they're lucky an occasional fluoride treatment. Although afterwards your mouth tastes like chemical waste and feels like a cold fusion vat, it is all well worth while. Getting a fluoride treatment means that the dentist puts two rubber molds filled with fluoride gel, with a minty, strawberry, or another "exotic" flavour, over your teeth. Then you are supposed to bite for some minutes while the goo dribbles out of your mouth, oozes slowly over your chin, and drips into a kidney shaped dish. Oooooooooooh, the mere thought sends shivers of excitement down my spine! The uncomfortable bit is that you are not allowed to rinse until well after the fluoride has settled on your gums, mostly several *hours* later. The hard-core dentist patients, who have purposefully neglected to take good care of their teeth, or have the natural talent, can enjoy the more sophisticated dental treatments (at a cost!). These always include some kind of drilling, which can hurt. If local anaesthesia is possible, by all means USE IT [1]! Not only is it very comfortable (it keeps the pain away; nice except if you are into that kind of sex), also after treatment you can enjoy the wonderful sensation of touching yourself as if you were someone else. Only your fingers sense the touch; the touched area feels sparkly, at the most. With this swolen mouth (it feels this way, but doesn't look like it) you can easily talk incoherently, and you can disgust everyone by drinking something (if allowed yet) with your all gallipolli lips, and letting it spill and dribble all over you (see fluoride treatment). Drilling is another wonderful thing. With drilling the dentist usually uses two kind of drills, a slow one for the bulky work, and a fast one for the finer work. The slow drill makes your mouth vibrate with a similar feeling you get when you switch to a wrong gear, except that your gear doesn't break and this can thus go on much longer (whoopeee!!!). The fast drill makes that high-pitch noise that most people get the creeps of. It is one of those sounds that sets an alarm bell off in your head, just like nails scraping over a blackboard, a mosquito, and, well, the alarm on your electric alarm clock do. It is the sound that makes beads of sweat appear on the foreheads of people in the waiting room. For drilling to be easy and all the bits and pieces that come off your teeth to be removed, water is supplied through the drills. This is one of the nicer aspects of the drill. The instrument creates a small shower of water and bits of tooth that rains all over your face and the fresh set of clothes you have inappropriately dressed yourself in today. It is especially nice on hot days, but the more important thing is that now the most marvellous device ever invented has to be used: the oral vacuum cleaner! Don't mix this with the other oral vacuum cleaner, the flexible tube you clean the house with by sucking dust through it with your mouth. This oral vacuum cleaner is a device as large as a pen and it sucks all excess water and saliva from your mouth. The sucking sensation is thrilling, and, oooh, the sound! The rest is not particularly exciting: the actual filling of the holes, the construction of crowns, bridges and other protheses, so I end the description of the positive aspects here. One of the few unpleasant aspects of going to the dentist's office, is that it is a small enclave where "normal" democratic rights are legally violated. After you've been put in the chair and your jaw has been locked by the dentist's various shining tweezers, the dentist can and will accuse you of all kinds of horrible and tooth-unfriendly activities. You cannot reply[2]. This, together with the dentist's law that everyone is guilty until proven innocent, gives him a very warped view on human/dental society. The day after your visit, you will be disturbed by the great lump of filling that suddenly falls out of your mouth. Don't worry, it's just something you missed the day before, when you gallipolli lips prevented a thorough rinsing. (Now what's the Liff-word for this object?) Conclusion. Don't be afraid of the dentist; it's more fun than you think. You might even consider to take a family trip there instead of to Disney land. The Dentist: a nice day out. And now please a small moment of silence for all the things I have had to endure at the dentist's to research this article. Notes: [1] Some people complain the anaesthetic is more painful than the whole treatment. This is not so! Other people don't trust the dentist and say they want to feel what is happening. If you feel that way, do whatever you think is best for you, but don't whine about the pain!!! [2] Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a simple yes or no answer. %e *EOA* %t Aardvarks %n 2R156 %s First Thing To Know %a Alexander Lachlan McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) %d 19940909 %x Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction %e Aardvark is traditionally the first word in any encyclopedia. By a strange coincidence it is designed to be the first entry at the top of the title list of Project Galactic Guide articles. The first entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is for the American author "Abbey, Edward" who I have never heard of. The first reference in the Oxford Reference Dictionary is "a". %e *EOA* %t Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction %n 2R157 %s Science Fiction Reference Work %a Alexander Lachlan McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) %d 19940909 %x Jargon In British Science Fiction Fandom %e The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction was edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls. It costs 45 UK pounds in hardback and is published by Orbit. The Blue Book, as I shall call it, doesn't really need a review. It needs statistics. It has 1370 pages, 1.2 million words, and 4300 entries. And that is all I can say about it. It has everything I never needed to know. The nationality of the last author in the book is Polish (not Hungarian as I thought). If the Blue Book has any faults it is that it takes itself too seriously. I would like to have seen more cross referencing of science fiction terms. There is the obligatory entry on time travel, hyper space, and so on, but less well-know terms such as "Slans" were by passed. Comics and fantasy novelists are also left out. The deciding factor of whether you should get this is the price. 45 pounds is a hell of a lot for any book. But if you do think you can afford it then you will be getting an awful lot of information for your money. This book has no pictures. (The CD Rom editions are not yet published at the time of writing but thanks to the wonderous time travel effects of electronic messaging it might be available when you read this.) Adams, Douglas Noel has a full column on page 5. %e *EOA* %t Dietary Bachelorisms %n 2R158 %s Male Tendancies Of The Culinary Kind %a Alexander Lachlan McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) %d 19940909 %i Mrs. Beaton's Everyday Cookery %e The males of any species without permanent mates develop strange dietary habits. Among some bachelors of Hertfordshire, UK, Earth I have found the following trends. Bachelors mostly cannot stand to cook. They will take every opportunity to eat meals cooked by other people. This means that they will try to live off the meals provided by their employers' canteens. One sad case regularly buys pizza once a week and keeps half of it in the fridge for tomorrow's meal! Of course, the British youth of today can survive eating nothing other than lager and chicken vindaloo. Rumours of men able to live off nothing more solid that Guinness are to be taken with sceptism. There are exceptions to every rule. A traditional gift to young men (and women) is "Mrs Beaton's Everyday Cookery." This is an invaluable tome which goes through almost everything the kitchen DIY enthusiast might need to know. It can tell you about knives, soups, roasting a chicken, making a bread sauce, tossing a salad, and what drink to serve. Unfortunately this book avoids cookery from the more exotic places around the world - squeezing them into a few pages near the end. You can tell that this book was not directed towards males because it continually refers to "housewives" whose duty is to be in the kitchen. Well, it was written in 1963. Those bachelors who do cook often practice one receipe to the detriment to all others. In my case that is chilli con carne. See my forthcoming article on AlexMC's chilli. %e *EOA* %t alt.test %n 2R159 %s Internet Methods Of Relieving Boredom %a Alexander Lachlan McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) %d 19941013 %x Boredom %e Advertisment: Are you bored? Does nobody email you? Do you have no friends? After following my course you will be receiving hundreds of email messages from interesting people [1] all around the world. The course is simple to follow, extremely cheap, and cost effective. In just four weeks I changed from <#insert dweeb picture> to <#insert Arnold Schwarzenegger>. Simply post [2] a usenet news message to alt.test and you will receive scores of email messages from like-minded people [3] who have nothing to do except talk to people like you. Don't delay! Try it today! Notes: [1] Of course, should you be emailed by machines then don't complain - just consider yourself lucky. [2] Should you not have news access then email to alt.test@news.demon.co.uk instead. [3] See footnote [1], above. %e *EOA* %t Netherlands, Earth %n 2R160 %s Holland, Amsterdam %a Alexander Lachlan McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) %d 19941008 %i Dutch %x Random Dot Stereo Movies %x Rocky Horror Picture Show At The Prince Charles Cinema %x Earth %e The Netherlands are flat. There is no word that describes this country better than "flat." The largest hill that I have seen in the Netherlands was an artificial one used for raising part of a motorway junction. You may arrive in Amsterdam airport and then go to your final destination by train or taxi. The Airport's train station is quite unusual compared to British train stations. There was almost no advertising posters. The first advertising posters I saw were tasteful black and white jobs of a man and woman in bed. I think the advert was for the "Donor Codicil." The instituiton concerned is an organ transplantation service but I first thought it was a sperm bank. I saw my first double decker trains here. A train journey though a strange country is a good way of getting to know its landscape. Unfortunately the Netherlands has none. I thought I might see Amsterdam on the way out, but no. All I saw was a few skyscrapers (with mirrored windows) seperated with green fields full of cows and sheep. Everywhere there were small canals or brooks (for drainage I suppose). Although I took the train halfway across the country I could not tell when the cities finished and the countryside began. It all seemed to be a mixture of buildings and pasture with a changing ratio between the two. Sometimes more houses, sometimes more fields. I can confirm that there are windmills in the Netherlands. This is not a myth. Though I think my collegue buying a windmill inside a plastic ball with a pretend snow storm in it was a bit over the top. Dutchmen are tall. This may be of no consequence if you are tall yourself, but if, like me, you are one of a relatively small race of people and you are considered not oversized amongst them then you may have a problem. This has been alleviated slightly by the Dutch habit of wearing garish jackets and ties which give you something interesting to look at instead of getting a crick in your neck by looking upwards all the time. The hotel I stayed had an amazing selection of satellite television. Twenty channels of stuff I couldn't understand - and a few more that looked encoded so I couldn't watch it. I wonder what it was. The highlight of my television viewing was "Star Trek: The Next Generation" on BBC2 which I would have watched in England had I been at home. I must admit to watching the encoded satellite stations for a while. These subscription only channels are distorted electronically so that only customers who pay for the correct hardware decoders can view them. Every so often you get the impression that you just might see something - and then it goes away again. The feeling is something like trying to focus on a random dot stereogram. The dutch have that amazing European ability that gets on alot of English people's nerves. They are able to speak English. The only reason why this is disturbing is because no Englishman I know can speak Dutch. However they all seem to say the word "routing" (finding the path to take - pronounced like "rooting") as "routing" (beating an army in battle so that they have to flee - pronounced like "outing"). Of course this is of no consequence since in modern business it is hard to envisage a situation where the two meanings could be confused. After watching most of an abominibal film called "Shock Treatment" (the dire "sequel" to the brilliant "Rocky Horror Picture Show") I discovered that Americans also say "r-outing." Very strange. The highlight of my visit to Baan Headquarters in Barneveld was the discovering that the urinals had buttons which would start a flush. Luxury knows no bounds. %e *EOA* %t Magic: The Gathering %n 2R161 %s A Super Fantasy Trading Card Game %a Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.LeidenUniv.nl) * with help from Pierre Viau (viau@estec.esa.nl) %d 19941108 * %k Games * %k Collect * %k Cards * %k Strategy %i Card Game %i Strategy Game %i Game, Card Strategy %e Games are a froody way to spend your time. One of the froodiest games around is Magic: The Gathering. If you happen to like role-playing games, you're sure to like Magic a lot as well. Better still, you're sure to like it a lot, period! Magic is not just another game you play with the standard playing cards, Magic has its very own cards and an amazing lot of them too. In fact, the other use of Magic is collecting all the different cards and trading them with your friends, just like baseball cards or nose buggers. You can go on collecting these cards forever, because expansion sets are continuously seeing the light. Already we have the standard revised edition, the Arabian Nights expansion set, the antiquities set (with lots of artifacts), the Legends set (with legendary figures and a rules extension), and the Dark expansion set (the be-careful-with-use:-possibly-backfires! set); altogether more than 600 unique cards! The amazing idea behind Magic has had tremendous success: in the 18 months of its existence over 10 billion cards have been sold world wide! There exists another trading card game built on the Deckmaster (the name of the producing company) ruleset, but it isn't compatible with Magic. It is called Jyhad. It's about vampires and the politics they use to survive. I haven't played this game, but it is said to be a bit more complicated than Magic. Rumour has it that a third game will come out soon, to be called Middle Earth. This will be based on the Middle Earth books of Tolkien and it also won't be compatible with Magic. Now what's the game about? In Magic the players are powerful sorcerers, who battle to destroy their opponents in order to gain the sole domination of Dominia, the imaginary world where Magic is set. This goal is achieved by casting spells by playing the cards and following a careful strategy doing this. Magic consists of different kinds of cards, representing lands, creatures, interrupt spells, instant spells, enchantments, sorceries and artifacts. With these cards you try to reduce to zero the 20 life points of your opponent. You can do that by summoning creatures that attack and defend, and by modifying or attacking them, their lands, or themselves with your other spells. Without creatures to defend you your opponent will be able to get through to you directly. There are five different kinds of magic, powered by the five different kinds of lands: forests (green magic), plains (white magic), islands (blue magic), swamps (black magic), and mountains (red magic). The amount and type of lands you've got down on the table limit the energy (mana) available for you to power the spells. Each colour of magic has its own character, blue is for instance more ethereal and mental in nature and black magic is evil. If you have enough cards you can start to strategically select cards to create a better balanced deck. This is mostly done by using two main magic colours and one other to provide the edge, and then in about equal amounts selecting creatures, lands, and other spells, making a total of minimal 60. But that is just standard. And you can still have a lot of fun with the limited and random deck you have as a starter. For your entertainment I'll give an example of how the game goes. It's simple and standard at first, but later on I'll show you how you can ingeniously combine cards. Imagine your opponent has had some luck with getting lands, he has four different lands, but not so much with creatures; he's only got a 0/3 Wall of Wood to defend himself. The 0 is its power: the amount of damage it can do, and the 3 is its toughness: the lower limit of damage that can destroy it. You've been a bit luckier, you've got two 2/2 Grey Ogres on the table. It's your turn and you draw the Earthbind enchantment card, capable of grounding a flying creature and doing 2 damage in the process (flying creatures can't be blocked by non-flying creatures). This card is not useful right now, but is without a doubt a powerful card. Maybe it would be of use later (wink, wink). You decide to attack with both Ogres. Attacking makes defending during the opponent's turn impossible, but in this case that doesn't matter because he doesn't have a creature to attack with anyway. Your opponent decides to block one Ogre with the Wall (no one dies). To deal with the other one he uses the fast effect spell Unsummon (which allows him to put one card back to your hand) to send him back where he came from. All in all no critical damage has been inflicted in this round. In your opponent's round he draws a Hill Giant, a 3/3 creature costing four lands. (You aren't allowed to use the lands again until your next round). He puts it in play, but can't use it to attack in this round. Now it's your turn and you draw a Fireball spell, which can do damage to a selected target, costing you one mountain and an amount of lands equal to the damage you want to do. You only have two mountains and one island, so your Fireball wouldn't be powerful enough to kill the Hill Giant. You just put your Grey Ogre on the table again and don't attack with the other one, because he wouldn't survive the blocking by the Giant. Your opponent, in his turn, draws a Regeneration spell, which can regenerate a creature that would otherwise die. He feels safe and decides to attack with the Hill Giant. You block him with both your Ogres, giving the Hill Giant enough damage to kill him, while he kills one of your Ogres. Of course he regenerates the Giant, which you did not expect. Ouch! Now it's your turn again and you draw a Flight enchantment. This card permanently puts a creature up in the air. Normally you would put it on your own creature, so the Ogre could fly over the Wall and past the Giant directly to the opposing mage, but you detect the better opportunity and enchant the Giant with it. Your opponent is surprised and does not know why you gave him this present. He suspects something though. You let him have his turn. After drawing a for now useless card, your opponent lets the flying Hill Giant sweep past the Ogre and attack you. You receive full damage. He is happy. Now you draw a card that is not particularly of interest at the moment, and cast your Earthbind spell, costing one mountain. The Hill Giant heavily hits the dirt and receives two damage. That is not enough to kill him off, so you also cast the Fireball, costing one mountain and one other land, just enough to let the damage be lethal. Wicked! Your friend's grin has now changed into something quite the opposite. This description should give you some idea what you can experience during a game. The game is designed to be played by two, but numerous multi-player and solitaire rules have been invented. If you want to know more about this or about Magic in general you can either buy a starters deck (each different from the other) and read the rules, or find out if you have friends (don't worry, more is to come...) who play it and ask them, but there is also a newsgroup, rec.games.deckmaster, and the official Magic (and Jyhad) website at http://marvin.macc.wisc.edu/ to help you along. This should be enough to convince you that you simply have to start playing this awesome game. Happy sorcery! %e *EOA* %t Clio, Michigan, USA, Earth %n 2R162 %s A Great Place To Live, But I Wouldn't Want To Visit There %a Jonathan David Harmon (jharmon@mtu.edu) %d 19941101 %x Earth %x Skipping Along The Trail To Acheron %e Clio (pronounced "kl-eye-oh", despite what anyone not from Clio might tell you) is a small town nestled between the slightly large cities of Flint and Saginaw, Michigan. Despite its image of being primarily a farm town, it is a normal stop-off point for travelers on one of Michigan's main expressways, I-75, and even a bit of a cultural center. The former is mostly because of it's location. Being located just off of I-75, almost exactly half way between Flint and Saginaw, it gets both the Flint traffic going north, and the Saginaw traffic going south. This has caused a multitude of fast food restaurants to spring to life over the last few years, giving Clionians (as the denizens of Clio sometimes call themselves) a great deal of choice when the urge to harden their arteries becomes overbearing. This has also caused the roads to be improved in the area, to support the influx of hungry travellers. This has also caused the cultural sector to realize that this crowd could be taken advantage of. This latter bit of Clio is what makes it truly special. The Clio Cast and Crew, the local theater group, has led the town in the building of an Art Center and Amphitheater. These attractions bring in many performers every summer. Unfortunately, the Powers That Be still choose to cater to the farmer image of Clio, and most of these concerts are country stars. The two weekend run of the Clio Cast and Crew's summer play is the only solace for the enlightened in this swamp of bad music. The Cast and Crew also puts on fall and spring plays, and they also recently added a winter and spring youth production by the Clio Electric Youth Theater, a tiny little division of the Clio Cast and Crew. Clio High School has also been called outstanding, but this has mostly been by the author of this article when realizing when he got to college how amazingly more prepared in calculus and chemistry he was than his fellow students. The Clio High English department is also great, but this author attends a tech school, so that aspect isn't used by him very often (except in writing articles such as this, and attempting to continue "Skipping Along The Trail To Acheron" (cf)). Unfortunately, both of these examples could be used as evidence either for or against the Clio High English department. The meaning of the name "Clio" is lost in history. This is rather ironic, as Clio, pronounced "kl-ee-oh", was the Muse of History. Since the residents of Clio pronounce it "kl-eye-oh", however, this basis for the origin of the name is unlikely. This leaves room for "humouros" stories of the origin. One such story is based on the fact that Clio rests very near County Line 10 of Michigan on maps. This line is abbreviated CL10. Let me just point out that I sincerely HOPE that this is not where the name came from. %e *EOA* %t Skipping Along The Trail To Acheron %n 2R163 %s The Funniest Group-Authored Book On Earth %a Jonathan David Harmon (jharmon@mtu.edu) %d 19941017 %i Acheron, The Story %e Early in the 1992-1993 school year, a group of seniors at Clio High got bored in their AP English class. The next day Jon Harmon, a member of this group, brought in a notebook which he'd planned to use to actually take notes. What was actually written in it he will most likely remember until he's old and grey and can't even remember his own name. Before class, Jon scrawled "Skipping Along the Trail to Acheron," a title which he hoped was sufficiently ludicrous, across the cover. He then wrote a short introductory paragraph to a story, and handed the notebook to Barb Gross, a friend sitting behind him, when he got to class. She read the first paragraph, snickered, and wrote a bit of her own. She then passed it to Alan Head, another friend, and thus the cycle continued. By the end of the year, the group, consisting of five regular authors and two or three irregular ones (that is, five authors who wrote often and two or three who wrote occasionally; all authors were irregular, as can be surmised by reading the story), had accumulated 68 pages of drivel; drivel which just happened to be one of the funniest things to ever come out of Clio High. The main group consisted of: Jon Harmon, the "Keeper of the Sacred Scrolls," as he came up with the idea, and thus "guarded" the original notebook when the group went off to college; Barb Gross, a nose-ring wearing rebel who also happened to be president of the Clio chapter of the National Honor Society; Alan Head, a Southern Baptist who somehow managed to hold back most of his objections to the writings of the other authors; Jon McCarron, a big hairy guy who is still actually considering pursuing a career in journalism, after a short stint in engineering at a tech school; and Kyle LaVelle, hands down the funniest of the authors, who now wanders the streets of Clio looking for someone to cut his hair. The Story, as it is often called by The Authors, is about an "agent" who has forgotten that he's an "agent," and his various "adventures." It doesn't really have much of a plot until about page 60 of the original text; instead, it wanders from moment to moment, following the life of Norman Arless, the "agent," as he searches for his "mission." While this may sound like exactly what is necessary to make a story exceedingly dull, the story is actually quite interesting, and has been called funny by everyone who has ever read it, even those who have no real reason to simply kiss up to The Authors. One even found it so funny that work has begun on a _Skipping Along the Trail to Acheron_ radio show at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, Earth. Excerpts from the story are available by emailing jharmon@mtu.edu. Please use a subject of "Acheron Request", as I'd like to eventually set up an auto-answer. %e *EOA* %t Cool Camping %n 6R6 %s Camping As The Museum Of The Cooling Machine %a Stephane Lussier (harmless@mostly.com) %d 19940927 %x Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada, Earth %i Fridges %i Refrigerators %e Going camping is like stepping through a time gate to the past. And I am not talking about (wo)man's reunion with nature here; the camping sky is too full of television antennas to make this hypothesis reasonable to the observant thinker who likes to draw conclusions too quickly. Poetry asides, I am talking about fridges. Camping sites are the open air refrigerator museums of the late twentieth century. Nowhere in the far reaching galaxy that I know of is there a diversity of cooling devices reunited in a single location. And thanks to bad marketing, retired brand names and models engineered more than five decades ago are still humming and cooling. Compared to our aesthetically challenged modern refrigerator (rectangular box with rectangular doors) the old fridges (of the kind we've been used to see dropped on the head(s) of villain cartoon characters) have long become marvels of industrial design. Their round shapes, massive handles and encased freezer compartment can't help but give shivers to the over mediated westerner. Then why buy new expensive fridges with low lifespans when we can get hoopy looking ones with a je ne sais quoi of cartoon nostalgia for the price of a second hand Timex Sinclair 1000? Okay, the new technology is more ecological. In theory, at least. But let's put aside global concerns and concentrate on what we're really worried about here: buying a new -- or old, in that case -- fridge. So why buy a used cool fridge? They don't have warranties any longer. They may have lived out too many KWhours to be of any reliability. You may only find them at unhealthy second hand appliance discount stores, in an eccentric collector's attic or at an obscure flea market... at your own risks. Or you can always attempt to get one from a camping site but most of them have been repainted in disgusting wall paint colors and encased in hand-made sheds by workaholic amateur campers who cannot endure the serenity of nature. Things don't look up too well, uh? Maybe I'll have to write something one day on how not-to-become an auto-defrost bourgeois... So, if buying a new used fridge isn't really into your reach right now, it doesn't really matter. You can always content yourself idling around a camping site, glancing at the freezing marvels. But don't be surprised if a camper glances back at you suspisciously, they're just not used to have their refrigerators looked upon as museum pieces. %e *EOA* %t Winning Arguments %n 2R164 %s An Important Strategy For Winning Arguments %a Roel van der Meulen (vdmeulen@strw.leidenuniv.nl) %d 19941130 %i Repetition %e One way of winning an argument is repeating your point over and over again. Just repeat what you have to say, whatever they bring against it. Nothing matters more than to counter a counter argument with the same thing you've been saying all along. Just repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat it. You might say this will never convince anyone, but that is not important, just repeat your message. People will absolutely hear and understand what you say if you repeat it long enough. Repeating is enough to win any argument. All you need to do is to repeat the same words over and over again. If someone disagrees with you just say "Yes, but..." and tell them the same words again.... So we see, repetition is the key of winning any argument. Don't forget it. Repetition. Although this will never really convince people your argument is the best, they will get so bored and tired that they'll agree with anything, just as long as you SHUT UP!!!! %e *EOA* %t InterRail And Eurail %n 2R165 %s Froody Ways To Explore Europe %a Andrea Berger (andrea.berger@altair.it) %d 19941112 %i Train Tickets %i Eurail And Interrail * %k Rail * %k Trains %e The InterRail (for european citizens), and the Eurail (for people outside the ECC), is a special unlimited mileage monthly rail ticket which allows people under 26 years old to freely travel on national railways in all ECC countries, as well as a lot of eastern ones, and Turkey and Morocco. The InterRail scheme is the following (Eurail is very similar). You can buy a one-, two-, or three-zone ticket, or a complete all-zones ticket (this one is quite expensive and I suggest it only for people who intend to _really_ travel a lot). The zones are: 1) Spain, Portugal, and Morocco 2) France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland 3) Great Britain and Ireland 4) Norway, Sweden, and Finland 5) Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Denmark 6) Italy (big cheer for my own country!), Slovenija, Greece, and Turkey [1] 7) Poland, Czech and Slovakia Republics, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary If you are from a European country and you buy a ticket including your zone, you only have to pay 50% fare for the tickets inside your country (so the best is get your kicks out of your country as soon as possible). You also get a 50% discount on tickets if you cross countries not included in your zones. Not included are the supplement and reservation for luxurious train as Intercities, TGV, Talgo, etc. (but no true InterRailer would ever take an intercity with comfortable couchettes when he could sleep in a completely full train, loaded with lots of backpackers from every country in on planet, maybe trying to sleep sneaking in the postal wagon (opened with your swiss knife) and being completely submerged by mail sacks thrown by Austrian postmen, not to mention the unique occasion to taste fried chicken at Wien's station for breakfast). My advice is to travel during the night -- this will consent you to save time and money on hotels, to get the peculiar perfume you can only obtain in smelly trains (Moroccan and Turkish are the best), and to achieve that particular really tired look which is so glamorous among tanned and relaxed people on vacations. And besides, the really tired girls/boys you will meet are an easer prey for purposes I'm not mentioning 8). Other cheap places to sleep are the ever-present youth hotels (God praise the YHIF), benches in parks, churchyards, but I'm not explaining these things to true Galactic Hitchhikers. Some words on the luggage: If you are planning to walk a lot (and InterRailing means walking a lot), you will have to use a backpack. Some purists think that you only need a very small one, one of the kind used by schoolboys to carry their books. Mr. Luca Conti in his Inter Rail Man booklet suggests this "ultra compact luggage:" * one pair of slips * one pair of shorts (also useful as a swimsuit) * a k-way * one pair of shoes * a shirt * a jacket * a t-shirt * a pair of long trousers (i.e, jeans) * a toothbrush * a shampoo bottle * toilet paper (optional: stealable from hotels, trains, etc.) and, of course... * a TOWEL My personal opinion is that a normal backpack could be quite useful, especially if you want to bring those nice and cheap used books you bought in a Danish church until the very comfortable youth hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco. Now some words on your fellow travellers. I advise you to choose carefully your companions; they must be ready to withstand fatigue, hunger, lack of sleep, greek sailors mistaking you for an Albanian refugee and beating you, sexual harassment, organized tourists, people getting very angry just because you hit them with your backpack while you were only trying to throw it on the bus roof. The rewards, however, are great: you will be able to see and taste in one month more than in couple of years of ordinary tourism. You will meet lot of interesting and strange people as my Slovenian friends who helped me getting out of a riot in Marrakesh and from a few other little troubles. Do not build parties of more than 3 people; you will spend most of your time discussing where to go and what to do next. I had a couple of InterRails on my own and I had a great time; I met all my company on the way and I could also decide to go away without any problem at any time. Another idea is to start agreeing with your companions to split if the occasion would rise (as I did with Marcello who went after some girls in southern France while I headed towards the Moroccan desert) you can also arrange some re-meetings in exotic places, if your friends are trustable. About the food: if you are on a bit low budget (as I usually am), you can actually survive on cold meals bought in supermarkets and stores (once I managed live a week eating just some tinned tuna I found in my home pantry). Besides, if the season is right, there are lot fruits and vegetables available trees and fields on the road; you have just to be careful of the undisposed farmer. As a last resort you can also invite yourself to dinners, maybe using your irresistible charm on the opposite sex (on my personal experience this just worked once but if you are more Richard Gearish). Travelling with an InterRail is a sensation of complete freedom: you can choose where to go next anytime, there are absolutely no preorganized tours, you will always decide with your own head what to do next. My final advise is to buy an european rail time table from Thomas Cook, an InterRail or Eurail pass, pack your sleeping bag in your backpack and go and try yourself. This is absolutely not a complete and exhaustive digression on the matter and I claim the right to add, amend, correct, deny, anything I stated. For any comments, ideas, and insults you can find me at: andrea.berger@altair.it [1] Note: this zone includes an almost free (just 10.000 italian lir. portal fee) to and from Greece from Brindisi, Italy. %e *EOA* %t Nerd Bingo %n 2R166 %s Games To Play In The Lecture Hall %a Michael Bleyer (s_bleyer@rzmain.rz.uni-ulm.de) %d 19941126 %i Recreational Games %i Humor %i Fun %x Lecture Games %e As you probably guessed from the title, this is a game. If you didn't guess it, you know now. As fun things usually do, it requires a certain sense of humor. It also requires several other things to start playing; if you don't have them readily available, check out your nearest university or college. First you will need a lecture hall with a lecture going on. Best suited is a large lecture with lots of nerds (computer scientists work pretty well, but any other scientists will do too). Every player participating in the game draws a tic-tac-toe square on a sheet of paper (3x3 fields). Into each field, enter the name of one nerd who sits in the lecture. If you don't know their names, make up funny nicknames, just be sure everyone knows who is meant. If one of the nerds on your sheet asks the professor a stupid question (or any question, since every question from a nerd is by definition a stupid question), you get to cross out the field with the name of that nerd in it. The first player to get 3 fields in a row wins (horizontal, vertical or diagonal). Of course the player has to shout "Bingo" loud and clear to claim his victory. The difficulty of this game is to figure out who the nerdiest nerd is, since this name should go into the middle field of your sheet (this field obviously has the most possible combinations). As you can see, this game is a favourite of hitchhikers to exercise the knowledge of human nature. If you want to make the game more exiting, you can bet for money, alcohol or other things that a hitchhiker often runs short of. %e *EOA* %t Stories, Short %n 2R167 %s The Story About Short Stories %d 19941117 %a Rickard Andersson (rickard@softlab.se) %i Short Stories %x Article Writing Guide For Field Researchers And Guide Editors %e A short story isn't very long. :-) %e *EOA* %t Enlightenment %n 2R168 %s Do You See The Light? %a Michael Bleyer (s_bleyer@rzmain.rz.uni-ulm.de) %d 19941125 %i Pastimes %x Art Of Being, The %x Classification Of Religions %x Euro Disney, Marne-le-Vallee, France, Earth %e The danger of enlightenment is often underestimated by people, for obvious reasons. The common idea of enlightenment is that it is something positive and wonderful that makes people consequently feel better afterwards. This is a big mistake. For enlightenment always happens a little later than when you expect it to happen, usually when you're already on the way back home in your car. But then it is actually so overwhelming that you are quite busy with all these feelings and thoughts of, "Yeah. Right. So that's what it's all about" going on inside you. In other words, you are in absolutely no condition to reliably control a vehicle, so you'll very likely end up hitting a tree head-on. This is why enlightenment is so dangerous. But luckily, nature was smart enough to foresee this foolish human behavior, and has therefore installed a safety measure: it's not easy to get there. This ensures that only experienced people who know how to handle it get enlightened, and thus humankind is prevented from self-extinction through enlightened drivers causing car accidents. For you as an average Hitchhiker however, these risks most likely pose no extraordinary threat compared to your usual lifestyle, so you might try it out as well. You have the option of several methods: 1) Ask a Guru or Master to show you how it works. This requires you to first find such a person, which shouldn't be so difficult, since they seem to be all over this planet lately. Watch out for fakes though. If the person smiles a lot, is not embarrassed by any of the stunts you pull to test him and asks for no or little money in exchange for teaching you, then you probably found one. The second part is a little more tricky. The definition of enlightenment claims that you cannot understand what someone else tells you about it if you haven't been there yourself. It also claims, however, that you don't have to be told, because you already have the potential to eventually figure it out for yourself, which brings you back to where you started. This obviously leads to the question why you would need a guru in the first place, since he can't explain it to you. So all this guy usually does is tell you to meditate (see method 2, below) and whack you on the back of your head or perform some other mysterious action that he claims will speed up the process of getting you there. 2) Meditation. Besides often taking a lifetime or longer to yield any decent results, you usually have to stand incredible pains in your legs or other parts of your body, plus possibly being tortured by a guru with whacks on the back of your head (see method 1, above). You are advised to try this only if you have masochistic tendencies or you have tried pretty much all other pastimes known to you and found them all boring. 3) Drugs. Since humans have become rather lazy, our technically advanced society has invented means to make even the hardest of tasks possible. Many people want to feel as positive and wonderful as someone who is enlightened, but they don't want to put up with all this lifelong meditation and whacks on the back of their head. This is why drugs were invented. While some purists claim that drugs are not the same thing, and nowhere near as good as _true_ enlightenment, this argument has never been scientifically proven, so it can be discarded. The high rate of people causing car accidents while under the influence of drugs proves that there must be some effect of the same quality. Besides, you can always cover the bad side effects of drugs by taking more drugs, whereas you can't cover up the pain in your legs through more meditation, so drugs obviously score better on this part. 4) Instantaneous enlightenment. This is by all means the best way to do it. Unfortunately, so far no one has found a reliable way to successfully trigger it off. It appears to just happen somehow, and before you even really notice, it's already gone again. Hopes are high for neuroscience to come up with a device that will be able to record and playback such a condition of mind, but you might as well try some of the other methods while you wait. %e *EOA* %t Water %n 2R169 %s A Liquid Just Like Anybody Else %d 19941117 %a Rickard Andersson (rickard@softlab.se) %i Liquids %x Coffee %x Tea %x Diet Coke %e Water is one of the most used liquids on the planet Earth. For example, approximately 70% of the Earth's surface are filled with water. By coincidence, the human body also contains 70% water. The relationship between these figures is easily understood, and will be thoroughly explained in the near future. One thing that water is known to be is wet. But in cold places, water can be more hard than wet. To be more precise, this will happen when water is stored in places where the temperature is below 0 degrees Celsius. This form of frozen water is called ice. One of the best uses of ice is to cut it into small pieces, and put it into drinks and whiskey. Some of the higher intelligence life forms on Earth have learned to skate on the ice, most notably the humans and the elks. One other form that water can be found in is when it has a temperature over 100 degrees Celsius. Water in this form is called steam, and is hard to see when you look for it. Steam is the way water goes when it tries to escape from the Earth. These attempts usually end with the fact that the steam falls down toward the Earth's surface again. When the water comes falling from the sky, the humans refer to it as rain. Rain is wet, and when rain isn't wet it's usually hard and frozen. The frozen water that is falling from the sky is called snow. Most of the water that we use is fresh water. When you put salt in the fresh water, you get, not surprisingly, salt water. All the oceans on the Earth have been polluted with salt, and therefore contain salt water. Nobody remembers who it was that put the salt in the oceans. And to be frank, who care about it nowadays. There is also the fact that scientists have found a way to make hard water. This type of water shall not be confused with any of the above mentioned types of water. It has a different atomic structure and you shouldn't be drinking it. Many more facts about the subject of water can be told by your local scientist. I can promise you that they will be not only more accurate, but also more dull. %e *EOA* %t Vi Editor, A Less Beginner's Guide %n 2R170 %s Why Vi Is More Useful And Maybe Faster Than Edlin Or Emacs %d 19941118 %a Rickard Andersson (rickard@softlab.se) %i Text Editors, Vi %x Vi Editor, A Beginner's Guide %x Unix Vi Editor, Case Study Of %e Here is the sequel to the _Vi Editor, A Beginner's Guide_ article, which explained some of the basic facts about the all-to-famous text editor vi. This article contains more or less everything that was left out from the first article. My advice for those that haven't read the first article is to promptly read this article and then look up and read the first article. Expert users of vi can skip both these introductionary articles and go straight to more expert-friendly articles about vi. If you can't find any other vi articles than the ones you have read already, a good explanation will be found in the next sentence. Writing and updating articles for the PGG are done solely for fun and in spare time. There are some different implementations of vi for different computers, in some cases there are even different implementations for one particular computer. One good example of a good implementation of vi for a good computer is VIM for the Macintosh computers. VIM is also available for use on Amiga DOS, (Archimedes), MS-DOS, Windows NT and many Unix versions. VIM has all the basic vi features and many new and interesting features, including multiple open windows. But enough of the introduction speech; here are many goodies for all the less beginner's of the vi text editor: * To move one line down, press the [j], [], [^G], or [+] key. * Press the [%] key to find next bracket and go to its match. This also applies to [, ], {, }. * To set a mark on the cursor position, just press the [m] key + [one letter]. * To move to a mark, press the [`] key + [one letter]. * Press the [:] key to switch to the command line. * On the command line, press [p], [r], [e] and [return]. This makes vi preserve the text file by saving the buffer as if the system has crashed. Recover with 'vi -r' command. * Press [^G] to see file information. File name, status, current line number and position. This was some advises and tips on how to get the more out of vi. Two useful features in vi that haven't been mentioned yet, are macros and abbreviations. They will be explained in the forthcoming sequel _Vi Editor, A Expert Beginner's Guide_. %e *EOA* %t Encyclopedia Galactica %n 6R7 %s The Legendary Encyclopedia Of The Entire Universe %a Rickard Andersson (rickard@softlab.se) %d 19941230 * %k Guide * %k Asimov * %k Adams * %k HHGTTG * %k PGG * %k Reference %e The term _Encyclopedia Galactica_ has been used by many writers, when they have needed references to some type of official encyclopedia in their works. Probably the first one to use the term was Isaac Asimov. Asimov used the term _Encyclopedia Galactica_ in his Foundation trilogy, which was first published as eight novels between 1942 and 1949. In all the Foundation books by Asimov, the last one written in 1993, there are references to the _Encyclopedia Galactica_. Douglas Adams has also used the term _Encyclopedia Galactica_ in his Hitch-Hiker's Guide trilogy. Adams only goes so far as to compare _Encyclopedia Galactica_ to the _Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, which by comparison is a bit cheaper. The Project Galactic Guide (PGG) can maybe be seen as an attempt to bring a reasonably accurate encyclopedia to the people of the universe. But nevertheless must the _Encyclopedia Galactica_ be considered the ultimate reference book in the future. %e *EOA* %t Aaargh %n 6R8 %s How You Express Yourself When Something Is Wrong %a Rickard Andersson (rickard@softlab.se) %d 19941230 %i Screaming %i Expressions: The Scream %e This verbal expression can be heard in many situations. It is said by people who have found out that something isn't quite all right. It shows their feelings of having done something the wrong way or in the wrong place. Well, maybe the best way to show you how to use the expression is with these small examples: * When people finds out that they have done the wrong assignment for homework, they will sometime express their feeling with an _Aaargh_. * Picture yourself outside your house with all the keys to the door inside the house. Yes, an _Aaargh_ is the right thing to say. * If you has programmed a very interesting piece of code, and then accidentally hits the wrong keys and erases everything, an _Aaargh_ is perfectly accurate to scream. * When you have written an article and you can't seem to stop adding more or less useful explanations, the only thing to do is to end with an _Aaargh_. %e *EOA* %t Wine Tasting %n 2R171 %s Hughes Parry Hall Oenology Society %a Alex McLintock (alexmc@biccdc.co.uk) %d 19941212 %x Coffee %i Pissed, (adv) To Be Inebriated %i Hughes Parry Hall Oenology Society, London, UK %e Wine tasting is not necessarily a snobbish pastime. There are many people who taste beers, coffee, and tea, along with many other foods and drinks. The first thing to understand is that wine tasting is a subjective experience. Whatever you say to describe a wine is OK - if that is what you experience. If you think this particular white tastes of cat's piss then feel free to say it. It might remind you of Domestos or some other household toilet cleaner. Personally, I have never tasted a Gerwurztraminer because the smell is so overpowering that I have never brought a glass of it to my lips. When tasting in a friendly gathering there is no _right_ way to do it. Whatever your friends feel is acceptable goes. But a couple of small tips may be useful. 1) Use glass glasses. Plastic tumblers just degrade the experience, and turn a connoisseurs' event into a debauched piss up [0]. 2) Never ever drive home. Always bring a sleeping bag. If you have to leave the house then remember to bring a tent and compass too, because you won't be sober enough to find your way back. 3) Never ever try chatting anyone up. This usually results in an embarrassing situation because the chattee is invariably stone sober and probably thinks you are as pissed as a fart [0]. As a final note, some sort of formal note paper is useful. This usually has slots for the name of the wine, region where the grapes were grown [1], year, grape variety. Most of these you can get from the label. Don't even think of doing blind tastings whilst still a beginner [2]. But more useful from a beginner's point of view are the various standard characteristics of wine: colour, taste (sweetness, bitterness, acidity), tannin, aroma, body, legs, length, and rim. To demonstrate let me give to you the tasting notes I made at the last meeting of the Hughes Parry Hall Oenology Group. (No, we couldn't make a good acronym out of that name either.) Graves L'Hospital, 1992, reminds me of low alcohol wine, yellow, ok. Dr Loosen's Riesling, 1992, white, ok. Jacob's Creek, 1993, Australia, white, rose water, bored. I didn't like that much. Thankfully the next bottle was very nice, and I got more fluent in my praise. Tokaji Aszu, 1988, desert wine, Hungary, Tokaj region, Tesco! Buy this. It was very similar to dilute Commandaria which is a Cypriot desert wine. Pouilly-Sur Loire, Loire, refreshing (probably because it was very cold), hot day, french, and a couple of other things which were too scrawled for me to read. The next bottle I missed for some reason. I think my faculties must have been slightly impaired. Chateau Ramage La Batisse, 1989, Red. Missed. Friends I know are welcome to the Hughes Parry Hall Wine Society meetings. Please contact me for full details. [0] _To be pissed_, verb, to be inebriated. The American phrase "I am pissed" should be translated into English English as "I am pissed off" unless the American is drunk - which is usually a good state to keep them in. _Piss up_, noun, an arranged meeting for the consumption of alcoholic beverages. [1] Yes, wine is made out of grapes. [2] A blind tasting is where you don't see the label. %e *EOA* %t What's In A Name? %n 2R172 %s Automotive Appellations that Appal %a David McG. Squire (squizz@cs.curtin.edu.au) %d 19941028 %i Automotive Names, The Art Of %e I have decided that they have gone mad. The folks in the marketing divisions have finally lost it. I have no idea who they are or how they do it, but the folks who decide the names of cars have flipped. They have put their foot to the floor and ploughed headlong into the brick wall of utter, utter lunacy. What has brought me to this conclusion? The Ford "Probe." What were they thinking of? How could this be a good thing to call a car? It is not a strong name. It does not evoke images of glamour, safety, power or sexual prowess. I can only conclude that it is the result of a bunch of twits taking a simple idea far, far further than they should have. For decades motor cars have been phallic (Or at least so we have been told). The thrusting, powerful red sportscar is a supposed to symbolize a latent sexual potential, or at least to indicate that the owner has a pretty impressive drive shaft. Now some fool at Ford has taken hold of this notion, completely failed to grasp it properly (a common problem), and named the latest model after a gynecological instrument. As they say, "close, but no cigar." What are we to expect next? The Ford "Speculum"? It was not this incident alone that caused me to despair of the sanity of the car christeners. It has been a cumulative process. Car names used to be simple, easy to understand. Subtlety was not a factor. Predatory animals were big. "Jaguar," "Falcon;" names to impress. Not only could this vehicle move the family about at speed, it could eat the neighbours. Try keeping up now, Mr. Jones. Another popular one was the names of European towns. "Cortina," "Capri," "Calais." No doubt these are supposed to sound glamorous, and possibly to subconsciously invoke the word "Ferrari," and its concomitant associations. "Eldorado" got a run too (though not a European town), with its obvious overtones of opulence. Unfortunately this now seems to have degenerated into nothing more than an industry-wide belief that, where possible, car names should end with a vowel sound. Now we have "Camira," "Camry," "Cressida," "Barina," "Lantra," and "Verada." I mean one sounds like an insect, another like an ice-creams flavour, and the last one sounds very much like a dry biscuit. Can you imagine the marketing gurus sitting around the table deciding on these? How do they choose? "Verruca? ... No," "Extruda? ... No. Sounds like crap," "Polenta? ... Yes! Nice ring to it! The "Mazda Polenta." I like it! ... Oh, No. It's some sort of food.," "How about Verada? ... Isn't that something around a house? No? Great! ..." The mind boggles. I would like now to draw your attention to the Mitsubishi stable, and I use the word advisedly. A few years ago Mitsubishi released a small car called the "Colt." Nothing wrong with that. A cute name for a small car, suggestive of latent strength and potential even. Just recently a much larger Mitsubishi model hit the market -- the "Lancer." Now that's really cute! A theme of names running through the models. That's right, "Lancer" is the name of a really big horse (big enough to carry a knight in armour, and his lance). Those clever fellows at Mitsubishi! It even sounds like a car name (echoes of "Charger"), and has a hint of penetration which, as we have seen, is always good. Unfortunately, it did not all go well for those well-meaning marketing folk in Japan. What is the name of their middle-sized model? The "Starion." Think about it. Those sirry, sirry buggers. There is one recently released model that I think sums this entire trend up very nicely indeed. The Daihatsu "Charade." I mean really. I guess it sort of has the right sound for a car name, but did they give the slightest thought to what the word means? What next? The Toyota "Facade"? The Nissan "Farce"? Probably. (c) Copyright David Squire, 1994. Permission is given for this article to be distributed as part of the Project Galactic Guide archives. It may NOT be distributed in any other form, or published in any newspaper, book, or magazine anywhere without the express permission of the author. %e *EOA* %t Bremerhaven, Bremen, Germany, Earth %n 2R173 %s A Place Out Of Space And Time %a Kai Hattendorf (hattendorf@ifj.fb15.uni-dortmund.de) %d 19950106 %x Earth %e The Town -------- Deep in the flat area of northern Germany lies a small, quite unknown city called Bremerhaven. To be honest, it is not really necessary to visit this spot on Earth, but sometimes you can't avoid ending up there. This happened to about 130,000 people who now live there. How To Get There ---------------- Luckily it is not very easy to come to Bremerhaven: there is only a small local airport for flights to important centres such as Wangerooge or Baltrum. Most of the regular flights are cancelled because of the small number of passengers. The more common way to reach Bremerhaven is to take one of the trains from Bremen. This train ride gives you an impression of travelling in the nineteen-forties: little speed, lots of stops, and old coaches guarantee a interesting journey to "Bremerhaven Hauptbahnhof," the central station. If you really want to see Bremerhaven the hard way, you might leave the Train at "Bremerhaven Wulsdorf," a stop right in the middle of nowhere, and find your way to the city centre. What To Do There ---------------- If you really decide to stay for a while instead of taking the next train back, you might check out the "Alte Buerger", Bremerhavens pub-mile. Because of the harbour, Bremerhaven was used to a many-sided nightlife. Nowadays the ships just stop for a couple of hours to change their containers, and the boatmen aren't allowed to leave to ships. This causes lots of problems to the red-light-district at Lessingstrasse. But still the pubs and bars are allowed to stay open all night, which is quite nice and most commonly regarded as one of Bremerhavens big points. If you want to see the remains of the 1960's "Hippie" movement, check out the bar "Frosch." If you want to feel like a tomato in the Netherlands, visit the "Blattlaus" - it is located in an old glasshouse. Other bars worth visiting: "Pub" (irish beer, expensive!), "Yesterday" (disco and club, no entrance fee), "Frizz" (watch the Want-To-Be-Importants, lots of fun!). Where To Stay ------------- There is an official Youth Hostel - try to avoid it. Doors are locked very early and it isn't located in a place you could call "central" - except if you like to leave the clubs at 2300 and walk for a good hour through the usually cold and rainy night. The cheapest place to spend the night is the "Columbus-Center," a big shopping centre in the city centre. Its doors remain open at night and lots of the homeless people of Bremerhaven spend their night there. You will meet a number of have-been-sailors, but also some have-been-humans that will ask you for a beer (or two or ninety-eight). This might be interesting, but not everyone likes it. Otherwise just find your way to the "Alte Buerger," check out the pubs, and ask for some possibilities to spend the night. Where To Work ------------- If you happened to run out of money - i.e., after a couple of nights in the pubs - ask for a job at the "Bremer Lagerhausgesellschaft." This company is in charge for the jobs in the harbour. You might be offered a job to carry bananas out of ships or to drive cars into or out of ships. The work is sometimes hard, but well (and weekly) paid. An other possibility is - again - the bars. Ask for a job in the early hours, before everyone gets drunk. Or catch a "McJob" at a fast food restaurant. Always Remember --------------- Bremerhaven is full of people who just arrived one day more or less by pure coincidence - and missed to leave again. Except from the original Bremerhaveners (the ones that have been born there) nearly no one finds that this city is the proof for intelligence in architecture and culture. (To be honest, there is a Mr. Hennig Goes who does so, but he is the head of the local tourist office...). Events in 1995 -------------- Finally there is one good reason to come to Bremerhaven in 1995: if you are interested in old giant sailing ships, you might visit the city between July 15 and July 20. During this week up to one hundred sailing ships will be in town to hold an international festival called "Sail '95." You can watch the ships, you can visit the ships - and if you're lucky you can leave Bremerhaven on one of the boats when they go for a big parade on the closing Sunday. Nine years ago a different event took place - and nearly a million spectators came to watch. So even the "Columbus-Center" will be crowded with sleepers. %e *EOA* %t Bradford, England, UK, Earth (Part 2) %n 2R174 %s A Survivor's Guide To Bradford %a Andrew Sims (AndrewS@mortdieu.demon.co.uk) %d 19940111 %x Bradford, England, UK, Earth %e There are many good things I could write about Bradford. I could write paragraphs about it's contributions to British culture and society, wax lyrical about the friendliness of it's inhabitants and the beauty of the architecture. I could do so, but, as anyone who has ever been there can tell you, I would be lying through my teeth. There are those who say that Bradford is the last place God made, and I would like to distance myself from such radicals immediately. While it is obvious that God Himself (or, to be fair, Herself) directly intervened in the development of other Yorkshire cities, such as York and certain parts of Leeds, I fear that no divinity worth His (or Her) salt would go anywhere near the place [1] - which leaves us with the Devil Himself [2] in charge of the place. The town itself can be found lurking on a number of hills in central Yorkshire. As anyone who has ever spent any time in the city will tell you, due to some topological quirk of the local geography, in order to get from any one place to any other, it will be necessary to walk uphill. The town centre shows signs of having been moderately pleasant at some distant point in the past, but these days the developers have moved in - the beautiful Victorian buildings which might have brought some cheer to the dank streets are long gone, having been replaced in the 60's with the sort of architectural monstrosities that people at that time thought were "exciting" and "modern." Those shells which survived the "renovation" are covered with fine wire mesh, either to stop passer-byes appreciating them, or, more likely, to make sure they don't collapse into the street from shame. The University, by the way, is placed at the top of a hill (as if I should have to say), and it can be seen across most of the city. Can it be mere coincidence that the University also boasts three contenders for "Britain's Ugliest Building?" The Richmond Street building would disfigure even a carbuncle. And so we come to weather. It is actually possible to tell natives of Bradford anywhere in the world. They are the ones dressed in waterproofs in midsummer. In Bradford, you dress for rain, because you know, no matter how clear the sky, sooner or later, the heavens will open. In fact, the only time in the year that you can guarantee it won't rain is winter, and that's because the snow doesn't let up for long enough. Bradford's contribution to British culture is somewhat nil - they have produced no Dickens, no Shakespeare. Indeed, the only famous son of Bradford I can find is a certain J. B. Priestley - a previously obscure writer who, I believe, was propelled into the limelight when his nephew, Elvis, shot to fame in the States. As to cuisine, what great marvels are there on offer? Which British dishes can be had there? What are the local specialties? Can I perhaps sample Yorkshire pudding, that world-renowned dish? Or perhaps a black pudding, which is Yorkshire's other famed specialty... No. The item of Great British cuisine which is most easily available in the city is the curry, that most English of dishes. I rest my case. Things To See In Bradford ------------------------- 1) The sign on the motorway saying "You are now leaving Bradford" which is the highlight of any trip to the city. Things To Do In Bradford ------------------------ 1) Leave. As quickly as possible. [Note - while this article may appear to be somewhat derogatory to a certain area of Yorkshire, it is by no means the author's intent to insult or denigrate this region. I trust that inhabitants of the area will appreciate that this article was written with humorous intent - it is well known that Bradfordians have a great sense of humour - you have to, to survive in the place.] [1] It is a little known, but highly relevant, fact that Bradford Cathedral is placed in such a way that it is possible to walk right past it and _still not see it_! What is it hiding from? [2] Why does no one ever question the gender of the devil? %e *EOA* * * End of file: REAL08.NEW * Share and Enjoy! *